These two gentlemen are standing in front of the main door to the Leomuehle, built in 1533 by Curth Gottfried von Loewenstein, local heavy weight aristocrat and entrepreneur. Soon to be five hundred years old, the mill still grinds grains into bakers' flours and animal feeds. The only major difference between the mill of today and the one of von Loewenstein's day is the way the great water wheel's work is harnessed. Today it generates hydroelectricity 24/7. When not utilized for grinding grains into bakers' flours or animal feeds, the electricity that is generated is sold back to the grid.
I toured the mill with an old friend (on the left in the picture) who has been helping me with my Nord Hessen family history. Like the mill, he was built to last, too. He is a world war II veteran who was captured by the American forces, thanks to which experience he learned English. And he is pretty much the only person in his little city who speaks English. The day that this picture was taken was the first day that he wore a tie other than black--black to mourn the death of his wife of sixty-one years, the one love of his life, mother of their children, and grandmother and great grandmother.
He is still in grief, but walked me into the ground as we toured his city. Although he is retired from farming he still works hard during the planting and harvesting times. And he lives in the old Hof in his own little suite. (This Hof is separate from the old living quarters of what was once a knight's schloss. The original schloss was the present farm house and the more elaborate house next door--a very large structure. And the present farm house was the animal quarters. Not much gets torn down here, but a lot gets remodeled or refitted. These Hessians built things to last.)
The same aristocrat built the church in Bad Zwesten. This part of Germany went Protestant very early. "As the prince, so his people" was the way one's religion was decided in that time. I was told that late one Sunday morning my grandfather (who died when my mother was only sixteen) left the church services, placed his book of songs on the table of the family's old house, and left the city for Hamburg and America. No explanations given. Since the family's business for generations was wagon making and since he was not mechanically inclined, I think he rejected his future in the Old World and decided to try his luck in the new.
The church in Jesberg, Hessen
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I like the church in Bad Zwesten, and it is in very good condition, as are the others in this part of Germany. My favorite is is the church in Jesberg, an even smaller city from which my grandfather's fathers came. Europe has a reputation of being post Christian, and a land of no belief (except for its new immigrants' Muslim faith). That is not what one sees in the rural parts of Germany. These churches are attended and attended to. Probably some disconnect between the country mice and the city mice.
The church in Kerstenhausen, from which my mother's father's mother's people came.
The bell tower of the Bad Zwesten church is coming off a renovation for which all the money has been raised. I offered help but was politely told that all the money was in place. At which point you know you are in a special place indeed. You are not in South Florida anymore.
What an incredibly well preserved medieval building: The Guild Hall in Haguenau:
This is the Guild Hall in Haguenau, Bas-Rhin, northern Alsace. Now indisputably French, Alsace has been a part of the German world for most of its history. This magnificent building is only a century old but feels truly ancient. It was built when Alsace was German. It looks to me as though this one was built to last, too. The archives for the Department de Bas-Rhin are housed here. There is also a neat and tidy little museum of the region which includes the Forest of Haguenau. This was a free city in the Empire and rich. The burghers and tradesmen kept more of their hard earned money because they had no intermediate grasping hands of church and state. Haguenau was the lead city of the Decapole (the ten free cities of Alsace). The Battle of Alsace in WWII destroyed most of the city along with surrounding cities including Kaltenhouse from which my paternal immigrant ancestor came to America in 1828. Read Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke if you wonder whether all the death and destruction of WWII was absolutely necessary. Unless you are afraid to think such a thought.
Here is a part of the Roman wall in Barcelona. Now, I always considered the origin of the city's name to be Hamilcar Barca's family (the most well known of them was Hannibal). So, Barca--(l)ona, or Barca's city. But now the official version is that this is a city of and by Romans. And it is hard to argue with the ruins. But etymology makes for a good argument, too. Once again, the old ones, European or North African, built things to last. Barring extreme periods of time or modern weapons of great destruction, the buildings of the Old World tend to last.
Let not a monument give you or me hopes, Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheôps.
--Byron
The quadrilateral pyramids of the Giza plateau: we could not duplicate them today. They are apparently built, against the advice of the Good Book, on sand. Yet their subsidence is negligible forty centuries after their construction. (And, though it appears that the pyramids are built on a sea of sand, they must be on rock since the deep chamber in the Great Pyramid is cut from the living rock one hundred twenty feet below ground level.) Here is the author of the best book ever on the architectural features of the Great Pyramids, James Ferguson:
Come we now to the "Great Pyramid," "which is still," says Lenormant, "at least in respect of its mass, the most prodigious of all human constructions," The "Great Pyramid," or "First Pyramid of Ghizeh," as it is indifferently termed, is situated almost due north-east of the "Second Pyramid," at the distance of about two hundred yards. The length of each side at the base was originally seven hundred and sixty-four feet, or fifty-seven feet more than that of the sides of the "Second Pyramid." Its original perpendicular height was something over four hundred and eighty feet, its cubic contents exceeded eighty-nine million feet, and the weight of its mass 6,840,000 tons. In height it thus exceeded Strasburg Cathedral by above six feet, St. Peter's at Rome by above thirty feet, St. Stephen's at Vienna by fifty feet St. Paul's, London, by a hundred and twenty feet, and the Capitol at Washington by nearly two hundred feet. Its area was thirteen acres, one rood, and twenty-two poles, or nearly two acres more than the area of the "Second Pyramid." which was fourfold that of the "Third Pyramid," which, as we have seen, was that of an ordinary London square. Its cubic contents would build a city of twenty-two thousand such houses as were above described, and laid in a line of cubic squares would reach a distance of nearly seventeen thousand miles, or girdle two-thirds of the earth's circumference at the equator. Herodotus says that its construction required the continuous labour of a hundred thousand men for the space of twenty years, and moderns do not regard the estimate as exaggerated.
The "Great Pyramid" presents, moreover, many other marvels besides its size. First, there is the massiveness of the blocks of which it is composed. The basement stones are in many cases thirty feet long by five feet high, and four or five wide: they must contain from six hundred to seven hundred and fifty cubic feet each, and weigh from forty-six to fifty-seven tons. The granite blocks which roof over the upper sepulchral chamber are nearly nineteen feet long, by two broad and from three to four deep. The relieving stones above the same chamber, and those of the entrance passage, are almost equally massive. Generally the external blocks are of a size with which modern builders scarcely ever venture to deal, though the massiveness diminishes as the pyramid is ascended. The bulk of the interior is, however, of comparatively small stones; but even these are carefully hewn and squared, so as to fit together compactly.
Further, there are the passages, the long gallery, the ventilation shafts, and the sepulchral chambers all of them remarkable, and some of them simply astonishing. The "Great Pyramid" guards three chambers. One lies deep in the rock, about a hundred and twenty feet beneath the natural surface of the ground, and is placed almost directly below the apex of the structure. It measures forty-six feet by twenty-seven, and is eleven feet high. The access to it is by a long and narrow passage which commences in the north side of the pyramid, about seventy feet above the original base, and descends for forty yards through the masonry, and then for seventy more in the same line through the solid rock, when it changes its direction, becoming horizontal for nine yards, and so entering the chamber itself. The two other chambers are reached by an ascending passage, which branches off from the descending one at the distance of about thirty yards from the entrance, and mounts up through the heart of the pyramid for rather more than forty yards, when it divides into two. A low horizontal gallery, a hundred and ten feet long, leads to a chamber which has been called "the Queen's"--a room about nineteen feet long by seventeen broad, roofed in with sloping blocks, and having a height of twenty feet in the centre. Another longer and much loftier gallery continues on for a hundred and fifty feet in the line of the ascending passage, and is then connected by a short horizontal passage with the upper-most or "King's Chamber." Here was found a sarcophagus believed to be that of King Khufu, since the name of Khufu was scrawled in more than one place on the chamber walls.
The construction of this chamber--the very kernel of the whole building--is exceedingly remarkable. It is a room of thirty-four feet in length, with a width of seventeen feet, and a height of nineteen, composed wholly of granite blocks of great size, beautifully polished, and fitted together with great care. The construction of the roof is particularly admirable. First, the chamber is covered in with nine huge blocks, each nearly nineteen feet long and four feet wide, which are laid side by side upon the walls so as to form a complete ceiling. Then above these blocks is a low chamber similarly covered in, and this is repeated four times; after which there is a fifth opening, triangular, and roofed in by a set of huge sloping blocks, which meet at the apex and support each other. The object is to relieve the chamber from any superincumbent weight, and prevent it from being crushed in by the mass of material above it; and this object has been so completely attained that still, at the expiration of above forty centuries, the entire chamber, with its elaborate roof, remains intact, without crack or settlement of any kind.
Further, from the great chamber are carried two ventilation-shafts, or air-passages, northwards and southwards, which open on the outer surface of the pyramid, and are respectively two hundred and thirty-three and one hundred and ninety-four feet long. These passages are square, or nearly so, and have a diameter varying between six and nine inches. They give a continual supply of pure air to the chamber, and keep it dry at all seasons.
The Great Gallery is also of curious construction. Extending for a distance of one hundred and fifty feet, and rising at an angle of 26° 18', it has a width of five feet at the base and a height of above thirty feet. The side walls are formed of seven layers of stone, each projecting a few inches over that below it. The gallery thus gradually contracts towards the top, which has a width of four feet only, and is covered in with stones that reach across it, and rest on the walls at either side. The exact object of so lofty a gallery has not been ascertained; but it must have helped to keep the air of the interior pure and sweet, by increasing the space through which it had to circulate.
(James Ferguson, in his great work, the History of Architecture.)
So, where are we today with respect to building things to last? Need I ask? Check for yourselves the subsidence rates of buildings in New York City, Houston, Beijing, and Shanghai. The magnificent skyline of Pudong is built on river mud. Granted, a million or so piles were driven into the mud. But river city skyscrapers are problematic by nature. And those grew like weeds. Houston is built on alluvial mud and is going the same way of subsidence. Ditto Beijing. New York City is atop hard rock but subsiding nonetheless. The one remaining monument of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World will likely outlast any and all such wonders of the modern world. I wouldn't say that is a bad thing. But in a world of Kleenex a handkerchief is a welcome sight.
Making that handkerchief: El Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia, Barcelona. This is the master work of the mad cap genius Antoni Gaudi. There is nothing in the world like this. This is a must see for any and all who possess some spiritual sense, love architecture, need to see something hopeful, or just like the exotic. It won't be completed in our lifetime, just as was the case with the great Gothic cathedrals. It might restore your faith, if not in God, then in mankind. If nothing else, it is folly on a truly monumental scale. It is breathtaking.
A Gothic cathedral without flying buttresses, without straight lines, hand wrought of cut stones, replete with sculptural details from the Good Book and from fantasy, and all of it on a huge scale. See it to believe it.
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