In terms of walking, this week has been lousy. It was largely grey, cold, wet and/or icy underfoot, and the precious few moments the sun came through were during the busiest times at work.
By Thursday, I was getting stir-crazy and simply HAD to go walking. I finished work as soon as I had completed my most pressing tasks, which was at about 3:30 in the afternoon (after I'd been at my desk since 6:30 in the morning, with just an average lunch break), giving me 1 1/2 hours until sunset and almost 2 hours until darkness.
My first impulse was to walk to Benningen, but as I reached the first crossroads, instead of turning left I went right, suddenly wanting to go to Kornwestheim, where I'd not been in a while.
Once there, equally on a whim I decided to visit the cemetery, where I'd not been in probably a couple of years.
Kornwestheim is where my maternal grandmother lived until she married my grandfather, and her mother - my great-grandmother - still lived there until her death in the early 1970s. Many times during my childhood, we went to see our great-grandmother, and I suppose it was some time after her death that my Mum or my Grandma (or both) took me along when they went to the cemetery to look after the family grave.
In my memory, it was always sunny and warm, which makes sense - on rainy days, there would have been no point in going there, as the flowers and other plants on the grave didn't need watering then.
I also half remembered a huge white statue placed rather prominently on a bit of open green in the cemetery, and how that statue used to impress and attract me. To my little girl's mind, it was Jesus, someone absolutely good and trustworthy.
Walking the paths on the cemetery now, I did not see the statue in between the bare trees and sad looking tombstones, and was beginning to wonder whether I had either imagined it (we all know that the human mind has a funny way with memories) or the statue had been removed.
Instead, I went to the columbarium, knowing exactly where that was, and looked at the compartment that holds the urns of my Mum's parents.
As I walked away from that site, intent on going right and leaving the cemetery by its main gate, for some reason I looked left - and spotted the statue not far away, still at its rather prominent site, and of course I had a closer look.
The reasons why I had not seen it before were that a) it was nowhere near as huge as I remembered (I was a little girl then, and it's a common effect that we remember things like a certain house, a tree, a street etc. much bigger from childhood than what they are to adult eyes), and b) it was not white but a dull grey, with darker grey on top, where no doubt some moss or lichen has formed over the years.
Still, it was the statue I remembered, and on approaching, I saw a fairly new information board nearby. It proved me wrong once more: The statue was not Jesus at all, but a widow and an orphaned child, the child being more or less my height (I'm roughly 1,74 m/5'7" tall).
The statue was erected in 1959 to mark this particular part of the cemetery, dedicated to the graves and memories of the people who died or went missing in the two world wars. The grieving mother raises her arms, asking for peace and to remind us of the dead, appealing to present and future generations to prevent war.
Albrecht Kneer, the sculptor, was 36 when the statue was erected. Born in 1923, he was a child at a time when Germany was still struggling with the aftermath of WWI, and 25 years old at the outbreak of WWII. Like many others of his generation, he must have seen or experienced unspeakable horrors, and a lot of his sadness and despair over the wars must have gone into his work.
One thing I remembered about the statue was right, though: Its whiteness. The material is called Muschelkalk in German; I have found various translations for it in English: coquina; lacustrine limestone; shell limestone or shell lime. For coquina, the website "Geology Science" has a picture that goes well with the idea of the white statue that I remember, but of course it has weathered to grey now.
In any case, I was quite deeply moved by this unplanned visit to the cemetery and my encounter with a half-forgotten memory.
I can see why, as a child, you took that statue to represent Jesus - especially in that cemetery context, and in whiter condition. Now it looks like it could do with a good cleaning... - I too sometimes find my feet taking me another way than I originally had in mind to walk when I set out!
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting that my Mum had no recollection at all of the statue when I told her about my visit to the Kornwestheim cemetery. Of course, when she went there, it was for a specific task, and not to roam and explore like I did when I was a kid.
DeleteI am glad that you rediscovered Albrecht Kneer's memorial statue. It speaks of war hurt and loss that is, I suspect, far less trumpeted in Germany than it is in Great Britain. The style of the sculpture is interesting - somehow harking back to the 1930s. The child's head hangs down as the adult's arms reach up and more years pass by taking us further from the painful conflicts of the twentieth century. No wonder the whiteness has given way to natural discolouration.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, there are war memorials in every village, town and city in Germany, and also memorial places where Jewish synagogues once stood, and Jewish cemeteries as well as soldiers' cemeteries (or paricular areas for those uniform graves on larger cemeteries) - the culture of remembrance is VERY strong in Germany, so much so that at some stage during our school years, I was getting a bit fed up with it being the subject in nearly every lesson in history (where it fitted, of course), ethics/religious instruction, German and others.
DeleteWell - you have educated me a little more this morning. Thank you.
DeleteYou are welcome.
DeleteHow fascinating, to revisit a half-remembered monument. Overall your memory was very accurate! I too would have mistaken that figure for Jesus, especially if I'd seen it first as a child.
ReplyDeleteYes, as a child I was familiar with beautiful stories about Jesus, but I although occasionally, people like my grandparents spoke of the war and in a very abstract way I knew this was something terrible, I never made the connection when I visited this monument at the cemetery.
DeleteWhat an interesting walk you had, Meike. I'm glad you found the statue and explained to us what it was all about.
ReplyDeleteI was glad to finally spot it, as I was beginning to think it was an imagined memory or I had gotten something totally wrong. Well, turns out I did get the meaning of the monument wrong... but it was a pleasant childhood memory.
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