The Viereckschanze in Utting

I previously blogged about the village of Utting am Ammersee in connection with the small, hidden cemetery for nearby concentration camp victims there. Today I have another unusual place to show you — the rectangular earthwork (Viereckschanze) in the fields just west of the village.

This earthwork was built around 200-100 B.C., in the late Iron Age, by the people we call Celts. According to local sources the Roman Via Raetia (laid down after 15 A.D.) passed right by here, possibly within a few meters of the earthwork.

There are approximately 150 such earthworks of this kind (not including grave mounds and other types) surviving in whole or in part today in Bavaria alone. The one in Utting is one of five in the county, and an unusually large one with an inside area of 12,000 square meters.

According to information given on-site, research of some kind (a divining rod is mentioned) has revealed evidence inside the enclosure of the existence of A) small buildings, B) a sacrificial site, C) a hole with wooden support walls.

I have to add here that the western side of the Ammersee, we are learning, is some kind of hotspot for the esoterically-minded, and evidently has been for quite some time, as least as early as the 1920s. The sign at this earthwork clearly reflects this, with breezy assertations that the small buildings were temples, the hole was for divining energies, that the whole thing was primarily used for “cult-religious purposes and activities, teaching and passing on of traditions, adjudication, observance of nature and the heavens.” It goes on to say that

the Celts lived in close harmony with the laws of nature. They sensed unseen active entities, forces and energies. They built their ritual sites on places with particular characteristics. These phenomena can evoke internal visions, colors, sounds or moods even today in people who are especially attuned to listening to them.

(translation mine)

Now, there may be something to the idea that people of all eras feel a certain affinity to certain places. I have come across some theories that medieval churches were built on pagan sites not just to wipe out the old gods but to capitalize on the good vibes attributed to the particular place. That’s plausible. Certainly the Celts were more in tune with the laws of nature, as were all people living at the time. But the idea that these earlier people had time to spend tuning into the universe, observing nature and digging the force fields is, to me, a bunch of hooey. Sure, this Schanze may well have included some religious purpose, in the sense that one might feel the need to pray to one’s gods while barricaded inside. These earthworks offered protection, possibly against invaders, or animals (bears, wolves, wild boars). They offered a good surveillance view of the surrounding lands. They offered safe places to keep foodstuffs and materials (leather, bone, wood) awaiting processing. Sure, the Mayans and the Egyptians built pyramids (or, better said, their kings and pharoahs made them do it.) I cannot believe  that the Celts were not too busy, just from trying to get through the winter, to expend time and energy on this sort of thing for the express purpose of being One With The Universe. Perhaps they had one Shaman who did that, and it was built for him (or her.) But then, we are back to today’s system, with a village of farmers and one parish priest. Perhaps the most powerful families maintained these enclosures, like an Iron-Age version of the Kennedy Compound. Many large farms around here have their own little chapels on their grounds (in fact you can have one built these days — we watched one go up in Eching, passing that farm regularly.) Since we are walking around today with basically the same faculties as our ancestors had 50,000 years ago, I see no reason to believe that the people who built the Schanzen were any more enlightened than today’s modern Bauer.

Still, it’s quite something to be on an earthen structure which has survived over 2000 years.

If you go: you can find the earthwork very easily on Google Maps (WNW of Utting, no coordinates needed:just  look for the word “Keltenschanze”). There is parking just off the ST2347 (Landsberger Strasse) and then it’s a few minutes walk on well-maintained gravel roads.

Poetry for Whitmonday

Postscript
W. H. Auden

Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.

Travel Blogging: Ulm

The Beau recently attended a Bookseller’s trade show and conference in Ulm, and I was able to tag along. Before we left, neither of us knew much about the city except where it lies (on the other side of Augsburg, before Stuttgart) and that it has a very large and impressive cathedral. With hardly any expectations, I set off on my own haphazard walking tour so see what I might come across.
On the surface, Ulm looks just like one of those standard-issue German Cities, which resemble each other so much that they begin to lose their unique qualities.* But once you start to wander off the main roads there are lovely parts to it, such as the Fishermen’s Quarter with its old timbered houses, cobblestones alleys and waterways.

The Schiefes Haus (Crooked House), built in the 1400s, leans about 10° but is still in use today as a hotel.

Two women in front of the Münster (cathedral). The stone one looks annoyed with the one talking on her mobile phone.

An unusual addition to an old medieval city; the municipal public library is housed in a glass pyramid. Free wi-fi access, but closed on Mondays.

On the Donau (Danube River), a solar-powered tourist boat, sponsored by Ulm’s Solar Energy Foundation. There is also a ferry service over the river.

What lies across the river is Neu-Ulm. Ulm belongs to the state of Baden-Württemberg, Neu-Ulm belongs to Bavaria. (Think of the two Kansas Cities, straddling the state line.) Above, near the riverside park, an outdoor “lounge”.

*We recently heard a comedian on TV tell a joke what went more or less so (here a rough, short version): My girlfriend called me and told me to meet her at the new Italian restaurant in Düsseldorf; she said, you go down the pedestrian zone, pass Tchibo, turn left at Schlecker, and it’s right there next to the H&M. So I followed her directions, got there and waited half and hour for her before I realized, I was in Augsburg.

Belated Mayday Links

Spent the 1. Mai with friends at an alpine thermal spa getting my Wellness on. The good vibes lasted all day and through most of the first half of a stress-laden technical rehearsal, after which they wilted and died under the heat of the spotlights. But it was certainly good while it lasted.

Arts: The Telegraph (UK) has a nice feature article on the fine old tradition of finding ways to insert worldly fare into the church service music. I myself remember noticing a subtly modulated “Happy Birthday” being snuck into some post-communion incidental music, in honor of a particular chorister, back in the day.

Sports: Champions League in a nutshell for the uninitiated: this year, both semifinal match-ups consisted of a German team (Bayern, Borussia Dortmund) playing a Spanish team (Barcelona, Real Madrid respectively), and both German teams moved on to the finals. FC Bayern is the Yankees of German Fußball (wads of money and they win a lot), Dortmund almost went under from financial problems a few years ago (in fact, Bayern helped bail them out and keep them afloat.) The finale takes place May 25 in Wembley Stadium, be prepared for a lot of “German invasion” commentary on social media.

Education: When schoolkids have no clue, they get creative. Some of the best examples of pupils defacing their textbooks and exam papers, often in a last-ditch attempt for extra credit in creativity. My personal favorite is Nr 18, “Neandertallica”, but many of them are brilliant.

Travel: Andrew at German Joys recently linked to this video of a streetcar ride through East Berlin before Reunification. As it so happens, the Beau made money during his university years in East Berlin by driving trams — and so all this looked very familiar to him, it could very easily have been him in the video (it’s not).

History: According to this article in Live Science, the genetic make-up of the people living in Europe changed dramatically for as of yet unknown reasons about 4,500 years ago. Before that time Europeans shared their genetic heritage with people in Turkey and the Middle-East, and at some point after that, they no longer did.  This just might be in line with what happened at the Goldbichl sacrificial burning site in Tirol — constant use until about 2000-1500 BC, then a few centuries of nothing, and then used again when the Raetians turned up.

“At The Roman Stone”

This post’s title is the translation of Am Römerstein, a street in the Bavarian town of Gilching. It’s a road the Beau takes regularly for business. The name always intrigued me — where is, or was, this Roman stone, anyway?

A look at a map of Gilching shows that Am Römerstein intersects (and for a short stretch follows) the old Roman road Via Julia from Salzburg to Augsburg (through Gilching it is named, appropriately, Römerstrasse. Click on the link above to see a simple map of the entire road. Gilching is on the red line just above the area between those two lakes.) So the street got it’s name from being at or near a milestone on the Roman road. Salzburg, not yet the summer destination of the Euro-chic, was important for it’s salt mines, salt in earlier times being a very valuable commodity. (Worth another blog post at a later time. The names of many places in Germany and Austria come from their importance in the salt trade.) Augsburg was Augusta Vindelicorum, the capital city of Roman province Raetia and all the Roman roads in and around the Alps lead not to Rome, but to there.

Back to my milestone. With the help of Zeitspringer (who blogs chiefly about archaeological outings in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, and who is a great source of information on the subject, his blog is well worth perusing if you read German), I learned that a stone erected in the 1860s and dedicated to the Roman Road is included in a list of monuments on Gilching, including it’s location. A trip over there brought us to Number 15 Am Römerstein, where we found this monument,

Roman Road
from
Augusta Vindelicorum
(Augsburg)
to
Juvavum
(Salzburg)

This, by the way, is definitely not the same stone mentioned (and shown) in Gilching’s Wikipedia entry (g), a small tube-shaped stone with engraved Latin text, a copy made more recently than the monument at 15 Am Römerstein. So where is the milestone photographed and shown in the Wikipedia entry? Turns out, it’s just a bit further down the road (g), in the center of town.

I assume that the street Am Römerstein, therefor, is named after the 19th-century monument to the Roman road, and not for the site of the Roman milestone (although it’s also entirely possible that the former was erected on the actual site of the original, and the later copy was placed somewhere more convenient and available.) A sign erected near the copy stone gives a very interesting account of the original’s fate. Milestones have been hauled off and used as building stones since the Late Antiquity. This particular stone was taken to Hattenhofen (there are four communities in the area with that name, most likely they mean the one in Fürstenfeldbrück County) in the 16th century, and then used as a cornerstone in Günzlhofen Castle. After the castle fell to ruin it came it Munich, first in the Royal “Antiquarium” and later as part of the Bavarian national collection of prehistoric artifacts, and exhibited with it. Here is where it met it’s ultimate fate, on a date with an Allied bomb in 1944.

Maybe We Can Translate It As “Kakastrophe”

One sees/hears a lot of English words which have been absorbed into the German language. Sometimes, like HD vs Blue Ray, you’ll hear competing German and English terms for certain things (“Computer” seems to have won out over “Rechner”, for example). But this one in the Tiroler Tageszeitung took me completely by surprise. I really would have expected to see it in quotation marks, since it probably came from the subject’s own Facebook posting (which would not have been in German).

The article, if you’re curious, states that the designated composer of a new anthem in honor of the upcoming Coronation in the Netherlands (the Queen is stepping down and handing the throne over to her eldest son. This is THE STORY up there right now) has withdrawn his composition after massive protest and ridicule from citizens. My Dutch friends assure me that it’s godawful. Hence the Anschiss.

Looking it up in the online German-English dictionaries, I find that the word “shitstorm” was named the 2011 Anglizismus des Jahres (Anglicism Of The Year), and not perfectly translatable, therefor accepted “as is” in the German language. There are links at the links, if you’re that interested.

Just a Little Macabre

Found in the vicinity of the defunct Lechfeld Air Base, between Landsberg and Augsburg, Germany. Upper sign points the way to the base’s shooting range. Lower sign points the way to the war cemetery.

Springtime Links

Because, as fabulous as Austrian “socialized medicine” is, I’m not going to bore you with routine doctor visits, which is what I did all morning. On my day off, with beautiful weather. I know, “first-world problems”.

Coming To America: There are regular deaths of people trying to do “the walk”, what the local police call the long foot march from the Mexican border into the interior of the United States. The local cemetery is filling with the remains of undocumented, unidentifiable immigrants.

LeavingAnywhere But America: Some guide books used to suggest (really) that Americans going abroad sew little Canadian-flag patches onto their backpacks, to escape any “ugly American” assumptions. The thing is, you can’t go around giving people the idea that there are now “ugly Canadians” too, from your distinctly American behavior! The blogger here doesn’t give any specific crimes other than their way of speaking and dressing, but she didn’t have to. I knew exactly what she meant.

Living In America: If you have someone in your life who is braying about “killing all the Muslims” after this latest (as yet unidentified and unclaimed) act of violence in Boston, and you need some back-up sources to argue with them, then Juan Cole’s your man.

On The Border

Approaching the Alps from the north, somewhere near Murnau. The Föhn cleans the air and allows for long, clear views.

A hidden courtyard in Mittenwald, with evening sun on the mountains. I had an hour to kill between trains, and despite our proximity to the border I had no Austrian internet access, but the weather was pleasant enough for a walk around town. I chatted up a Turkish Kebap seller while I waited for my Döner Kebap. I remarked that it looked like the summer tourist season hadn’t begun, and he told me, “Deutschland ist kaputt!” He’d moved to Mittenwald 6 months from Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and said that there are no jobs these days. We both agreed that things are somewhat better in Austria, for which I can be grateful.

Mittenwald again: in a tiny war chapel behind the church, customary death notices of fallen soldiers from the Second World War. Some of them look quite young.

WordPress Blogs Under Attack

This is just a public service announcement for those of you who do not read computer and tech blogs regularly (like, uh, me). The Beau forwarded me a story this morning that WordPress blogs were being hacked — the victims being mainly blogs with weak administrator passwords such as “admin”. See  here (en) or here (g).

You can protect yourself (on WordPress or any other blogging platform, for that matter) by having a strong password and by changing it regularly. The blogs are being subject to “brute force” attacks carried out by bots which can rack up attempts in the millions per hour.