Good Evening Herr Goethe: You say History! I say Dumplings!

Good Evening Herr Goethe!

·         Near Chemnitz two activists chained themselves to the rails to slow down Castor, the train loaded with nuclear waste, on its way to Lubmin, Mecklenburg Vorpommern.
·         Larry King leaves the show.
·         Heavy snow creates traffic problems from the Alps to the Oder, all across Germany.
·         A woman from California posed a teddy bear in front of Goethe’s Garden House in Weimar.

Tyana J LittleString near Goethe's Garten Haus

Yes, I am guilty of the bear posing incident. Passers-by frowned. A woman stopped a few meters away, turned around , glared at me. I get it. Still no sense of humor in the homeland. I wonder why for some people curiosity turns into displeasure or moral outrage, while it leads to acceptance for others. You, Herr Goethe, felt the moral outrage when you invited Christiane Vulpius into your house; I only received an obvious sign of irritation. You once pointed out that the question “why” is too difficult to answer, that one should ask “how?” How then, does it happen? Is a shortcut taken? A shortcut that prematurely ends an engagement with something unfamiliar? A shortcut preventing deliberate thought and exploration with an open mind?

Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar

It doesn’t matter; I, definitely, am determined to spend a lot of time on exploration. On Wednesday I put on big, grey felt slippers over my hiking boots and padded across the wooden floor of the Anna Amalia Bibliothek. Again I relied on audio equipment and a map for guidance and loved the experience.

There is a limit of 250 visitors per day and I was one of the lucky early morning walk-ins. Of course, during the summer reservations are a must. A part of the library was destroyed by a fire in 2004; empty spaces on book shelves are the result. It took large donations to restore the building and rescue fire, smoke, water damaged books, but the library reopened in 2007. More than 50,000 books and 37 oil paintings were lost and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar is still asking for donations of copies of once here displayed rare books from private collectors and public libraries. Extensive musical collections, old manuscripts, and much early cultural history are gone forever. The digital age had not yet come to Weimar though some micro fiche documentation is preserved. No project Gutenberg or Google Books for your friend Herzogin Anna Amalia and her life’s work, Herr Goethe.

Your spirit must have shivered with sadness when the flames leapt through the roof of the Rococo Room. So far over 35 million Euros have been donated by more than 22,000 persons and institutions to restore the library and replenish its books. A large database of loss is published on the Internet. Today the library holds one million books; most of the rescued books have been returned from the freeze dry process in Leipzig, are stored in a separate place, await individual evaluation as to the possibility of restoration.

Heavy, depressing realization of great loss seems to cast a shadow over the beauty of the room. I couldn’t escape it. I think nobody who enters with an awareness of cultural inheritance can. Only an occasional concentrated focus on the snowy landscape beyond the tall windows allowed me to spend the better part of two hours within these holy walls of knowledge without succumbing to sadness.

Wednesday was also the day on which I tried a typical local meal. What better place than the oldest restaurant in town to guide my taste buds? Zum Schwarzen Baeren, here I come!

Red cabbage, rolled beef, potato dumplings. It isn’t the chef’s fault; his dumplings were good. It is my mother’s fault – family lore – highlight in retrospect – low point in her ability to cook – whatever attribute we give an episode that is etched in our minds – my mother’s dumplings came with a warning sign “Caution: Dumplings will haunt you from the bottom of your stomach.” Indeed, not even our cat would touch the leftovers. I remembered that as I cleaned my plate. I remembered that when I woke at three in the morning.

All family history aside, one of the tables near the entrance to the “Black Bear” is the perfect place from which to watch the antics of tour groups, the joy of children in the snow, the Christmas Market crowd, Weimar as it lives its daily life. The young lady who served me was sweet and attentive; she brought me my very own historical brochure which told me that the place was built in 1540. The candle on my table burned brightly. And the dumplings? Those two large potato dumplings? Unforgettable!