Frankfurt was our first European layover after leaving Brazil. We only stayed about three days, enough to begin accustoming ourselves to 5-15 degree (Celsius) temperatures (after leaving São Luis at about 30 degrees and São Paulo at about 25.
This meant buying a jacket and a warm hat.
It was also a time to visit family and friends, and a few museums, around Frankfurt/Hessen.
Wiesbaden is a former aristocratic spa that was spared in World War because the American military wanted it as a headquarters. The American presence is reduced now, and the city has a charm and commercial/artistic character of its own.
Below is a figure commemorating the German unification. The meaning of the green man is a bit unclear to the casual visitor, but he is a symbol nonetheless. In the background of the photo is an old hotel that has been refunctioned into apartments. We stayed in a dear friend’s place there, looking down on the green man.
This is another view of Kranzplatz and the hotel. It shows why the “bad” (bath) in Wiesbaden. Beneath the city are hot mineral springs that have for centuries been used as thermal baths and spas. This mineral fountain bubbles constantly in the cool March air, giving off a faint smell of rotten eggs. Nearby there is a bulletin posting the mineral content and offering a drinking fountain of the water.
Below is an example of Wiesbaden functional public art. It decorates one wall of a playground and park that is usually filled with children, families, and a multicultural mix of Germans and immigrants.
Below is the Russian-Orthodox Church, also known locally as the “Griechische Kapelle.” Above the city of Wiesbaden, it looks down into a valley through surrounding forests. Many visitors mention feeling a sense of meditative calm when they visit the church, as did we.
The church was built by architect Philip Hoffman for Duke Adolf von Nassau to commemorate the early death of his wife, a 19-year old Russian princess. It was dedicated in 1853 and has been maintained since as a center for worship of an active orthodox community in Wiesbaden and Hessen.
Wiesbaden offers a spa, a casino, opera, and ballet — and the world’s largest cuckoo clock (really!). But for many visitors the “Greek Chapel” is the most beautiful and culturally interesting of the city’s sites.
The Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art
For the serious visitor, there is a multi-card available at the visitor’s office on the Römerplatz (next to the city hall). The card offers discounts on multiple museum visits in a day. We visited the Miró exhibit at the Schirn Gallerie and the Museum of Modern Art before the day ran out.
German museums have followed the international museum trend of allowing visitors to photograph works of art. Unfortunately I didn’t take photos of the Miró exhibit and found out only later that I might have. That exhibit highlighted the artist’s fascination with large works that simulated rural farm walls in their backgrounds. Most of the canvasses appeared to have been painted on farm walls. This was a perspective on the “materiality” of his works that I had not seen before.
The lead exhibit in the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art was curated by John Forsythe, the American choreographer who had just finished 25 years in Frankfurt. He curated an exhibition in which virtually all the pieces used the visitor as part of the installation.
Visitors entered the art installations, danced, swung from gymnastic rings, crawled into small spaces, struggled to enter doors, looked into rooms that seemed to house a sleeping or dead person, and so on.
In this piece, dance steps are given on the floor (an Arthur Murray-type fox trot I think). A museum attendant helped us figure out what to do.
In another era this might have been a number in a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie.
This exhibition has a title referring to a Chinese ghost descending a mountain. It appears static at first, but as you walk around the vases they uncover pictures together than unfold the story. It is a piece of work to enter and walk around many times.
From the photo you can probably see that the vases have different elements of the picture, allowing the story to unfold like an old-fashioned deck of pictures that show a moving scene when flipped. This is more meditative.
These gymnastic rings in the photo below invite you to cross the room (which is itself the art work) on the rings. We didn’t see anybody do it. Most ended up hanging helplessly like this person. Maybe that is the point. It may be a meditation on humility.
In the photo below “Old Bridge” crosses the Main River from the area of the Römerplatz to the Museum Embankment (Museum Ufer) where there are a dozen or so museums, each worth a half day or more.
I’ve seen this custom of attaching locks to a bridge in Cologne near the art museum there, and I understand that is widely done throughout Europe. A common interpretation is that it ia done by couples to signify lasting love. There is even a story of a bridge in Paris where tons of locks were removed because they threatened the integrity of the bridge.
The custom reminds me of the light poles outside some museums where visitors stick their exposition stickers when they leave. Someday a cultural anthropologist will find this interesting and write a monograph about it.
The Main River from the “Alte Brücke” that leads pedestrians from the Römerplatz to the Museum Ufer where the far embankment of the Main houses a dozen or so museums. We are looking back at the Frankfurter Dom, he cathedral just to the left of center in the photo.
