Tomorrow I leave for my next journey. Like all my travel blogs since Jill died in July 2024, this is a mixture of a nostalgic visit to places and people who have been important to us both, and of a pilgrimage to seek absolution and reconciliation on various aspects of my life.
This journey starts in 1929 when my mother at the age of 17 went as an au pair to the very north of Germany to look after little Ethe Feddersen in Bargteheide. Contacts with the Feddersen family were picked up after the war and descendants now live in Berlin. I hope to visit them, but before that I have another appointment in Weimar. There, in 1964, I got to know Hubert when I attended a university holiday study course for German language and culture. Weimar was then in the German Democratic Republic but we retained contact for 60 years by letter, telephone, e-mail and personal visits. Hubert had psychological and social problems but he was very intelligent and well regarded in Weimar as a literary and local historian. Early in 2024 he was going by email through a particularly depressive period, and I got into contact with Sieglinde, his partner for more than ten years after the death of his wife. We were able to share our worries about him until he took his own life on the 25 June 2024, about a week before Jill died.
Going through his correspondence after his death, I came across two articles, one on Weimar and the other on the Wartburg Castle, which he had sent me in 1977 and 1982. These he hoped to have translated and published anonymously in the West, They had never been published in German and Sieglinde and I hope to do this in his memory on the first anniversary of his death. I produced a limited printing of twenty copies, of which I will be taking ten to local institutions and the few friends and family members he had. A full publication in Exeter is not practical, but it could serve for inclusion in a collection of his articles on which he was working when he died.
11 June. Wednesday.
I had intended to relive life as a student 60 years ago and so packed my luggage into a rucksack, leaving home at 8:45 and walking in along by the River Exe to the station. It was already warm so I thought I had better leave home a good hour before the train departed. The train arrived on time and reached Paddington at noon. The Circle Line got me to St Pancras half an hour later, giving me an hour or so to spend in the British Library to have a coffee and snack. I looked around the exhibition of treasures in the Ritblat Gallery, noticing quite a number of gaps - items removed either for conservation or for special exhibitions.
In Saint Pancras I started to queue up for Eurostar but was picked out of the queue to go onto an earlier train: 14:01 instead of 14:31. This did not mean that I avoided the hellish wait in an overheated and overcrowded waiting room, but I did arrive early at Hotel Margot, located conveniently between the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est where I had reserved a room on the 4th floor. I found I had forgotten the adaptor for the phone charger but the Hotel staff directed me to a nearby shop that supplied one. Once I got back to the hotel, after having tagliatelle in a nearby Italian restaurant, I discovered that the one supplied did not work as it was for a more recent model but the hotel kindly lent me a charger. After my shower discovered I had also forgotten to pack my comb, so I will enter Germany looking like the classic German cartoon character Struwwelpeter.
12 June. Thursday.
The shop that had sold me a cable to recharge my iPhone was not open when I left the hotel at 8:30 to hunt for breakfast in the town. The Gare de l’Est seemed as big and as busy as the Gare du Nord just a few hundred metres away. There I caught an intercity train at 9:56 to take me the first part of my way towards Weimar. The train was delayed ten minutes by an unscheduled stop for a police passport check in Kehl, at the border between France and Germany, and this delay gradually extended, but the connecting train, fortunately, was delayed by even longer in Karlsruhe, where I had to change trains, because of track works. It was delayed yet further by a train blocking the line before Mannheim and took a longer route round to Frankfurt am Main, yet another large and busy station where I missed the connection and took the next available train to Erfurt, another complicated station with various levels and the escalator between them under repair. I had emailed the hotel to explain that I would probably arrive after the check-in deadline of 18:00. I received a reply: not to worry, there was a key in a safe by the door and they gave me the code. The final short stage from Erfurt to Weimar was very crowded because it was rush hour with standing room only and masses of bikes getting in the way.
I arrived in Weimar at 17:50 and walked to the hotel, reaching it at 18:30. Das Kleine Hotel is a very pleasant family-run hotel, located in a beautiful quarter of large houses built around 1900 with much decoration often in art nouveau style, sometimes with the foliage picked out in muted colours. I had an evening meal in a Greek restaurant, the Apollo, set in a square opposite the Catholic church, which I had noticed when walking to the hotel. Moussaka and beer washed down with strong coffee and two glasses of ouzo. I felt I had earned it. I found Hubert’s flat, investigated the little Berka station set on a branch line nearby, and found a Lidl next to it. But they couldn't sell me a comb, so Struwwelpeter I will have to remain.
13 June. Friday.
I discovered the comb at the bottom of my jacket pocket this morning, so could descend neatly combed for an elegant breakfast, where I displayed Mr Bean-like incompetence in my complete ignorance of the various protocols and etiquette in such a genteel environment. After breakfast, I set out to explore the town and found my way to the impressive modern section of the Anna Amalia Bibliothek where I gave them a copy of the book and the typescripts that were used to prepare it, followed by a coffee in the library cafe.
I met Sieglinde, who had come from Berlin, at the station at 11:30 together with a friend, Irene, who took us by car to the room where she was staying, and then we all had lunch together. Sieglinde had worked as the administrative director of the Biomedical Research Center at the Charité, a university hospital, the oldest and largest in Berlin, founded as a plague hospital in 1710. Her late husband had been an IT administrator at a large municipal hospital, which today also belongs to the Charité. Her friend Irene was a librarian in the Franz Liszt Hochschule für Musik, her office facing onto the rococo building of the Anna Amalia Bibliothek which had a disastrous fire when 50,000 rare books were lost on 2 September 2004, the day we were there for the funeral of Hubert’s wife Sigrid.
We had an appointment at 2:30 in the Stadtmuseum with the director Dr Alf Rößmann to hand over another copy of the book. We spoke about Hubert and some of the difficulties they had with him, but he was very appreciative of his contribution to Weimar’s local and cultural history. Hubert had worked as a corrector in the publishing house Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, working among other things on the national edition of the works of Friedrich Schiller, but after the Wende/Change in 1989 he became the town’s tourist officer and chronicler. Dr Rößmann also spoke about the town museum and the problems they had their limited staffing and funding cuts. He gave us copies of three impressive publications that he had written based on different exhibitions held over recent years. He felt that perhaps Hubert had been too intellectual for the general public who showed a lack of interest in the museum. There were too many other tourist traps and events around. Then he gave us a private tour of a series of exhibits from prehistoric times, a very early skull, through the golden age at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries right up to recent protest banners. There was also a video presentation of Weimar’s history, a little like the one that can be seen at the Custom House in Exeter, to which Dr Rößmann was a major contributor.
It was too hot to do much, but after the Museum visit we strolled in the tranquil park past Goethe's Garden House and went in the evening back to the Apollo restaurant where we imbibed so much wine that Sieglinde was pleased that Irene offered to take her back to her lodgings. As for me, I left my jacket behind when returning to the hotel and had to rush back to retrieve it.
14 June. Saturday.
I had breakfast in the hotel and felt emboldened enough to try a hard boiled egg now I knew the acceptable way to crack it. I then went round the town, hunting out various sites, including the Pavillon Presse, which was to be another recipient of a copy of the book, where we were due to have a tour on Monday. Near the printing museum was the Schwarzbierhaus, a wonderful half-timbered building that in the 18th century housed Weimar’s court librarian Salomon Franck.
At 10:15 I met Susie and Sieglinde by the statue to Goethe and Schiller in front of the National Theatre where the Weimar Republic was declared in 1919. Hubert’s adopted daughter Susie recognised me at once after at least twenty years. We had lost contact as she was estranged from Hubert and had gone through difficult times but was now very happy as a school cook, much appreciated by staff and students alike. Together we went to the cemetery by bus, and located and photographed the graves of Hubert and Sigrid. >
Then I could not find the little sachet of Jill’s ashes that I hoped scatter there, so we took the bus back into town to have a long lunch in the historic Sächsischer Hof looking on to the Herderplatz where we were very cheerful on this day with so many memories. We set up a Whatapp group for the three of us and after lunch we visited the church on the square and Susie left us about 4:00.
We found a shady place in the Theaterplatz for a long talk with nibbles, wine and much laughter. I walked Sieglinde home and then went back to the hotel where I found the ashes tucked into a wad of papers in my rucksack.
15 June. Sunday.
Today I went to Goethe's Garden House with Jill’s ashes. I thought on reflection that it would be a more appropriate place to scatter them as we had happy family memories there when our two families visited and hunted for Easter eggs in the garden of the house, so I took Jill’s ashes there. It was still early in the day, the house hadn't opened but the gate to the gardens was ajar and I found a quiet seat under the trees, scattered the ashes into some ivy and sat for a while in thought.
Then I walked to where Sieglinde was staying and met up with Irene who drove us out to Tiefurt, the beautifully set estate, a refuge for the ducal family, also much frequented by the literary luminaries of Weimar in the late 18th century, the time of the regent Anna Amalia and her son Carl August. We looked around the little castle and reserved a table in the Alte Remise, the former stable block. We strolled in the beautiful park, set in a bend in the River Ilm. Crossing the river to the monument to Constantine, Anna Amalia’s younger son who died in the war with France in 1793. There were poppies everywhere and the park was beautifully laid out in the English style.
We all had a buffet lunch in the Alte Remise which included Thuringian dumplings, beef roulade and red cabbage, for which Jill paid, redeeming her designation by Sigrid as “Mrs Cheap”. Then we drove back to town where Irene left us. Rain and thunder was threatening, which we avoided in the Museum Neues Weimar. Built in the 1860s as the ducal library, it houses displays on architecture, arts and crafts in the period leading up to and including the Bauhaus.
There were no books printed by the Cranach Presse but some bindings and an excellent display of binding tools by the craft binder Otto Dorfner (1885-1955).
We had supper in Anno 1900, a locale patronised by Hubert, Sieglinde and sometimes Irene after Hubert lectures. We wondered if the waiters in Germany have to go to acting school. It was difficult to work out whether the one in Anno 1900 was seriously attentive to us or taking the Mickey.
16 June. Monday.
It was a cooler day and at 08:32 Anne arrived in Weimar Hauptbahnhof having started her journey from Bavaria at some unearthly hour. I had known Anne since library school days in Sheffield in 1967-8 and she had moved many years ago to the Holledau, a hop-growing area in area in Bavaria where she became linked to the Deutsches Hopfenmuseum in Wolnzach. She also taught English and had built up a loyal band of fellow travellers that she took on tours to English speaking parts of the world, including Exeter.
We met in the Theaterplatz at 9:15 and walked through the Marktplatz to the Anna Amalia Bibliothek to view the impressive interior of the modern library across the square from the rococo library, restored after the fire, which is closed on Mondays. Sieglinde joined us for coffee in the Schillerstrasse by the Gänsemännchenbrunnen (Goose man fountain) a copy of the larger 16th century original in Nuremberg.
There is a similar copy in front of the manor house in Lewtrenchard, Sabine Baring-Gould’s home in West Devon.
We returned for lunch to the Sächsischer Hof, by the Herderplatz which pleased Anne who had studied Herder at university. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) was brought to Weimar by Goethe in 1776 as chief pastor at the court church of Saints Peter and Paul. He was a literary critic, writer, linguist and pioneer ethnologist. We owe the term folk song to him. He first employed the term Volkslied in 1773 in a reference to English popular song and published a collection entitled Volkslieder in two volumes in 1778 and 1779. The better known title Stimmen der Völker in Lieder was only used in the second edition which appeared in 1807. So, another link to pioneering folk song collector Sabine Baring-Gould. We visited what is now known as the Herderkirche where he is buried and viewed the Cranachaltar.
By now it was time for the tour of the Pavillon Presse at 14:00. Hubert had worked in the publishing house of Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger which is now the town archive office just opposite the Pavillon Presse.
This was on the site of the publishing house of the Thüringische Landeszeitung and the museum contained many of the pieces of equipment used to print the newspaper, so we were given an informative tour of the three main types of printing:
- Hochdruck (relief printing, letterpess and woodcut)
- Tiefdruck (recess printing, engraving, mezzotint, aquatint)
- Flachdruck (planographic, lithography, and later photoprinting)
There were also sections on punch cutting, type casting, composition and hot metal typesetting – linotype, as might be expected in an newspaper office, but not monotype. I presented a copy of Hubert's book and also purchased a book produced by the Press on the history of publishing in Weimar.
We went on to have an enormous ice each in the Schillerstrasse and saw Anne on the bus to the station for her train back at 18:09.
We returned to the centre of town and made our way through the attractive western quarter, passing appropriately along William Shakespeare Strasse to Hubert's apartment block. As when he was there, cycles were parked outside and a passer-by obligingly photographed us standing together on his doorstep.
We returned to the Apollo Restaurant where we laughed over our meal so much so that a lady on a nearby table came over to tell us that she found us “entzuckend” (enchanting). One of the reasons for Sieglinde's amusement was that she found some of my activities reminiscent of Mr. Bean, who is very popular in Germany. For example, at the Apollo I collided with what I imagined was the toilet door which turned out to be a mirror. I turned round to go through the actual toilet door only to discover when I came out that it was the ladies toilet that I had used.
17 June. Tuesday.
I had no time to write up yesterday but I am now sitting on Erfurt station on Wednesday morning awaiting the delayed 10:22 train to Berlin. After breakfast in the Hotel, I made my way to the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv where I presented a copy of Hubert’s book to a very friendly lady archivist. I met Sieglinde for coffee and breakfast in the Theaterplatz and we made our way back to the Goethe- und Schillerarchiv to have a closer look at the sixteen display cases of Goethe’s drafts to Faust part two.
Irene met us on the bridge just below the Archive and drove us back to the Alte Remise in Tiefurt for lunch. Then we went to the main station in the car to see Sieglinde off to Berlin on the 16:30 train. Irene took me back to the hotel and offered to take me to the station next morning but I was unable to make contact to confirm this. I spent the evening alone in the Apollo restaurant, eating stuffed vine leaves, a light bite after the heavy meals of the last few days.
