I spent the last two days in Würzburg! Two sunny days in this north Bavarian city made a refreshing change to my routine. Most of these sunny days were spent in the archives, of course, which I'd been needing to check out. The Würzburg branch of the Bavarian State Archives lives in several of the 320 rooms of the Baroque residence built by the prince-archbishop from 1720 onwards. (Video of this extraordinary place here; photos are not allowed inside.) Now, be not deceived: the archives are in a rear courtyard in a side wing; the barred windows suggest that the rooms were previously service rooms. But the space is nevertheless impressively spacious, and on Friday morning, I got the reading room to myself, with early morning light streaming through the windows, and the enormous palace gardens waking up on the other side.
Dealing with the head archivist was a bit of an adventure, not only because of his Bavarian accent. I was obliquely critiqued for not showing up on the first day I'd planned to show up; I explained that this was due to my misunderstanding the fact that my "May I view the following manuscripts?"e-mail had received a reply reading "Please send us your postal address so that we can send you information." Apparently this is merely a legal formality, and I was expected. I apologized humbly and repeatedly, and was initiated into Würzburg's organizational system for its Mainz holdings. Not everything was digitalized, I was told; that takes time. It turned out that this meant searching through a variety of typewritten Findbücher (incomplete, the head archivist told me; but everything takes time…) and an impressively large collection of handwritten slips dating to the 1930s, when the charters from Mainz had last been catalogued. Fortunately, the medieval scribes of the codices belonging to the "books from Mainz with various contents" collection had made tables of contents. Is there a patron saint of such scribes? A day devoted to praying fervently for their souls? I think there should be.
Another nice surprise was running into acquaintances. As I was getting a mid-afternoon apple from my locker, a voice behind me said: "So, Mainz is not enough for you?" and I turned to find none other than the amiable Herr Professor who wrestles with 18th-century officialdom and its handwriting. We chatted over our apples before returning to our respective tasks. On the second day (when the Herr Professor had returned to Mainz) the vaguely-familiar man at the desk behind me said "We know each other from Mainz, don't we?" and I placed him as the musicologist responsible for the recent transcription of a Don Giovanni adaptation written for one of Mainz's archbishops shortly after the opera's premiere. These are small encounters… but I mention them because I've missed this sort of companionable chat, the sense of having a routine where one is likely to encounter those with similar interests. In New York, of course, the place where I have such encounters is the opera… but archives are nice places to have them too. Without further rambling, though: photos! Würzburg's archive closes at noon on Friday, so I spent several hours of a pleasantly sunny afternoon exploring the Residence gardens and the city before catching a train back to Mainz.
Me in the Residence gardens (see, Mom, I do take pictures of myself…)
Dealing with the head archivist was a bit of an adventure, not only because of his Bavarian accent. I was obliquely critiqued for not showing up on the first day I'd planned to show up; I explained that this was due to my misunderstanding the fact that my "May I view the following manuscripts?"e-mail had received a reply reading "Please send us your postal address so that we can send you information." Apparently this is merely a legal formality, and I was expected. I apologized humbly and repeatedly, and was initiated into Würzburg's organizational system for its Mainz holdings. Not everything was digitalized, I was told; that takes time. It turned out that this meant searching through a variety of typewritten Findbücher (incomplete, the head archivist told me; but everything takes time…) and an impressively large collection of handwritten slips dating to the 1930s, when the charters from Mainz had last been catalogued. Fortunately, the medieval scribes of the codices belonging to the "books from Mainz with various contents" collection had made tables of contents. Is there a patron saint of such scribes? A day devoted to praying fervently for their souls? I think there should be.
Me in the Residence gardens (see, Mom, I do take pictures of myself…)
More Residence gardens… I got very excited about them.
Then into the city, where I found a baroque church dedicated to seventh-century martyrs (their reliquary statues look a bit fed-up:)
And the place where Walther von der Vogelweide was buried! The 18th century moved his bones, but there's a bit of a 12th-century cloister walk there still, and he has a modest slab engraved with some poetry, and with hollows in its top for water and birdseed.
In the cathedral, I found this tympanum with a pleasingly symmetrical Last Judgment:
…and a late medieval Dormition of the Virgin:
I was charmed by this hotel sign:
And admired the Marienberg, where Würzburg's prince-bishops resided before they got a fancy baroque residence designed by Balthasar Neumann:
On the old bridge over the Main (along with half the rest of Würzburg, enjoying wine or ice cream or just conversation with friends):
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