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Together with Hartmut, Runhild and the soup, we are now on the way to Jena, town of optical industries. Here a part of the traditional factory for lenses, found by Carl Zeiss in the year 1846, is located.
As a new Jena landmark the tower block in the center of the city is considered. It is called the 'Keksrolle'(= cookie roller) and was built in GDR times. They planned to built a second tower and to interlink it with the other tower by a bridge, to get the look of field glasses, as a sign of the optical industries of Jena. It was never put into practice, because the state was on the budget. So the building is not a symbol for a vision, but rather, that the GDR regime had been blind on one eye.
Jena somewhat gives the impression of a sleepy college town. It lies amidst the undulating landscape of Thüringen. The center, being destroyed at the Second World War, has been rebuilt. The Anatomic Institut, where once the privy councillor Goethe found the premaxilla remained intact and is still on its place.
In any event, Goethe is omnipresent here, but almost flashy his presence becomes in Weimar, the town we are visiting in the afternoon.
The European Capital of Culture of the year 1999 is a spruce museum town with a great history background. Weimar once was the intellectual center of German Classicism with its exponents Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland and for a short time it was also meeting place of the national constituent assembly of the year 1919. There is the Goethe house with garden, the Schiller house with death room, the graveyard, where Schiller allegedly hastily was buried and where Goethe's wife Christiane Vulpius indeed is buried, the Goethe-Schiller monument with laurel wreath and the Thüringer Rostbratwurst(=typical sausage).
Weimar is definitely a friendly town, but with to much opulent presence of remembrance. The liveliness of a university town works as a contrast on the fusty, museological character. An expression of a rebellious mind is a multi-colored painted house, which has been occupied by alternative people even at GDR times, an optically interesting counterpoint to the restored baroque and neo-classical claddings.
While we visit old towns, the soup is waiting patiently in the cars boot for its next gig in Schöndorf near Weimar.
We arrive there in the evening at Dorothee's and Jörg's home. They welcome us with mountains of various vegetable, sausages and herbs, also a 30 litres soup pot is waiting to be filled up.
Other guests aside from Hartmut, Runhild and both of us are Barbara and her husband Tobias and Christa and her husband Hermann. Together we peel and cut all the vegetables. Slowly the soup pot starts to steam and simmer on open fire. Jörg serves us beer and homemade plum- and sour cherry wine and after a while, slowly but surely the guests minds are illuminated and the conversation becomes more witty and amusing.
Hermann is a professor emeritus for preservation of ancient monuments at the university of Weimar.
Once again I touch on the subject 'selective deconstruction of the ' Palast der Republik'.
His lapidary answer:- such a description is just a rotten compromise with diehard SED-party followers, but in fact the case is decided, the old castle will be rebuilt.
Also he didn't accept my objection, it made no sense to rebuilt an old castle after 50 years, cause it's got nothing to do with preservation of ancient monuments, when the building doesn't exist anymore and in my opinion this could be a chance for contemporary architecture to find expression in reference to historical conditions.
Hermann, an eloquent, literate and humorous opponent brings forward some interesting arguments for the old castle.
Namely, that the argument to rebuilt a feudalistic symbol is untenable, because since the end of First World War The castle had been opened for folks as a culturel institution, so the demolition of the building had been a plain barbarian act, that must be reversed to keep the historical continuity of the place for posterity.
Further he argues, the castle was a central architectural point and all the surrounding buildings was part of it and if the castle wasn't there, the whole arrangement would fall apart.
To my repeated objection, that the erection of a new building always was better than to recondition an old building he adduces numerous examples of it.
The Romans had copied a numerous greek buildings one to one without having any problems. The Campanile in Venice was rebuilt after its collapse in the year 1902 with no argument and if tomorrow the Stefansdom in Vienna would collaps for any reasons, there would be surely an expanded consensus for immediate reconstruction.
As an example for successful combination of new architecture and old destroyed buildings I take the Berlin Gedächtniskirche. For my very surprise I am told, that the oftentimes admired work in this form only has been realised under pressure from a citizen's group against the massive resistence of the architect.
After a while I notice, that the discussion about destruction, demolition, construction and rebuilding and so on is a question about the symbolic value of architecture and also a question of appreciation of history. I think the demolition of the Palast der Republik is not only motivated by preservation of monuments but also by revanchist reasons. The knack for revanchism and its specific reasons will become more clear later in Leipzig, were I will be confronted with an stupefying act of barbarism.
The evening ends in cheerful, frolicsome athmosphere. In spite of a good portion of soup we have eaten, the drinks unfold their full pleasant potential. Jörg very early keels over to a horizontal position, Tobias every now and then looses his balance, giving cause for concern and Hermann increasingly produces more brilliant but also more confused philosophic theories. He postulates, that the real meaning of life is to grow into ease and calmness in combination with outer harmony and after his elaborated extemporisation of Taoist body of thought in synthesis with Nietzsche's happy weltschmerz he's ready to open a new perspective to the very tipsy round table, all this! he says, can be described with one term - we all excitedly await the one and only term for the theory of everything: Preservation of monuments.
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