Meissen and More

The boat pulled out of Dresden early in the morning. As we woke up, we saw the great churches and palaces of that city drifting past us. It took a couple hours for the boat to make it to our first destination of the day, the small city of Meissen. Although Dresden today is the important political and cultural center, in early centuries that distinction belonged to Meissen. During the fifteenth century this was the seat of the Elector of Saxony and the see city of the diocese covering lower Saxony. It faded in importance when the capital was moved to Dresden, and after the Reformation the Diocese of Meissen was dissolved after a majority its clergy and laity became Lutheran. 

In the early eighteenth century, however, Meissen became significant again when chemists and craftsmen working for Augustus the Strong discovered the formula for making porcelain. Augustus, hoping for a monopoly on European porcelain production, picked Meissen as the center for production of the precious commodity. The secret did not last; ten years later porcelain was being produced in other European locations. But Meissen stayed as the center of Saxon porcelain production and has been celebrated for the quality of its ceramic products for two centuries. 

Our tour of the city began with a tour of the Meissen factory. Normally I find this sort of thing really annoying as the “tour” is mostly about shoving the poor tourist into a gift shop to endure a hard sales pitch. But I had heard from others that there was not much of a push to buy the product here and that the museum attached to the factory was wonderful. Both of those things proved to be true.

We did not really enter the factory. Instead, the tour goes through several demonstration rooms. Each room has a craftsman working while taped narrator explains the different steps in the process. We watched as the porcelain clay was tossed on a wheel, formed into shapes in molds, and also shaped by hand. 

We watched pieces being painted by hand

and learned the difference between underpainting and overpainting porcelain. It is much more interesting than I expected it to be.

One of the things I found quite curious what just how porcelain shrinks every time it is fired. They showed us two versions of the same piece. As you can see, one is smaller. It did not start out that way. 

At the end of the demonstrations, we were shown the gift shop but we were also invited to visit the factory’s museum on the second and third floors. This proved to be absolutely fascinating. There were hundreds of pieces on display from all periods of porcelain production at Meissen. Most were exactly what you might expect

though some were not exactly what I think of with Meissen.

Large porcelain animals are a speciality.

John was fascinated by “Feast and Folly,” a rather salacious new piece. 

I was more interested in the partitive organ with porcelain pipes. I doubt it sounds that great. 

Leaving the factory we had to cross the street. When the German Democratic Republic came to an end, few people wanted to keep anything from that era. Except one thing … the walk lights! Everybody loves the old East German walking man.

After we finished at the factory, we were driven close to the center of the old town. Meissen escaped bombing during the Second World War and its historic core is beautifully preserved. For example, the old city gate 

leads into a large square. Here you can see the “dom”, as the Germans call cathedrals, as well as the old elector’s palace. Our guide was Gertun, and she was sweet and knowledgable. We both felt a little guilty for finding her rather dull. 

John is normally not the one who wants to go into a church, but he found the towering black cathedral intriguing, particularly as he could hear the organ playing inside. 

We learned that there was going to be an organ concert in about an hour, but we would not be in Meissen long enough for that. For a modest contribution, we were still allowed to explore the church. We not only listened to the organist practice, but had the opportunity to watch him as well. 

It’s hard to quite explain why this church is so quintessentially Lutheran. 

 The clear balance of preaching, 

baptism,

and the table of the Lord’s Supper is definitely Lutheran. But it is mostly I think that stark focus on the passion of Christ that comes close to defining the Lutheran sensibility. Unlike Catholicism, the community recedes in importance here. It is the sinful believer facing a just yet gracious God that is the essence of Lutheran spirituality. 

Theology aside, the building is an interesting bit of late Gothic architecture. It has soaring ribbed vaulting like most of these ancient buildings.

But it also has retained some of the original coloring of the stones. We think of Gothic architecture as cold and gray, but originally the structures were brightly painted. Some of that remains here. 

Less colorful and more unique to this cathedral, of course, is the use of Meissen porcelain on the altar. 

After about twenty minutes in the cathedral we decided we should rejoin our guide and our tour group. We found our way doing to the market square where we were supposed to all meet up and go back to the ship. 

We all stopped briefly to listen to the porcelain carillon in the bell tower. 

It was far less impressive than the one in Dresden.

As we ate our lunch on the bow, the boat pulled out of Meissen. I had not expected that much from this stop on the river, but it proved to be a quite memorable moment in the trip. 

After lunch, we watched the pastoral countryside as we floated down the river. This was a perfect afternoon, clear and cool. 

The animals seemed to be enjoying the day as much as we were. 

If it weren’t for the occasional car or electric power lines I would have thought I had somehow drifted into a John Constable painting.

At dinner time we docked in Torgau. I have to admit that this is the one town on this trip that I had never heard of before even though it is historically quite important. I learned some things at this stop. 

In 1945, this was the place where American and Red Army troops met up, officially closing the Eastern and Western fronts of the war. Keiran, our guide, kept referring to them as “Russians” but they were actually Ukrainian soldiers and few Ukrainians today would be willing to be identified as Russians. Germany had effectively lost the war by this point, but this completely sealed its fate. At statue marks the spot. As the East German government erected it, the hammer and sickle is more prominent than the Stars and Stripes.

The bridge where the forces met has been replaced with a new one. But a small portion of the old bridge has been left to mark the spot. 

Torgau was extensively damaged in the war but has been almost completely rebuilt. This is because it was so important during the Reformation. Torgau was a center of Saxon government, and the Elector of Saxony became a supporter Martin Luther’s cause. The importance of this alliance cannot be overstressed. Previous reformers, people like Wycliff and Hus, failed to attract powerful political patrons. Luther succeeded here, and that meant that the Reformation succeeded. But there was a cost, too. Wycliff and Hus imagined a simple Christian community detached from political power. They foreshadowed the Anabaptists more than the Lutherans or the Calvinists. Luther’s embrace of the Saxon state ensured that his movement would prosper, but also established a pattern of Protestant subservience to political authority that would continue well into the Nazi era. 

Schloss Hartenfels is the magnificent Saxon castle here. The grand entry still shows the Prince Elector’s coat of arms. 

Its central staircase is a masterpiece of North Renaissance architecture. 

There are other lovely architectural details as well such as these windows.

Less lovely from a modern point of view is the “bear moat” surrounding the castle. There are still three females brown bears kept here. They had gone to bed for the evening when we arrived. 

Keiran took us through the center of town. 

He gave us a lot of history, and John listened attentively. He had the good sense to sit down. 

Torgau has a LOT of Lutheran history. Not only was this the home of Luther’s patron, but the very first chapel designed for Lutheran worship was in the castle. But wait, as they say in those television commercials, there’s more. It was here that the first drafts of the Augsburg Confession was written. And, for real Lutheran theology buffs, it was here that the Formula of Concord, the Declaration of the Formula of Concord, and the Book of Concord were penned. 

And there is more Lutheran stuff here than simply disputations about justification by faith and consubstantiation to Torgau. Luther’s rather formidable wife Kathe left Wittenburg after her husband’s death to avoid plague. She came here to Torgau. Unfortunately, she had some kind of unfortunately accident in an oxcart and died of her injuries not only after. This is where she died 

and she is buried somewhere in the parish church here.

I found all this rather interesting though my enthusiasm was not shared by my friend in the window. 

I do think that most dogs are Catholic, anyhow. Cats are definitely Presbyterian. 

Tomorrow we go to the heart of Lutherland, the city of Wittenberg. 

 

Dresden

For earlier generations the word Dresden made people think of “china." For me, and I suspect for most people my age, the word that comes to mind when I hear Dresen is “fire bombing.” While most of us grew up thinking of World War II as if not a “good war” at least a justifiable one, the incineration of Dresden and the slaughter of 75,000 of its people counts perhaps as the greatest of the war crimes of the allied forces. So it came as a great surprise to discover how much the city has rebuilt in the the last 25 years, recovering both from the horrors of the war and the desolation wrought by socialism. 

We had a superb guide for our walking trip this morning. I wish I had a decent picture of the woman; it was a windy day and all the pictures I took of Liliane had her hair blowing across her face. Unlike Alex, our guide from yesterday, she had grown up in Dresden and spent her childhood in the German Democratic Republic. She was coming the to end of high school when the wall fall in Berlin, so she was old enough to remember how oppressive it all was, and yet young enough that the communist system had not destroyed her opportunities for further education and a career. 

We began our tour in the middle of the main square right next to the Frauenkirche. This has always been the most important Lutheran church is a traditionally Lutheran city. It was one of the casualties of the allied bombing, and during the years of the atheist government of the DDR, it remained as a pile of rubble in the middle of the city. As soon as east and west Germany were reunited, however, donors from the United States and England provided funds for reconstructing this historic edifice. 

Still, as a memorial to the war, a small bit of the original church was left in place, a charred reminder of the horrors of the bombing.

While we were there, our guide gave us some background on the history of Saxony. Although I had always assumed that Saxony functioned more or less as the junior partner of Prussia, it turns out that the two regions of eastern Germany were deeply antipathetic. During medieval and Renaissance times, Saxony was governed by a Prince Elector of the House of Wittin. The put the leader of Saxony just below the Holy Roman Emperor in importance as the seven electors chose the Emperor. After Napoleon finally ended the presence of the Holy Roman Empire, the Prince Elector became King of Saxony. Even after the unification of Germany in the late nineteenth century, the regional kings retained their titles although real power had passed to the Kaiser. 

The Prince Electors and Kings of Saxony lived in the Dresdner Residenzschloss, usually rendered in English as Dresden Castle. The castle was severely burned in 1701, and it was reconstructed by perhaps the greatest of the Saxon kings, Augustus the Strong. In the late 19th century a great mural called the “Procession of the Princes” was constructed to show the different rulers of Saxony in one great parade. 

Although it looks like a tapestry, the Procession is actually constructed of about twenty thousand porcelain tiles. Because porcelain is fired at a high heat, the mural actually survived the fire storm of 1945 with minimal damage. Colors are still vivid.

Augustus was not only the king of Saxony, but he was offered the crown of Poland. There was one catch, however:  the Pole were willing to accept a foreign ruler, but not a Protestant one. Much as Henri of Navarre decided that “Paris vaut bien un messe” Augustus decided that becoming a Catholic was a price he was willing to pay for such an extension to his lands. However, breaking with the tradition of "cuius regio, eius religio,” the principle that the ruler’s religion would become that of his people, Augustus freely allowed his subjects to be either Lutheran or Catholic. In this way, he pioneered the idea of freedom of religion long before it became a principle of Enlightenment thought. 

As a Catholic, Augustus needed a church and he had the current cathedral of the city built right next to the castle. It is a magnificent Baroque structure. 

The cathedral, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was connected to the palace to that the rulers could easily hear Mass from the royal box. 

As a ruler, Augustus was obsessed not only with power but also with beautiful objects. He adored porcelain, at one point saying he had a “porcelain sickness.” He also loved intricate objects in gold and ivory. The Grünes Gewölbe or “Green Vault” of the palace contains the treasures that he and his successor commissioned and collected. He saw many of these including these intricate clocks

There are devotional objects

drinking goblets

and pure objects d’arte.

I have to admit that after a while all of this became kind of overwhelming. 

We also went to Zwinger Palace. This surrounds a magnificent central courtyard. 

The tower at the end has a carillon of porcelain bells that plays a portion of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons three times a day. We were present as it played today. 

Porcelain bells will never replace bronze bells for volume, but they were beautifully pitched and sounded lovely. 

John and I returned after the tour to the ship where we had lunch and a nap. Although there were plenty more art museums to see in Dresden, we decided to look for something quite different, Dresden’s bohemian neighborhood in the “Outer New Town” area. This was a part of Dresden that had not been bombed during the war, yet by 1990 it was in such bad shape that few believed it could be saved. Dresden residents had a saying, “You do not need bombs to create ruins.” Now it is on the cusp of serious gentrification and its residents now are fighting to preserve its SoHo-in-the-seventies ambience. 

One of the reasons tourists like us come to visit this neighborhood is the Kunsthofpassage. This is a series of courtyards with different whimsical themes. 

The most famous part is this one, a giant device that makes music when it rains.

After checking out this neighborhood, John and I went back to the center because I heard that there was going to be a free concert right outside the Semperoper, the Dresden Opera House. 

As it turned out, however, it was going to be the live simulcast of a concert later in the evening, so we did not stay. We stopped briefly in the cathedral. Some kind of event — but not Mass — was ending and we did get a chance briefly to hear the famous Silberman organ.

The town was lively as we walked back to the boat with all kinds of street performers including a guy who had been blowing enormous bubbles all day to the delight of children. 

I hope I have a chance to come back to Dresden in a few years and seem even more of how this extraordinary city is coming back to life. Tomorrow the boat is off to Miessen and then Torgau. 

Switzerland?

It was a cool, gray morning in Bad Schandau. I woke up early and worked on editing photographs. John joined me later and we had a bit of breakfast. At about nine we boarded a bus for our first excursion of the voyage, a trip to Sächsische Schweiz, Saxon Switzerland. Despite the somewhat bizarre name, this is one of the most famous places in  southeast Germany. 

Saxon Switzerland is nowhere close to Switzerland. It is on the border of the Czech Republic. The Germans use the word “Schweiz” to refer to any area of great natural beauty. This area of Germany became popular in the early nineteenth century, the time when Romantic painters and poets were looking for wild natural scenes to evoke equally wild passions within themselves. Anything that looked vaguely desolate was the best for this. And this area fits that description perfectly. No wonder it became a popular spot for painters like Caspar David Friedrich.

Viking gave us a free guided tour, and it was not as lame as many of those tours often are. We took a bus from Bad Scandau to the entrance of the national park, about half an hour away.

The park is apparently dog-friendly, though I only saw one there. 

You only walk a few feet into the park before you see the eroded sandstone cliff formations that are the signature feature. 

As I said, we had a great guide for this. His name was Alexander. He lives in Dresden but with originally from Mainz in the west. So he admitted that he still could not understand a word of the local Saxon dialect. Fortunately, everybody in German can speak both standard German and their regional tongue. 

He explained that Saxons love to go sleep overnight in the woods. Instead of using established campgrounds, they look for small indentations in the rocks like this one. Today, since this is a national park, they are obviously not doing it here. But there are many inscriptions to show that visitors have spent time here in the past. 

The most famous feature of the park is the Bastei Bridge. This connects several of the pinnacles. 

And indeed there are many evocative vistas even for those who, like Jane Austen, find the early Romantic emphasis on “sensibility” somewhat silly. 

There are also vistas of more pastoral countryside

and the Elbe, flowing below.

The nineteenth century writers concocted a story of a monk and a nun who fell in love with each other. Of course, vowed to celibacy, their love was romantically doomed to fail. But each went to monasteries on opposite sides of the river and each evening would climb onto rocks so that they could see each other from a distance. Somebody decided to put a metal statue of the monk on one of the higher rocks. 

On a less romantic note, we saw a high fortress that had been used at various points as a prison. This was also one of the places where art treasures from Dresden were hidden during the war. 

Alex took us to one point where we saw both the rock formation

and Caspar David Friedrich’s rendition of it.

After a couple hours in the park, we went back to the bus and drove back to the ship. John and I decided that we wanted to actually go to the hot springs in Bad Schandau as the town is famous for this. We grabbed our swim trunks and walked about 500 meters to the Toskana Spa. The facilities is quite new, even though the springs themselves have been an attraction for a century. Inside, the lady at the desk, who basically spoke no English, sold us tickets and showed us how to use the lockers. It was an ingenious, but a little complicated, system of something that looked like a small poker chip being inserts into a bracelet for us to wear. Suitably attired, we went about to explore. The main area had about a half dozen pools of various sizes. Some were designed mostly for kids. John found a large pool in a darkened room with a light display on the ceiling. This was a little warmer than the other pools, and it was the only one with salty water. The neat thing about this pool was that you heard music when your ears were under the water, but not when you were out of the pool. There was the “Saunaland” area. A sign on the door here told us that nudity in this area was “compulsory,” though, somewhat confusingly, we were also told to use a towel. There were at least a dozen saunas and steam rooms here. Each had a different theme. There was also a big pile of ice, but neither of us felt like using it. 

After about 90 minutes, we returned to the boat. We had missed our lunch time, but the staff had saved us some soup and fried chicken. As we ate, the boat pulled out of Bad Schandau and down the Elbe. In a few minutes, we passed through Saxon Switzerland again, and this time we could see the attractions from the water.

It was interesting to see it from the water, but I was glad I had actually been up there on the Bastei Bridge. The dramatic scenery only lasted for about 20 minutes and after that it turned into flat countryside. We took a nap.

In the later afternoon, we pulled into Dresden. After dinner, we went into the city to explore a bit. We will have more of a tour tomorrow. We saw the central square next to Our Lady’s Church.

We saw a little bit of the old German Democratic Republic on the side of the main library.

As it started to get dark — and a bit cold, too — we went back to the boat.