The Melting Pot

by Glen Strachan

My wife and I have often used Frankfurt as the major European transport hub for which it has long been famous. My mother and most of my family live in various parts of Germany while our own children live in our native Scotland so it is no surprise that many of us pass through Frankfurt, quite often hurrying to make connections etc.

This visit was planned quite differently and, for once, we had the opportunity to look at this city in more or less the way that we view other places of interest. Our first impression was of people on the move and a great vitality - much of it emanating from the non-Germans in the city, a growing group that gives this most cliched looking German city a very different feel from that suggested by the Germanic architecture of the city centre. The buildings may have represented some of the best architectural values of both traditional and very new Germany, but many of the people thronging the downtown streets give that area more of a look of Ankara or Istanbul. This impression is confirmed by many of the food shops and restaurants - not to mention the posters on the walls which advertise large venue concerts from the most popular Turkish singers of the day.

That new architecture has created a very distinctive high rise core to the city centre and the river Main, as a centre point, is accorded the respect that such a powerful economic aid to the region demands. Later on this visit somebody asked us if we had enjoyed our time in ‘Mainhatten’ - one of the nicknames that Frankfurt has collected in its ‘tall buildings years’. These massive buildings have made this one of the most concentrated skyscraper communities anywhere in the world and closer examination of the ownership of these properties shows that they are almost entirely the brainchild of the huge banking concerns that are headquartered in Frankfurt.

Stepping out of the city’s main railway station (that arch over the entrance seems to be a prime target for every television news camera crew covering European financial matters), our first impression was of great volumes of traffic, much of it boasting large limousines heading over to the nearby ‘financial district’. The second impression when crossing the road to the Willy Brandt Platz (history buffs might see some irony in the naming of this place for that gentleman) was of the ragged looking youngsters who comprised the citizens of a tented village known as ‘The Occupy Frankfurt Zone’. The contrast was striking, as Africans and Turks walked past these young Germans, who were protesting against what they clearly consider to be the unfairness and futility of a future that they believe has been blighted by these bankers in whose shadows they sleep each night. While there did seem to be something of a nervousness shown by the visitors to these banking establishments as they looked back towards ‘the other half’ of society, a range of other ironies emerged.

The Africans and Turks have come to mighty Frankfurt in search of a better, freer life. While the protesters make a fair point about the misfortune that they face today, perhaps the group which faces the greatest challenges is that privileged range of bankers and economists, currently assigned with finding a solution to that near-eternal financial conundrum - the impossible future of a Euro that was curiously believed at one stage (and that no further back than a couple of decades ago) to be an instrument capable of solving most of the economic and political ills of Europe. As Greece and Spain melt into financial disaster, I have a sudden little vision of the ultimate irony of these failing fat cats diving out of the windows of these collapsing banking organisations and flailing down towards the Occupy Frankfurt protesters in the streets below. Frankfurt confirmed the impression that we live in interesting times with even more promised in the years ahead.

All of that said, this city was still considered by the US-based Mercer Group’s Quality of Living Survey late in 2011 to be the seventh best large city in all the world alongside Munich and not far behind the top pair - Vienna and Zurich. I certainly saw nothing during our visit to suggest that Mercer Group was wrong about that!

We sought a restaurant for lunch and were not disappointed by the eastern food on offer: and then we happened upon an unexpected pleasure. Having spent some time in the beautiful Romerberg area we came across two very interesting exhibitions in the Schirn Kunstahlle - a wonderful post-modern building that presents highly intriguing exhibitions in a very sympathetic space. But a word about the Romerberg district first - although it is really best illustrated by the photograph that accompanies this piece. It was fortunate that the weather had relented to provide a beautiful sunny afternoon for us to stand in the centre of this beautiful ‘square’ and take in the full beauty of the symmetry of these buildings. Amongst many fabulous half-timbered houses and the ‘Ostzeile’ housing row that was rebuilt, at no small expense, in 1986 to the original plans, stands the Rathaus - the former patrician villa with its distinctive three gabled roof that has been Frankfurt’s city hall since 1405 and which remains the seat of the rather fortunate city Lord Mayor to this day.

There is an almost mind-numbing array of very significant buildings in this part of the city. It includes many churches filled with echoes of the Holy Roman Empire and the Franconian past, but probably the double whammy of the Kaiserdom set within metres of the remains of a Roman military outpost which includes thermal baths, and a Carolingian Royal Palace, takes pride of place in a star-studded array of sites.

Standing high above that impressive ruin is the Emperor’s Cathedral or Kaiserdom which is reputed to have been consecrated in the name of St Bartholomew, the Apostle, in 1239. After 1356, it was the official site for the elections of emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Ten such imperial coronations took place between 1562 and 1792. While I do not intend to offer this Frankfurt piece as a tour of the city’s churches, I should also mention the Protestant church of St Catherine - maybe the most beautiful of these magnificent religious buildings and itself carrying many layers of political and religious history that echo the Kaiserdom.

Back in the Schirn were two major exhibitions that could hardly have been more appropriate for the time. The work of Edvard Munch, a man who died in his 81st year just twelve months before I was born and, as much as any other painter, was a bridge from the old world to something recognisable as the time in which we now live, was on display in profusion before the admiring German and international observers - in a space that projected his work in a way that might have boggled even the mind of this remarkable artist.It was impossible to see the banner outside the Schirn and not be reminded of Munch’s ‘Scream’ - a painting that is perhaps not only the most famous of all time (sorry, Mona Lisa - we did see you in Paris a few years ago and I was somewhat underwhelmed), but which could hardly be more relevant to the confusion of ‘Occupy Frankfurt’, melting currencies, crumbling economies and the unmistakable stench of impending Euro-doom. In his ‘Scream’, Edvard, the son of an obsessively pious troubled son of a priest, and a clearly troubled individual throughout a life of fame and respect which also included a sad catalogue of mental illness, expressed confusion and pain. This could well be the perfect illustration of the state of mind of both the puzzled high floor bankers of Frankfurt and the bewildered ‘Occupiers’ below. I just enjoyed his small obsessions with vampires and red haired women, since my favourite example of the latter was with me as we savoured the odd delights of this unique painter. My copy of the ‘Scream’ still stands on top of a bookshelf in our computer room, as it has done in all of its plastic glory over the last couple of decades across our various homes.The perfect foil for the heavy nature of Mr Munch’s material was the art of ‘Mr Mental States’ himself - the man from Concord who came out of New York’s East Village art scene in the 1980s - and provided a wickedly satirical eye to his many provocative subjects - George Condo.

From Frankfurt it was into the hinterland of Bavaria by a fast train and a welcome from my mother and sister as we arrived in the beautiful little town of Lohr am Main. Despite being in Bavaria, Lohr is a typical Franconian old town with its half-timbered buildings and some stunning views across the mighty river Main and the surrounding forest land. This little town of 16,500 inhabitants in the Spessart Forest has quite a lot more to it than immediately meets the eye. Not least is the fact that two of the largest hydraulic companies in the world are based here and, on a more prosaic level, the old fishermen’s district boasts a tower which, until comparatively recent times, was inhabited by the tower keeper and his family. My brother-in-law was unfortunate enough to have this family on his register and, as their doctor, he would climb the many steps up to their home on his emergency house calls. It was his good luck that the family enjoyed fine health throughout most of that time and they have now moved away, closer to ground level.

We were able to conclude this visit to Germany with a very enjoyable Saturday evening invitation to dinner outside the town, deep in the Spessart Forest at a hunting lodge. The owners have long been friends of my sister and brother-in-law and they live in Frankfurt but retain this lodge which has been in the family since they acquired it in settlement of a business debt in 1950. As often as they can manage to get away from their desks in Frankfurt, they take to the rural life and go into the wilds of the Spessart. That results in occasional dinner invitations for a dozen people - many of whom are known to one another and, this time, Flora and I were the two strangers in the gathering. Several of the guests were back in Germany after long-term overseas postings as part of the development of that pair of hydraulic companies. Most of the others were surgeons.

The food was superb and their conversation was generously delivered in English throughout, although we were the only non-German speakers in the group. We learned many things but two of the more trivial items stand out. We were warned not to leave our shoes outside the front door as the foxes had been about. Apparently foxes steal shoes, for no obvious reason that anybody could point out then, and large numbers of stray shoes are collected when lairs are uncovered during the course of hunting. We still giggle a bit at the prospect of these Bavarian foxes tottering along speedily on a couple of pairs of high heels. It’s interesting that the animal kingdom can also boast an interest in foot fetishism. Clearly Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was not alone in such an indulgence.

We also learned a good deal about mushrooms from our host’s husband. He has a long-standing interest in these and even keeps a small library of books on the subject at the lodge. The oddest story that he told about harvesting mushrooms was confirmed by two of the surgeons at the table that night. A family of five had been gathering some of the many mushrooms growing in the Spessart forest and had used these in a stew that included wild boar. Shortly after eating they had called out the emergency services and, by the following morning, only the grandfather remained alive. Parents and both children died quickly; the cause was clear. They had mistakenly cooked some highly poisonous mushrooms, confusing these with a quite benign variety growing in the same part of the forest. One odd aspect in all of this was that the old man was not only still alive but perfectly fit and healthy despite, on his own admission, having eaten more of that food than anybody else at the table during the fateful evening.

For a period of months he was suspected by local police of being a murderer and it was only much later that the reason for his reprieve was revealed. The old fellow had suffered for many years from a debilitating kidney illness that just happened to be the instrument of his salvation. His powerful medication for treating that illness had somehow nullified the impact of the poison that the mushrooms brought into his system during that unfortunate evening. He still lives on his own in the area - a rather unhappy medical miracle.

The mushrooms used for that evening’s meal were far less exotic. We thanked her for her splendid hospitality and left for the long drive back into town, debating the suggestion offered by another guests that an unconventional solution for Europe’s current economic woes could one day be a joint Korean/ Chinese buyout of the entire continent. ‘Scream’ about that if you must!

First published in VISA 103 (Jun 2012)