Paris to Swiss Alps: Mainz (3/31/2017)

Thursday, March 31, 2017

We have arrived in Mainz (half our porthole view!)

After breakfast, we started the included walking tour of Mainz. The city is located at the confluence of the Main and Rhine Rivers, and was founded 13 BCE as Roman military post and the town grew between fort and river. By the late 5C, after various incursions, it became Frankish and an important city in the Holy Roman Empire, with the Archbishop as one of Seven Electors of the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1797 Mainz was occupied by the army of Napoléon Bonaparte, who left in 1815. It then was part of the German Confederation, and was occupied by France after both World Wars.

Theodor-Heuss-Brücke/Bridge (1948-1950 to replace the 1885
bridge destroyed by the Germans to slow the Allied pursuit in
World War II), named for the German statesman who was the
first president of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland/
Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany

Rear view of the Mainzer Rathaus/Mainz City Hall (1970-1973,
designed by Danish partners Arne Jacobsen and Otto Weitling)

Front of City Hall, which is said to look like a prison (KSS)

Sculpture (does it include the bicycle?!) in front of the Rheingoldhalle/
Rhine Gold Hall (1965-1968 designed by Dissing & Weitling),
a conference and exhibition hall on Jockel-Fuchs-Platz,
a square named for the popular Lord Mayor of 1965 to 1987

Since Mainz is the German Wine Capital, the
directional signs point towards other "wine capitals" 

Eisenturm/Iron Tower (c 1240 to 15C), the
gate tower at the former iron market

Some of the oldest houses that survived WWII bombing
(when Mainz was 80% destroyed; much of
the rebuilding was under French control) (KSS)

The former Heilig Geist Spital/Holy Ghost Hospital (1236,
in red sandstone), although damaged during WWII, it was repaired
and became a popular dance hall, but now a restaurant

It sort of looks like a Zbigniew
Frączkiewicz sculpture... (KSS)

Well! It looked like long Venetian blinds draped over the roof and down
the sides, with openings of missing slats; what is interesting is that this
is a modern building (2008, designed by Massimiliano Fuksas, using white
terracotta lamellas) behind the historic façades seen in Market Square

Markt/Market Square with the Heunensäule/Hay
Column (1975) with the reconstructed façades
behind it; only the white Gothic façade remained
standing after World War II, the others represent
different architectural styles over the ages

The above column represents Mainz history with headgear around the base, including a helmet of a Roman legionnaire (city founded in 13 BCE). There is also a bishop's mitre (ecclesiastic tradition), the fool's cap (symbolic of a Phrygian cap) worn by French revolutionaries, and the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire.

Renaissance and Gothic façades (KSS)

Renaisssance corbels/supports (KSS)

Trying to fit the entire Mainzer Dom/Mainz Cathedral in one picture,
with its double chancels and six towers; cathedrals were traditionally
surrounded by church admistration buildings like those on the left,
and Mainz is the rare city that kept these buildings intact
while other cities razed them for a better view of the cathedral

The octagonal tower (c 1100 Lombardic)
of the Mainz Cathedral

Gotthardkapelle/Gotthard Chapel (1137), made of concha limestone,
was built as the official palace chapel, with a statue of St Boniface
holding the Codex Ragyndrudis, the book he is said to have held
to protect himself from the murderous pagan Frisians
he tried to convert when he was bishop of Mainz

Unfortunately this huge chicken turned her tiny head away for the photo!
("No worries about salmonella in the eggs, the chickens are vaccinated")

Fresh veggies

Eggs and dyed eggs for Easter (the dyed eggs are "cooked"!)

Interesting wreaths made from what looks like driftwood branches (KSS)

Marktbrunnen/Market Fountain (1526)
one of the largest Renaissance fountains in Germany,
 also the oldest and most beautiful...; it (the water)
was a gift from the archbishop to the people, and the
imagery supposedly recollects the peasant revolts
which were also bloodily beaten down in Mainz

The Nagelsäule/Nail Column (1916) made from an oak
tree trunk topped with an Iron Cross and the inscription
"In War - God Help Us" with allegories of unity,
charity, bravery; where donors could insert a nail to
raise funds for deprived children and soldiers' wives

Mainz Cathedral for the blind

Sunny side of the Mainz Cathedral (KSS)

The Mainz citizens eat breakfast on the run,
with fresh goodies from the market

Our local guide took us into the Gutenberg Museum, and remained our guide.

Bronze gateway (1961 by Karl-Heinz Krause, who
used real printing blocks to make the casts, then
welded them together to make six panels (KSS)

Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz, and died here, thus the presence of this museum with reconstructions of print shops and Gutenberg's hand press, an exhibition of incunabula (pre-1501 books), and one complete (and a couple halves) original Gutenberg Bible (1455, 42-lines), amongst many other printed books from the 15C and later. Gutenberg's contributions to printing include introducing moveable type to Europe and inventing the process to mass produce the type, and also by developing an oil-based ink that has shown no wear even today.

No photos allowed in the museum, but we were allowed to
photograph our guide, Rolando, showing us how a printing press works

At a young age, Gutenberg moved to Strasbourg where he perfected the printing process. He moved back to Mainz in 1448 to set up shop and borrow money. The Bibles he printed in 1455 were of 42 lines (in black ink) per page in double columns. Spaces were left for the initial letters of each paragraph (once printed in red ink). A person would purchase the Old Testament separately from the New Testament, receiving an armful of loose printed (and unnumbered!) pages (about 300 per Testament). He would then seek an artist to color in the initial letters of the paragraphs and fill in a variety of red decorative marks. They could then illuminate initial letters and the margins per instruction or imagination. It was apparent that the artists who "illustrated" the Gutenberg Bibles were illiterate themselves, as backward letters were seen. When that was completed, then the owner could have the book bound. It was still a time-intensive and expensive process to obtain a Bible, but much less time and expense than a hand-copied Bible, which would most likely stay in the hands of the religious.

Gutenberg's invention allowed the Bible to be more accessible to a growing middle class and mass printing contributed to increasing literacy. The Gutenberg Bible used a Latin version of the Hebrew Old Testament and of the Greek New Testament.

Statue of Gutenberg (1827, by Joseph Scholl),
the first memorial made to Gutenberg

Paintings and statues of Gutenberg show him with a beard, since it was the style at the time when the artists lived over a hundred years later. But historically full beards were shunned by the patrician class in Germany in the mid-1400s. Thus, no one really knows what Gutenberg looked like.

Haus zum Römischen Kaiser/Palace of the Holy Roman Emperor
(1653-1657 late Renaissance, bombed 1945, restored 1962), the former
home and present administration building for the Gutenberg Museum

The palace gateway has a 1685 Baroque ceiling that survived the bombing

Although simply labeled as a Roman Emperor,
this statue was said to be Kaiser Karl/Emperor
Charles V, shown, perhaps. after the defeat of the
Ottomans in Tunis in 1535, with the head and
testicles of a Turk at his feet (cannot be verified!)

A food truck at the market!

It was pointed out that the streets with red signs lead to the Rhine River...

and streets with blue signs run parallel to the river

The story is that when soldiers (Prussian?) were garrisoned in Mainz, there was not much to do other than to drink. Since they had trouble finding their way home each night, it was decreed to color code the streets...

A gas lamp, a gift from Paris when Paris
converted to electric lighting; this
lamp still operates with gas

The Mainz Cathedral cloister contains
plants usually seen in Mediterranean climates

The Rhine River moderates the climate in Mainz, making riverside areas slightly warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Due to this phenomenon, the Rhine Valley is an ideal location for vineyards.

Icon donated by a crusader grateful to have
arrived safely back in Mainz

Spooky grave markers

Look! It's St Denis of Paris!
Nope, it's St Alban of Mainz, who was also
beheaded and picked up his head to carry it
to the place he wished to be buried

Inside the Mainz Cathedral, 19C frescoes in the nave,
some by Philipp Veit (KSS)

A monument in the cathedral using white marble
from America and black marble from Russia,
being the first time they worked together...

Tombstone of Archbishop Siegfried III von
Eppstein, the oldest memorial in the cathedral,
where the archbishop is the dominant figure, greater
than the two kings he was responsible for having
crowned, wearing the bishops's mitre and robe,
holding the staff, and standing on a lion and
a basilisk, symbols of evil (KSS) 

The central nave has unique Romanesque arches
that end underneath the windows and in 1200
the ribbed vault was added

The right aisle shows the Romanesque style (KSS)

Gothic-style pulpit

The cathedrals market portal

The portal doors have lion heads with rings in their mouths,
the rings being symbols of asylum, where a fugitive who was
able to grab a ring at the doors of a temple or a church
would have been granted protection from his pursuers

The Mainz cathedral was one of the three Kaiserdome/Imperial Cathedrals of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the cathedrals in Worms and Speyer. Seven coronations were held in Mainz, including the last Saxon emperor, Henry II, crowned in 1002, and the first Salian emperor, Konrad II, crowned in 1024.

At this point we were given perhaps 45 minutes of free time.

Next: Mainz on Our Own.