Mainz All Mine

 OK. There's hubris and there's trying to explain the history of Franco-German border relations in one blog post. The place that spurred the question of the title was the Niederwald Memorial in Rudesheim, Germany, a 38-meter statue that looks out over the Rhine. In yet another post on the topic, I had pondered the angels of Germany, both on the Rhine and in the capital city .  But I had never gotten to the statue of Germania that reigns above the angel of war and the angel of peace. Germania appears here as a strong woman, stout with strong arms: a working woman, not a woman of the court. Her gaze is stern, unlike the Statue of Liberty (which stands twice as high), she signals warning, not welcome.  Her right arm holds up a jeweled crown--on her head she wears a wreath of oak leaves, symbols of the heroism she embodies . Her left hand grips a longsword. If you look closely, there is also an olive branch held along with the sword's pommel in her left hand. On her chest ...

Whose Rhine is it? It's a simple question--an easy one to get wrong, and kings, emperors and dictators have spilled enough blood over the centuries in answer to that question to fill the damned river with blood, from Basel to Rotterdam. From my reading of history, there are two wrong answers to the question: 1. It is the northwestern border of France. 2. It is a German river. Yet these answers have been applied over and over again. Much to the destruction and re-destruction of towns like Mainz along the river, and to the deaths of soldiers from far and near. Let's look at a few examples. Lessons from History The first to see the Rhine as a northern border were the Romans, who fortified cities on the west bank of the river like Cologne, Koblenz, and Mainz. The lands to the east were a rich source of trade, but after an attempt to push the borders of the empire to the Elbe resulted in a disasterous defeate in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, the Rhine became a border, and it stayed ...

On Monday, the Pfingsten holiday, my hosts took me on a trip to Rudesheim. We walked through town on the main street, zipped up through the Drosselgasse (soberly avoiding the temptation of the wine and ice cream shops) and found ourselves at the Seilbahn (cable car), on which we glided above vineyards to witness one of the most beautiful views the Rhineland has to offer. At the Niederwald statue there, I found myself gazing at an angel.  I could tell she was an angel by her huge wings and her soft features. She had long hair (it was always long in the illustrated Bible stories I remember from childhood--and always blonde, too). She was crowned with rosebuds. In her left hand she held a Horn of Plenty, with fruits and grains always ripe. With her right hand, she offered an olive branch.  It was a beautiful offering, she was beautiful. But there was another angel at the other side of Germania's base: a male angel with a rather different aspect. I knew he was an angel by the wing...