Germany: Stuttgart, Ravensburg, Freiberg

Early Tuesday morning, Joe drove the Oldhams to the train station to catch a ride to Frankfurt before flying home.  When he got back, we and the Aikeles grabbed breakfast at a bakery and headed into downtown Stuttgart to tour the Porsche Museum.  It was really interesting to see the different parts of the cars, how they were built, and how Porsche has evolved over time both in technology and in styling and design.  Sam and Joe were in heaven as they were surrounded by fancy cars all in one place. 

 Standing next to their favorites

 

  

When we were done in Stuttgart, we headed into Ravensburg, which is the other town that Sam's ancestors were from.  We went to see the apartment where his great-great grandparents originally lived but weren't able to go inside.  There was construction on those buildings as they were turning them into a hotel.  Next to the apartments was a little cafe in the bottom level of what we thought had been a monastery back in the day.   Sam and Marquessa sneaked into a back stairway behind the cafe and climbed up into the roof tower to get a view of the city.  I was worried that we may get in trouble for being in a "construction zone" or sightseeing in "restricted areas" but Sam declared, "I own this place!" and off they went.

The apartment buildings being renovated into the hotel.

The stairway leading to the great views of Ravensburg.

   

The Aikeles, many generations later.  Good looks still run in their family!

After quickly driving through Ravensburg, we continued south through the Black Forest to Freiburg.  We stopped for some pictures at Bodensee (Lake Constance), which is a lake on the Rhine River at the northern foot of the Alps.  The shorelines are in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

 

 

When we arrived in Freiburg, we checked into the Novotel and walked through the city.  Freiburg is a college town so we enjoyed the evening walking around, relaxing and people-watching.

 The views from our hotel room

Freiburg was founded as a free market town and was strategically located at a junction of trade routes between the Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea regions, and the Rhine and Danube rivers.  In 1200, Freiburg's population numbered around 6,000 people.  At about that time, under the rule of Bertold V, the last duke of Zähringen, the city began construction of its Freiburg Münster cathedral on the site of an older parish church and was completed as a Gothic cathedral in 1513.  In 1218, when Bertold V died, the counts of Urach assumed the title.  The city council did not trust the new nobles and wrote down their established rights in a document. At the end of the 13th century there was a feud between the citizens of Freiburg and their lord, Count Egino II of Freiburg.  Egino raised taxes and sought to limit the citizens' freedom, after which the Freiburgers used catapults to destroy the count's castle atop Schloßberg, a hill that overlooks the city center.  The furious count called on his brother-in-law the Bishop of Strasbourg for help.  The bishop answered by marching with his army to Freiburg.

According to an old Freiburg legend, a butcher named Hauri stabbed the Bishop of Strasbourg to death on July 29, 1299.  Henceforth the citizens of Freiburg had to pay an annual expiation of 300 marks in silver to the count of Freiburg until 1368.  In 1366 the counts of Freiburg made another failed attempt to occupy the city during a night raid.  Eventually the citizens were fed up with their lords, and in 1368 Freiburg purchased its independence from them.  The city turned itself over to the protection of the Habsburgs, who allowed the city to retain a large measure of freedom. 

The Martinstor, one of the original city gates in Freiburg.

Munsterplatz, or Cathedral Square

The silver mines in Mount Schauinsland provided an important source of capital for Freiburg.  This silver made Freiburg one of the richest cities in Europe, and in 1327 Freiburg minted its own coin, the Rappenpfennig.  At the end of the 14th century the veins of silver were dwindling, and by 1460 only around 6,000 people still lived within Freiburg's city walls.  A university city, Freiburg evolved from its focus on mining to become a cultural center for the arts and sciences.  It was also a commercial center.  The end of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance was a time of both advances and tragedy for Freiburg.

In 1457, Albrecht VI established one of Germany's oldest universities. In 1498, Emperor Maximilian I held a Reichstag in Freiburg.  In 1520, the city ratified a set of legal reforms, widely considered the most progressive of the time.  The aim was to find a balance between city traditions and old Roman Law.  The reforms were well received, especially the sections dealing with civil process law, punishment and the city's constitution.

In 1520, Freiburg decided not to take part in the Reformation and became an important center for Catholicism.  In 1536, a strong and persistent belief in witchcraft led to the city's first witch-hunt.  The need to find a scapegoat for calamities such as the Black Plague, which claimed 2,000 area residents (25% of the city population) in 1564, led to an escalation in witch-hunting that reached its peak in 1599.  A plaque on the old city wall marks the spot where burnings were carried out.
The 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries were turbulent times for Freiburg. At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War there were 10,000-14,000 citizens in Freiburg; by its end only 2,000 remained.  During this war and other conflicts, the city belonged at various times to the Austrians, the French, the Swedish, the Spanish, and various members of the German Confederacy.  Between 1648 and 1805, it was the administrative headquarters of the Habsburg territories in the southwest of Germany, when the city was not under French occupation.  In 1805, the city became part of Baden.

Freiburg Minster, a medieval cathedral.

The last duke of Zähringen had started the building around 1200 in romanesque style, the construction continued in 1230 in Gothic style.  The minster was partly built on the foundations of an original church that had been there from the beginning of Freiburg in 1120.  In 1827 the Minster became the seat of the Catholic archbishop of Freiburg and thus a cathedral.

It has the only Gothic church tower in Germany that was completed in the Middle Ages (1330), and miraculously, has lasted until the present, surviving the bombing raids of November 1944, which destroyed all of the houses on the west and north side of the market.  The tower was subject to severe vibration at the time, and its survival of these vibrations is attributed to its lead anchors, which connect the sections of the spire.  The windows had been taken out of the spire at the time, and so these also suffered no damage.  The tower has 16 bells, the oldest being the "Hosanna" bell from 1258, which weighs 3,290 kilograms.

We were not allowed inside the cathedral because they were setting up for a celebration and visit from the Pope but we were allowed into the entryway.  It was beautiful.

On October 22, 1940, the Nazi Gauleiter of Baden ordered the deportation of all of Baden's Jews, and 350 Jewish citizens of Freiburg were deported to a southern French internment camp. They remained there under poor conditions until the majority of the survivors were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz on July 18, 1942.

Freiburg was heavily bombed during World War II.  First, in May 1940, aircraft mistakenly dropped approximately 60 bombs on Freiburg near the train station, killing fifty-seven people.  Later on, a raid by more than 300 bombers on 27 November 1944 destroyed a large portion of the city center, with the notable exception of the Münster, which was only lightly damaged.  After the war, the city was rebuilt on its medieval plan.

It was occupied by the French Army in 1945, and Freiburg was soon allotted to the French Zone of Occupation.  In December 1945 Freiburg became the site of government for the German state Badenia, which was merged into Baden-Württemberg in 1952.  The French Army maintained a presence in Freiburg until 1991, when the last French Army division left the city, and Germany.

Because of its scenic beauty, relatively warm and sunny climate, and easy access to the Black Forest, Freiburg is a hub for regional tourism.  The longest cable car run in Germany runs from Günterstal up to a nearby mountain called Schauinsland.  The city has an unusual system of gutters (called Bächle) that run throughout its center.  These Bächle, once used to provide water to fight fires and feed livestock, are constantly flowing with water.  They were never used for sewage, and during the summer, the running water provides natural cooling of the air, and offers a pleasant gurgling sound.

The Historical Merchants Hall, is a Late Gothic building on the south side of Freiburg's plaza.  Built between 1520 and 1530, it was once the center of the financial life of the region. Its façade is decorated with statues and the coat of arms of four Habsburg emperors.

After wandering through the streets, it started getting dark and we started getting hungry.  We stopped for pizza at a cafe near the university.  We relaxed there for a couple of hours and soon after the sun set, it started raining so we headed back to the hotel.