Today is our last day at the cottage and will return home tomorrow. It has been a great 2 weeks and the weather has been generally warm and sunny.
Cavendish National Park
Here are some nice photos the first one is the old Roman road known as the Via Flaminia which was in antiquity an highway into Rome proper and entering the City at Piazza del Popolo. The modern Via Flaminia is on top of the ancient road, and turns into a city streets once it crosses the Milvian Bridge.
Nice to see the old pavement and the quality of roman construction.
This photo shows the Museum Island in central Berlin and the park surrounded by a colonnade next to the Lutheran Cathedral of Berlin. A peaceful area of the city made for walking.Here is another shot this time taken from the roof of the Imperial City Palace in Berlin known today as the Humboldt Forum. The Lutheran Cathedral was heavily damaged in 1944-45. It has been restored completely as it was before the war. The crypt is interesting to see, where the coffins of the members of the old Prussian Royal family are kept. The inside of the church also has the old balcony with pews for the Kaiser and his family came to worship and a special section for the diplomatic corps. The lantern of the dome is modern, the communist regime did not want to rebuild it as it was before the war.
Well today more development in Berlin on the final touches of the Berlin Palace.
Above the main gate Portal III, the second and last bronze inscription in Latin was hoisted and installed. It refers to the expansion of the Palace at the time of the proclamation of the new Kingdom of Prussia by its Prince Elector Frederick I. He was truly a prince of the baroque age in everything he did, his reign saw the promotion of the Arts and Culture in a lavish display. The political ideology of European Princes was to promote themselves by protecting and promoting the work of the best artists, painters, musicians, artisans, dancers, etc. Every Prince worth their salt pursue this line of politics in a rivalry with other Princes. The Baroque age or the age of Princes starts around 1550 and will end around 1740.
However there was a limit, you could do it as long as you did not make waves against more powerful princes like the Holy Roman Emperor in 1700 this was Charles VI of Austria and Hungary. The Emperor did not agree with the creation of this new Kingdom, but he did not protest too much as long as the Prince of Prussia did not try to expand his territory. The Title Prince Elector refers to the fact that the Emperor was elected by other Princes forming a league with them. There was jockeying for this title, it referred to Charlemagne who created the position and to his Crown. Austria will hold the title for a long time until Napoleon forces the issue and the title is abolished around 1810.
Here are some photos of today as the final tablet is put up. Latin and French had become the language of the powerful and educated.
Here are some photos to allow you to compare what was left of the Palace in 1945 and today in the final stage of reconstruction.
June 1945 the war in Europe is over and the Berlin Palace is nothing more than a ruin, to be destroyed by the Communist regime of East Germany in 1958.AUGUST 2022, the palace is now known as the Humboldt Forum, a new museum. The Coast of Arms will hang in the middle and will be installed next month.With the inscription tablets, on the left is Low German of the 15th Century, on the right in Latin of the 18th Century.
The title refers to Low German spoken in Northern Germany and a common language amongst the merchant of the Hanseatic League in the 15th century. It is still spoken amongst the Mennonite in Canada and elsewhere. It is not the common German language of today. Tomorrow two tablets are being installed over the main Portal of the Palace in Berlin. When I first saw them I tried to read them but could not understand the phraseology or wording.
So I looked up in various dictionary trying to find an explanation and fell on Low German. The text refers to a decree by Friedrich II, Prince Elector of Brandenburg who lived between 1413-1471 and ruled over the State of Brandenburg where Berlin is located. He had the first castle built in 1443 on the site of the current Palace. The Bronze depiction below the inscription shows him with the corner stone of the edifice.
The second bronze tablet is dedicated to Fridericus I who lived between 1657-1713 as the first King of Prussia who remodelled the palace and made it into a royal residence. This first King of Prussia was the grandfather of Frederick II the Great who was born on the second floor of the palace in 1712 and would die at Sans Souci in 1786. The Palace was heavily damaged in 1944 and the ruins were blown up by the communist in 1958 to make way for a parking lot for buses.
All the work on this building was financed by public donations.
On the left side we can now see the bronze textual plaque affixed to the Portal III. The second Bronze inscription will be affixed probably tomorrow. All that is missing now is the great Coat of Arms of Prussia above the main door. There are 6 hooks imbedded in the stone facade wall to keep it up there. This would complete the main portal of the Palace as it was before 1939. The text glorifies the Princes of the House of Hohenzollern who ruled for 800 years over Brandenburg and then Prussia and finally a unified German State. This inscription speaks of Prince Elector of Brandenburg Friedrich II who stand over the laying of the Palace corner stone. The inscription says, He willed this to be made.
Roman Mosaic at the baths of Caracalla in Rome. All the floors where done in such intricate mosaic including the pools which were not more than waist deep. To see such work today, I marvel at the craftsmanship. In the middle you can see the figure of Neptune on his chariot of 4 seahorses.
The Brandenburg gate at Christmas in Berlin. The Formal entrance to the Royal Quarter in Berlin and leads to the Palace at the end of the avenue. The gate is on Pariser Platz so named for the French Embassy which occupies the South Side of the square.
The gate was built in 1791 to celebrate the restoration of peace on the order of King Frederick-William II who was the nephew of Frederick II the Great.
The New German Chancery in Berlin, built by architects Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank in 1997. It is the seat of the Chancellor of Germany, the Office space and Residence. It sits across the Spree River from the Bundestag in Berlin. It is a very light and airy building.
Photo taken from the Palace Bridge on the left is the Lust Garden and the museum Island.
The Museums which hold the Royal Prussian Art Collection were restored by British Architect David Chipperfield. At the back of the photo you can see the newest museum opened in 2019 named after James Simon, 1855-1932 a German entrepreneur, philanthropist, a great art collector and a friend of the Kaiser Wilhelm II. When he died he left his collection of 10,000 Art pieces to the German Museums. Simon was the owner of the famous Nefertiti bust which can be seen in a specially designed room of the museum. I saw it and it is as if Nefertiti will speak, it is so beautiful.
This is my favourite store in West Berlin, KaDeWe or Kaufhaus des Westens. It is a great store and you always find truly beautiful things to buy, clothing, watches, shoes, jewellery, shoes, etc… The restaurant on the roof is wonderful and elegant.
The House of the City Commandant or Kommandatur at no.1 Unter den Linden in Berlin. Next door to the Crown Prince Palais. It is the former headquarter of the city’s commandant. It was built in 1654 and renovated from 1873 to 1874 in Renaissance Revival style. Today it is the HQ of the German Printing Company Bertelsmann.
This morning I was at the memorial service at the Basilica for a friend who went through the assisted suicide procedure. As I was listening to the Service and this dawns on me each time, the prayers and sayings for Catholics or Christians in general are the same as those for Muslim in Islam. The similarities are present, same commandments, same teachings. This is why I find it so strange when I hear people making derogatory remarks about Islam. Ignorance of the other.
I was looking at a little info video on the Bundesrat in Berlin, it’s an imposing building in the centre of the City. It was built for the Prussian House of Lords under the German Empire. It sits on the site of the former mansion of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family on Leipziger Strasse. It stood on this site until about 1900, when it was sold to make way for the Prussian House of Lords. This is the house were Felix lived and composed the Mid-Summer Nights Dream Music.
Bundesrat today is the seat of the 16 German Lander or Provinces. The building was severely damaged in 1944. Renovated and modernized it keeps only some decorative elements of its past. An interesting fact, in memory of Felix Mendelssohn at the opening of each session to call the delegates to the session, the overture to a Mid-Summer Nights Dream is played in the building.
Joe Rogan called Canada a Communist Country run by a dictator. How ignorant can anyone be. We do live in the age of ignorance, it has become a virtue. I do not really know who Joe is, but he has made a career of saying stupid things. Obviously he has no idea what a dictatorship is and Justin Trudeau does not fit that definition at all. As for Canada being a Communist country, well gee that is what I say to myself everyday, I am so happy to live in a police state just like North Korea. This explains all those American Communist sympathizers who come here to vacation or live.
Speaking of Prime Minister Trudeau, you know the dictator, this past weekend he had his haircut short and donated the trimmings to the Cancer society who make wigs for people who lost their hair to chemo treatment. He then went on to lead a Carnival of Children in Toronto as part of Caribbana (Caribbean) Festival held in the Summer. Then he went to a Summer Camp and answered questions on Quantum and other science stuff sitting on the ground amongst kids who would ask the questions. He is very good at this stuff and people love him for it.
His new haircut makes him look a lot like his famous father Pierre E. Trudeau who was Prime Minister 40 years ago.
The weather in Europe has been brutal and in the UK approaching 43C absolutely unheard of in England. The photo below taken at Buckingham Palace says it all, do you know how hot it is with the big fur hat and the red wool tunic to stand guard. No one actually lives there at the moment given the great renovation going on inside, electrical and plumbing not done in 90 years. I feel sorry for the grenadier guard.
This being Summer and mid-July we are having some lovely weather on PEI. So far we have avoided completely the scorching heat with an average temp of 24 C. always with a nice breeze. Here are some photos of places I have visited and seen.
In the news from Italy, it was reported that last week a silly American tourist who ignored all warnings decided that he would take a dangerous path up to the crater of Mount Vesuvius above Pompeii. He jumped over fences and gates and reached the summit at 1218 meters or 3996 feet. Vesuvius remains a very active volcano and is far from extinct.
Once on the edge of the crater our tourist wanted to take a selfie and in so doing fell into the crater several meters deep. He was unable to get out and but luckily only had a few bruises. Lucky for him another group of tourist and a guide where in another authorized area and heard his cry. He was rescued by the Italian mountain brigades.
Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples.
Keyholes with a story
In this photo you see the keyhole of the Gate of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, officially the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. The Gate keyhole of the Villa del Priorato di Malta stands on the Aventine Hill. It is the historic seat of the Grand Priory of Rome of the Knights of Malta. By looking through it you can enjoy one of the most evocative views of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, perfectly framed at the bottom of the villa’s garden. The door is rarely open outside of Official business, it houses the Embassy of the Order of Malta to the Italian Republic since 1869. It was in antiquity the site of a Temple and a Festival dedicated to the god Mars and to the Roman Army, called the Armilustrium held in October.
View from the inside the Garden.
Speaking of Domes here is a rather beautiful photo of the Dome of the Berlin Palace at sunset. The Palace is now known as the Humboldt Forum, a museum dedicated to civilizations. The outside is in the original Baroque style while the inside is very stark and modern.
The Ceremonial Entrance to the Berlin Palace in 1930. The Palace was demolished by the Communist in 1958 to make way for a Bus Parking lot. The entire palace has now been re-built and opened as a museum in 2021. The only difference with this photo, the wrought iron gates are gone and replaced by modern glass entrance. The inside courtyard is also very modern now and not as can be seen here. The various bronze inscriptions on the portal sing the praise of the Hohenzollern Dynasty, 1415-1918.
Finally Istanbul, the Suleymaniye Mosque. Sultan Suleyman The Magnificent chose the architect Mimar Sinan to create a mosque in remembrance of his son Shehzade Mehmed. Suleyman was beyond impressed with Sinan’s completion that he decided to have him design a mosque after himself. This mosque would represent the eminence of the Ottoman Empire.
The foundation inscription above the north portal of the mosque is carved in Thuluth script on three marble panels. It gives a foundation date of 1550 and an inauguration date of 1557.
Courtyard of the Suleymaniye Mosque.
Beautiful tyle work and rich colours with verses of the Coran inscribed all around the walls. The dimensions of the rooms are truly gigantic. There is an atmosphere of peace and quiet in this sacred complex.
Well yesterday I went shopping for new jeans because the old ones did not fit me at all, too big now, so on sale they had Levi’s 501 and I got a size 34 which is 2 inches better on my waist. That made my day and shows that the diet works. I am now at 80Kg and hope that by next week I will be at 79kg or my weight of 2011. Met with my nutritionist today and he also coaches fitness training. He suggested that if I did not have a glass of wine with dinner I could easily reach my initial goal. Wine has a lot of calories around 250 per 9 oz glass. If you have 2 glasses which I do then with a meal this makes for a lot of extra calories. I will try it and see what happens. Exercise like walking is also very important. This is my little project.
Canada Day is coming up this Friday and because of the major renovation work at Parliament in Ottawa the festivities have been moved to a large vacant site below the hill called LeBreton Flats by the Outaouais River. I never went to Parliament Hill for the show too many people, upwards of 100K. Here in Charlottetown 1100 km away, I am the BBQ guy for the party at the Club. Looks like we will get nice weather.
Today I stumbled upon this picture in the German Newspaper, Berliner Zeitung. It’s a photo of the Cartouche or great coat of arms that will be placed above portal III of the reconstructed Berlin Palace. It will be made of copper, the photo shows the model to follow. The undamaged original was destroyed by the communist regime of East Germany in 1958.
The artist is Andreas Hoferick on the left with Oleg Bessonov, both are responsible for many sculptures on the rebuilt palace, the cartouche is 8 meters high. The second photo is the middle part which is inserted. It is to be installed in November.
Today I saw this picture of Unter den Linden and looking Eastward towards the City Palace, we see the famous equestrian statue of Frederick II the Great riding his favourite horse Condé.
Named after a French Prince of the time Louis de Bourbon-Condé, this horse was purchased in 1777 at the age of 11 and quickly became the favourite of Frederick II. He would ride him in Potsdam every day and do so until a few weeks before he died. After the King’s death Condé would continue to live a quiet life for many more years dying at 38 in 1804. He was from the Wallach breed, a German breed of riding horse. His skeleton today is at the Veterinary college.
He was according to records, spoiled, Frederick would often put slice of melon and figs in his coat pocket and Condé would come and sniff them out, it amused the King, there was a close familiarity between Condé and Frederick II, that his visitors to Potsdam observed. The same with his dogs, all Whippets, he is buried in the garden of Sans Souci with his dogs, as he stipulated in his will.
To be in Berlin in the Spring, with its parks, lakes and rivers, beautiful restaurants and great museums, concert halls and Opera houses. Maybe one day after this pandemic, we can travel.
Finally today we are having sunshine and mild temp, in the next few days it will go up to 14C, however for the Easter Weekend looks like rain and 6C.
This morning we went to Leonhard’s for breakfast, owned by a swiss german fellow, this café has a very elegant european flair to it, not only in its relaxed and elegant decor but also in the food they serve. All of it is clearly inspired by European cuisine and not the usual North American fair.
I had an omelette with vegetables, it was very fluffy and seasoned just right, something you do not encounter usually in restaurants here. Tables are set with fresh flowers, tulips at this time of the year. You could say that the atmosphere is clean, crisp and relaxed. No background music which is nice. In the summer they have ample boxes of flowers and hanging green plants on the front sidewalk.
We have another German bakery which just opened also on Great George street but on the South side of the Provincial Legislature, again offering a very different fair from all the other restaurants/café in town. More geared towards the local crowd instead of the tourist crowd.
This morning one of the blogs I follow, entitled Berlin Companion featured the National Monument to the Wars of Liberation in Kreuzberg on its 200 Anniversary.
View from Kreuzberg by Johann Heinrich Hintze, 1829 (currently at the Alte Nationalgalerie). The winding road leading to Berlin is today’s Mehringdamm.
For people who have visited the Invalides in Paris, under the dome is the Tomb of Emperor Napoleon, you will probably have noticed the 12 columns in a circle around the tomb, they represent the 12 military campaigns of Napoleon all across Europe over 12 years, basically continuous wars during his reign. The Monument on the Kreuzberg in Berlin also refers to the 12 wars which are named wars of Liberation from French oppression. There are all over Germany, other monuments were built celebrating that liberation from this constant warfare waged by Napoleon in his effort to conquer Europe and appoint himself the new Charlemagne.
This is something very rarely mentioned in history books and certainly never mentioned by French authors who prefer to present Napoleon’s action as a romantic endeavour. However if you follow the historical tread you will see that those wars sowed the seeds for further wars in the 19th century between France and German States and Prussia and after 1870 a unified Germany. It is almost a seesaw effect of trying to correct wrongs. Think 1870 Franco-Prussian War, 1914-1918 and then 1939-1945, in all those conflicts the underlying narrative is revenge, either by Germany or France.
The National Monument on Kreuzberg (Cross Hill) leads down the avenue to Belle-Alliance Platz this alliance/Treaty between Great-Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia created and maintained an army of 600,000 men until such time as Napoleon was completely defeated and overthrown. This Belle-Alliance ultimately led to Waterloo. Since 1945 Belle-Alliance Platz has been renamed Mehring Platz and sadly completely modernized.
On March 30, 1821 – the seventh anniversary of the Prussian charge of Montmartre and of the conquest of Paris, which unavoidably triggered Napoleon’s demise in 1814 – King Friedrich Wilhelm III arrived on top of the Tempelhofer Berg (also known as the Weinberg, soon to be renamed Kreuzberg). The highest natural elevation in what is now central Berlin but back in the days was still part of a district outside the city limits.
Accompanied by an illustrious guest, Russian Tsar Alexander I – Friedrich Wilhelm’s brother-in-arms in the conflict with Napoleon Bonaparte – Prussian monarch came to witness the unveiling of a monument commemorating their victories in what came to be known as the Wars of Liberation, 1802-1814.
As Prussia’s military ally in the wars against Napoleon it was Alexander who prevented the king – as well as the Austrian emperor for he was wavering, too – from making what could have been the biggest mistake in the history of the Coalition: he convinced them to take Paris instead of withdrawing their troops. Now it was time to celebrate these good choices.
National Memorial for Wars of Liberation – a 200-tonne cast-iron tapering structure installed on an octagonal stone base – was the work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Johann Heinrich Strack (who was responsible for the stone base).
Schinkel, supported by several renown contemporary artists with Christian Daniel Rauch as the most prominent among them, created an artwork which truly had everything a memorial of this kind should possess: it was impressive, it was elegant, it was positively oozing with symbols which everybody understood and was happy to see included and, last but not least, it had twelve extremely good-looking statues with faces the crowds back then were often able to recognise.
The memorial’s leitmotiv was a cross: it was a direct reference to a new military decoration introduced by King Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1813 after the Battle of Leipzig: the legendary Eiserne Kreuz, the Iron Cross. The foot of the memorial itself is shaped liked one, too, and you will see the shape repeated from the memorial’s bottom to its very top.
The 200-year-old memorial in Viktoriapark inspired the name of the hill and the neighbourhood.
The Nationaldenkmal am Kreuzberg – truly worth the climb. (Photo by Beata Gontarczyk-Krampe, author of the Berlin Companion.
It seems that the Holiday Season is the season for Sweets of all kinds. You receive them as gifts, you make some to give as a gift or for dessert or to offer to people visiting. Here at our house we have little bags of goodies, full of chocolates and other sweets we give out to guests. Then there are the cakes and pastries, here have another one, but I already had 3, it does not matter who is counting anyway it’s the Holidays.
We have enough sweets to last us until at least Valentines day. It is almost as if because it is the end of the year over eating is a way of saying, you know what, I made it through another year, I deserve a reward especially after 2020!
A few years ago when I worked on the painting exhibit by Canadian War Artists at the Canadian War Museum, I discovered a collection of Canadian paintings numbering about 1000, by Canadian men who had enlisted for the 1914-1918 conflict. Their job was to document the horrors of the battlefield for posterity. These fellows were in many cases painters, 6 of them would go on after the war to form the celebrated Canadian Group of Seven. One of those men was A.Y. Jackson. His paintings of battlefield and ravaged landscape where presented juxtaposed to those of another famous artists Otto Dix who fought against him in the trenches on the German Side. Both men knew each other and respected each others work, lived long lives but unfortunately never met. Otto Dix in Germany created the movement called New Objectivity in painting with his harshly realistic paintings. He quickly fell afoul of the Nazi regime in 1933 and was declared degenerate by their ideological standards. He stayed in Germany but was under house arrest and narrowly avoided the concentration camps.
The group of seven during the years 1919-1933 were painting Canadian Wilderness Landscapes, a first since no one before them had done it. It was new and exciting in the Canadian Art World. What many people do not know is that Max Aitken Lord Beaverbrook not only financed the work of Canadian War Artists but took care of collecting the works. Today this war art collection is mostly in the vaults of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. Some pieces are seen from time to time by the public. The Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton houses the Art collection of Max Aitken, and it is impressive. He had the money and influence to acquire great art and the gallery is celebrated for its works of art. It is currently closed for an expansion project until 2022.
I was looking at yet another architectural project in Berlin. A city that has experienced a renaissance since 1989 with the fall of the Wall. This one is the building of a Museum to Exile, dedicated to all the people forced out in the period 1933-1940 by the policies of the Nazi Regime. Artists, opposition politicians, scientists, academics, musicians, basically anyone who was targeted and told to get out before it was too late.
The new museum to be built with an opening date of 2025 will be located in what use to be the Official Train Station of the German State, Anhalter Bahnhof. All important arrivals and departures from Berlin took place at this train station, the Kaiser used the Anhalter Bahnhof for this purpose and then it was used by the Nazi Regime for welcoming friendly Heads of Government like Italian Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini on his visit to Berlin in 1938. Between 1933 and 1940 it became also the train station used by people forced out, going into exile because they fell afoul of the Nazi Regime, thousands left for other countries in Europe through this station.
Berlin’s Anhalter Bahnhof in 1900.
What is left today of this once large train station in central Berlin.
The station has stood as a ruin for more than 70 years, everything else that was once part of this great building a field of ruin and open land. It is not clear why only the portico survived, but part of the Communist ideology wanted such vestiges to teach people a lesson and East Berlin was until 1990 strewn with such ruins. East Germany occupied by the Russians was full of historical and cultural sites, left mostly abandoned. Cities like Leipzing where J.S.Bach lived and worked suffered greatly at the hands of the East German government who demolished many historical sites they did not like, Dresden and Potsdam are another example of cities re-built to fit the new ideology. What was East Berlin was full of monuments to the past and it too got the bulldozer treatment. On the other hand Nazi building like the Air Ministry of Herman Goering unscathed by the war were re-used and housed Communist party functionaries and Soviet agents. This building today still stands and houses the German Government Social Services dept. it resembles in its design two buildings in Ottawa on Wellington Street, the West and East Memorial Buildings.
The Danish architectural firm of Dorte Mandrup in Copenhagen is now tasked with building the structure that will house the Exil museum, which aims to portray the history of German exile during the Nazi era. It is estimated that half a million people fled Nazi persecution.
The Anhalter Bahnhof station in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district was one of the most important long-distance train stations in Berlin during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic.
After the rise of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power in the spring of 1933, many people left the city using this station. People like Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Klaus Mann, Lotte Laserstein, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Gropius, Billy Wilder.
From 1942, the Nazis used the station to deport Jews to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Many of those emigrants were not allowed to work in their new host countries, or banned from practicing their actual professions. In addition to losing their homes, friends and family, they also lost their cultural and professional identity this way. Many became destitute, and were greeted by rejection and animosity in their new homes.
The construction of the museum will largely be financed by private donations, with costs being estimated to run up to €25 to 30 million ($30 to 35 million).
The New Exil Museum in Berlin, schedule to open in 2025.
Jerry and I get around. In 2011, we moved from the USA to Spain. We now live near Málaga. Jerry y yo nos movemos. En 2011, nos mudamos de EEUU a España. Ahora vivimos cerca de Málaga.
Tutto iniziò con Memorie di Adriano, sulle strade dell'Impero Romano tra foto, storia e mito - It all began with Memoirs of Hadrian, on the roads of the Roman Empire among photos, history and myth!
Telling the stories of the history of the port of Charlottetown and the marine heritage of Northumberland Strait on Canada's East Coast. Winner of the Heritage Award from the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation and a Heritage Preservation Award from the City of Charlottetown
Larry Muffin At Home 