We drove along the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) from our abode in Baden-Wurtemmberg to the Bavarian town of Ulm in the Swabian Alps for an afternoon stroll and lunch.
The Ulm Műnster (Cathedral) boasts the world’s tallest steeple. The view from above after climbing 768 stairs is supposed to be stupendous, but I passed on the experience (no elevator). Cathedrals were built before disability accommodations were made the law in the United States anyways. It took 500 years to build the cathedral from 1377 to 1877 according to the Lonely Planet: Germany guide by Lonely Planet Guides.
The star-vaulting holding up the ceiling plays gestalt tricks with your eyes. “Is it a star or is it a square?” you keep asking yourself as you almost see the geometric shapes realigning on the ceiling. There are many coats-of-arms decorating the walls of the cathedral, attesting to the wealth of Ulm throughout the centuries. Ulm Cathedral renders homage to the Jews killed during the Holocaust with its Israelfenster, a stained-glass window over the west door.
Two memorials seem to contradict the sentiment expressed in the Israelfenster. These are memorials devoted to the Ulm soldiers, who died as soldiers of the Third Reich. These memorials are more than an attempt to heal war wound. They are an attempt to correct history as well.
They honor the German and Jewish men who were forced to serve in the armed services of the Third Reich. The family story of one of my Jewish friends never ceases to impress upon me the need for all countries to provide shelter to refugees.
My friend’s grandfather was a cobbler in a German town. Maybe this town was like Ulm with its gabled-roof shops and pastel colored shop exteriors with their shop signs displaying the trades practiced in the shop dangling over the streets. The Nazi’s came for my friend’s grandfather and told him that he had one night to get his belongings together before being voluntarily inducted into the army of the Third Reich. If he did not comply, his shop would be burned down.
When the Nazi’s came to get my friend’s grandfather the next day, they burned down his store anyways. However, when they went to find his wife and children they were gone. My friend’s grandfather’s agreement to serve in the army of the Third Reich gave his wife and children enough time to escape to the Black Forest, the Schwarzwald.
The people of the Schwarzwald fed, clothed, and protected my friend’s family for the duration of World War II. At the end of the war, my friend’s family discovered that the Jewish cobbler who became a member of the Third Reich’s army to save his family was taken prisoner in Stalingrad and died in Siberia. A simple wreath of dried flowers with ribbons on it decorated one of the memorials to the Ulm soldiers, who died as members of the Third Reich.
As we walked through the streets of Ulm, I thought of a recent drive my husband and I had taken through the Schwarzwald. I saw a sign for a synagogue there. I immediately looked for it, because so few Jews survived to live in Germany. The synagogue was a large, stand-alone building that was not part of a multi-purpose religious structure.
Everything was clean and orderly in the Schwarzwald – “Very German!” I chuckled to myself at the time. I understood why people came from all over Germany to the Schwarzwald to breathe the pure air, sup in the welcoming restaurants, and laugh as they stroll down the street.
This bucolic memory of the Schwarzwald contrasted sharply with the streets of Ulm around me. Every building we saw was tagged with green, red, and black graffiti. The red graffiti almost looked like swastikas, but not quite. If the graffiti had been swastikas, it would have been immediately taken down immediately out of public shame.
However, even the industrious Germans of Ulm seemed to be having trouble keeping up with the plethora of graffiti and tagging here. Ugly scrawl covered the architecturally beautiful apartment blocks, homes, shops, and even a side of the cathedral.
I spitefully thought to myself, “That’s what they deserve for not even mentioning in their tourist brochures that Albert Einstein was born here. There’s not even a plaque on his house or a plaque showing where his house stood if it was destroyed during the way.”
That moment passed, though, when I remembered reading about how Albert Einstein was devastated about how his theory of relativity was used to develop the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The greatest honor Albert Einstein gave to his birthplace of Ulm, Germany was not to his stature as the greatest scientist of the twentieth century, because his intellectual work contributed to the creation of the nuclear bomb that caused the Third Reich to lose the Second World War.
No, the greatest honor Albert Einstein ever contributed to his birthplace of Ulm, Germany was to say, “If I had known what they were going to do with the theory of relativity, I never would have shared it with the world. I would have kept it a secret and stayed working at the Swiss patent office for the rest of my life.
If the city of Ulm were to honor Albert Einstein for that statement and not for his theory of relativity, which led to the creation of nuclear weapons, I have no doubt that the graffiti and tagging would come down, and Ulm would be beautiful once again.
