Getting ready for a Warmer Future
One of our early walks was to my cousin’s old “School’ that is, the Braike Campus of the University of Nürtingen und Gaislingen‘s School of Economy and the Environment, where students were experimenting with sustainable landscape design and climate change resilient plants. As part of their practical work for degrees in Landscape Architecture they had created a pleasant park with sections devoted to plants that thrive with little water, a wetland and plants which did well on poor soils. I learnt something that day too – that there is such a thing as a deciduous cypress. I thought it was dead.
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| Dragonflies dart around the pond in the park made by landscape design students |
A Gallery
My other cousin here - sister of the first, took me to
The Sammelung Domnick. The latter was originally a private art collection and
a private house. The very modern lines of the building in brutalist style - that is, large slabs of raw concrete, is
the perfect backdrop for the abstract art which the gallery displays. Indeed, I
may not have given these pictures a second glance, had the works been seen in
isolation and had I not heard the stories behind some of them.
Ottomar Domnick was a neurologist and psychiatrist who used his wealth to support artists who had fled Nazi Germany. With his wife Greta - also a psychiatrist, Ottomar began to collect Post War modernist art particularly that of Willi Baumeister and Hartung who became close personal friends. Some pictures and sculptures were also the work of his patients.
Both situations help to explain the somewhat sombre colours and a darkness which pervades many of these works. Initially they shocked and repelled critics including me to some extent, but according Monica Bolin -Duchen’s excellent article for the Tate Gallery, the émigré artists helped to shift the idea of art from accurate renditions of what is seen, to depicting what is felt or to evoke feelings in others, though recognition did not come until the 1950s. By the time abstract art had become mainstream in the mid fifties, the couple stopped collecting it, because it was no longer radical enough and Ottomar Domnick turned to film making for which he won several awards. When he wasn't doing that he also played cello and had a soft spot for Porsche Cars.
This cousin also took me to the Ritter Sport Chocolate Factory, which also has a Gallery devoted to all things Square, the shape of its signature chocolate. Unfortunately, after the coffee and cake and all that chocolate sampling, I had to go 'home' and have a nice lie down.
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| Will a picture of the outside of the Ritter Sport Gallery do? |
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| Entrance to the Forest Cemetery |
A little Cemetery Tour
On another day we visited the forest cemetery where members of my cousins’ family had recently been laid to rest. This was a green and peaceful place with the graves tucked discreetly among the trees and only small plantings and natural stone markers allowed, not the great mausoleums or acres of concrete you see in traditional cemeteries. We also visited a much older cemetery where her mother and uncle were buried. Indeed, if my cousin’s behaviour is anything to go by, then devotion to the dead seems to have a far higher priority in Germany than it does in Australia. There is even a public holiday for doing so. Instead of Trick or Treating on All Saints Day (Halloween), it’s a solemn day for visiting those who have departed.
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| Only natural materials and simple markers are allowed in this cemetery. Plastic bag is from the new plants we brought |
While Germans seem to be much more religious than Australians anyway -German businesses still close on Sundays for example, there is also another reason for doing so. As I found out when looking for my sister’s grave, they are rarely kept for more than ten years unless relatives continue to maintain them and or continue to pay for the plot. Refreshing plants and flowers, weeding, lighting candles and trimming back vegetation were all ways to show that a grave is still being actively maintained and that there are still people alive who care about this person. At the cemetery in Münsingen – a much more conventional one with laser printed photos, we found no more trace of my father’s family either – one of the small tragedies of emigration and one which many Australians and others who migrated to other countries have had to bear.
Just moving to another remote town for work would have had much the same effect, leaving little room for sentimentality about the dead.
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| War Graves at the Old Cemetery |
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| Remembering those who died doing forced labour in Germany |
As I was walking, I was thinking about why I loved these
landscapes which looked so timeless, picturesque and neat and why Germany
remains a pleasant place to live, despite being densely populated and highly
industrialised.
Land Use Patterns
It most likely starts with underlying land use patterns in Germany, which have largely evolved over time, but were refined and developed by Walter Christaller in the 1930s. Looking at where the very old Celtic settlements were we can see that fertile soils, rivers and junctions of important pathways and high ground were desirable locations.
As populations grew, each small town and village developed surrounding market gardens, fields and orchards and beyond that, retained forest for timber needs and firewood. Each village therefore had the potential to be self – sufficient without the need for long distance trucking of food supplies, so long as its people were content with basic foods - potatoes, cabbages, pork and dairy produce, rather than the exotic food we now see in our supermarkets.
In Christaller’s Central Place theory, which focuses largely on economic factors and was based on what he had observed in this part of Germany, each village also feeds into a larger administrative centre, which supports more services and provides a larger market for the surplus produce in the smaller villages. His theory is still used today when say, deciding where a new hospital, school or shopping centre should go. You can read more about it here, though there are some limitations.
It assumes that all this takes place on a flat plain, that people will always travel to the nearest place and have the same income and desires. It also ignores existing patterns of behaviour. Nor does it necessarily hold for other countries. In China for example, very large cities have evolved right beside each other, but it remains a good starting point.
The Right to Roam
A second reason is that wherever you are in Germany, there is always access to nature nearby, and within walking distance. The fields and orchards are unfenced, unlike here in Australia, and visitors are free to wander along designated paths or simply sit upon one of the many seats and enjoy the view.
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| Look! No fences |
Like many other European countries, Germany has retained the Right to Roam, a hangover from the days when forests and fields were communal lands and people could continue to gather firewood, pick berries and so on, although these days you are restricted to public pathways and many activities such as picking wildflowers have had to be curtailed for environmental reasons.
The interpretation of Right to Roam varies from country to country. In Scotland you may access any land – public or private, so long as it’s done responsibly and in Iceland and other Scandinavian countries “Everyman’s Right” includes access to public and private lands for all kinds of activities including camping and swimming, even on private lands, whereas in the UK it is restricted to public footpaths and designated rights of way. In Switzerland, the right to access forests and pasture lands is enshrined in its constitution.
Curiously, these rights have not transferred to the New World, that is, to places like Australia, Canada and the USA. Perhaps they did not seem necessary when there seemed to be so much open space and there was a much greater need to contain livestock and protect crops, as well as keeping others out.
The invention of barbed wire and wire netting (1850 -1860s) made it easy to quickly enclose large areas of land which simply could not be watched over in the way European agricultural holdings were. The higher population density in the latter, would mean that if someone were to misbehave on Germany’s fields or in its forests, I am certain that other Germans would very quickly show them the error of their ways, something which would be unlikely to happen in places with smaller, scattered populations like ours.
While Australia’s founding fathers allowed for generous parks in the inner city, subsequent developments tended to neglect these in favour of the quarter acre block which resulted in sprawling ribbon developments along railway lines and beaches. With inner sections having since been filled in and more people living in apartments, we have lost much of that easy access to green spaces, though several cities are working on improving this.
Linear parks along creeks and rivers are becoming popular as flooding becomes more frequent and the resulting damage bill becomes higher each time there is a need to rebuild. Added advantages include slowing down the loss of water and providing a green continuous corridor where wildlife can flourish. Other popular initiatives include community gardens, though their plots are usually much smaller than Schrebergärten and without the "playground." aspect.
What's a Schrebergarten?
Another way in which Germany compensates for denser settlement – houses are often 2 -3 storeys high and may house two or more families or extended families, is through its Schrebergärten. These are small plots of land usually found on the edge of towns, along railway embankments and so forth, where, not unlike British allotments– people can grow vegetables, flowers and fruit, or simply relax at the weekend or stay busy in retirement. Although these are often on the urban fringe, it should be noted that European towns and villages are usually much more compact than ours.
In Britain’s case allotments of some kind, where landless peasants could grow their food go back at least 1,000 years, however after the Enclosure Act of 1845 as thousands crowded into the cities to toil in the factories at the start of the Industrial Revolution, they became a matter of law. This required that councils set land aside land to enable people to grow food, especially the poor. For various reasons, they did not live up to their promise at this stage, but really came into their own during World War I and became the celebrated Victory Gardens of World War II.
Although Germany still has a few ancestral plots which belong to houses in the towns, most such ancillary gardens are of more recent origin and largely the brainchild of one man – one Dr. Moritz Schreber an orthopaedic specialist in Leipzig, who insisted that children should be exposed to as much fresh air and exercise as possible. In 1864, several years after his death, the first community organisations evolved to create what were essentially play areas for children but where parents and their children could also grow food. Today, almost every city has them and there are 1.5 million throughout Germany.
The Streuobstwiesen
There is yet another way in which Germans have greater access to nature. This is through the Streuobstwiesen or Meadow Orchards which are another feature of the German countryside. Usually located on marginal lands – steep hills, poor soils and along roadsides, they really took off in the C18th when its rulers decreed that landowners and newlyweds must plant a certain number of trees. When dairying became popular in the early 1900s, the wide spacing of trees still allowed cows to graze underneath and the movement of farm vehicles.
In the past, fallen fruit from such orchards could be gathered freely and was largely used for cider – making, but these days as farmers grow old and young people move away, they are mostly valued for their enormous ecological benefit, being the repository of countless species such as birds, insects and small mammals, as well as removing pollutants from the air. Farmers benefit from the additional fodder, pollination services and the fruit and the public gains the additional benefit of having more open space.
While existing land use patterns are difficult to change, places facing rebuilding after disasters could easily incorporate some of these ideas and turn disaster into a positive.
I shall be sad to be leaving these peaceful, orderly landscapes behind.
PS I have just noticed while looking through the photos that some of the events are a bit out of order. The gallery visit for example, was earlier and the Münsinger Craft fair was later, but I'm hoping that it won't make much difference.
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