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Photos:
1. The palace
2. Cyclists at the palace
3. On the Promenade near the palace
4. Cyclists by the newly re-planted linden trees
5. More cyclists on this section of the Promenade
If you follow the Promenade around to its western side you come to the Palace, which was built from 1767 to 1787 as the Residence for the "Prince-Bishops" who ruled this region at the time.
Like everything else in Münster, the Palace was badly damaged by bombs during the Second World War. But it has since been rebuilt and now houses the administration of Münster University, known officially as the Westphalian Wilhelms University or WWU.
This side of the Promenade used to have big old 18th century linden trees just like the rest of it, until on January 18, 2007, a hurricane named "Kyrill" came through here and uprooted two hundred of the old trees in just a few minutes. In the autumn of the same year there was an initiative in which people planted new trees of the same sort, as you can see in my third and fourth photos. So after a few decades this part of the promenade will again look just as nice as the rest of it, especially if they manage to get rid of the ugly parking lot in the background. Leave a Comment
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Photos:
1. Cyclists on the Promenade
2. Cyclist and in-line skater on the Promenade
Where the old city fortifications used to be there is now a green "Promenade" that goes all around the city center and is reserved for pedestrians and cyclists (and in-line skaters, as in my second photo).
The total length is four and a half kilometers, and it is a practically uninterrupted circle. The only exception is that at one point near the palace there is a courthouse right in the way of where the Promenade ought to go, but you can just ride your bike around the courthouse to the right and you're soon back on the Promenade again.
Sometimes they count the number of cyclists on the Promenade, and they have counted up to 1200 per hour.
The trees along the Promenade are lime trees or linden trees of the type known officially by their Latin name talia cordata, in German "Winter-Linde" or "Stein-Linde". These trees were planted here towards the end of the 18th century, and where they are still intact they make the Promenade very attractive. Where they're not, the people have made a big project of replanting them (see the tip after next). Leave a Comment
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Photos:
1. Friedensaal
2. The chimney
3. The golden rooster
Münster was one of two cities -- the other being nearby Osnabrück -- where the peace treaties were negotiated and signed to bring an end to the Thirty Years' War that had ravaged Germany, or what is now Germany, from 1618 to 1648.
The Hall of Peace in the Münster Town Hall is where some of the negotiations took place, over a period of five years, before the final treaties were signed (not in this room) on October 24, 1648. The negotiations were long and difficult, with 109 delegations taking part at one time or another, but the end result was that for the first time in European history a major war was ended by diplomacy, not military surrender.
Münster had about 100,000 inhabitants in those days, and had to house and feed roughly the same number of visitors from all those delegations -- which must have been quite a strain, but the advantage was that Münster was declared a neutral city for the duration of the peace talks, so it was not the site of any battles during the final years of the war. Leave a Comment
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Photos:
1. An old façade in the new theater
2. Old brick wall in a new courtyard
3. Trees through the old windows
4. New theater behind the old wall
Münster's old Lortzing-Theater (named after the composer Albert Lortzing, who was active as an actor and singer in Münster from 1826 to 1833) was destroyed in the bombings of World War II.
After the war it was decided not to reconstruct the old theater. Instead, four architects were commissioned to design and build a new one. I had actually heard of one of these architects, namely Werner Ruhnau, since he was the one who later built the opera house "MiR" in Gelsenkirchen.
When I was in Gelsenkirchen in 2007 I saw a very interesting exhibition on Werner Ruhnau, who was influenced not only by the Bauhaus movement of the 1920s but also by the medieval Bauhütte, which was a sort of clandestine builder's guild with its own laws, courts and secrets. Ruhnau's conclusion from his study of the Bauhütte was that a team of architects and artists should work together on a large building, and that they should all live together on the construction site.
In Münster it turned out that on the site of the destroyed theater one wall of the old building was still standing. Instead of tearing down that remaining wall, the architects decided to preserve it and incorporate it into their new theater. So the old wall is still there today, as sort of a conversation piece in the courtyard of the modern building.
The new theater, with 955 seats, was opened in 1954. Leave a Comment
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The word Zwinger in German means a dungeon, for people, or a kennel, for dogs, or the outer wall of a fortress.
The Zwinger in Münster is a round building from the early 16th century which now looks quite picturesque when you ride by it on the Promenade, but under the Nazis it was used first as a meeting place for the Hitler Youth and later as a prison and execution site by the Gestapo.
Towards the end of the Second World War the Zwinger was damaged by bombs, but it has since been restored and is now maintained as a memorial for the victims of violence and oppression. Leave a Comment
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Photos:
1. Aasee
2. Cyclist near the Aasee
3. Another cyclist (two in fact)
Lake Aa is an artificial lake near the center of Münster that was first made in the 1920s as a flood control measure, and later expanded in the 1970s.
It looks fine and is a great place to cycle around. Also it is good for sailing, but not for swimming, in fact swimming is forbidden because of the poor water quality, which is caused especially by the fact that the River Aa flows through intensively fertilized farmland before emptying into the lake.
There have been various attempts to improve the water quality of the lake, and some people are under the impression that they will be able to swim there in 2010, but from what I have read about it I don't think I will join them, since there are plenty of other places to swim that don't have contaminated water. Leave a Comment
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Photos:
1. Münster Town Hall at night
2. Inside the Town Hall
3. Town Hall from a block away
4. Prinzipalmarkt
5. Cyclists near the Town Hall
Münster's Town Hall dates from the fourteenth century. The building was begun around 1320, but has been added to and rearranged numerous times over the centuries.
In the Second World War the Town Hall was largely destroyed, but it was re-built during the 1950s and is still used for some of the city offices.
The square in front of the Town Hall is called Prinzipalmarkt and is mostly carfree (except for the occasional delivery van), so it can be used safely by pedestrians and cyclists. Leave a Comment
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Photos:
1. Picasso Graphics Museum
2. Café with Helmut Newton poster
3. Street entrance with cyclists
4. Cyclists near the Picasso Museum
5. Cyclist by the Picasso Museum bus stop
This museum claims to have a nearly complete collection of the lithographic works of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), but they do not have them all on display at once. Only a few rooms of the museum actually show Picasso's graphics, and these are rotated periodically on an "A-Z" basis. When I was there they were showing "C" for "Corrida", meaning lithographs having to do with bullfighting.
The rest of the six hundred square meters of display space are devoted mainly to special exhibitions -- when I was there they were showing some of the large erotic photographs by Helmut Newton (1920-2004), who turns out to have been born in Berlin under the name of Helmut Neustädter. He fled from Germany just in time to escape from the Nazis, and changed his name to Helmut Newton after becoming an Australian citizen.
Unfortunately I was there too soon to see the next exhibition, which was called "The Future of the Past" and dealt with "Modern Photography in the 19th Century".
The museum is open Tuesday - Sunday and holidays from 10:00 to 18:00. Leave a Comment
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Photos:
1. Singers and conductor applauding the orchestra
2. Opera audience at the Münster City Theater
3. Musicians in the orchestra pit
4. Birds and animals taking their bows
5. Program booklet for The Cunning Little Vixen (in German Das schlaue Füchslein)
Unlike Mozart, who started writing operas when he was eleven, Leos Janacek got off to a late start as an opera composer. His first really successful opera, Jenufa, didn't come out until he was fifty, and he really hit his stride between the ages of sixty-six and seventy-four when he composed The Excursions of Mr. Broucek, Katja Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Macropulous Case and From the House of the Dead. (All of these are still performed, and I have seen them all except Macropulous.)
Janacek made a habit of sitting in the park in his home city of Brno and noting down what people said in everyday conversation, not only the words but also the language rhythms and melodies. He used these notes when he composed his operas, so his music closely follows the rhythms of the Czech language. For this reason his operas are often performed in the original Czech, even in places like Frankfurt am Main where hardly anyone in the cast or audience speaks or understands this language.
In Münster, however, The Cunning Little Vixen was sung in German.
While he was composing The Cunning Little Vixen, Janacek not only listened to people speaking Czech, but also went out to the woods and noted down various sounds that he heard, in musical notation, so in this opera the instruments in the orchestra often imitate woodsy and animal sounds.
I'm listening to a recording of The Cunning Little Vixen as I write this, and it's very nice. Janacek is not at all a "difficult" composer, despite what a lot of people here in Germany seem to think. Leave a Comment Address: Neubrückenstraße 63, 48143 MünsterPhone: 02 51/ 59 09 - 0Directions: GPS 51°57'53.03" North; 7°37'43.97" EastWebsite: http://www.leosjanacek.co.uk/
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The historical centre of the city and its main sight - the Cathedral (Dom St. Paulus), which construction was conducted basically in the XIII century. Monumental figures of 12 apostles and sacred in the entrance of the Cathedral were also created during the same period. According a legend, the Cathedral was constructed on the same place where the founder of the city, the missionary Sacred Ludgery, had put the first church in the VIII century.
The monastery grew up around the church. Then a settlement was formed around of the monastery. The monastery and the settlement still referred to as a Latin word «monasterium» which locals altered, and the modern name of the city - Muenster turned out.
As well as all the churches of the medieval Europe, the Cathedral was under construction, altered and decorated on an extent of all its life. Romance style dominated over the XIII century in Europe. Its basic features were heavy towers, rounded off windows, validity and some ponderousness. Therefore the Cathedral was constructed in this style. Then the gothic style came on change to the Romance style. Lacy Gothic portals torn upwards were put to the Cathedral. Then the baroque was in fashion. There was a magnificent baroque faculty in the Cathedral.
Very charming alloy of styles and epoch, some kind of a book with pictures from history of the European architecture turned out as a result.
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on June 8, 2009
on December 15, 2006
