Wars are never won

Written by eklastic

St. Laurentius

This war memorial – commemorating the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 – stands in front of the St Laurentius Church in Weinheim.  As in many towns all over Germany, memorials went up to celebrate this particular war and Kaiser Wilhelm I.  A German historian talked of this as the epidemic of monuments brought forth by Germany’s boastful besottedness with national ideals (file:///C:/Users/nukman/AppData/Local/Temp/12240-21601-1-PB.pdf) and I am not at all fond of these glorifications of war.

There is a humorous side note to this particular one.  Johann Wilhelm Goos, a miller in town, was considered to be the epitome of manhood and chosen to be the model for the charging soldier.  He later emigrated to America with his family, where he became wealthy.  To this day, descendants of Johann Goos come to Weinheim and want to see what their ancestor looked like.

This is a more comprehensive look of the church overlooking the market square.

St. Laurentius

For A Photo a Week Challenge: Light the Night.   More lit up nights can be found here.

 

12 thoughts on “Wars are never won”

    2. Übrigens die verlinkte PDF-Datei über das Denkmal ist interessant. Auch dass sie z.B. im 2.WK nicht eingeschmolzen wurde, weil sie nicht aus Bronze, sondern aus Zink ist.

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  3. We just returned from a river cruise through central Europe (Budapest to Amsterdam), and we saw so many monuments to war in Germany it was overwhelming. Nuremberg was particularly sobering with Hitler’s coliseum. They day we were there, a music festival was being held on the grounds and it was a tent city. Your pictures are lovely, and the history is fascinating. Thanks for joining the challenge!

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    1. Hey, what was your boat called? Friends of mine did exactly that and we met them when they had the day in Rüdesheim. And I have stories about Nürnberg … (Nazi/war related, second hand, though, I am not that old).

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      2. Yes, but because you said: we just returned … they left Europe last week (I got an e.mail today in which they complain about jet lag) so I thought it might have been a real coincidence if you’d been on the same boat. We were guests on the boat and had dinner with them. We might have been sitting back to back to each other … but alas! (Their boat was called River Queen, can’t remember the company but it wasn’t Viking.)

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