Erfurt

View of Erfurt from The Schedelsche World Chronical (Nuremberg, 1493)

Back in the former GDR

with a laptop

and no internet access.

From Magdeburg

I took the local train this morning

past rolling hills

dark furrows

windmills all around.

Walls crumbling,

whole rows of warehouses

worn shaggy and tufted.

We stopped at every little town,

names I could not find on my map

nor show the old man going to Hettstedt.

He wanted some change for a cola

and told me his brother was going to pick him up at the station.

I can can see inside all these little towns

past the church towers and house corners,

the wooden crossbeams,

old people in their little gardens

and cars waiting at the crossing.

When I last looked back,

the old man was walking off the platform alone.

In Stassfurt the shoulders of new windmills

lie among the old walls

and weeds clawing at the edges.

We moved past more fields

and deer looking over their shoulders.

Stops at Guesten, Sandersleben, Hettstedt, Kloster Mansfeld, Riesstedt, Sangerhausen, Oberroeblingen, Voigtstedt, Artern, Bretleben, Heldrungen (past a dam/waterfall), Etzleben, Griefstedt, Leubingen and Soemmererda.

Workers' Paradise

From the train station I caught the tram to south part of town, past the state parliament building, the unemployment center, the ice hall and the soccer stadium to the room I had rented.

The doorman told me to come back if I needed things for the apartment.
He locked his office door and took me down the long hallway past the old lecture halls. I asked him what this building once was.

In the front lobby there is a huge mural.

Was this place a vocational school?

No, he replied. It was school for the Party.

For the SED in all of Thueringen?, I asked.

For all of East Germany, he claimed.

(Bezirksparteischule)

It was a giant building, he went on: heavily secured with military personnel; lecture rooms in the front; several basement levels including bunkers for atomic attacks and residential spaces for the students, Party cadres in one month programs. With everything they needed: barbers, health clinic, even a bowling alley. He opened a door to a room in the back and showed me shelves full of pots and pans, dishes (with the East German logo, glasses and silverware anything I wanted just leave it in my room before I go.

I like Erfurt. It has an old, dynamic and green city core. The old town sits on some of the old crossroads between east and west and it was known for its production and trade in a blue pigment made from the woad plant (Waid) and known for other herbal properties and uses.

Erfurt has one of the oldest German universities (although there was a major break in continuity up until Reunification) and once had a prosperous Jewish community. Martin Luther studied here as a young Augustiner Monk. Napoleon inspected the Petersburg fortifications as part of his visit with Goethe in nearby Weimar.

In the mid 19th century, the city began an extensive urban canal project to shape the course of the Gera around and through the city. Erfurt also began to industrialize like many similar sized towns in the region, but it also developed successful horticulture and gardening industries, known for garden plant seeds and watercress.

Much of that industry is gone now. In between the world wars, Erfurt industry, although robust and diverse, would become most known for Topf and Sons (looking for an English version; German-speakers, see also Holocaust und Moderne). They started as a firm that made industrial furnaces and brewing equipment in the late 19th century. Around the First World War they began supplying mortuaries with industrial crematoria and the accessories like urns and plaques. The sons joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and their engineers instructed the SS on the use of their ovens and ventilations systems for the Final Solution and death camps,. The company's engineers could little plumes rising up valley on a clear day in the late years of the Second World War above town of Weimar from their drafting tables. The Soviets found the company's nameplates and knew to start looking for the Topf brothers in Erfurt. This story brings up interesting points for modern students, but more on the history in another post.

Erfurt suffered damage from aerial bombings, but not as extensively as most other cities in Germany. The Soviets and their East German communist compatriots spent forty years giving the town a Stalinist belt of public housing projects, but much of the town remained has it had been at mid century.

Since reunification in 1989/90, Erfurt has bloomed, unlike many small towns and cities in East Germany. It has that old historical center and tourists as a good starting base. There is still a robust agricultural economy and there is a new university with a beautiful library north of the city. In the old town, much has been renovated and modern architectural structures are tucked amongst the old buildings, lined with shops, cafes, bakeries and butchers.

Compared to Berlin, this place is quaint. Most of the outlying suburbs wind their ways along the trams to the center, known as the Anger. I have been taking walks up in the Steigerwald Forest near my apartment and when I am working at the municipal archives in the old town or the new library, I make my way to the Gera and its many pathways for my walks.