Nuremberg Archives - Andrea Gibbons

One thing I do love about Germany — and the Czech Republic and Poland (I think I did three posts on apothecaries after visiting Krakow?) — are the way that apothecaries are still everywhere. I know we have pharmacists, but it’s just not the same, is it? But there are also the old signs, the nods back to the glory days with dark, battered wooden shelves full of gleaming bottles and herbs drying from the ceiling, powdered minerals and bits of dried bat and crocodile. Though I do love bats, and prefer them alive. A number also harken back to the superior medical knowledge of the moors — and so I am simultaneously appreciative of that and horrified by the racism inherent in the old figures.

Still, we only saw one of them in Nuremberg. This was by far my favourite:

I loved most the rules for health from the turn of the last century:

I have copied them all for you from the website: Counsellor Eckart’s golden rules of health for a prudent lifestyle — but let me highlight my favourite:

Do not dress according to fashion, but rather in tune with the weather. Keep your feet and lower body warm. In snowy, freezing weather, thin tights and shoes are a crime against your health.

I have been thinking that to myself all winter looking at our freezing youth with their strange fashionable dislike of socks.

They are incredibly Victorian, and feel they could have as likely appeared in England or the East Coast of the US. Fresh air, cold water, not too much comfort, not too much good food, and you can imagine no whinging about all of that. I’ve been thinking about health a lot lately, and this kind of framework for how we imagine good living still seems to lurk a great deal in the background.

The golden rules of health from Carl Ludwig Ernst Eckart (1830 – 1911)

Do not burn the candle at both ends: sleep before midnight is of more worth than after sunrise.

Rest your body and nerves. This does not happen when partaking of entertainment or on the dance floor, but rather in God’s free, natural world. Keep the Sunday as a holy day, as it has been designated for our rest.

Pay attention to your daily bowel movement! It is better to eat too little than too much, and to leave the stomach time to digest. A lot of meat and strong spices make the blood heavy and hot; live on a simple and mixed diet and do not reject our natural beverage: fresh water.

Do not load up your stomach in the evening with foods which are hard to digest, and which cause restless sleep and troubled dreams. Leave yourself time to eat, so that your nutrition can be processed more efficiently.

Do not cover yourself with heavy, full bedclothes; your mattress should rather be too hard than too soft.

Do not dress according to fashion, but rather in tune with the weather. Keep your feet and lower body warm. In snowy, freezing weather, thin tights and shoes are a crime against your health.

Fresh air has never hurt anyone; therefore ventilate your rooms well and leave a window open at night. Breathe in deeply, but shut your mouth when walking in the street in windy, dusty conditions; breathing through your nose will suffice.

Get your children used to the frequent use of water. Cold water improves resilience. Keeping your mouth and teeth clean will help to prevent infections.

Always remember that our health is our most precious possession, and do not first start to live prudently when it is too late.

Nazi memorabilia, brothels where women stood in windows above their names, local people who, it felt, rather hated us…they certainly hated my poor attempts at German.

But also moments of the sublime.

St Egidien…we walked past and heard the most beautiful music and just sidled in the great doors and sat to listen to a rehearsal.

An older man who was brilliant but a young woman who was truly one of the best I’ve heard, singing there in a white t-shirt and cut-offs. Not Bach, but of the period I think. We could have, should have, lit a candle to the angel of history in the back.

And then there was the fairly brilliant bar Mata Hari (tiny basement bar, regulars, DJ playing 70s vinyl and loving every minute of the music, a German whiskey)

Albrecht Dürer‘s house — quite beautiful, from a time when this was a vibrant centre of politics, trade and culture, one in which Dürer chose to stay rather than be lured away to Venice. He lived here just below the castle, in front of one of the main entrances to the city:

The rooms are full of light — at least the day that we were there. Beautiful rooms.

Not so beautiful, perhaps, how he and these rooms were reinvented to the greater glory of Nuremberg and Germany. A lot feels reinvented here for those reasons somehow, though I loved the sausages and the dark wood paneling and the wine — and wished I could still drink beer. The Golden Postern was delicious and friendly, couldn’t really say the same for anywhere else.

Mark giving a lecture and doing a class at the University in Erlangen, and we deciding to stay in Nuremberg. It is a beautiful town to be honest, and one where life can be lived with grace I think — wide pavements, well maintained buildings of flats, lots of colour that I love. Lots of timber construction, a vibrant market in the centre, brilliant public transport. Also a number of people rough sleeping. Addictions — though they felt of a different kind than those so familiar in Manchester or London.

Statues that were bewildering:

Some terrifying (though I confess I rather liked the latter)

Yet I think we will not be going back to Bavaria, at least not to stay.

It didn’t leave me with the physical sick to the stomach feeling of Bayreuth — the visit to Cosima Wagner’s Wahnfried and Winfred Wagner’s home next door, where Adolf Hitler felt at home, sneaking in after dark in the days after the 1923 failed putsch and then openly feted after his rise to power.

But this was ‘The most German of German Cities’, a centre of Hitler’s support and where they planned to build the massive and monumental Nazi Party Rally Grounds.

A map of what would have been, had not World War started and been lost:

There is a museum in part, it was alright. The building for party rallies still looms monumental, sitting at one end of the two-kilometer road for marches and parades:

I read Speer’s autobiography many years ago when he writes about designing this, the great outdoor rally grounds with the massive banners, the use of floodlights to create the cathedral effect. It is almost down to foundations now, called the zepplin grounds because a zepplin once landed here in happier days.

It made me happy to see this there though:

Most of this complex still serves as just another park.

This is also the city where Kaspar Hauser appeared on 26 May 1828, claiming to have been held prisoner, rumours ran rife of his parentage, especially after he was stabbed and killed.