h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hauenstein

One of the main industries in Pirmasens, a small town towards the North of the Palatinate, is the manufacture of shoes. When things were going well for the industry, it spread to the little village of Hauenstein, right in the woods.

(Pronounced How 'n shtine. I won't go into the dialect pronunciation.)

Why exactly shoes were made here, I haven't been able to find out. It's not as if there were loads of cows or other leather-providing animals around. Or even an abundance of tanners. But the skills for shoe-making must have been there, and so an industry was born. (Cue puns based on "a load of cobblers")

From the 1880's to the First World War, the village, thanks to the shoe industry, thrived. To this day, the village keeps its tagline "The Shoe village" and houses a conglomeration of shoe outlet shops and a Shoe Museum with some strange exhibits of very large and very small shoes, historical shoes, back as far as Roman times, and tools of the trade. In the village square there is a sculpture of shoemakers at work, and every so often (it's supposed to be every four years) a "Schuhprinzessin" - Shoe Princess - is elected.

These "Princesses" - we may come across the "Wine Princess" later on - are not just picked for being pretty, but they have to have a substantial knowledge of their subject and usually have grown up in the industry. One or two other villages dotted about Germany have their own "Schuprinzess" and one of them is then elected as their "Queen".

And why should you go to Hauenstein? It's in the middle of the Forest and is a landmark on many a hiking route. Other stopping places nearby consist mainly of large sandstone rocks which have marked the way for hikers and travellers for centuries, each with their quirky names. The air is refreshing, and it is far from the main roads. For some, these may be reasons to go, for others they may be reasons to stay away.

Rock-climbing has joined hiking as a favourite sport in that part of the world, and mountain biking, although it has now gone out of favour somewhat, is also a way of getting from A to B through the woods, just for the fun of it.

The little river that flows through Hauenstein is called the "Queich" - might be useful to remember that for party games, when you're asked to name a river beginning with "Q".

Were the tanners there because of oak forests? Tannin can be gotten from leaching acorns.

[Amy P]

TC - these journals are really interesting. Are you going to turn them all into entries?

Deb

Reddit

Is there still a huge difference in German dialects? I'm reading a book about Bach that says, being born in Eisenach, his dialect would have been so strong as to make him incomprehensible to his exact contemporary Handel, born 40 miles away in Halle.

Excellent book by the way: 'Music in the Castle of Heaven' by John Eliot Gardiner.

not incomprehensible - but they speak a form of Plattdeutsch about 25kms away from here that I couldn't understand when we first moved there (I thought they were speaking Dutch).

If you took someone from the wilds of the Schleswig Holstein, and had them speak to a native of Bayern, each in their own dialect, I suspect it would be difficult for them. But not 40kms away.

Bach longed to meet Handel, but Handel did not want to meet Bach.

I once saw a whole play based on a fictitious meeting between the two. It was very interesting and not only on the level of music history but also because it was allegorical for all rivalries of this sort: Händel wrote for money, Bach wrote from love of music and simply because he couldn't stop creating.

Interesting that they both enjoy longevity and popularity in fairly equal amounts.

oh I don't know - JS Bach worked at St Thomas' Leipzig for years and wrote cantata after cantata to be performed at Sunday services throughout the year (or so I learned in music history) that can't have all been for love

although i can imagine that the Coffee Cantata wasn't for money

Bach also accepted money gladly! He got a particularly handsome payment for the Goldberg Variations, and he did apply for a job where he would have had the opportunity to write operas.

It seems the only reason he didn't write any operas was that he never got the chance. And although Handel was famous in his time, Bach was not. When he got his final job as Kantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, he was not the first choice, nor even the second.

The first choice, Telemann, and the second, Graupner (who??) both turned down the job because it involved teaching Latin in the school.

Accepting Bach, Councillor Platz said that, as the best men could not be got, they must make do with the mediocre.

Bach agreed to pay a deputy to teach the Latin.

Bach's contract specified that he write no operas. Some of the townspeople may have suspected that "Saint Matthew Passion" was an opera in liturgical garb, but technically it was not. Bach's youngest son, Johann Christian, had no use for such limits. He was 15 when J.S. died, and he revolted against much of the family heritage. He converted to Catholicism, wrote abundant operas, and travelled freely.