High points

I spent this past Friday and Saturday at an academic workgroup meeting: a slightly less formal version of a conference, plus an organizational meeting. And although I find writing grant applications where I create an autobiographical narrative artificially culminating in a particular academic experience rather irritating, I have to say that a weekend of discussing medieval religious women in a castle more or less fulfills the wildest dreams of my 17-year-old self about Being A Medievalist. (Parenthetical realization: I appear to have spent almost a decade of my life so far training to Be A Medievalist. I might feel mildly panicky about this, if I weren't still on a high from spending a weekend discussing medieval religious women. In a castle.)

Looking back from above the village

Further (mis)adventures in the archives

I conceived the ambitious plan of finishing out this week (before spending the weekend at an academic workshop about religious women; yay!) by visiting the archives of Aschaffenburg, and seeing if their legal and medical texts from the region had any helpful marginalia or, at the very least, enough indications of provenance to allow me to cite them. I was led by a published catalog of manuscripts, but encountered confusion when I reached the internet site which lumped the Stifts- and Stadtbibliotheken together, and where the only e-mail address I could find was for the Stadtsarchiv. Still, I e-mailed them the evening before my visit. This wasn't listed as mandatory on the site, so I thought of it as a courteous, as well as a convenient gesture (and this approach had worked for me in Speyer and elsewhere.) Here, my optimism proved to be unfounded. After stopping by the Stadtbibliothek and finding it was not what I wanted, I followed the directions of the helpful young woman there to the Stadtsarchiv, which was located in a 16th-century episcopal residence:

Research montage? updates from the archives

Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt 

The new archive director of Darmstadt is a mysterious man; he is unseen, but the effects of his presence are felt. "He is of a more restrictive nature," said one of the other archivists, explaining why I could not look at original charters anymore (unless specially requested for the sake of seals or legibility) but should instead use the available microfiches. Now, I of course feel very strongly about the desirability of preserving medieval charters. In the interests of this high purpose, I forego the pleasure of (delicately and with scrupulously clean hands and always on a padded support covered in linen) handling them myself… not entirely without repining. On the bright side, this does put the microfiche section of How To Use A Library lessons I had in middle school to good use. My "home base" of Mainz's municipal archive has also putting me at the microfilm reader (in the tiny room also containing the printer and the coffee machine) to look at charters. I have successfully begged for exceptions to the rule there, though. Perhaps a memo went out telling German archivists that more strictness should be their new year's resolution. I still find widely varying policies. Some archives (Darmstadt, Würzburg) only bring out documents twice a day; others will get materials for you whenever you need them. In Mainz, it's been policy for years not to allow photographs; elsewhere, archivists have taken initiative in offering that I can photograph things! [Side note: if I take photos on my phone, I can turn said photos into a PDF and then export the PDF into the software program that I use to take notes on my computer. Who needs flying cars?]

This past week contained a journey to a new archive, this time in Worms. Worms' claims to fame, historically speaking, are its prominence in the Nibelungenlied, and the fact that Martin Luther made himself a public and obstinate heretic there in 1521 ("Hier stehe ich…") On Wednesday, my day was mostly spent looking at the account books of the city's leper hospital, but there was a two-hour lunch break in which I had nothing to do but eat a sandwich. I spent the rest of it biking around to look at churches. So, without further ado, Worms:

Nun ist die Welt so trübe...

I had a grand plan for this Saturday afternoon: to descend on the costume sale of Wiesbaden's opera house and carry off a costume (if affordable) that would enable me to spend the Carneval season as Cherubino or one of his cousins of the operatic repertoire. This should have been a straightforward proceeding. There is no bus that goes directly into central Wiesbaden from the large bus stop nearest to Mainz's archives, but I was undeterred; I decided to take a bus part of the way into the city outskirts, and simply follow the train tracks into the center from there. (I decided that waiting 20 whole minutes for a train would be silly. Ha.) Following the train tracks turned out to be easier said than done, and I set a personal record for getting lost, making three different complete loops. I did ask directions twice… and ended up cycling in circles both times. Almost three hours later, I arrived at my destination just as the costume sale was ending, and cycled back to Wiesbaden's central train station. Now, if I had only memorized Schubert's Winterreise, I could have sung it through on my way in belated observance of his birthday. As I hadn't, I just sang fragments of it as seemed apt, addressing several crows as "Wunderliches Tier!" etc. The following photos are otherwise all I have to show for my journey.

New archives, new cities: the academic tourist

Domplatz, Speyer

I'm approaching the halfway point of my time here (eek!) and am busily reconnoitering regional archives in order to make my midterm report for the Fulbright commission sound as impressive as possible. This week, this mission took me to the city of Speyer. Speyer flourished under imperial patronage in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; remarkably, enough of the old town survives that streets, neighborhoods, and monastic precincts from that period are still marked with plaques. At least so far, the charm of being able to trace via street names the medieval layout of weavers and tailors, butchers and bakers, has not palled for me. Speyer's medieval Jewish neighborhood, unusually large and central, also retains its outlines; I'd hoped to visit some of the archaeological remains too, but the city map I picked up during the archive's lunch break turned out not to be quite up to date with its "winter hours" listings. Walking back to the archive, I found myself in the Salzgasse where the leper hospital owned property in the fifteenth century. The narrow street was only about two blocks long, so I could guess: did the lepers own their house where the wine bar stands? The Thai restaurant? The hideous concrete municipal buildings?

Work and play (or vice versa)

Frohes neues Jahr! In Germany, you can wish anyone a happy new year as long as you haven't seen them in the new year yet, a custom which I find charming. Coupled with the custom of wishing everyone "a good slide into the new year" in the last days of the old one, it pretty effectively makes the entire Christmas season a festive-feeling one. I saw in the new year by going dancing with a friend from church, and watching the fireworks over the Rhine (pictured left, taken by someone looking towards Mainz from the other riverbank.) Not a bad way to start! In an attempt to balance out this rank frivolity, I've so far submitted an abstract to a prestigious conference on medical history, and submitted a book review for publication. I spent this past weekend, however, wrapped up in Still More Frivolity, with a friend who stopped over on her way to do research of her own in Vienna. Many of our pleasant catch-up chats were held on trains, as we junketed around this corner of the Rhineland. This included me getting to Frankfurt's famous Museum Mile for the first time (oops!) where we saw Goethe's house, and admired the considerable collection of the Städel Museum. It had been a long time since I spent several hours in the company of visual art (the luxury of popping into museums is one of the things I miss about NYC) and I loved it. Auden was right about the old masters' insights into suffering. One of the pieces which grabbed me most strongly was a retable depicting Christ bearing the cross. The configuration of figures was familiar from the Stations; what struck me with the violence of originality was a man in the crowd sticking out his tongue, not even ridiculing Christ himself, but the Virgin Mary, who, following, already stunned with grief, leaning on St. John, might not even have been aware of the man's cheap, mean gesture.

Frohe Weihnachten!

Wiesbaden's opera house

Many of Germany's Christmas traditions (like trees!) have been exported, but the solemn festivities here remain very special, and celebrated for 3 days. Christmas Eve is Heiligabend, the holy evening, and then the 25th and 26th are observed as the first and second days of Christmas. I am taking full advantage of this! I started Christmas Eve by baking breakfast rolls (Rosinen-Quarkbrötchen,) after which I headed off to help serve an all-comers brunch with the parish of St. Augustine's, the Episcopal church which I've been attending here. Another Ph.D. candidate from the congregation invited me for a coffee afterwards, and we had a very nice and relaxed time in a café in central Wiesbaden. I came home to be almost literally pulled into the kitchen by my landlord's sister, who is a) visiting and b) very nice. So I joined her and my landlord for Christmas cookies and carol singing, with the recorders which they break out once a year (!). After all this, I felt that a bit of a rest was called for before late-night services… and Carols from King's was streaming via the BBC. This was actually my first Christmas in an Anglican service, as I've always traveled home for the holidays, so I was excited to get all the glorious liturgy. As, for example:

O God, who makest us glad by the yearly remembrance of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that as we joyfully receive him for our Redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come to be our Judge; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen