Germany – Saxony-Anhalt (Magdeburg, Halle) August 30-31, 2019
Schierke. (pop 713)
This village, located in the Harz mountain range, is situated in the valley of the Bode River, at the edge of the Harz National Park. It is primarily a tourist resort, especially for hiking and various winter sports.
Walk to the Brocken massif via the Goetheweg or the Glashüttenweg. A popular attraction in the area is the “Brocken Coaster”, a local summer toboggan run. Schierke is also not far from skiing at Wurmberg Mountain, the second-highest mountain in the Harz. Another winter activity in the area involves hiring or obtaining a sled and riding it down the “bob bahn” – a local tobogganing track.
WERNIGERODE
Wernigerode Castle. The Saxon noble Adalbert of Haimar, Count of Wernigerode, in 1121 built the castle on a slope south of the town as their residence. It was not until 1710 that Count Christian Ernest could relocate the seat of government back to Wernigerode, when he had the castle rebuilt as a Schloss in a Baroque style. He ruled for 61 years. Christian Ernest’s descendant, Count Otto, first president of the Prussian Province of Hanover from 1867, president of the Prussian House of Lords from 1872, and German Vice-Chancellor from 1878, had the Schloss extensively rebuilt in a Neo-Romantic style known as historicism, finishing the project in 1893. The entire complex includes a chapel built in 1880. In 1945, the building was seized by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany.
It has 50 rooms, royal quarters and a grand banquet room with wood ceilings and exotic wallpaper. The views down to the town and the Harz mountains are expansive. €6
Baumann’s Cave/Hermann’s Cave. These are show caves in Rübeland in the Harz district. Humans have visited caves since the Stone Age. The cave has been open to the public with guided tours since 1649, making it the oldest regularly frequented and guided show cave in Germany. Amongst its most famous visitors was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The cave’s largest chamber, the Goethesaal, is named after him and is equipped with seating and a stage for concerts and plays. The cave was sealed off from an early date, so its rich display of stalactites and stalagmites has been largely preserved. The cave is particularly famous for, amongst other things, the numerous bones of cave bears that have been found there. €8.50
Titan-RT Bridge, Oberharz am Brocken. Built in 2017, this bridge is the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the world, with a total length of 483 meters and a suspended span of 453 meters. The bridge is used solely as an attraction and serves no practical purpose. It is built on the downstream side of the massive Rappbode dam, more than 100 meters above the water surface. A pendulum bungee jump of 75m is in the middle. €6
The dam is the highest in Germany. One of six dams on the Bode river, it is 106m high and has a crest of 415m. A road crosses it.
The main attraction here is a one-km-long tandem zip line that descends from the top of the bridge down to the water. Participants are lying horizontally. €39
QUEDLINBURG
World Heritage Sites: Collegiate Church, Castle and Old Town of Quedlinburg
Quedlinburg hosted 69 imperial assemblies until the year 1209, all of which were attended by 16 German emperors and kings. In the 10th century, it was the ancestral seat of the first German king, Heinrich I. The imperial and royal holidays were held here.
Quedlinburg Abbey. Founded in 936 by Empress Mathilde, the convent was established as an educational institution and home for the daughters of the aristocracy, providing a religious upbringing combined with intellectual development. Mathilde headed it, followed in 966 by her granddaughter Mathilde, who became the first abbess. It was not a convent, but the women were allowed to keep their material possessions and function like normal women. The convent was dissolved in 1803, ruled by 39 abbesses and one prioress.
The Collegiate Church (Stiftskirche) of St. Servatius is one of the oldest churches in Germany, dating back to 1129. Heinrich was buried in a small chapel on the hill, near the crypt of the church. In 936, upon his death, his widow, Queen Mathilde, founded an imperial collegiate for noble ladies governed by an abbess. A lightning fire in 1070 burnt down the 3rd basilica completely. This 4th building was erected in Romanesque style with 3-naves, a flat ceiling, thick walls, small windows, and mighty pillars and columns (the Saxon style was two columns followed by one pillar with 12 columns (the 12 apostles) and four pillars (the four evangelists). The apse was replaced by a Gothic choir in 1320, and in 1938, a new apse was built into the choir by the Nazis (they believed Heinrich I was the founder of the “Thousand Year Reich” and used the church as a Germanic Hall to celebrate SS meetings). It was painted entirely (no longer present) and decorated with symbolic Middle Age capitals and friezes (raisin, ribbon, eagle, monk and a knight on the last column—paintings of saints under a cross in the choir date from 1480.
Treasury. Dating from 1179, most was given by the Ottonian emperors. Many were sold in the 16th century, and 2 of 12 chests used to store the treasury were looted after WW II by an American lieutenant and taken to Whitewright, Texas (10 pieces were returned in 1992). The pieces are fantastic, gem-encrusted, ivory, and gold: reliquaries of Heinrich (also his comb), St. Servatius (also his crozier), an alabaster jar, crystal reliquary jars, a Samuhel Bible, wood shrines, and many more reliquary objects.
Crypt. Beneath the high choir, it is a 3-aisled hall with decorated capitals, medieval paintings, tombs of 22 of the 39 abbesses, the empty coffin of King Heinrich and the sarcophagus of Queen Mathilde.
Tapestries. A room at the top of the back is full of ancient, somewhat worn but very nice tapestries (0 English). €9.50, no reduction
The highlights include the treasury, capitals, and frieze, as well as the small stained glass windows.
Museum in the 16th-century Renaissance Castle. The residential building is the “New Abbey”. It has a Baroque hall, a throne room and several other rooms. This is a prominent place with a lot to see, but everything is in German – we are only given one plastic card to explain it all. Then the lady at the desk tried to see a small booklet in English for €
Gernrode Abbey, Gernrode. Gernrode was founded in 959 and was disestablished in the seventeenth century. In the Middle Ages, the abbey was an Imperial abbey that had the status of imperial immediacy. Located on the north-eastern edge of the Harz Mountains. The abbey and its collegiate church, Saint Cyriakus, were thus dedicated to Cyriakus, and became a centre for his cult.
From its foundation, the abbesses and provosts of Gernrode were drawn from members of noble German dynasties, including the Billung, Ascanier, and the House of Wettin. Initially, there were places for 24 noblewomen at Gernrode. Together, the nuns and canonesses of Gernrode and Frose made up the convent. Like the abbesses of Quedlinburg, Gandersheim, Essen and Vreden, the abbesses of Gernrode were imperial princes, who each had their seat at imperial assemblies.
Over time, particularly from the thirteenth century onwards, Gernrode lost its former influence due to mismanagement by abbesses, the general economic situation, and the local bishops’ political influence. By 1544, the possessions of the abbey consisted only of the town of Gernrode and five villages. By the early seventeenth century, the abbey’s possessions covered around two square miles.
The Reformation began during the abbacy of Elizabeth of Weida, and from 1545, Protestant worship was introduced at Gernrode. The abbey was turned into a Protestant convent. The last abbess of Gernrode, Sophie Elisabeth, left the abbey in 1614 to marry. The princes of Anhalt refused to appoint a new abbess and completed the incorporation of Gernrode into their territory.
MARTIN LUTHER (10 November 1483– 18 February 1546) was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk, and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation.
Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507. He came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, in particular, disputing the view on indulgences. Luther proposed an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517. His refusal to renounce all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Holy Roman Emperor.
Luther taught that salvation and, consequently, eternal life are not earned by good deeds but are received as a gift of God’s grace through the believer’s faith in Jesus Christ as the redeemer from sin. His theology challenged the authority and office of the Pope by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge. And opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood. Those who identify with these teachings, as well as Luther’s broader teachings, are called Lutherans. However, Luther insisted on Christian or Evangelical (German: evangelisch) as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ.
His translation of the Bible into the German vernacular (instead of Latin) made it more accessible to the laity, an event that had a tremendous impact on both the church and German culture. It fostered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation, and influenced the writing of an English translation, the Tyndale Bible. His hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches. His marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry.
In two of his later works, Luther expressed antagonistic views towards Jews. His rhetoric was not directed at Jews alone, but also towards Roman Catholics, Anabaptists, and nontrinitarian Christians. Luther died in 1546, with Pope Leo X’s excommunication still in effect.
EISLEBEN
First mentioned in 994, the city was tied to the Counts of Mansfeld in the 13th century. Copper was also produced here in the 15th century, and this became the primary source of the economy. Luther’s parents moved to this area in 1483.
LUTHER MEMORIALS in Eisleben and Wittenberg, A World Heritage Site
St. Andrew’s Church. This was Martin Luther’s church. This small, three-nave church features a wonderful gilt six-panel altar retable, stone rib vaulting, and columns. A “bas-relief” embroidery hangs on the right wall. Free
A local photographic display was hanging on the walls.
Martin Luther’s Death House. Excellent discussion of Christian thought about death. Luther suffered a heart attack on January 28, 1546 and died on February 18. He was a strong anti-Semite as he saw them as enemies of the faith who had to be converted or expelled. He delivered an anti-Jewish sermon in St Andrew’s church just before he died, blaming them for his heart attack.
The actual house in which he died was demolished (except for a house mark) in 1570 and recreated between 1865 and 1869. This house was the first Luther memorial site. A place of remembrance gradually evolved into a museum, although nothing from the original period survived. He was buried in All Saints’ church in Wittenberg.
The house sits across the street from St Andrews. €5, 4 reduction with birthplace ticket
Martin Luther’s Birth House. He was born in a small apartment in Eisleben on November 10, 1483, and baptized the next day at the parish church of St. Peter. A few months later, his family moved to Mansfeld. Luther’s father is a smelter and well-off, so he was able to give his children a good education. He joined the Augustinian Monastery in Erfurt in 1505. Luther is married and has six children, four of whom have reached adulthood, living in Wittenberg. In 1819, the house became the Luther Charity School, with 130 pupils, and later added teacher education. €5, 4 with a dual ticket from the birth house.
St. Peter and Paul Church. The interior appears to have been recently renovated, featuring white walls, stone fluted pillars, stone ribs that terminate in rosettes of heraldic crests, and new pews with padding. The five-panel retablo altar is a nice bas-relief. The stained glass windows feature lovely, opaque/clear glass geometric designs. Photos of Luther and his parents are on the walls. Free
Merseburg Cathedral, Merseburg. King Heinrich I (Henry I) built a Kaiserpfalz there, overlooking the Saale, and founded a church next to it, which was consecrated in 919. Construction of the early Romanesque cathedral was completed between 1015 and 1021. However, the eastern part of the building collapsed twice within a few years and had to be rebuilt, opening in 1042. Despite later construction, this early Romanesque structure continues to influence the appearance of today’s cathedral. The hall crypt is one of the oldest, mostly unchanged structures of this type in Germany. Around the middle of the 12th century, the western towers were rebuilt. The earlier quarry stone masonry was replaced by masonry made from worked stones. Many additions were made in the following 200 years. The old nave was demolished in 1510, and the new nave was built between 1510 and 1511. Since the Reformation, the cathedral has not been the seat of a bishop. Martin Luther gave a sermon here in August 1545. Renovations aimed at restoring the “original” look of the church took place in 1839, 1844/5 and 1883-6. Baroque elements were mostly removed (excluding the tombs, high altar, organ and the façade of the princely vault).
Damage sustained by the palace and the cathedral during World War II bombing was repaired starting in 1946.
The Treasury exhibits altars from the 16th century, liturgical equipment, the so-called cloak of Otto I and the hand of Rudolf of Rheinfelden. The manuscript vault contains a 13th-century Bible, a fragment of the Ravenna Annals, a 9th-century manuscript, and a 10th-century sacramentary. The incantation vault holds a facsimile of the Merseburg Incantations, also known as the Merseburger Zaubersprüche. The southern wing now houses the European Centre for Romanesque Art.
This stone church dates to 1045. This was an exorbitant charge for entering a church €6.50, no reduction. I asked what was so special, and she said the cloister and the old Bibles. I should have known better than to have wasted my money.
HALLE
Francke Foundation Buildings, a tentative WHS (20/09/1999),
The Francke Foundation was founded in 1695 as a Christian, social, and educational institution by August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), a Pietist theologian and university professor in Halle. Francke Foundations are today a modern educational cosmos closely connected with their history.
In the former outskirts of Halle, in Glaucha, August Hermann Francke established a school for deprived and orphan children. He elaborated an extensive, religiously motivated educational concept and started, initially without a steady income and without capital, to establish social-educational institutions for each class of society. Within only 30 years, it developed into a unique school city with a teacher training institution, business enterprises such as a pharmacy and a publishing house, and scientific collections.
Today, the Francke Foundations feel bound to a double heritage: the responsibility for the salvation and lasting preservation of the building ensemble and the historical collections, as well as the task of continuing the ideas and traditions of their founder into the future. Since the revival of the Foundations in 1992, institutions with close connections to Francke’s ideas and work have been established in the historical buildings. With their 40 partner institutions the Foundations are today a unique centre of cultural, scientific, educational, social and Christian institutions, a complex with three kindergartens, children’s creativity centre, four schools, a House of Generations, a youth workshop, a bible centre, traditional commercial enterprises, archives, libraries, museums, university and non-university research facilities and much more. Today, more than 4,000 people learn, teach, work and live in the Francke Foundations.
Halle-Neustadt: Socialist Buildings Popularly known as HaNeu, this was a city in the GDR established in May 1967 as an independent city. The population in 1972 was 51,600, and in 1981, it had increased to 93,000. In 1990, it merged back into Halle. The population has halved since then. It was praised for being sustainable, featuring high density, a tram line serving the central corridor, and a suburban rail system. Infrastructure (hotels, department stores) was not provided, and it was a bedroom community. The tram line was not built.
It extends east-west for approximately 4 kilometres and is 1 kilometre wide. Virtually all housing is high-rise, with some towers reaching 11 stories, but many are medium-rise buildings without elevators. There are many buildings, some of which have been gutted, while the private sector is redeveloping others. A shopping mall has also been developed in the middle. Parking was on the east fringe for those few who were privileged enough to own a car, but is now provided adjacent to the apartments.
BARHAUS and its SITES in WIEMAR and DESSAU
The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus, was a German art school operating from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was renowned for the design approach it promoted and taught.
Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar. The German term Bauhaus—literally “building house”—was understood as meaning “School of Building”, but despite its name and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not initially have an architecture department. Nonetheless, it was founded upon the idea of creating a Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”) in which all the arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style later became one of the most influential currents in modern design, as well as in Modernist architecture, art, and architectural education. The Bauhaus movement had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.
The school existed in three German cities—Weimar, from 1919 to 1925; Dessau, from 1925 to 1932; and Berlin, from 1932 to 1933—under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928; Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930; and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school was closed by its leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime, having been painted as a centre of communist intellectualism. Although the school was closed, the staff continued to spread its idealistic precepts as they emigrated from Germany to all over the world.
The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics. For example, the pottery shop was discontinued when the school relocated from Weimar to Dessau, despite having been a significant source of revenue.
The Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, is characterized by the absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object or building and its design. However, the most important influence on Bauhaus was modernism, the radically simplified forms, the rationality and functionality, and the idea that mass production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit—many fundamental questions of craftsmanship versus mass production, the relationship of usefulness and beauty, the practical purpose of formal beauty in a commonplace object,
Weimar. The school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar on April 12, 1919 and was directed by Belgian Art Nouveau architect Henry van de Velde. When van de Velde was forced to resign in 1915 because he was Belgian, he suggested Gropius.
The main building of the Bauhaus-University Weimar. Built between 1904 and 1911 and designed by Henry van de Velde to house the sculptors’ studio at the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. Gropius’ style in architecture and consumer goods emphasized functionality, affordability, and consistency with mass production.
Dessau. Gropius’s design for the Dessau facilities was a return to the futuristic Gropius of 1914, which had more in common with the International Style lines of the Fagus Factory. Meyer became director when Gropius resigned in February 1928, and brought the Bauhaus its two most significant building commissions, both of which still exist: five apartment buildings in the city of Dessau, and the Bundesschule des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (ADGB Trade Union School) in Bernau bei Berlin.
The Dessau building is white, flat-roofed, and has a facade that is entirely glass, with small panes. Although the building is 100 years old, it still appears and feels remarkably modern. €6
Berlin. In late 1932, Mies rented a derelict factory in Berlin to use as the new Bauhaus with his own money. The students and faculty rehabilitated the building, painting the interior white. The school operated for ten months without further interference from the Nazi Party. In 1933, the Gestapo closed down the Berlin school. Although neither the Nazi Party nor Adolf Hitler had a cohesive architectural policy before they came to power in 1933, they labelled the Bauhaus “un-German”. It criticized its modernist styles, deliberately generating public controversy over issues like flat roofs. Increasingly through the early 1930s, they characterized the Bauhaus as a front for communists and social liberals. Indeed, several communist students loyal to Meyer moved to the Soviet Union when he was fired in 1930.
Emigrants did succeed, however, in spreading the concepts of the Bauhaus to other countries, including the “New Bauhaus” of Chicago. Mies decided to emigrate to the United States to become the director of the School of Architecture at the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago and to seek building commissions. The straightforward, engineering-oriented functionalism of stripped-down modernism, however, did lead to some Bauhaus influences persisting in Nazi Germany. In 1935, when the new autobahn (highways) in 1935, many of the bridges and service stations were “bold examples of modernism”—among those submitting designs was Mies van der Rohe.
Architecture. The paradox of the early Bauhaus was that, although its manifesto proclaimed that the aim of all creative activity was building, The school did not offer classes in architecture until 1927. During the years under Gropius (1919–1927), he and his partner Adolf Meyer observed no fundamental difference. The building output of Bauhaus architecture during these years is primarily the work of Gropius: the Sommerfeld house in Berlin, the Otte house in Berlin, the Auerbach house in Jena, and the competition design for the Chicago Tribune Tower, which brought the school considerable attention. The definitive 1926 Bauhaus building in Dessau is also attributed to Gropius. Apart from contributions to the 1923 Haus am Horn, student architectural work consisted of unbuilt projects, interior finishes, and craftwork, including cabinets, chairs, and pottery.
In the next two years under Meyer, the architectural focus shifted away from aesthetics and towards functionality. There were major commissions: one from the city of Dessau for five tightly designed “Laubenganghäuser” (apartment buildings with balcony access), which are still in use today, and another for the Bundesschule des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (ADGB Trade Union School) in Bernau bei Berlin. Neither Mies van der Rohe nor his Bauhaus students saw any projects built during the 1930s.
The popular conception of the Bauhaus as the source of extensive Weimar-era housing projects is not entirely accurate. Two projects, the apartment building project in Dessau and the Törten row housing project also in Dessau, fall into that category; however, developing worker housing was not a priority for Gropius or Mies. It was the Bauhaus contemporaries Bruno Taut, Hans Poelzig, and, particularly, Ernst May, as the city architects of Berlin, Dresden, and Frankfurt, respectively, who are rightfully credited with the thousands of socially progressive housing units built in Weimar Germany. The housing Taut built in south-west Berlin during the 1920s, close to the U-Bahn stop Onkel Toms Hütte, is still occupied.
The Bauhaus had a significant impact on art and architecture trends in Western Europe, Canada, the United States and Israel in the decades following its demise, as many of the artists involved fled, or were exiled by the Nazi regime. In 2004, Tel Aviv was named to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites due to its abundance of Bauhaus architecture. It had some 4,000 Bauhaus buildings erected from 1933 onwards.
Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Moholy-Nagy reassembled in Britain during the mid-1930s to live and work in the Isokon project before the war caught up with them. Gropius and Breuer went to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked together before their professional split. Their collaboration produced the Aluminum City Terrace in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and the Alan I. W. Frank House in Pittsburgh, among other notable projects. The Harvard School was enormously influential in America in the late 1920s and early 1930s, producing notable students such as Philip Johnson, I. M. Pei, Lawrence Halprin, and Paul Rudolph, among many others.
The influence of the Bauhaus on design education was significant. One of the primary objectives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft, and technology, and this approach was integrated into the Bauhaus curriculum.
One of the most important contributions of the Bauhaus is in the field of modern furniture design. The characteristic Cantilever chair and Wassily Chair, designed by Marcel Breuer, are two examples. The most profitable product of the Bauhaus was its wallpaper.
In 1979, Bauhaus-Dessau College began organizing postgraduate programs that attracted participants from around the world. This effort has been supported by the Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation, which was founded in 1974 as a public institution.
Later evaluation of the Bauhaus design credo was critical of its flawed recognition of the human element, an acknowledgment of “the dated, unattractive aspects of the Bauhaus as a projection of utopia marked by mechanistic views of human nature…Home hygiene without home atmosphere.”
The White City refers to a collection of over 4,000 buildings built in the Bauhaus or International Style in Tel Aviv from the 1930s by German Jewish architects who immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine after the rise of the Nazis. Tel Aviv has the most significant number of buildings in the Bauhaus/International Style of any city in the world. Preservation, documentation, and exhibitions have brought attention to Tel Aviv’s collection of 1930s architecture. In 2003, UNESCO proclaimed Tel Aviv’s White City a World Cultural Heritage site, as “an outstanding example of new town planning and architecture in the early 20th century.”
GARDEN KINGDOM of DESSAU-WÖRLITZ
This is a World Heritage Site located between the city of Dessau and the town of Wörlitz. It was designated a World Heritage in 2000. It is one of the first and largest English parks in Germany and continental Europe. It was created in the late 18th century under the regency of Duke Leopold III of Anhalt-Dessau (1740-1817), who returned from a Ggrand tour of taly, the Netherlands, England, France, and Switzerland. Strongly influenced by the ideals of Tthe Enlightenment, they aimed to move beyond the formal garden concept of the Baroque era in favour of a naturalistic landscape, as een at Stourhead Gardens and Ermenonville. Today, the cultural landscape of Dessau-Wörlitz encompasses an area of 142 km² (55 sq mi) within the Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve.
Oranienbaum Palace was finished in 1683 as the summer residence of Henriette Catharina, where she retired after the death of her husband in 1693. The rich furnishing includes leather wallpapers and a dining room equipped with Delft tiles. From 1780 onwards, Duke Leopold III had the palace and park rebuilt in a Chinese style, featuring several arch bridges, a tea house, and a pagoda. In 1811, the orangery was built, measuring 175 m (574 ft) in length, one of the largest in Europe, and it still serves to protect a vast collection of citrus plants. Oranienbaum Palace, along with the park and the geometric settlement concept, forms one of the few original Dutch Baroque town layouts in Germany.
Wörlitzer Park. The central Wörlitzer Park lies adjacent to the small town of Wörlitz, situated at an anabranch of the Elbe River, making it rich in water and diversity. It was laid out between 1769 and 1773 as one of the first English gardens on the continent. According to the ideals of Duke Leopold III, the park would also serve as an educational institution in architecture, gardening and agriculture; therefore, large parts were open to the public from the beginning. The gardens are protected from the floods of the Elbe River in the north by a dam that also serves as a belt walk, offering numerous views along the park’s sight lines.
Wörlitz Palace, completed in 1773, was the residence of Duke Leopold and his wife, Louise, and was the first Neoclassical building in present-day Germany. The palace and its interior, with valuable cabinets from the studio of Abraham and David Roentgen, as well as an extensive collection of Wedgwood porcelain, were publicly accessible. At the eastern rim of the palace’s garden stands the Wörlitz Synagogue, built in 1790 as a rotunda modelled after the ancient “Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy. The building that expressed Leopold’s religious tolerance was saved from demolition in the 1938 “Kristallnacht” pogrom by the custodian of the park, who subsequently lost his employment. The Neo-Gothic St Peter’s Church in the west, with its 66 m (217 ft) tall steeple, was finished in 1809.
An island on the artificial Wörlitz Lake features Europe’s only artificial volcano. A brick inner building nearly five stories high, covered with local boulders, had at the top a hollow cone with a high chamber, complete with three fireplaces and a roof that contained an “artificial crater” that could be filled with water. Only contemporary accounts detail what the 18th-century artificial eruption would have been like, but the practice still takes place today, complete with modern effects, after the island was restored to its past glory.
Minor structures of the Garden Realm, spanning approximately 25 km, had far-reaching ramifications for the architecture of Central Europe. The “Gothic House” was one of the first Neo-Gothic structures on the continent. The park also features replicas of Roman temples, including the Pantheon, built in 1795. The grounds, which had been divided into four parts since the construction of a railway line and the Bundesautobahn 9 in the 1930s, were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000. ICOMOS, however, noted that “the overall structure of the landscape has undergone a good deal of deterioration”.
Georgium Castle. Further structures of the Garden Realm include Luisium Castle, located in the Waldersee district of Dessau, which was built from 1774 to 1776 in a plain Neoclassical style as a country home. The Georgium Castle, erected from 1780, features an English garden with several monuments. Today, the Georgium hosts the Anhalt collection of art,
Mosigkau Castle, located in the west of Dessau, is one of the few Rococo palaces in Central Germany, resembling Sanssouci at Potsdam. Built between 1752 and 1757, it includes an orangery and an art collection featuring Flemish Baroque paintings.
Großkühnau Castle marks the western end of the Garden Realm. It was built in 1780 with a park including several artificial islands, fruit tree orchards and a vineyard. Today, the castle serves as the seat of the Kulturstiftung Dessau-Wörlitz, the trust that manages the park.
WITTENBURG
World Heritage Sites: Luther Memorials in Eisleben and Wittenberg (Lutherhaus Wittenberg)
Lutherhaus, Lutherstadt Wittenberg. This was the house Luther lived in while a professor at the university and a preacher at All-Saints Church. It recounts his life story and outlines his beliefs and doctrines (see above). €8, no reduction
All Saints’ Church. Built in the late 1400s alongside Wittneberg Castle, it served as the University of Wittenberg’s church and the final resting place for prominent scholars from 1507 onward. In 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the church, and he was buried here in 1546. The church and castle were destroyed in the Seven-Year War in 1760, and today’s neo-Gothic design dates to 1883-92.
The cream plaster and black stone exterior had a grand round story tower with a Gothic copper dome. Inside is rather ordinary. €3
The church is located in a modern complex that includes the castle, conference centre, Christian Art Foundation, research library, and Protestant seminary.
