Kontorhausviertel

The enormous Chilehaus, massive as it is, is not even the largest Counting House (“Kontorhaus”) within Hamburg’s Counting House Quarter (“Kontorhausviertel”).

That distinction belongs to Sprinkenhof, a truly monstrous building built in three stages between 1927 and 1943. Sprinkenhof, like Chilehaus, is the work of architect Fritz Hoger.

In the photograph below, Sprinkenhof is in the lower right-hand corner. It almost dwarfs nearby Chilehaus—indeed, it almost dwarfs the entire Counting House Quarter—and it is hard to walk around the Counting House Quarter without bumping into Sprinkenhof again and again.


I did not appreciate Sprinkenhof—it stuck me as a large, unattractive office building, nothing more—and no one else liked it, either. Andrew and his mother thought it was an eyesore.

We were surprised, therefore, when we learned that Sprinkenhof appears on UNESCO’s list of protected World Heritage Sites.

In fact, Hamburg’s entire Counting House Quarter has been deemed a World Heritage Site owing to its status as “the first dedicated office district on the continent of Europe”. Of the Quarter, UNESCO has this to say:

The special identity of this Kontorhaus District, which is among Germany's most impressive cityscapes of the 1920s, is due in part to the fact that the ground plans of the buildings coincide with the outlines of the blocks, to make full use of the available land - an approach chosen deliberately in view of the purely commercial purpose of the buildings. The proportions of the buildings are designed to make use of the maximum height, adding further height by means of stepped-back upper storeys. The formal language of the major buildings is a variant of the "New Construction" style of the 1920s, characterised by their proportions and the use of decorative sculptural elements, with a more restrained version of this style used in the 1930s. The combination of the building material used, that is dark-coloured, hard-fired brick (clinker), and use of the Kontorhaus construction style, results in an overall complex that is characteristic of Hamburg, and is not found anywhere else even in related form. The Kontorhaus District includes heritage buildings of the highest calibre within a small area.

Those are strong claims, and surely not everyone accepts them. I submit that most persons, including most architects, that walk around Hamburg’s Counting House Quarter would be quite surprised—perhaps even stunned—to learn that they were traversing an area now under historic preservation protection.

In the U.S., such buildings would have been replaced no later than the 1980’s, and no one would have given a second thought to their passing.

I wonder whether Eero Saarinen would agree that the Kontorhausviertel deserves protected status.

Chilehaus II

Chilehaus escaped major destruction during World War II, which is miraculous given how large a structure architect Fritz Hoger had created.

Chilehaus is almost three city blocks long. It is such a massive building that a city street actually passes through the building.

The photograph below is from 1943. It was taken after the mid-summer air raids had destroyed much of Hamburg, causing the city’s population to be evacuated for the final two years of the war.


From the photo, it is clear that buildings surrounding Chilehaus had suffered direct hits from enemy bombs. It is also clear that fires had swept through the neighboring structures.

No enemy bombs struck Chilehaus, and Hamburg fire squadrons were successful in preventing fires from spreading to Chilehaus.

Chilehaus was very lucky.

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In the photograph above, it may be seen that Hamburg streets had already been cleared of rubble.

Clearing streets of rubble was always the first order of business, in Hamburg and elsewhere in Germany, after bombing raids.

Streets were cleared immediately in order to allow medical personnel and fire squadrons to travel freely around cities, rushing to districts where their services were most needed.

One of the reasons that a firestorm developed in Hamburg in 1943 was because the Allied bombings had been continuous, and did not allow Hamburg authorities the necessary few hours’ respite to clear Hamburg streets. As the Allied bombings went on and on, without pause, Hamburg streets became more and more filled with rubble, preventing fire squadrons from traveling to scenes of fires. Several of those fires conjoined and created the devastating firestorm.

Hamburg had been bombed, continuously, for 48 hours before the firestorm began. Had Hamburg’s fire squadrons been mobile, no firestorm would have occurred.

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Because I had read extensively about the Hamburg firestorm before visiting Hamburg, it was fascinating for me to walk around the city and connect buildings and sites with their roles and fates during the firestorm in particular and during the war in general.

One of the most bizarre stories connected with the 1943 bombing of Hamburg is the fate of Hamburg’s Staatsoper, known as the Stadttheater until 1937.

The area around the Staatsoper had not been hit during the concentrated air raids over Hamburg. As a result, the city of Hamburg decided to use the enormous stage of the Staatsoper as staging ground for its campaign to feed the city (hundreds of thousands of Hamburg citizens had become homeless after the concentrated bombings).

Tens of thousands of loaves of bread had been shipped into the city from surrounding areas, and those loaves of bread were stacked onto the stage of the Staatsoper, ready for distribution to the public.

Just as distribution began, the Staatsoper suffered several direct hits by Allied bombers engaging in a delayed mission over Hamburg.

The auditorium was completely destroyed, but lowering of the iron fire curtain saved the stage and backstage areas of the opera house (and saved the bread as well). The stage and backstage of the Hamburg Staatsoper had been saved by the fire curtain—but otherwise there was nothing but total destruction for blocks and blocks in all directions.

When, after the war, it came time for Hamburg to rebuild its opera house, the new Staatsoper was built on the same location as the old.

However, the new Staatsoper is only partly new, something most persons do not realize.

Only the auditorium and public promenades are new. The portion housing the stage and backstage areas remains in its pre-war form and remains in use today (although the stage machinery has been modernized).

The result: the one-third of the building the public sees is from 1955, but the two-thirds of the building the public seldom sees is from 1827 and 1926 (the original 1827 backstage facilities had been extensively renovated and expanded in 1926).

Most patrons of the opera in Hamburg do not even realize that the Staatsoper’s box office is located in the pre-war portion of the building.

Chilehaus

Hamburg is a city of magnificent architecture.

Hamburg has splendid examples of architecture from all periods, but Hamburg is unique among European cities in that it has great 20th-Century architecture. In that sense, Hamburg is the Chicago of Europe.

Good 20th-Century architecture is rare in Europe, and almost unknown in major capitals such as London, where 20th-Century buildings are horrifically bad, and uniformly so.

Great 20th-Century architecture is even more rare in Europe than good 20th-Century architecture. Indeed, some experts claim that it does not exist.

In Europe, Hamburg stands out for the quality of its 20th-Century architecture. Since the late 19th Century, commercial enterprises headquartered in Hamburg have insisted upon quality buildings. The evidence of this may be seen on every street in the center of the city.

I suspect that there are three reasons why Hamburg is such a 20th-Century architectural treasure: (1) the city has long enjoyed the presence of an enlightened business community; (2) many excellent Central European architects lived and worked in Hamburg for decades on end, headquartering their architectural practices in the city; and (3) the rich tradition of Hanseatic architecture cannot help but serve as an inspiration to architects living and working among such fine and noble buildings on a daily basis.

One of the tenets of Hanseatic architecture is the use of fine materials. Only the finest brick, marble and stone are used to erect Hanseatic edifices, an ancient tradition carried over and maintained to the present day. Hamburg buildings, unlike London buildings, do not look cheap and thrown-together. They are exquisitely-wrought and exquisitely-crafted. In fact, I was surprised when I learned the dates of several notable buildings in Hamburg—the buildings were in such excellent condition that I had assumed they were much newer than they were.

Another tenet of Hanseatic architecture is the use of stone moldings. Moldings around roofs, windows and entranceways are one of the most prominent and pleasing features of Hanseatic architecture.

Yet another tenet of Hanseatic architecture is the heavy reliance upon architectural features from the Baroque Era, especially with regard to roofs. Baroque roofs are endemic in Hamburg, even on modern buildings. These roofs often are very sly in their acknowledgement of Baroque models, either minimizing or elongating Baroque features or setting them at odd angles.

A final tenet of Hanseatic architecture is the use of ceramics to decorate building exteriors. Sometimes these ceramics are set into exterior walls in the manner of reliefs. More common, however, is the use of small ceramics to highlight architectural features in the fabric of a building.

The result is that Hamburg is one of the most handsome cities in the world, a great city for walking and gawking. Ancient Hanseatic edifices blend with modern structures inspired by Hanseatic principles. The city has a unique beauty no less remarkable than the beauty of Paris or Venice.

One of the most famous 20th-Century buildings in Hamburg is Chilehaus.

Designed by architect Fritz Hoger and built from 1922 to 1924, the massive Chilehaus is perhaps the finest of Hamburg’s modern office buildings known as Kontorhauser (“Counting Houses”). This famed structure served as a sign of Hamburg’s growth after World War I and, miraculously, survived World War II to serve as a sign of Hamburg’s survival and renewal.


Chilehaus is a perfect example of Expressionist architecture: an elongated building made of clinker brick (a dark, dense brick of the very highest quality, unique to Northern Germany) with a sharp point at one end, designed to evoke a ship’s helm. The elegant façade, the Gothic-style arcades and the intricate ceramic décor on the exterior all combine to make this one of Hamburg’s most impressive buildings. Over 4.8 million bricks went into its construction.


In 1922, a Hamburg businessman who had made a fortune with potassium nitrate (saltpeter) in Chile bought a 5,000-square-meter building site in the center of Hamburg’s business district. There he planned to erect a very special kind of office building, Chilehaus, designed in the shape of a passenger ship. The saltpeter magnate arranged for an architectural design contest, which was won by Hamburg architect Hoger, already renowned for his office-building designs. Chilehaus quickly became Hamburg’s second most distinctive city landmark after Saint-Michaelis-Kirche.


Chilehaus has drawn worldwide attention since the day it was completed. The building has retained its reputation as an architectural work of the utmost importance to the present day.

Its brick façade glitters in a different light at each shift of the weather, and each change of an observer’s viewpoint alters the impression of its stone workings and ceramic ornaments.

The ten-story structure is seen most impressively from the end at which one may observe its acute-angled façade resembling a ship’s bow.


The ceramic-brick decorative designs on the building’s façade are notable.


At night, the building is illuminated.


It shines with a special majestic beauty.

Free From Obligation

For the next five weeks, I am free from obligation. I have the luxury of deciding how to spend my time.

I shall assume all household burdens during this period in order that Andrew and I may enjoy our evenings together.

However, household tasks will not take up much of my time—our apartment is very small, and we have no backlog of household tasks awaiting attention—and I will have an amount of time at my disposal that I may not have again for years and years.

If Andrew did not have to work, he and I could use this time to travel. However, Andrew DOES have to work—and, in any case, he and I shall be traveling from early July until the middle of August.

I think I shall undertake a reading program—something as far afield from the law as possible—and presently I am mulling over a few possibilities.

Edward Gibbon is on the table, but I am not confident that I am in the mood to attempt unabridged Gibbon.

I have given some thought to reading all six volumes of “The Pallisers”, but I have no especial love for Anthony Trollope and I am not confident that “The Pallisers” would hold my interest.

Leon Edel’s multi-volume study of Henry James is under consideration, but the prospect of reading the complete Edel does not excite me.

I am leaning, ever-so-slightly, toward Fernand Braudel’s three-volume study of civilization and capitalism. Andrew says that the Braudel is stunning. I think I shall make the Braudel my project—unless and until I come upon a better idea.

Oklahoma-Bound

Early tomorrow afternoon, Andrew and I will fly to Oklahoma City. We will spend Memorial Day Weekend with my family. On Saturday morning, we will attend my brother’s high school graduation.

This year will be the first time my high school will conduct commencement exercises on a Saturday morning. In the past, all graduation ceremonies at my high school were conducted in the evening, generally on a Friday night (like last year, when Andrew and I attended my sister’s high school graduation). I do not know the reason for the change, but my parents tell me that scheduling commencements for Saturday morning has become a growing practice in and around Oklahoma City.

Aside from the graduation, we have nothing planned for the weekend. On Saturday, after the ceremony, my parents will host relatives for a gathering dedicated to my brother’s graduation. I’m sure it will be very low-key. My brother is very blasé about the whole thing.

There are no nonstop flights between Boston and Oklahoma City, but Andrew and I were able to obtain a good set of flights, with only one stop each way. We will fly through Cincinnati on the way to Oklahoma and through Atlanta on the way home. Our travel time is scheduled to be only five hours and twenty-seven minutes on the outbound leg of our journey, and only five hours and forty-nine minutes on the return leg. I thought those times were pretty favorable. We could have done far worse.

If our flights are on time, we will be back in Boston five minutes past midnight on Monday night/Tuesday morning.

Summer Vacation Planned

The outline of our summer vacation is planned.

We will depart on Thursday afternoon, July 30. We are scheduled to arrive in Munich on Friday, morning, July 31.

We will spend Friday, July 31, Saturday, August 1, and Sunday, August 2, in Munich.

On Monday, August 3, we will head for Salzburg via Lake Chiemsee.

On Tuesday, August 4, we will head for Vienna via Melk.

We will spend Wednesday, August 5, in Vienna.

On Thursday, August 6, we will head for Graz via the Semmering Pass.

On Friday, August 7, we will head for Innsbruck via Klagenfurt, Lake Worth, Grossglockner Pass, Zell Am See and Kitzbuhel.

On Saturday, August 8, we will head back to Munich.

We will spend Sunday, August 9, in Munich.

On Monday, August 10, we will fly home.

It will not be a long vacation, but twelve days constitute the longest possible time my parents may be away from their work at present.

The purpose of the trip is to see as much spectacular Alpine scenery as possible, and we intend to see a lot of it, making one Northerly swing and one Southerly swing through Austria.

We shall visit a couple of museums in Munich and attend an opera performance in Vienna, but otherwise this trip is not built around historic and cultural attractions. We shall devote five days to experiencing the essence of Munich and Vienna, and five days to witnessing nature’s wonders in the provinces.

My parents are already worried about the flight arrangements.

On the trip over, we shall all meet in Chicago and fly to Munich nonstop on the same flight. My parents are already concerned about summer storms—they fear that summer storms will delay their flight from Oklahoma City to Chicago or delay Andrew’s and my flight from Minneapolis to Chicago—and the possibility that summer storms will cause them or us to miss the flight to Munich.

Andrew and I keep telling my parents that, in the event of unavoidable delays, the airline will be obligated to make other arrangements to get everyone to Munich, but my parents are worried anyway.

They also are worried that their luggage will not make the flight to Munich!

On the return journey, we will not all be on the same flight across the Atlantic. Andrew and I will return to Minneapolis via Chicago, but my parents and my brother and sister will return to Oklahoma City via Washington Dulles. Happily, our respective return flights are scheduled to depart within 55 minutes of each other.

Our upcoming trip will be my brother’s first trip outside the United States. He still has not received his passport, but it should arrive literally any day.

Since he selected our destination, he had better not change his mind now that all arrangements have been made!

Halfway Through

I am halfway through the exam period, and I will be glad when it is over.

Andrew has not been helpful.

He has been force-feeding me all sorts of weird Norwegian eel dishes, playing Schoenberg’s “Moses And Aaron” at full volume 24 hours a day, and continuously reading aloud from “Santa Anna’s Mexican Army 1821-1848”.

I think I am going to scream.

Mellow And Sweet

Andrew and I stayed in all weekend, studying, reading, cooking, listening to music, sending email and instant messages, and talking on the phone. It was the most relaxing weekend we have had for weeks and weeks and weeks. There was nothing on our schedule, nothing pressing that needed attention, nothing that warranted leaving the apartment, nothing that distracted us from getting plenty of rest and relaxation.

It was a wonderful weekend, mellow and sweet—and, in another week or so, I shall begin getting tense in anticipation of next month’s exams, so this weekend was very important to me.

We cooked steak, we cooked chicken, we cooked salmon. We ate pasta, we ate potatoes, we ate rice. I think we ate every vegetable known to man. We made cranberry-orange muffins, apple muffins, raspberry tarts and apricot tarts. We made strawberry-pear salad, apple-cranberry salad, tomato-cucumber salad and Amish pepper salad. We ate grapefruit, we ate oranges, we ate pears, we ate plums. We had everything except a Christmas pudding.

I’m starting to like our apartment, which is sort of frightening. The apartment appears to be larger, and more spacious, when we can open the window in the living room, which we were able to do this weekend owing to the good weather. We can survive another two years here.

In another four weeks, my academic year will be over. I look forward to a relaxing and stimulating summer.

Baltimore

The weekend before last Andrew and I went to Baltimore.

We flew down early Friday afternoon, and we rented a car so that we could get around the city easily.

On Friday night we attended a performance at Center Stage of “Tis Pity She’s A Whore”, John Ford’s early-Caroline-era revenge tragedy.

Four years ago, I studied “Tis Pity She’s A Whore” in a university literature class, and I looked forward to seeing a performance of the play.

The Center Stage production was not strong. The cast members were very, very uneven and the production did not manage to find a unified style. It was all very “regional theater”, and not regional theater at its finest. This play is probably best left to British actors—it’s the kind of play American actors simply cannot do well.

Several of the actors were badly miscast. The physical production was not handsome and nowise suggested the time of Charles I. The director did not have a solid grasp of the material and, further, offered no particular point of view. Everyone with a hand in the production appeared to be far more interested in providing lots of stage action than concentrating on and illuminating the text.

I had never previously attended a performance at Center Stage. The company probably does better work with 20th-Century American plays than Caroline-era tragedy, because the company enjoys a solid reputation.

On Saturday morning Andrew and I walked around Fells Point, one of Baltimore’s historic neighborhoods.

On Saturday afternoon, we attended a performance of “The Cherry Orchard” at Everyman Theater. Everyman Theater is supposed to be a cut below Center Stage, but the Everyman Theater production of “The Cherry Orchard” was much more successful than the Center Stage production of “Tis Pity She’s A Whore”.

I think the success of the production was due, above all, to the actress portraying Madame Ranevskaya. She was extraordinary. She gave one of the finest performances I have ever seen. Andrew and I could not take our eyes off her all afternoon. She had luminosity and the kind of magical aura that cannot be taught. Single-handedly, she raised the level of the performance to something special. Her fellow cast members were much better when interacting with her than when interacting solely among themselves: she was THAT good. The actress’s name was Deborah Hazlett.

The translation of Chekhov’s last and greatest play was by Michael Frayn.

A good production of “The Cherry Orchard” will make the viewer want to proclaim “The Cherry Orchard” the greatest play ever written. I was ready to make that proclamation after attending the Everyman Theater performance, and so was Andrew. Indeed, we would have been happy to return to the theater for the evening performance of “The Cherry Orchard”, too, had we not had tickets for Saturday night’s Baltimore Symphony concert (which Andrew has already described on his blog).

On Sunday morning, we walked around Baltimore’s historic Mount Vernon district until The Walters Museum opened for the day. We remained at The Walters Museum until it closed. We were not bored for one minute.

The Walters Museum owns Old Master paintings from the 14th through the 19th Centuries, antiquities from Egypt, Greece and Rome, a stunning array of artwork from Medieval Europe, sculpture (including a large number of sculptures from The Italian Renaissance), illuminated manuscripts from The Middle Ages, and objets d’art from all periods. We visited thoroughly two of the three buildings, skipping only the original Walters building in which the Asian collection is now housed.

Previously unbeknownst to me, The Walters Museum owns America’s third-largest collection of antiquities—only the Metropolitan Museum Of Art and the Brooklyn Museum Of Art have larger holdings of antiquities—and many of the antiquities are of the very highest quality and rarity, especially the holdings of works from Ancient Rome. The Walters Museum also owns America’s largest collection of Medieval armor, very little of which is ever on display.

There was more than enough to keep Andrew and me occupied for six hours. The Walters Museum has to be one of the finest museums in the United States.

Baltimore is a very small city, and yet it has two professional repertory theater companies and two major art museums, the other of which we did not visit: the Baltimore Museum Of Art. We elected to visit The Walters Museum because of its large holdings of antiquities and because its collection of Old Master paintings is much larger than the collection of Old Master paintings at the Baltimore Museum Of Art. However, sometime I would like to visit the Baltimore Museum Of Art in order to see The Cone Collection, one of the finest collections anywhere of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Early Modernist painting.

Before our trip, Andrew told me that Baltimore was probably the best restaurant town in the United States. Based upon my experience two weekends ago, I don’t think I would argue with that assessment.

We planned to dine at three different restaurants while we were in Baltimore, but we ended up dining only at two. This was because I liked one restaurant so much that we returned for a second visit.

On Friday night, we ate dinner at a restaurant that is mostly visited for its seafood but which also offers other foods. Andrew and I ate seafood—seafood for a starter course and seafood for a main course—and it was very fine indeed.

On Saturday night we ate dinner at a restaurant known for its “new” American cuisine. The restaurant was stunning: the décor was stunning, the service was stunning, the food was stunning. We went all out: we ordered appetizer, soup, salad, starter course and main course. Everything was exceptional. It may have been the finest restaurant I ever visited.

I liked the restaurant so much that we returned for dinner on Sunday evening. We skipped the third restaurant on our list, believing that it could not possibly surpass the restaurant from Saturday night.

For our second visit, we only had two courses: a starter course and a main course. For our second visit to the restaurant, we were just as pleased as the first.

We have Andrew’s boss to thank for the restaurant selections. He is a native of Baltimore, has family members still living in Baltimore, and keeps up with Baltimore restaurants operating at the top of their games. He certainly steered us in the right direction.

After dinner, we went to the airport to catch our late flight home.

"Do You Think Your Parents Might Enjoy A Luigi Nono Opera?"

Andrew and I definitely will be joining my family for a trip to Austria this summer.

We will spend the first week of August in Austria—that much is settled—and we will visit Salzburg, Melk, Vienna, Graz, Zell Am See, Kitzbuhel and Innsbruck.

At present we are trying to decide whether to add a few days in Bavaria to our Austrian journey. Once the Bavaria issue is out of the way, we will book our flights.

No one in my family has been to Austria, and it should be an interesting vacation for us.

This vacation will be devoted more to Alpine scenery than to historic and cultural attractions, but we nevertheless will explore the primary attractions of Vienna.

We will be in Salzburg during the Salzburg Festival, but we will not attend any Festival performances.

“Do you think your parents might enjoy a Luigi Nono opera?” was one of Andrew’s rhetorical questions to me—the Salzburg Festival will present a Luigi Nono opera this year—and I assured Andrew that my parents definitely would not be interested in hearing an atonal opera, no matter who wrote it, and that Andrew very well knew this.

“Then I guess we’ll have to forego the Luigi Nono” was Andrew’s response, his voice filled with fake disappointment.

“Yes, Nono would definitely be a no-no” was my rejoinder.

However, we WILL attend one opera performance during our vacation: a performance of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” at Theater An Der Wien, featuring an international-level cast (Erwin Schrott, Hanno Muller-Brachmann, Veronique Gens) in a major new production. My mother wants to attend an opera performance while we are in Vienna, and “Don Giovanni” at Theater An Der Wien is the only option, since the Staatsoper and Volksoper are closed during the month of August.

I look forward to a visit to Theater An Der Wien because it was the theater in which my favorite opera, Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”, received its first performance in 1791. It was also the theater in which the first version of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” premiered in 1805. That both Mozart and Beethoven worked and conducted in a theater still in existence and still in use is quite an amazing thing.

Andrew says that, for the last few years, Theater An Der Wien has mounted its own international-level opera season each year, presenting ten productions in stagione, with international casts, international conductors and international stage directors. Its productions are rehearsed to a festival standard and have received worldwide acclaim. The performance of “Don Giovanni” we will attend will be only the second performance of the run.

I have never attended an opera performance in Europe—and neither have my parents, and neither have my sister and brother.

In fact, I believe my father has never attended an opera performance anywhere, and I know my sister and brother have never attended an opera performance in their lives.

Andrew and I will take a recording of “Don Giovanni” to Oklahoma when we return home for my brother’s high-school graduation late next month. The recording will give everyone a couple of months to become familiar with the opera.

I hope they don’t hate it.

If they dislike “Don Giovanni”, I shudder to think what might be their reactions to an opera by Luigi Nono!

BELATED CORRECTION ON 19 MAY 2009: Andrew had to remind me that I HAD attended an opera performance in Europe. In November 2006, we had attended a performance of Puccini's "La Boheme" at the Hamburg Staatsoper.

TWO BELATED CORRECTIONS ON 10 AUGUST 2009: (1) Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” did NOT receive its first performance at Theater An Der Wien, as the opera pre-dates the theater by ten years; and (2) the current Theater An Der Wien production of “Don Giovanni”, which ends its run on Friday, is NOT a new production.