I have finished up in the UK. My last housesit was a long one, at nine weeks. It was pretty much the perfect housesit. The people were warm, considerate and did everything they could to make me comfortable. The neighbours were friendly. There were two big forests within walking distance, each with multiple paths to explore with Fergus the dog. Not to mention a sort of system of village greens that were also great for dog walking.
And Fergus was quite possibly the best dog I’ve ever housesat.
Certainly among the top five. So friendly, smart, and very well behaved. Could be walked off leash. Loved to play ball. Loved to sit beside me on the couch without making a nuisance of himself. No barking, no destruction, no messes.
Sadly, though, the time came to say goodbye. It felt both great and intimidating to be on the move again after two months. However, the trip to Germany went almost flawlessly. I had forgotten how quick it is to get to interesting places in Europe. Mind you, the homeowners drove me to Heathrow so that avoided some hassle, but to my surprise, it only took about thirty minutes to get checked in, through security and get to my gate. I even had time for breakfast, at a sit down restaurant no less, which airports don’t seem to have anymore. A rather sad looking, but ultimately tasty, smoked salmon eggs benny.
An hour or so later, I was in Frankfurt en route to the train station, right at the airport. The Frankfurt airport was the most civilized I have seen outside of Singapore. Places to have a nap, and a shower.
The train was 45 minutes late.
Pretty much every train was late. What happened to the famed German efficiency?
After waiting on the cold, windy platform for another 45 minutes, it was time for my train, but there was another train still sitting at the designated platform. My tired brain tried to compute this. Maybe there has been a platform change? Spike of adrenaline. Yep. There was a tiny notice in German crawling across the bottom corner of the screen which I swear had not been there the last time I Looked, sixty seconds before. By the time I found the correct platform, my train was disappearing down the track.
I felt like crying. I had been traveling all day. I had already been sitting in the cold for 90 minutes. It was now nearly 6:00 and I hadn’t eaten since the eggs benny at 9:30. It would be after 7:00 by the time I got to Wurzburg, even if I had caught my train.
I think this piece of art in the train station must memorialise some weary traveler whose head just came right off in frustration over delays.
I was tempted to check in at one of the airport hotels and try the next day. But I stiffened my spine, located the information booth and was told my ticket would still be good on the next train, which after another round of searching and trying to read notices in German, I found was scheduled to arrive in 45 minutes or so. On the same platform. Back in the cold wind, this time I watched the crawl screen of information like a hawk. I was even able to help some other poor schmuck who was confused as to why his train wasn’t arriving at this platform as indicated, and was able to point out that his platform had changed. His train was already sitting at the platform behind us, ready to depart. At least he made his.
My train was only a few minutes late, and there no platform change. I hauled my suitcase up the steps and staggered to a seat, none the worse for wear besides feeling half frozen and starving.
Oh, I forgot to say where I was going. Berlin? Munich? Perhaps all the way to Vienna? Nope. I was on my way to Wurzburg and excited to be so.
What? Why?
It isn’t obvious? The city has the largest collection of works in the world by the medieval sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider. What do you mean, you never heard of him??? What are you, a savage? Just kidding. Medieval German wood sculptors are not exactly having a viral moment. Tilman needs a TikTok influencer to promote him.
This is a long story.
I came across Tilman Riemenschneider over forty years ago in a novel written by Elizabeth Peters. If you haven’t read her books, you should check them out. This talented woman had a doctorate in Egyptology from the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, but she took to writing romance/adventure/mystery novels, many of them set in the Victorian age of Egyptian archeological exploration. They are smart and funny.
Anyway, one of the first books of hers I came across was ‘Borrower of the Night’. It stars the wonderfully named “Vicki Bliss” who is a tall, statuesque blonde who just also happens to be a PhD and historian. She and a colleague end up in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, chasing after a lost Riemenschneider altar. Her description of Rothenburg, and of Riemenschneider’s works, coupled with Riemenschneider’s life story, made an indelible impression on me.
Riemenschneider came to Wurzburg at the age of 23 in 1483, already a trained wood carver. By 1494, he was well enough established to be commissioned to do stone statues of Adam and Eve for the Marienkapelle church. Today these are recognized worldwide as masterpieces of medieval art.
Honestly, for me, not his best work, but I am an amateur. What do I know?
In 1496, Lorenz von Bibra, the Prince Bishop of Wurzburg, commissioned Tilman to carve an ‘epitaph’ for the former Prince Bishop, Rudolf von Scherenberg. I think we would call it an effigy. The next year he was commissioned to do the tomb for the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and his wife Cunigonde, in Bamberg Cathedral. In 1516, he did the epitaph for his patron, von Bibra.
Riemenschneider continued to prosper, attracting many more prestigious commissions. He was elected a burgher in Wurzburg, meaning he sat on the city council. He was a landowner, holding several houses and vineyards. His workshop is estimated to have provided employment for as many as 40 people, including twelve apprentices and three stone sculptors.
Then came the German Peasants’ War in 1524/1525. It was the largest and most widespread popular uprising in Europe before the French Revolution, involving 300,000 peasants, in uprisings all over the Germanic states, poor people armed with only their farm tools and their hatred of the repressive system they lived under. As one article pointed out, they were not only outmatched in arms and training by the Germanic aristocracy, but because their movement was determinedly democratic, they had no effective leadership. Gee, this sounds familiar. Occupy Wall Street? Me Too? Black Lives Matter? Hands Off?
Democracy is all very well, but someone needs to stand up and take the lead, or these popular movements have their moment and peter out, accomplishing nothing.
One would have expected Riemenschneider, the wealthy landholder, to side with the nobility. Instead he and some of the other burghers refused the order of the then Prince Bishop of Wurzburg to organize Wurzburg to fight the peasants. Up to 100,000 of the revolutionaries were slaughtered by the nobility (8,000 of them outside the Wurzburg city gates), before the revolt was put down for good.
Riemenschneider was taken to the Marienburg Fortress, where he was imprisoned and tortured for two months. Riemenschneider was stripped of most of his property and only received one other commission before his death six years later. He was largely forgotten until his gravestone was rediscovered in 1822.
Clearly he was a man of principle. His story seems very apt in the current political climate.
When I was housesitting near Nurnberg in 2018, I was able to take a day trip to Rothenburg and saw my first ‘Riemenschneider’. (The quotation marks will make sense later in this series of posts.)
I had also been privileged to see a few of Riemenschneider’s works in museums in Munich and Berlin as well as Nurnburg.
Both Rothenburg and Riemenschneider were everything Elizabeth Peters had lead me to expect. How often does reality live up to the fantasy?
One thing about being purposefully homeless and committed to travel is that you have to make a lot of decisions about where you are going. My eldest son and his family were going to Paris in early April and I was committed to meeting them there. But I didn’t think I wanted to spend two and a half weeks in Paris. (Spoiled princess, I know, right?) But I have been to Paris many times, and in case I don’t come back to Europe, I wanted to just make sure there wasn’t anywhere else I really didn’t want to miss.
For some reason, I remembered Riemenschneider. A very little investigation online told me that the largest collection of Riemenschneider’s work – 81 pieces – was in a museum in Wurzburg. The epitaphs of the two Prince Bishops were in the cathedral there. And the tomb of the Emperor and Empress were in Bamberg, about an hour’s train ride away.
Suddenly I was on a mission. I booked myself into a hotel in the heart of Wurzburg for a short interlude, intending to immerse myself in medieval German sculpture. As one does.
As my train pulled into Wurzburg, I noticed a mighty fortress high on a hill.
I decided that whatever that was, I was not climbing up there to investigate.
Wurzburg has a long and violent history – mass witch trials (600 to 900 people, mostly women, were burnt alive over a period of five years in the early 1600s), pogroms against Ashkenazi Jews in 1819, and of course, full participation in the persecution under Hitler of the 2,000 Jews living in Wurzburg. It even had its own satellite concentration camp.
I was interested to see many, many small bronze plaques embedded in the cobblestone streets, memorialising people who were persecuted, deported and murder during WWII.
Germany does not flinch from confronting and acknowledging the despicable parts of its history. A lesson other countries could usefully learn.
It is now a small, charming city (at least the historic part), on the beautiful river Main.
My hotel was a historic one, one of a handful of buildings on the street not destroyed by Allied bombs in 1944.
Across the street, there is a clear demarcation between the new construction and the other buildings, on the right, which were not destroyed.
The hotel lobby was quite beautiful. I was pretty sure that the statue in the alcove was not a Riemenschneider.
When I asked the desk clerk to confirm, he kind of grimaced, like, “Another stupid tourist”.
The night I arrived, I had an interesting meal in the hotel restaurant.
I asked what the soup of the day was, and I thought the waiter said ‘Grape.” Thinking I must have misheard, I asked him to repeat that. Still sounded like ‘Grape”. Of course I had to try it. Would it be like wine soup?
I have no idea what it actually was. I couldn’t taste grapes, but also couldn’t identify the very interesting and delicious flavour.
The drink is Lillet. I thought it sounded familiar and I would try it again. Yummy. The truffle pasta was also very good.
Remember the fortress on the top of a high hill as the train came into the city and I was soooo glad I didn’t have to walk up there? Yep. That was the Festung Marienburg where Riemenschneider was imprisoned, but which now houses the museum with all the Riemenschneider pieces.
Next day I started out walking. I figured I’d go as far as I had knee and hip joint strength for and then get a cab. Or something. I strolled along the river Main, which was only a block away. I stopped multiple times on the Alte Brucke, which was built about 550 years go, but has been partially destroyed and rebuilt eighteen times since it was first constructed.
John would have been fascinated by the construction on the locks.
Of course, by the time I reached the start of the walkway up to the fortress, it was really too close to expect a cab to take me, even if had been accessible by car (turns out it was).
Those are vineyards on the side of the hill. This is a big wine growing region and my hotel gave me a complimentary bottle.
My travel buddies approved.
I arrived at the hill and took it slowly. Luckily there were conveniently placed benches to rest part way along. I walked up a steep walkway, and got to the gates, yay.
I went through the gates – to find the same length and height to do again. But there was some art.
And a fantastic viewpoint over Wurzburg.
I navigated over a moat and through tunnels to the interior courtyard of the fortress.
There was the museum.
If I had had any breath left, I would have cheered.
I entered and was told that the Riemenschneider room was up another two flights of stairs with no elevator because of course it was.
That was okay. I bloody did it. I’m really glad I did, because in another few years, I expect it would be impossible.
The pieces were mesmerizing.
Look at the expression on that face. She is looking up from the book she is reading. Remember that not many people were literate in the mid-1500s. And even fewer of those were women. She seems to be contemplating what she just read. I like to think the book is by Albert Magnus or Martin Luther and she is deciding about the heretical contents for herself.
Now, compare that to this statue of the Virgin Mary, from about the same period, in a cathedral so thought to be worthy of that placement.
What a difference.
Even this Mary and child, while better done (again, this is only my uninformed opinion), does not even begin to compare with Riemenschneider.
The sign for this nativity said “Riemenschneider and workshop”..
So I am assigning the baby lying on the floor and Joseph’s beer stein to the workshop, but the the wild hair of Mary and Joseph to the Master.
This nativity is from about the same period for comparison.
It is not Riemenschneider, but I love it for, if nothing else, the black Magi, Balthazar, actually looks like a real person of colour and not just a German guy in blackface.
Plus, look at Mary’s face. Downturned mouth, like, ew, his diaper needs changing in the worst way!
Here is a group of fourteen figures by Riemenschneider. Each of the fourteen represents a type of help, you could call upon for aid.
No further information was given as to what types of aid each would provide. The figures are fascinating. I recognise Saint George (or in some christian mythologies, Saint Michael) killing the dragon.
Maybe you call upon him to slay your personal dragons.
But what’s with this guy who seems to be stabbing himself in the head?
Patron saints of people with migraines?
And this one holding what looks to be a deer head. Maybe help in the hunt?
Considering where the deer is looking, maybe it’s the medieval version of Viagra.
Here is Saint Christopher looking sturdy enough to bear the christ child. Notice how his feet seem to be in water eddies. Possibly you’d call on him to help you bear burdens.
I don’t know who his chubby friend with the animal is.
Why is this man holding a head with a bishop’s mitre? Saint Denis is often depicted holding own head, because he was martyred by beheading. But this fellow has his own head, plus a bishop’s head.
Each figure is an individual embued with their own humanity.
Here is Mary, holding her dead son.
Mary is much larger than Jesus. He is still her child after all. Her expression to me, is one of a mother thinking in frustration “Damn it, damn it, damn it. I knew it would come to this. I told him not to go!” Is there sorrow? Or simply a clenched, repressed anger?
For comparison, here is Michaelangelo’s Pieta.
There we see the sorrow. Her face is still young. In the Riemenschneider piece, Mary is old enough to have a thirty-three year old son.
I know nothing about art. But to me, they are both masterpieces.
Joseph and Mary are depicted here with Mary’s parents, Anna and Joachim. Joseph was said to be an old man when he married Mary and we see this in the receding hair. The parents are clearly old. Those three are fully human. You could have met them walking down a street in Wurzburg. But Mary is spotless and without a blemish. The epitome of purity.
This figure is thought to be a self-portrait.
Notice the detail in the folds of the cloak.
It adds a sense of movement. This is fairly common with Riemenschneider. As in these angels.
Their robes are flying up as if they have just landed on earth from heaven.
Notice that Jesus’s loincloth is uplifted in a breeze.
Here we have a bishop. Again, a portrait of a real person.
I’m amused by the position of his fingers. Instead of the typical pose of blessing with two fingers extended side by side, these are crossed.
This is the Apostle Philip. He is scupted in stone. I prefer Riemenschneider’s wood pieces, but there is no doubt this is incredible work.
I’ve gone online to try to find out why he chose to depict this apostle as obese. It seems there is no tradition of doing so. So I guess that is just how Riemenschneider saw him in his mind’s eye.
Okay, enough of my opinions and ponderings. Here is a gallery of the rest of the pieces I took photos of. Form your own views.
To be continued.
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