Steve Mueller's Digital Scrapbook

Europe 2002

Friday May 10
Frankfurt, Germany

Finally! After more than a year of planning and anticipation, we were back in Germany. Although we quickly cleared customs and immigration, we promptly boarded the wrong train in a hurried effort to get to our hotel. After returning to the airport and selecting a second train more carefully, we realized that we were on the correct train the first time. Our confusion was understandable. While it was only 7:00 am in Frankfurt, it was 11:00 pm in Colorado, and we had been awake for 20 hours. We eventually arrived at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and spent the next forty minutes wandering around the neighborhood before discovering that our hotel was literally across the street from the point that we initially exited the station. Fortunately, the hotel had a room ready for us despite the fact that was only 8:30 in the morning. After sleeping for four or five hours we forced ourselves to get up and see the town. Frankfurt For most travelers to Germany, Frankfurt is nothing more than a convenient place to enter and leave the country. If it were not for the relatively inexpensive roundtrip airfare to Frankfurt, which has one of the busiest airports in the world, it is unlikely that we would have found ourselves in what is widely regarded as one of Europe's least interesting cities. While our travel books enthusiastically praise so many other German destinations, Frankfurt is, at best, given a perfunctory discussion of dining and lodging. At worst, blunt recommendations are issued to avoid the city entirely. Despite the negative publicity, our instinct to explore demanded that we determine for ourselves whether or not this town had anything to offer. We took the subway to the Römerberg, which is the historic center of Frankfurt. It should be noted that very little of Frankfurt is historically authentic. The Altstatd (old town) was severely damaged during an Allied bombing raid on March 22, 1944. By a peculiar coincidence, this was the 112^th anniversary of the death of Goethe, Frankfurt's most famous citizen. Large sections of the city were also destroyed in the Thirty Years War, a 17^th century Catholic-Protestant conflict, and the Napoleonic conquests of the early 19^th century. The greatest consequence of this destruction is that modern Frankfurt bears little resemblance to its pre-World War II appearance. Most of the city was simply built over with no regard to what existed before. The Römerberg is one of the few areas that was carefully reconstructed. In addition to the half-timbered houses that line the eastern side of the square, the Emperor's Hall and the Old Church of St Nicholas have been accurately restored, complete with faded paint and crooked window frames. Despite these attempts, I could not suppress a sense that this city is historically sterile. Although the location of these structures has some historic significance, the buildings themselves are no more authentic than Disneyland's Cinderella Castle. The symbol of the Römerberg, and perhaps the entire city, is the Fountain of Justice, a Renaissance-period statue that miraculously survived the destruction of Frankfurt. With the Fountain of Justice as a centerpiece, the Römerberg is a natural setting for a wide variety of political rallies. When we arrived, a pro-Israel event was in progress. We also visited the Eschenheimer Tower, which is one of the few historically authentic structures in Frankfurt. Part of the medieval town fortifications, this tower was constructed in the 15^th century and narrowly escaped destruction when the city fortifications were dismantled in the 19^th century and again during the Second World War. The trade fairs for which Frankfurt is renowned date from the 12^th century, and are directly responsible for transforming this city into the undisputed financial capital of Germany. Modern Frankfurt has the highest concentration of skyscrapers, as well as the most popular shopping district, in Germany. The history of the Zeil shopping district dates from the middle ages, and includes the opening, in 1907, of Frankfurt's first department store. Although we were excited to be back in Germany, Frankfurt was just a staging ground- a place to recuperate from our trans-Atlantic flight before hitting the Autobahn. Frankfurt represents the future of Germany, not the past. We came to Europe in search of history and quickly confirmed that there is very little of it here. The next day, however, we would visit a town whose well preserved history extends back nearly 1000 years. We could hardly wait.
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