07 July 2007

Impregnable

Today I took a day trip to Stuttgart, the capital city of Baden-Württemburg, the large state that divides Germany's south with Bavaria. It had everything a German town of 600,000 people should have: a couple large churches whose steeples compete with modern bank buildings in the skyline and several open-air markets which make any Saturday a fun day to be in the city. But as the train pulled into dinky, little Marbach (pop. 15,000), it was obvious why this overgrown village prides itself so much.
When you drive into Chaska on 41, either from the north and south, and you see the grid-patterned (and grid-locked) downtown, you think "quaint, Minnesota river town". But that is about it. No great person was born here whose poems we as townsfolk have commited to memory, or even a baseball field that bears the name of a local sports legend gone by. We're just the town that wants to be like all the rest, or what used to be the rest.
But Marbach, Marbach is different. It's the Schillerstadt. Schiller's city. Only fifteen minutes out of Marbach, the train winds through the gardens which Germans grow on the outskirts of town (because they have no sizeable backyards) and then all of a sudden, you enter wine country. Open fields and vineyards unending. On the horizon, however, juts a pointed tower. Marbarch's "Obertor". And as the train gets closer, you feel you are getting higher and higher, but actually the Neckar river has just eaten the ground below the railway so you are now high up on a steepe instead of a rolling hill. The Neckar separates you and Marbach, which is now clearly in sight, but still separated. The train station was obviously an afterthought in this 1,000 year old settlement, so it sits along the northern rim by the river, nowhere near the medieval buildings. Marbach's original development sits on a prominent hill, with no sizeable wall blocking your view, and it looks so vunerable. But you realize that this city survived all these years because it sat so high up on a hill. Coming up from the river is unbearably steep and rocky, and so you can feel a sense of defiance, the little nagging voice telling neighbors "you can't get me". Impregnable.
This is what makes a real small town. Holding on to that one claim to fame like it's life's breath. A poet who was merely born here and spent part of his childhood in Marbach's streets, became it's namesake. An important date in the town's chronology is the late 1960's visit by Queen Elizabeth II, most likely to see the Schiller National Museum and wander past the Schiller monument, all situated on Schillerhöhe (Schiller Heights, loosely translated).
Marbach sticks to its historical guns, the ones that withstood the Thirty Years War, and raised the author of Ode to Joy, and hosted English royalty. It's nothing new, it's quite satisfied being old. That is precisely why it's charming. Charming, but impregnable.

1 comment:

  1. Mick
    I feel like I am listening to Rick Seves. I hope you realize how lucky you are?? I am jealous. I'll be waiting for the next update. XX OO

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