Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire. – Gustav Mahler
Avant Propos: Before We Go Anywhere
I throw words on the page and push them around – not uprights, transversals, plumbing, piping or skylights. What buildings create is an aesthetic of space and feeling, a sense of being there. Two trades, vastly different, but with arguably shared objectives. You see what I’m driving at.
Can’t get there from here: photos of this leg of the Grand Tour are subscriber only, posted separately. Sorry but. Out of pocket ? You can buy the dude a coffee here.
Leaving Strasbourg
In which they say many mean things about France
The talk was fast, convivial. They gestured out the window, saying Look at that, laughing in mock-horror. We were in the lowlands now on our way to Karlsruhe, bus poking through traffic past strips of commercial fronts with their standardized signage, the brightly lit, beckoning shopping malls and in the near distance, neat, organic, very eco social housing – cute brown and white mushrooms for new Germans.
We were leaving Strasbourg, beau Strasbourg of the old gothic cathedral, an immense magnet, a gnarly, rough-hewn stone that gives shelter to divinity. Yes, God spends the Fall in Strasbourg before setting out for the Amalfi Coast. And if the locals are to be believed, the Devil hangs around when he’s gone.
It’s February now, and I don’t know a soul on board. I’m prepared for the long haul, 2 a.m. change in Stuttgart, arriving Vienna in darkness when all you can do is pace, envying the sleepers in Central Station their ability to curl into doughnuts in the middle of the psycho hurly-burly.
Eyes closed, I lean back in the seat while conversation in German filters across the aisle. When I look around the faces are young, vividly Middle East, not German at all. How, where and why ?
This young crowd of five friends are the children of immigrants from Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, all born, brought up in Germany, all engineering and architectural students in Karlsruhe. Two women, Aramaic Christian and Kurdish, a man from Egypt (very quiet) and one from Turkey, bulky, fashionable oversized specs, full of gestures as he turns around in his seat, maybe the oldest, definitely the most opinionated. (Bad of me not to write their names down.) Ready to tear down anything they don’t like.
Their reactions to Strasbourg?
Not impressed ! They laugh in my face. The town’s historic character doesn’t seem to have touched them.
-Nothing worth investigating ? How long were you there ?
All day. What about those massive, candy-colored Alsatian houses along the canal, sagging gracefully with the centuries ? They’d probably withstand an earthquake. Or the Cathedral, that impressive monster from which you could reconstruct an entire civilization ? Maybe they didn’t bother to go in.
And thinking I was French, they enjoyed baiting me. An intriguing bunch so I kept asking.
Is it Gothic, that pompous International Style that spread around France and Northern Europe like wildfire, endless variations on towers and gargoyles, its arrows pointing towards the heavens, that turns them off ? No point debating where the Gothic originated, the keystone arch, etc. Maybe they too keep a secret love for its humble, summa-vernacular predecessor, Romanesque ? Those churches are the work of patient men who created shelters at the edge of the wilderness. Example, the magnificent choir in the Strasbourg cathedral, the oldest part of the building, figures dancing across a gold leaf dome, half concealed behind draps while being renovated. Andrei Roublev comes to mind. That didn’t resonate either.
Or is it that owing to city’s peculiar history, Strasbourg (apart from modern infrastructure like the EU parliament, etc.) resembles numerous old towns on their side of the border ? Or could it be that Old Architecture is better left to social media posts because experiencing it first-hand challenges our notions of how to live ?
Ideological Diversions
Karlsruhe, population 300,000, boasts numerous technical schools in the sciences, engineering and what we might call cultural management: Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, HfG, European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s Knowledge and Innovation Communities.
Perusal of architecture and engineering programs gives me the impression Eco-Post-Modernism is in the driver’s seat. Understandable: no one’s building Gothic cathedrals these days. You want a job, don’t you ? Given Europe’s preference for regulation over innovation, one is tempted to dub these mighty educational centers Status Quo Studies.
In Europe physical labor is often done by immigrants (many without papers), perfect for immigrants, who won’t complain, to live in. Eco-apartment complexes, equipped with small luxuries, spread across the village landscapes outside Paris. Cities around the world look and feel more and more samey, the invincible monarchy of glass tower and sububan spread.
Avant the inevitable surge of the New Traditionalism (or whatever they’re going to call it) Po-Mo, the ultimate lifestyle version, reigns supreme in the academy but is still a placeless place, difficult for humans to live in. (Especially with those trans-identified males in the attic sobbing all the time.) Its non-stop Deconstruction of Everything produces buildings that bring on a kind of psychic breakdown. You hardly know where to sit and want to get out as soon as possible. That’s the point: they are structures that assault the notion of human shelter in favor of crowd management. Perfect for the modern museum, a marketplace where vulgar international urbanites stare for a minute or less at art they don’t understand before taking a photo (preferably with a flash) they can post on Instagram.
The contemporary artist and student is at an impasse: she has been taught that her culture is the fruit of colonialism and capitalism (and the other evils that keep one from having ideas or ideals) while intact cultures are off-limits. White man in a sombrero syndrome. Stick to your lane. TINA: there is no alternative. Karlsruhe University of Education is rife with programs like Intercultural Education, Migration and Multiculturalism, Biodiversity and Environmental Education, all of which produce graduates who talk the talk. What do they produce ?
There are rebels are in the hills, building houses, experimenting with innovative ways to keep tradition alive. Look hard and you’ll find them across Asia and Africa. There was, during COVID, a vast exodus from the French cities by people who wanted to get their hands dirty learning regional crafts, traditional methods of home building. A very French thing to do, you might say, inasmuch as the great cathedrals and chateaux were built by illiterate masons chosen by aristo, king or church. They drew their ideas in the dirt while the Bishop looked over their shoulder. Pennsylvania Amish build a barn in an afternoon: that’s social cohesion. Like a biblical prophet of old, Paolo Soleri headed into the desert to dream of cities that didn’t infringe on the wilderness.
Well-trained in the Progrès’ latest enthusiasms, students and professors are militant about things far away, but to cite a young German student I met in yet another train station, “By the second racism class I began to suspect I was being swindled out of an education.”
My new friends gestured at the world outside the bus windows, dreamed of a world they could create – nothing like this. Children of displaced parents, what world are they at home in ? The grand old giants of a flourishing Karlsruhe are all around them but you can’t build like that anymore. You can, however, argue about ‘inclusion’ until you’re blue in the face.
Back to the Bus
What made my new friends’ eyes light up when I showed them photos from Pau, the Bearnais capital near the Spanish border ? Suddenly they were excited. -Hey, that’s good! That’s a crazy house. Even the hotel on the hillside won their approval, as if they’d never seen Art-Deco before. Structures defined by their individuality, within the bounds of tradition, French or modern; abundant room for idiosyncrasy and invention; houses both forceful and charming; and, my suspicion, the Southern lifestyle, which maybe they can relate to, so different from the industrious, Protestant North.
You can see more images of Strasbourg and Pau in a separate post for paid subscribers a little later this morning. I must reward my most faithful!
Ungrand Finale
Fell out of the text above:
Old tales ! What the Strasbourgeois call the Devil’s Corner at the back of their cathedral where the wind plays havoc all winter long. And: the Devil was on his morning stroll when he noticed his portrait in stone near the front porticos. There I am, he said. Busy tempting angels like always. They made me look pretty good! Any more like that inside ? he wondered. He strolled in and stayed for the winter. So goes the legend.