A few weekends ago, it was very nice out (17.5C/63.5F and sunny), so I was outside a lot. On Friday, I ended up on a long walk westwards, following the parks along the Elbe and on Sunday, I went on a tour of the Rathaus(town hall) with the other students in my German course. Which is very affordable, by the way (2 or 4 euros for a tour, depending on whether you go with a large group or not).
I. Rathaus
A bit about the Rathaus. Hamburg had a huge fire in 1842 that burnt down a large swath of the city, including the old Rathaus. The rebuilt sometime within the next 20 years, and worked pretty hard at making the thing reflect their status as a wealthy/powerful city/state.
The Rathaus from outside. Pretty, not overly ostentatious:
I got there a bit early and wandered around a little, also coming across this WWI monument nearby:
The WWI remembrances I've seen are bigger than the WWII ones. The WWII things are smaller. Lots of small plaques on buildings or in front of doorways. Not sure why.
So, something complicated about Hamburg (which it shares with Berlin): it is both a city and a 'state'(Bundesland). As a result, it has both kinds of government, a parliament and senate. Our tour started on the parliament (or 'less fancy')side.
The ceiling of the stairwell was bordered by murals of an ideal Burgher's life:
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| Which apparently has something to do with a mermaid (LL corner) |
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| From Germany 2012-2013 |
Parliament assembly room:
Room where I think guests of the Parliament sit/wait/are met with:
And then we entered the Senate side. The doors involved are plain-ish on the Parliament side and super fancy on the Senate side (like so:)
We were told to take notice of the walls, which were quite richly...covered? I'd say ''papered'', but it's not paper. It's leather (in this case):
On an adjacent wall, a man wearing traditional Senate dress. It weighed ~30kilos and was never washed, only powdered. Ew.
I liked the very nautical touches to the sort of classical-style adornments. For instance, a ceiling mural with...walruses?
This was part of a huge room that included this plaque commemorating a canal dug between the North and East Seas (represented by the ladies holding hands):
And the ceiling was surrounded by representations of the continents as reliefs that framed paintings of harbor cities that were then part of Germany/Prussia. I liked the continents best, and will just leave them here and you can figure them out :)
And a nice representation of the seal of the city of Hamburg:
In the next room was perhaps one of the more pretentious things there:
Clearly the Hamburgish version of "SPQR"(Senators Populusque Romanus - The senate and people of Rome). Apparently the "H" is "Hamburgensis". I chuckled at this and pointed it out to my classmate, and how I found it a bit pretentious. The way the tour guide translated it to German was interesting; 'Populus' as 'Bürgerschaft', which can mean both citizens and the city-level parliament.
Then a fancy circular room with murals of important cities. I think this one was somehow Amsterdam (If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears, as to why this should be Amsterdam):
Ah. These doors were worked out of some weird Aluminum-Bronze alloy that somehow required electricity to be worked. Which in the mid 1850s was a bit expensive I suppose, and maybe dangerous. So, each door cost something like 10,000 euros a piece, and of course there were at least 8 pairs of them around:
More leather walls, now with some metal worked in:
And in that room, above a fireplace, the Muse of History, writing Hamburg's.
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| trans(roughly): Who had done the best in his time had lived enough for all time |
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| From Germany 2012-2013 |
The next room contained sort of memorials to the burnt down Rathaus and parts of town. That included this, which was a safe full of silver blocks that someone forgot in the basement of the previous Rathaus:
Also, I couldn't get any closer to this, sadly, but it's a map of Hamburg and the areas marked in red are what burned down in 1842:
Here's
something from Wikipedia as well.
The entrance to the Senate side:
The final huge room was quite tall, and surrounded by murals of the history of Hamburg. The start was just marsh and water, then early settlement
..working over to this delightful one:
The story: Originally, this contained a bishop blessing a kneeling person who is presumably a Hamburg resident. The people of Hamburg protested that no person of Hamburg would kneel before the church! So, they told the artist to remove the guy kneeling. As a result, you have a church procession with the lead guy blessing...the ground? Nice. The four statues below are supposed to signify traits of the ideal Hamburg(er):
wise, learned, strong and quick. (owl, books, lion skin, bees)
Then on to trading with ships
and a nice picture of old ships on the left and new ones on the right:
On our way out we passed this lion on the edge of the staircase, holding the seal of Hamburg:
II. Walk along the Elbe parks
On Friday, I walked along the parks lining the Elbe. Crocuses are already blooming:
Looking the other way, sloping grass-covered hill watched over by cranes
A better view of the cranes, which are quite brightly colored:
I guess if you have to have machinery, at least it's colorful.
Here's a view of the harbor, from closer to the water:
Once by the water and walking along it, came across a patch of very old buildings. Probably the oldest I've seen in Hamburg.
These houses, along the Elbe, had this path in front of them and then in front of that path was a small yard associated to each house. Some of the yards were...peculiar. For instance, the remains of a ship model used in a newer filming of Moby Dick:
This one had a cool chair thing in a tree:
Oh, yes. And an easter egg tree:
On German Easter(Ostern) traditions -- Trees adorned with eggs, usually with the insides ''blown out'' and then the shells painted. When Easter comes, painted eggs are hidden for the kids to find, or chocolate eggs (which are wrapped in foil). I explained how in the States we usually use plastic eggs stuffed with candy, which didn't excite anyone here. They also have a big bonfire on Easter Sunday or Easter Monday. Announcements of the bonfire say ''Ostern Feuer'', where ''Feuer" means "fire" and "fire" is roughly how you say ''Feier'' (which is ''Party'').
After a while, finally managed to walk past the very old houses and all of the cranes, to a beach:
And hung around long enough to watch the sun set over the Elbe:
Wonderful post--I love all the photos!
ReplyDeleteI think I want to scare me up a wooden or wire "tree" to decorate for Easter next year.
Ah, good. I was worried I was dumping too many photos at once, but also felt like the Elbe walk wasn't interesting to stand on its own.
DeleteWere you not in Germany during Easter? I'm not sure how regional the egg tree is, but I know at least Hamburg, Berlin, and the vicinity of Bonn.
I used to actually decorate the tree in our yard for halloween with ghosts instead of eggs. Like the ones these kids are holding.
Also, just found this really epic easter egg tree (and accompanying news story, of course):
``(AP) SAALFELD, Germany - You thought Easter eggs don't grow on trees? Check out Volker Kraft's garden in eastern Germany, and think again.
Kraft's apple sapling sported just 18 eggs when he first decorated it for Easter in 1965[...]This time, Kraft has reached 10,000 — and he says he's stopping there.
"There will be no increase because I do not have storage capacity anymore," the 76-year-old retiree says. "I would have to sleep with the eggs otherwise."
Kraft's tree in the town of Saalfeld has become a tourist attraction, drawing thousands of people every year. Decorating trees with colored eggs at Easter is a tradition in Germany — though usually on a smaller scale.''
Yes, I was in Dresden last Easter. One of my favorite things was seeing the random bushes and small trees decorated with eggs. That's...a serious Easter tree there.
DeleteWe used to make tissue ghosts, too!
heh heh. I loved your descriptions of the things in the Rathaus! And walruses. There should always be walruses!
ReplyDeleteYay!
Thanks! :) It made me think about how the Beatles became what they are largely during there time in Hamburg, and whether they were ever tripping in the Rathaus.
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