When we meet up with our group on Sundays, we follow a pre-laid trail. Once in a while we encounter a sign spelling SV. SV stands for “scenic view”. This normally signifies a look over a sweeping landscape. Occasionally it might also be an idyllic scene, a pond or a clearing or possibly a monument.
This Sunday it was neither sweeping nor idyllic, it was just odd.
There were wooden figures but embellished with odd toys and artificial flowers and strange artifacts. The wooden figures were stern and bleak, the additions however, were kind of menacing: a doll left in the weather looks scary after even a few days.
The manor house in the Hermannshof in Weinheim was built in classicist style in 1820. The garden was, of course, a private garden. Later it became the property of the Freudenberg family. The company founded by Carl Freudenberg in the mid 19th century is today still family owned. The house and garden was still private when I was a little girl and walked past it every day on my way to school. I used to wonder then what was behind the dense hedges.
The garden was changed to a park open to the public, now called “Schau- und Sichtungsgarten Hermannshof” in 1988 and has become a tourist magnet. The manor house is used by the company as a conference centre and is still closed to the public.
The windows show off the classicist style of the manor house. The representative front overlooks the park and with the beautiful magnolia looks impressive at any time of year. But the back and side views are beautiful as well.
I never realised that the salvias, which I used to grow in my garden, were related to the herb sage, which I use in my cooking. And I certainly never realised the colour range they come in.
French and Germans were told for many years that they were hereditary enemies. The nations fought wars against each other. The borders were re-arranged again and again depending on who “won” the last war.
But times change. Even politicians realised that going forward meant forging friendships. They founded the European Economic Community in 1957 together with Italy, Luxemburg, Belgium and the Netherlands which later developed into the European Union. Many French and German towns and cities were twinned – Städtepartnerschaften it is called in Germany, Jumelage in France.
In 1939 my father went as a soldier to France. In the 1960s he was involved with building friendships between people from our town, Weinheim, and Cavaillon in the South of France. Originally twinning only involved the town officials but my father and others made it an experience for the normal people, the employees and workers of the community.
When he retired he received these two illustrated books, one in French about Germany, one in German about France.
One had been signed by three German statesmen: Annemarie Renger, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt. The other had a whole page handwriten by Alain Poher, the then president of the French Senate.
To me the “lest we forget” is meaningless without adding George Santayana’s maxim:
“Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.”
Another photo of a ride around the small, local lake. Decide for yourself what you prefer: the monochrome original. I could barely make out what I was seeing or the enhanced image below.
This banner is in support of Fariba Adelkhah who is currently detained in Iran. She lived in Strasbourg before she visited her native country of Iran and got arrested for spying and later convicted for conspiring against national security and for propaganda against the state. The banner is displayed on the front of the townhall of Strasbourg.
pictures imperfect blog 