By John Masters
Meridian Writers’ Group
MUNICH—Germany may
no longer have a monarchy — it was abolished in 1918 — but it still
has plenty of nobility. Take the Wittelbachs, for example. They’d been the
rulers of Bavaria since the 12th century. Even today, if you run into the
current head of the house, Duke Franz von Bayern, you should address him as
“your royal highness.”
German nobility still
have some very nice real estate, too. Duke Franz lives at Nymphenburg Palace, a
baroque wonder that, in the 17th century, was a two-hour carriage ride from
Munich. Now it’s in the suburbs, but there’s still a nice buffer between the
duke and his neighbours: his front lawn’s the size of a stadium; the backyard’s
a 200-hectare park.
Since the duke still
lives here, not all of the palace is open to the public, but the impressive
centre block is. Built and rebuilt by successive generations of Wittelbachs
from 1664, with the last major work done in 1826, its rooms are in a variety of
styles that veer from Italianate to Chinese, but all would come under the
general heading of “opulent.”
The Great Hall that rises
before you as you enter is the biggest and best example of this: a
two-storey-high rococo chamber of lavish, gold-gilded stucco work, a colourful
ceiling fresco of, appropriately, nymphs, six glittering crystal chandeliers
and a bank of large windows to fill the room with light. It seems a hall
perfectly made for music and dancing.
The rooms with the most
interesting stories to them are in the south wing, where the Blue Salon and the
Queen’s Bedroom are both done in French Empire style. Why? Because in 1806
Napoleon made Bavaria its own kingdom and enlarged its borders. How better to
show your thanks — and allegiance — than to redo a few choice rooms
in the appropriate manner?
The Queen’s Bedroom has
another story to go with it: it’s where Ludwig II — Mad Ludwig, the one
who built the fantasy castle Walt Disney made into the icon for his amusement
park — was born. The furniture is all as it was on that day, Aug. 25, 1845,
including the mirror the delivering doctor looked into rather than gazing
directly on his royal patient.
As eye-catching as the
palace is, for many visitors the park behind it is an even greater attraction.
It comes with two lakes, several large pavilions, a baroque garden and a canal.
A 1761 painting by Canaletto shows the house and garden from the top of the
canal, with several pleasure craft rowing about in the water. Ladies in
voluminous dresses and gentlemen wearing white hose watch from the shore. The
boats are gone, but the park remains much as it was nearly 250 years ago.
Among the outbuildings
back here is the Magdelenenklause. It was meant to be a simple, monk-like place
of refuge for the lord and was designed to convey the idea of poverty. Most
people will think it fails miserably in this. But most people don’t live in
Nymphenburg Palace.
ACCESS
For more information on
the Nymphenburg Palace visit the Bavarian Palace Department’s website at
www.schoesser.bayern.de
.
For information on travel
in Germany visit the German National Tourist Office website at
www.cometogermany.com
.
PHOTO CAPTION
Nuremberg’s Documentation
Centre tells the story of the birth and growth of the National Socialist German
Workers’ Party—the Nazis.
PHOTO CREDIT
John Masters/Meridian
Writers’ Group
Nuremberg’s necessary
exhibition
By John Masters
Meridian Writers’ Group
NUREMBERG,
Germany—This Bavarian city has many sights to see. It has a spectacular
Christmas market, master Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer’s house and a range
of worthwhile museums covering everything from toys to railways to contemporary
art. There’s a big medieval castle to visit and a labyrinth of tunnels beneath
it to explore. The
Rough Guide to Germany
says “two or three days are probably the minimum necessary to get to know
the place.”
Then there’s the
exhibition the city isn’t so keen to promote, but it’s a very necessary one.
The blandly named
Dokumentationszentrum (Documentation Centre) tells the story of the birth and
growth of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party — the Nazis. What
makes this exhibition particularly compelling is that it’s housed in the
Congress Hall, begun by Adolf Hitler’s favourite architect, Albert Speer, in
1935 and never finished, but intended to outdo Rome’s Colosseum.
The hall itself was just
a small part of Nazi Party Rally Grounds, a vast parcel of land where parades
were held, military exercises conducted and where Hitler whipped up support
with his speeches at mass rallies, captured on film in the 1934 pro-Nazi
documentary
Triumph of the Will
.
The Allies bombed the
rally grounds (and destroyed much of Nuremberg) in 1945, but the Congress Hall
survived, the largest remaining example of the brutal, overscaled neoclassical
style Hitler and Speer preferred. “Eternity and monumentality” were the
qualities it was meant to express.
Stepping into this
crumbling piece of history would be eerie, but that’s not exactly what you do.
The central corridor of the Documentation Centre is an arrow that pierces the
outer flank of the building, blasting through its walls to emerge as a narrow
catwalk overlooking the now-silent inner arena. It is an elegantly dramatic
architectural repudiation of everything the Congress Hall was meant to embody.
Travel along that arrow
and you pass through 19 rooms that use old film footage and documents to tell
the Nazis’ tale, with special emphasis laid on Nuremberg’s role.
Nuremberg’s citizens
weren’t big supporters of Hitler early on, but the city became more and more
identified with his National Socialist movement as it gained strength. Besides
the rallies (attracting up 250,000) Nuremberg was where the so-called Nuremberg
Laws were passed in 1935, depriving Jews of their citizenship and forbidding
relations between Jews and Gentiles — the first step on the road to the
concentration camps.
The city’s high status
within the Third Reich made it a pointedly symbolic choice as the venue for the
war-crimes trials when that “thousand-year Reich” ended. (The courthouse where
the Nuremberg Trials were held is also open for inspection.)
Even more than 60 years
after the events it depicts, the Documentation Centre still has the power to
make you shudder. The stark reality of the film footage, from scenes of
fresh-faced German boys being molded into Hitler Youth squads to the unbearably
sad shots of concentration camps, is underscored, like a barely heard bass
line, by the ghosts and shadows of the building itself. In here, the past seems
not quite dead.
ACCESS
For more information on
the Documentation Centre visit the Museums of Nuremberg Web site at
www.museen.nuernberg.de
.
To reach the
Documentation Centre from Nuremberg’s central train station take the S2 S-bahn
to Dutzlendteich station (a six-minute ride), then walk 10 minutes to the
Congress Hall.
For more information on
Nuremberg visit the city’s website at
www.nuernberg.de
.