schickrobert: Germany Thursday July 31, 2008

I spent the past two weeks back in Bamberg, working on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project with my two German colleagues, Klaus Bieberstein, who is the professor for Old Testament studies at the University of Bamberg, and Hanswulf Bloedhorn, who came from Tübingen twice for several days of collaborative work. There is still a lot of work to do on this project, and I will probably need to spent a few months back in Germany in mid-2009 to get everything done.

One weekend I traveled to the state of Saxon-Anhalt, going first to Eisleben, the town where Luther was born and died. I toured the two museums at the houses where he was born and died and the main church of St Andreas, but heavy rain killed my enthusiasm for seeing anything else. The next day I spent in Halle. In mid-2007 I had spent a couple of days there using the university library, which is being built up as the main library in Germany for Oriental Studies.

I visited the zoo and the Frankische foundation, a remarkable cluster of buildings established as a charitable educational institution in the 18th century, but first went to the recently reopened pre-history museum to see the Nebra sky disk. This disk was discovered near Halle only a few years ago and was such a spectacular find that it prompted the renovation of the museum to have an adequate place to house it. The disk dates to prior to 1500 B.C. and can be used to determine sunrise and sunset on the winter and summer solistices, making it the oldest known astronomical device.

The Nebra sky disk

Then during my last days in Germany before my new adventure in Saudi Arabia, I travelled to Kassel in Niedersaxon to see the famous gardens at Wilhelmshöhe. These extensive gardens in the English style with fountains and water cascades were built by the megalomaniacal rulers in the 18th and early 19th centuries and are so excessive that they have made the list of UNESCO world heritage sites. The rulers had wanted to built a three-kilometer stretch of water installations down from a hillside along a straight road to the city of Kassel, but they only got the first half kilometer or so done.

The tower with the huge statue of Hercules that crowns the hill top was under renovation, but I toured the palace and the pseudo-medieval fairytale castle from the early 19th century and spent a lot of time walking around enjoying the greenery.