Day 36: History, Old and New-ish

The first thing we did today, over breakfast, was to write out a neater record of everything we learned relating to the family via the church records.

Then, we decided to bike into Thurigia, another of Germany's (16) states, which is very near by. Thuringia was part of East Germany and it's only a few kilometers away. So, the folks in the Bad Rodach region had East German border guards staring at them for many years, and some Soviet observation posts on the nearby hills. It was pretty creepy for them back then.  Creepier still for their neighbors and friends who were stuck behind the big fence the communists built to keep the East Germans in.

Here's the sign for Thuringia. Each state has its own official shield (Wappen).

Looking back into Bavaria, we see the Coburg shield. Coburg is this part of northern Bavaria, analogous to a county, more or less. This area (Bad Rodach and Coburg) has been more closely tied with Thuringia (not Bavaria) for many centuries but in 1920, post WW1 during the great depression (which started much sooner here), the area voted to join Bavaria. This turned out to be a good idea long term as this kept them out of East Germany after WW2.

Here's a survey stone marking the exact border between Bavaria and Thuringia.

Of course, the East Germans (i.e. their Russian overlords) did not make their scary borders right on the border, but about 50 meters further on. All the way around the country there was a wide swath of no man's land with tracks for patrol vehicles to drive on directly, and fences and such. All the fences, guard towers, and other signs have been removed, but the patrol path remands (along side many a historical marker explaining what it looked like and so forth during the 1945-1989 period.

The tracks are a sort of waffle concrete. An adventurous person with a mountain bike could bike from the Baltic to the Czech Republic on the remaining paths.

Not 300 yards after the scary border is the village of Holzhausen. Beyond, the fortress at Heldburg can be seen (above the next town over).

We biked to the other side of the village (Heldburg Fortress in the distance) and then came back and wandered through the village looking for the church (We heard the bells toll the hour).

We found the little church atop the hill behind a few rows of mostly rundown houses. The church seems real well cared for and looks nice through the windows but it was locked up (unlike the churches in Bad Rodach which are open during the day time for anyone to come in).

On the outside wall was an inscription to Ferdinandus Leopoldus. We have no idea who he was, but we shall find out.

Just opposite that is a memorial to the WW1 dead, including, apparently, a local nun.

Here's a pano view of the church and the yard behind. It's too close to houses on the other side to get a good photo.

Here you can see the houses are in various states of repair, some look completely abandoned and some have nice gardens.  Clearly, most folks living here do not have a lot of money as the cars tend to be older and rustier than we normally see in Germany.

We understand that the E. German government didn't like villages to be this close to the border (for fear folks would escape) so they had a practice of showing up unannounced and driving people out of town to settled in far-flung locations.  Here's the main street through town, with lots of not pristine houses.

No doubt, this road that we biked on did not actually exist going north at the time of the GDR because no one was allowed to go north from here to Bad Rodach in West Germany.

This beautiful home was on the main street. We spoke to the owner through the window. It's from the 1700s and very well cared for (or restored) with a nice garden.

Here's the town sign on the north end. The street is Rodacher Straße because it's the road to Bad Rodach.

We took a selfie here because of the street name.

To get to this village we biked over a mountain. Here's a shot of one of the trails going off to the side of the road on the way back. The forest on the mountain is deep and cool. We have no idea where the trails go as we stuck to the road.

After a shower, we biked to town and had a quick pizza at the restaurant in the old train station. It was very good!

A train came while we were there. The typical two car train. Each car is an engine and a passenger car. This is the end of the line, of course, because no trains could go behind Bad Rodach into East Germany for all those years.

After lunch, we met Frau Doktor Anja Augustin, the local medieval history expert for a private tour of city history. We started in the Herzog Hunting Palace. It was sold to the town by the Herzog Duke a little over 100 years ago. It was used as a school for about a century and is now the tourist information bureau, the local museum, and some exhibition space.  This room is set up to be similar in style to the dining room the dukes would have had in the 1800s. It's not a replica but similar.

The next room has memorials to Freidrich Rükert, the poet with close ties to Rodach. Here's his head as a young man, and 

Here's his portrait as an old man.  He wrote a famous 308 line poem about Ideallic Rodach.

Next, we learned more information about Max Röesler, who was Andy's great-grandfather's employer.  He owned the local ceramic works.

Here's a bust of him made by his own workers.

The building houses many examples of Röesler ceramics.

After this we wandered to the city walls and sat in a shady spot learning more about the older, medieval history of Rodach from Anja.  This is Anja's specialty and she recently earned a PhD in medieval history.

We sat in the shade talking and being shown pictures and diagrams for some time. It was fascinating. Then we went to see inside some of the cool places. Anja has keys to everything or has keys to the places with the keys.  So, first we went inside this city wall tower.

It was pretty cool. It's missing it's wooden second floor now, but we could get the idea of what it was like inside.

This is a view from the tower looking south down the city walls. In the distance is the next tower and the timbered building is the old school (not to be confused with the old old school just out of view to the right) and the choir end of the church. The choir part of the church dates from the medieval period and was the second church built here (probably on top of the first church).

We learned some interesting tidbits about various fixtures inside. This was the medieval baptismal font. However, in the 1970s there was a move by the local pastor at the time to modernize and remove some of the old things and this was removed. The congregation insisted it be kept, though, so it sits off in a corner.

This is the pulpit. The nave part of the church (from the pulpit to the left) was built in the 1700s to replace the nave that had been blown up during the thirty years war. For a long time the nave was just a temporary wooden structure after this and was replaced in the baroque style at the behest of the Herzog Duke (Franz Josias) at the time.

We posted many photos of the inside of the church some days ago. Today's tour was more about history than the church's fixtures, of course.

We then climbed a bunch of stairs to the attic. Did we mention Anja has keys to everything?

The stairs get narrower as you climb in this part of the church (in the tower they get narrower as you descend because the bottom stairs are the oldest).

The attic is quite high (the nave has two levels of balconies so we are standing on the fourth floor, more or less. The attic is huge.

Just off the attic is a small door leading into the tower. This part (and below) are from the middle ages. Above this part is more modern (1700s) because it had to be rebuilt after a horrible lightning strike.

Small narrow areas!

Here is the old mechanism for the bells, back when the boys had to swing on the ropes to ring the bells.  It's all electric now, of course.

From here we had to ascend several flights of creepy stairs with huge cracks between them and only a skinny old handrail.

Amelia chickened out at the last one, though because it seemed much too flimsy.

And, looking down was scary.  But, Andy went to the top and saw the bells. We'll pull those photos of his phone and add them later.

At this middle level, we found a weird room in the stone. Either it's a place to hide things or to lock someone away. It was pretty creepy and 

Had a large empty wooden box in it. No one knows what it was there for or what used to be inside it. 

Andy was amused by the trinkets laying around.

Just across from this the stone medieval stairs go down.

At the bottom, we come out into the medieval choir of the church.

It has these beautiful stained glass windows which were paid for by Max Röesler (who owned the ceramic works) in about 1903 and designed by his artist wife.

Supposedly, the modernization movement in the 1970s wanted to do away with these as well, but the congregation rebelled.

Through a side window, the old school can be glimpsed.

This is the new-ish (1970s) altar which replaced a very old altar that no one knows where it landed.

We sat here discussing history of Rodach for some time. See the "new" modern baptismal font from the 1970s?  We can't explain that, either. Why is that better than the one from the middle ages?

Then we walked down through the market place to look at this interesting house which has a funky history. It was renovated in 1914 by a man named Fridolin Hoffman who made it look even older but also made every part different.

Here's a pano of the south view.

This house was built originally in the early 1600s just outside the town gate and was a tavern that housed and fed travelers who arrived too late to get into the gates in the evening.

Then we walked back to the Hunting Palace square via the Kupfertürm (tower) outside of which is this sculpture of four people hugging that commemorates the reunification of Germany.

Here's the tower. It is never open to the public because owls live inside and they are not to be disturbed.

Then, on to the city walls to hear the presentation of the city night watchmen.

He took us up in a small tower and explained the history of the watchmen (all in German so we didn't understand that much).

Then we followed him to join the others for the Thursday night event.

We walked around the city walls to the other side of the church to a nice grassy area inside the walls.

The church and city walls.

Here a group of guitarists were playing and singing and an audience had joined to listen.

At this point we'd been about 6 hours without a drink of water and we were hot and tired, so after a few songs we wondered off and bought two cold Cokes and sat down for a short drink, then we biked back to the hotel for dinner.