Footnotes in History: Unterlinden, Colmar

On our recent trip, mainly to Alsace, but with sorties to Germany and the Netherlands, we came across several stories from the past which we’d known nothing about, but found engrossing. For the next few Fridays, I’ll share these stories with you.

Unterlinden, Colmar

Maybe this post will be a bit History-lite, but it’s still a story worth telling. Back in 13th century Alsace, the Dominican order founded a convent, Unterlinden, in the then outskirts of Colmar. The nuns from this contemplative order were woven into the life of the city until the French Revolution, when in 1793 the convent was confiscated. First abandoned, it then became a military barracks.

Henri Lebert Thann 1794-1862 imagined life in the convent in this oil painting.

In 1846, something rather extraordinary happened. Louis Hugot, the archivist-librarian of the City of Colmar set about bringing together fellow intellectuals and enthusiasts with the aim of setting up a print collection and drawing school. They called themselves  Societé Schongauer afer an Alsatian engraver and painter, an important influence on  Albrecht Dürer. The following year, they bought the now-abandoned convent and bequeathed it to the city.

Its earliest display is still here: a locally-discovered Roman mosaic. Here it is.

Then, the museum made do with plaster casts loaned from the Louvre. Now, it has an impressive collection of sculpture and altarpieces from a variety of churches in the area.

I was quietly impressed by these displays. Simply presented against white-painted walls, these pieces spoke of their spiritual intent, and I spent a long time in their presence, for the most part alone.

These pieces were all acquired in the early 1850s. But the star of the show, then and now, and the reason why most people visit this gallery is to spend time with Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece. As I did. But partly because I have no good images of it, and partly because it deserves a long appreciation, I won’t discuss it here. This is a good article from the Guardian –here.

Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece.

Then there are the cloisters: just the place for more religious statuary.

By the early 21st century the museum was running out of space. It was making contemporary acquisitions. It needed a refreshment area. Basel architects Herzog & de Meuron thought outside the box. The 1912 Public Baths on the other side of the road were no longer in use.

The 1912 former baths

Why not connect the two buldings with an underpass which could also be a display area?

This is the result.

The result is a gallery where the works on display can breathe. Where the newer parts complement the old and reflect its religious past. It’s an exciting as well as a contemplatve space, and I put this gallery down as possibly among the best viewing spaces that I have ever visited.

  • A new gallery.
  • A staircase.
  • An outside space
    An outside space.

I’ll finish by showcasing two or three of the works which appealed to me.

A detail from a 1480 Nativity recovered from an old Franciscan church in Colmar. The infant Jesus is the only one not old beyond his years.
A 1950 Annunciation by Otto Dix. Surely, if there was an Annunciation as described in the Bible, Mary might have been caught not at all in her Sunday best, and just plain embarrassed by the whole thing. What me? Sex before marriage? My mum’d kill me. Me? An unmarried mother? I don’t think so. What would Joseph say?
Paul Rebeyrolle, La Souche (the Stump) 2005. A composite of various organic and inorganic materials: wood, vines, straw, vegetable and animal fibres, wire, expanded polyurethane foam, resin, mortar, adhesive, paints.

Just a postscript. Malcolm didn’t come with me. He thought he was too tired to be able to spend a few hours standing before a succession of art works. If only we’d realised. He could have made use, for free, of one of these flâneuses, or leisurely strollers. What a brilliant idea!

Borrow a flâneuse! It’s free!

Becky, can you find the image + shadow for NovemberShadows? I hope so.

Autumn Shadows at Studley Royal

Shadows fall below this venerable sweet chestnut tree.

To begin a month of Shadows for Becky’s Month of Squares, I bring you a photo from Studley Royal, where the rutting stags vie for attention with the autumn colours.

Probably too young to join in the rut, this stag poses against dappled shadow.

Thank Becky, for being Queen of Squares once more.

Footnotes in History: Ammerschwihr

On our recent trip, mainly to Alsace, but with sorties to Germany and the Netherlands, we came across several stories from the past which we’d known nothing about, but found engrossing. For the next few Fridays, I’ll share these stories with you.

Ammerschwihr

We happened upon Ammerschwihr on our way back from Le Linge and decided to stop, attracted by its mediaeval town gates.

The first set of town gates we spotted

It’s a prosperous little town.  This commune is home to the highest number of winegrowers in relation to the number of inhabitants anywhere in Alsace. And that’s saying something.

In front of modern housing in traditional style is this fountain of the Wild Man of Ammerschwihr, 1560. He’s holding a shield showing the town’s weapons in one hand, while leaning on a vine stock.

As we mooched round, it gave the air of being yet another pretty town of half-timbered houses. Until we reached the old town hall, which these days doesn’t even justify being called a facade.

What’s left of Ammerschwihr’s former Town Hall

Then a small plaque. Oh!  So it was destroyed during the war?

The Town Hall, built in Renaissance style in 1552 was destroyed in an act of war in December 1944. It’s classed as a historic monument.

Buildings nearby were clearly more modern, though sympathetically built to fit in with the ancient centre (which we later realised were also reconstructions).  We found another notice, attached to the wall of one of the many wine producers in town.

We needed to know more.  

During the later stages of WWII, The Battle of the Bulge was the Germans’ last attempt to break through Allied lines.  They gained a dangerous amount of French territory in a campaign which though apparently well known, I hadn’t heard of. The Allies promptly regained much of this territory, except in an area near Colmar, which became known as The Colmar Pocket.  Ammerschwihr was in this zone, and like so many other nearby communities, it lost 85% of its buildings to bombing raids in December 1944.

But the ins and outs of military campaigns are above my paygrade, and if they interest you, you can read about them here and here. I prefer to know what life was like for the women and men on the street. Although I read that the conditions for the serving soldiers during this part of the war were truly horrendous.  A particularly harsh winter in 1944 – 45 meant that both sides endured the sheer misery of fighting in deep snow and mud in totally inadequate clothing.  Getting supplies to them was a sometimes unachievable struggle.  Casualties were extremely high.

For the civilians, life was no better. Ammerschwihr wasn’t evacuated, but many villages were, and unending columns of the dispossessed trailed to what they hoped was safety, having lost everything but the little they could carry.  Those who remained faced street barrages, hand-to-hand fighting.  Food and often water were hard to come by, and the population hid in cellars, sharing what little they had.  For those of us whose territory wasn’t invaded during WWII, this suffering is almost unimaginable.  And afterwards – the long hard road to reconstruction, and trying to re-establish some kind of normal life.

The victorious French advancing through Colmar in 1945 (Picryl.com)

Here’s what it says in WWII History Tour: Colmar Pocket

Once under German control, Alsace was subject to forced Germanization policies. The use of the French language was banned in schools, public spaces, and even private conversations in many cases. Street names were changed, French cultural symbols were removed, and local populations were pressured to embrace a German identity, often against their will. Families with French allegiances were treated as enemies, and suspicion ran high among neighbours, with the region caught between two nations. The sense of belonging for Alsatians became deeply conflicted as they struggled to retain their unique Franco-German culture under oppressive occupation.

Perhaps the most devastating aspect of Nazi control was the forced conscription of Alsatian men, known as the “Malgré-nous” (meaning “against our will”). Thousands of young men were drafted into the German army, the Wehrmacht, and even the feared SS, despite many feeling a strong allegiance to France. Some were sent to fight on the Eastern Front, where casualties were extremely high. Families were torn apart, and many Alsatians who tried to resist conscription faced imprisonment, deportation, or execution. After the war, the return of Alsace to France did not immediately heal the scars. The region carried the burden of divided loyalties, lingering mistrust, and the painful memories of occupation and forced service, which shaped its identity for decades to come.

It was hard to reconcile all this with the charming, civilised, peaceful little town we wandered around.  The nearest we got to the unpleasant realities was this building, once a town gate, once in fact a prison, and known as Le Tour des Fripons – the Tower of Knaves.  It all seemed much less immediate than the town’s more recent disturbing history.

Le Tour des Fripons

Farmer Fisher’s Farmyard Friends

One of the first picture books to come into the house – oh gosh – more than 45 years ago, delighted all three of my children, and the adults who read it with them. It’s still sought after, this early edition, but you’ll have to shell out about £25 to get a copy. The book was Farmer Fisher.

Farmer Fisher had a fine fat truck.
You couldn't see the colour for the farmyard muck.
In the front was a rabbit and a chicken and a duck -
On the way to market.

Well. I won’t be showing you a rabbit. I haven’t got a shot of one. Or a chicken. Or a duck. Elke, for this week’s Monochrome Madness would like us to show farmyard animals, so I’m sticking to four legged examples.

Like cows …

… and sheep …

… and pigs …

… and a goat …

… and not forgetting donkeys. Not useful, but easy to love.

And here’s a little library of livestock to finish with.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

Walking in Mountain Scenery

Since we left our home in France, eleven years ago, I’d forgotten the exhilaration of walking in the mountains. The Vosges are not the Pyreneees, far from it. But they offer the same reward of yomping, puffing and panting ever the harder, up the steepest of slopes before finally offering you views- across to distant slopes, and to valleys below: pastures, forests, settlements.

So in Alsace, Malcolm and I picked our chosen pastimes – walking for me, cycling for him. And on this day, we’d driven about 15 km. from ‘home’ to only a couple of hundred metres below the summit of Le Petit Ballon, so he could enjoy the exhilaration of zooming downhill, then along the valley bottom on a series of cycle ways to our holiday premises. I was to enjoy the different exhilaration of climbing to the top of the mountain before walking down and up and down and up the circular route I’d chosen to get me back to the car.

I passed cows first, the sound of their bells reverberating mellifluously far across the valleys.

It was a hard slog to the top, but I got there, and was disappointed by the presence of a bulky and rather ugly phone mast. And then immediately went wrong. I was relying on a walk description in a booklet I’d bought, and on the French equivalent of our OS maps. Which we’d long ago discovered do not do anything like as good a job. I was to follow several different series of balises (waymarks), which are also inconsistent in their usefulness (they tend to be there when you don’t need them, absent when you do).

My booklet said to walk to the statue of the Madonna and turn right. I did. I walked downwards, and found a path which didn’t seem right. Coming across some walkers from a French rambling group, they greeted me cheerily. ‘Are you alone? Come with us!’ I was tempted, but they were going the other way. But they pored over my map with me and set me right before going on their way. Anyway, it turned out I had followed the Wrong Madonna. Who knew there would be two in more or less the same area? I adjusted my walk plan and carried on.

I passed through woodland, a rich loamy path, with weightless grey lichens clinging to every twig and branch. Then open pastureland with distant mountain and forest views.

Onwards and upwards, till I came to an open summit with boulders scattered randomly around, making a perfect choice of picnic venue for me, offering me views in every direction. It was just warm enough, just sunny enough. Perfect.

After lunch, the views became more open, the colours more autumnnal, the path, though inexorably upwards, was a gentler slope. I passed the peak with the bench I showed you yesterday, and meandered slowly down to the wooded valley. On my way down, I found a piece of history from 1915: the remains of a German téléphérique, used to transport goods and all the chattels of war: a reminder of all we’d learnt up at le Linge.

My final couple of kilometres were disappointing, along a road – the one we’d travelled ourselves en route that morning. But I’ve forgotten that now, and kept instead the memories of a fresh, bright day in early autumn: an energetic and satisfying walk.

For Jo’s Monday Walk.