The local castle and its church - St. Sevarius - were most impressive. The church is a Romanesque (and earlier) building. It was run for centuries by an order of secular (yes, that's right, secular) abbesses as a refuge and school for the daughters of the local elite. A very impressive run - didn't stop until around 1830. The church itself is a very stark building of local stone. There used to be murals on the walls, but they have disappeared over time. We didn't go down to the crypt, but you can see it through gates under the high choir. There are buried Henry I, the first king of Germany, and his wife Mathilde, who was the first Abbess and really started the sisterhood. As in other places of German graves in churches, the two markers had simple bouquets of forsythia and tulips.
The crypt has murals that have survived from the high Middle Ages. They tell the story of Susannah, and of Solomon's wisdom over the dispute about the baby. Perfect for a community of women. The murals have a particular style that has been adapted on the simple local woven paraments and an exquisite linen contemporary tapestry on the wall of the high choir.
But here is the hard part. The place was taken over by the Nazis when the movement began. Hitler understood Henry I to be the beginning of the Third Reich. They changed it from a church to a Nazi assembly hall, and there are terrible pictures of their gatherings. It gives me a chill even to write about it. They also tried to block out the Gothic apse that had been added, to prove that it really was a Romanesque building without any "impurities." (For Hitler the First Reich was Rome.)
The church has been restored and redeemed. It has a lively congregation (except during deep winter - this is a big stone building!) and it is a wonderful worship space. (Upon seeing it I exclaimed, "I want this church!") A baroque crucifix has been replaced by an amazing cross. You can see through it, so that from front or back you know that the cross comes and restores all that has happened there. When everything is seen through the cross, all the evil disappears into a gather community of grace. Here is a picture of the room and the cross:
(The entrance to the crypt is behind the altar.)All in all Quedlinburg was a terrific place. We changed our initial plans of it just being a place to sleepy and spent the last two days of our week there exploring the town. We found good food as well, including a great little place just around the corner from our flat enticingly named Himmel und Holle (umlaut over that "o") - Heaven and Hell. They specialized in flammekuchen, a kind of German pizza on a very thin and crispy crust. Delicious! We ate there twice.
It was fascinating and interesting to be in all these places that had been part of East Germany - the GDR. Our flat owner was my age, and I realized that all her formative years - two-thirds of her life - had been shaped in that culture. We learned that the family are fifth generation booksellers in Quedlinburg. She's invited me to email her, and I look forward to a possible opportunity to learn some more about those years.
The good side of spending all this time in the former GDR is that Germany has clearly put a lot into the infrastructure there, and the roads are great!
And one more item about Quedlinburg: it is impossible to figure out how to get into it with a car! I mentioned "circling the drain" as our method of finding things. Julie Lightfoot commented that we'd best be careful not to "drill the sewer!" Well,, we almost did that in Quedlinburg the night we came back from Wittenburg. It took us a full 45 minutes to get back to our parking place! We just kept going round and round, even being just a block away but finding it impossible to get t to the spot! We figured out that you have to go to the outside of the town and make your way in, kind of like a snail shell, or one of those annoying puzzles where you have to get the little metal ball from the outside to the center, Phew!
But, if you are ever heading into that part of Germany, be sure and stop in Queldinburg. You'll be happy for the visit, even if you drill the sewer!
No comments:
Post a Comment