Giengen's World of Wonder: Story of Determination

A couple of days later, we went to the town of Giengen which is across the border in the state of Baden-Württemberg and would be pretty non-descript internationally were it not for one thing.  In the 19th century, a young woman with polio trained to be a seamstress and began making clothes.  This was Margarete Steiff.  She may have done this all her life, until she tried her hand at soft toys as presents.  This gradually became successful, but it still was relatively small scale.  Her nephew Richard Steiff studied art in Stuttgart and designed what he named "Bear 55 PB", the first soft bear with moving limbs.  The bear caught the eye of an American buyer in Leipzig who ordered 3,000 and turned the small family firm in Giengen into a major multinational overnight.  When somebody in New York likened the Steiff bear with the then President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, continued success was guaranteed.  In 1907, one million "teddy" bears were made.  Margarete Steiff only lived another two years, but over a hundred years later the business still thrives and draws visitors into Giengen.

Margarete contracted polio as a baby and was permanently paralysed in her two legs.  She also found it difficult to move her right arm.  This made training to be a seamstress difficult.  Though her family were relatively prosperous, there were not many outlets for a young woman with such a disability.  Nonetheless, Margarete not only qualified as a seamstress, but also became an accomplished zither player.  She taught others to play and used the money to buy a sewing machine.  Though initially concentrating on fashionable clothes, the business soon focused on toys.  Eventually, they got the order which was a small enterprise's dream.

So, on 4 July, we visited the Steiff Museum in Giengen.  This is the history of the Steiff enterprise, together with a display of what the factory can make.  If there was a way to interest young children in museums, this is it.   We were behind a primary school group who were enchanted by the display.  The museum also does its best with people with special needs.  It is possible to take the tour in English as well as German, though I would advise anyone wishing to do so to ring ahead to confirm.  However, room after room brings the Steiff magic to life, beginning with a recreation of Margarete Steiff's workshop, taking a tour of the expansion of the business, while hallmarking these stages for interested adults to follow.  It is possible also to see soft toys being made and some of the workers are happy to show anyone who is interested how.  While children, even older children, are free to climb on the backs of large sized camels, elephants, horses and other animals.  The tour takes at least a couple of hours.

And if someone is sufficiently interested, it is also possible to visit the Steiff factory outlet.  There are some good deals, but it is worth remembering Steiff is not a cheap brand.  They do clothes for babies and younger children too.  But it would be very difficult not to be charmed by the Steiff experience.  

Europe's Most Irish City

I am quoting the Mayor of Würzburg, Christian Schuchard, in my post title from a speech he gave on the occasion of Michael D Higgins' visit to Würzburg last July as part of his state visit to Germany.  No need to guess why the President of Ireland was in Germany in July, accompanied by Tánaiste/Foreign Minister Simon Coveney.  But I will come to that later.  Würzburg is a city of around 125,000 people midway between Frankfurt and Nuremberg, is capital of the wine-producing region of Unter-Franken (Lower Franconia) and is built on the River Main.  It is a cathedral city; the town of Volkach which I use as my base in Bavaria is in the diocese of Würzburg, though it is in Land-Kreis of Kitzingen

On arriving in Germany for distinctly non-political and non-diplomatic reasons, I went with my family to Würzburg on 2 July to view the exhibition entitled "Elfenbein und Ewigkeit" (ivory and eternity)  in Julius-Maximillians-University of Würzburg library.  This was a collection of mediaeval manuscripts and their covers, most of which were priceless.  The pride of the collection was the Kilians-Evangelier, a book of the Gospels said to have been brought to Würzburg from Ireland by St Kilian in the seventh century.

The key to the connexion between Ireland and Würzburg is the seventh century missionary bishop and martyr St Kilian.  From what we know about Kilian, he was a monk from Mullagh in what is now Co Cavan who was consecrated as a bishop and went to Europe to preach with his companions the priest Kolonat (given as Colmáin in Irish) and the deacon Totnan (sometimes given as Tadc, in modern Irish Tadhg).  The three successfully preached Christianity to the Franconians and baptised them, whose duke Gosbert had been taken by Kilian personally.  The problem was that Gosbert was married to Gailana, who had been his brother's wife.  I am not clear if his brother was still alive or not, but the Levitical law, prohibiting marriage to a sister-in-law even if she was a widow, was upheld by the Church at that time.  As such, Kilian required Gosbert to separate from Gailana (he would not have regarded this as a valid marriage), Gosbert did this and Gailana was not happy.  So she had Kilian and his companions murdered.  According to tradition, this happened on 8 July 689.  This did not deter the Franks from Christianity; quite the contrary - while the former duchess and her collaborators came to a bad end.  Ss Kilian, Kolonat and Totnan are now venerated as Apostles of Franconia.  Indeed, so enthusiastic have they become that  8 July in Würzburg today is the centre point of a civic and religious festival which lasts at least two weeks.  The relics of the three saints are solemnly processed through the streets of Würzburg at which both Church and State are in attendance.  Insofar as Ireland is represented, the diocese of Kilmore, from which Kilian came, is present for the Church and the County of Wicklow, particularly the town of Bray, which Würzburg is twinned, is there for the State.  Both modest enough.  Except on occasions such as Michael D. Higgins visit on 5 July in 2019.

The link between Ireland and Würzburg did not come to an abrupt end after the three Irish missionaries were killed.  For centuries, it was a focal point for Irish pilgrims long before the advent of Ryanair.  There was a Schottenkloster in Würzburg from 1138, and one should not be deceived by the name.  The mediaeval Latin Scotus is most accurately translated as Gael and it was only in the Middle Ages that the Gaels from Ireland colonised Scotland via the Dál Riata kingdom and asserted their identity on the country.  So much so, that many forget the designation Scot was more appropriate to Ireland 1500 years ago.  The monastery was taken over by Scottish monks in 1497, barely a couple of generations before the reformation.  Anyway, the Prior of the Schottenkloster in Regensburg, St Macarius, came to Würzburg to establish a centre of learning.  He was also known for his piety and was said to have changed wine into water.  Given how much the Franconians pride themselves on their wine, I wonder how this anecdote survived (my memory of it was due to a TV series in the 1970s produced by the Radharc team and presented by the then Monsignor Tomás Ó Fiaich, who was a mediaeval historian before becoming Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, later a cardinal).  St Macarius is interred in the Marienkappelle in Würzburg's Marktplatz.

All this might have been a matter of ancient history were it not for a 19th century linguistic historian from Kronach in Upper Franconia named Johann Kaspar Zeuß (1806-1856). Zeuß was teaching in Bamberg (in the same region) and developed a fascination with Old Irish.  When Latin was taught in Irish monasteries of the Golden Age, manuscripts were annotated in explanatory notes in what we now call Old Irish, but this was a closed book until Professor Zeuß used the Latin to decipher the Old Irish.  The principal texts used were the Commentary on St Paul's Epistles in Würzburg; the Psalter in Milan; and the Commentary on Priscian's Latin Grammar in San Gallen (Switzerland).  In 1853, he published Grammatica Celtica which made Old Irish accessible and proved the Celtic languages were Indo-European.  Anyone who did honours Irish for the Leaving Certificate in the past will have come across him in Stair na Teanga Gaeilge. But my point is that Zeuß' work, largely in Würzburg, made the city the cradle of the Gaelic linguistic and literary revival of the following few decades and I don't have to elaborate on the political consequences.

Of course I was disappointed not to see the Pauline epistles in the exhibition, but these are for VIPs.  I am aware Seán Lemass was shown them during his visit while he was Taoiseach.  I would be surprised if his son-in-law and successor as Taoiseach, Charles Haughey and Cardinal Ó Fiaich were not shown them when they were in Würzburg for the 1300th anniversary of St Kilian's martyrdom in 1989.  Mary McAleese and Michael D Higgins have both seen the manuscript while in Würzburg as part of their state visits.  But we did see a fabulous collection of manuscripts and I could identify a distinct Irish hand in them.

The display was interactive and school children were invited to copy the script.  It was also possible to play a virtual reality game which took the participants right back to mediaeval Würzburg, which I thought a fascinating adaption of modern technology to bring mediaeval history to life, something any history teacher will tell you is no easy task.  We were told that on the following Friday, 5 July, the exhibition would be closed to the public with the librarian noting with pride that this was part of Michael D Higgins' state visit.  I didn't give my nationality, still less my opinion of Mr Higgins, but that's beside the point

I would return to Würzburg several times in the subsequent weeks; indeed I have been at events of this festival several times over a quarter of a century.  But this is virtually unknown in Ireland. It's significant enough to register at the highest levels of both Church and State here, as evidenced by the names I have quoted above.  But if you took a survey, few people in Ireland have even heard of Würzburg.  As can be seen above, the Würzburg enthusiasm for Ireland is great.  This is a place where any Irish person or body who would wish to pursue business, tourism, cultural, educational or religious links would find themselves pushing on an open door.  Whether it is as the Mayor says the most Irish city in Europe is not something I can answer, but it certainly is a contender.  It is up to the Irish people to make the most of this.

Burgwindheim pilgrimage

Having arrived in Volkach in June 2019, the first undertaking was to participate in the pilgrimage between Volkach and Burgwindheim.  The distance isn't long, around 35 km.  Burgwindheim was the site of a mediaeval Eucharistic miracle and has drawn local pilgrims from the hinterland, especially around the feast of Corpus Christi which is a public holiday in Bavaria on the original feast day rather than on the following Sunday.

The Burgwindheim pilgrimage involves rising early for Mass and travelling over various terrains in Unterfranken on the weekend of the feast the Sacred Heart, which takes place eight days after the traditional Corpus Christi.  As the feast of the Sacred Heart was on 28 June in 2019, the following day was Ss Peter & Paul, another Catholic solemnity.  This was particularly late and the weather was very warm.  Part of the pilgrimage is through forest, which is thankfully shady.  The fact the pilgrims luggage is carried by a horse-drawn cart adds to the colour of the occasion.

The lateness of the pilgrimage in 2019 meant the weather was particularly hot.  It can be warm in June but it can also be wet.  This year was the former.  The pilgrims are accompanied by a brass band as they recite the rosary in German, while singing hymns and saying other prayers.  The people of Volkach have been doing this since a plague broke out in the town in 1646, which was at the tail end of the Thirty Years' War.  Within Bavaria, the province of Franconia is quite like Ulster in that it is a fault line in the religious divide in Germany which goes right back to the Reformation.  When living in the town of Kleinwallstadt in the Landkreis Miltenberg (near Aschaffenburg), I became acutely aware of this ideological border just over 15 years ago.  The people of Franconia are friendly and will greet you on the road.  But some will say "Grüß Gott" and others will say "Guten Tag", which in itself hint at the religious divide.  The pilgrims from Volkach go through a particular Protestant village on the way.  At one stage, still in living memory, the locals would drive their pigs into the streets but in these more ecumenical days, the minister greets the group with a couple of altar servers and guides them through the town.

I should not want to paint the picture of religious fervour here.  Though the bulk of the pilgrims are regular church goers, not everyone is.  Nor would I be quick to second guess anyone's religious or political views on the basis of participation in the pilgrimage.  The practice of the faith is in decline in Volkach, as it is in the rest of the so-called west.  But decline does not mean it is either dead or that it will die any time soon.  The group of pilgrims, a few hundred in all, may have mixed motives and opinions, but collectively they testify to the continued life of the faith in Bavaria, in Germany and in Europe.  Put them together with pilgrimage groups here and elsewhere and they begin to make a formidable number. 

Bavarian starting point

I don't intend this to be a travel blog.  I haven't been much of a traveler, preferring to know some places in depth rather than many casually.  I got the idea for this blog in Bavaria.  I say Bavaria as every German Bundesland is different; Bavaria is the most distinctive and it's also the Bundesland I know best. But given that Bavaria is the same size (roughly) as the 26 county Republic of Ireland (though its population is a lot bigger), I am like someone who knows Donegal very well, Wexford somewhat less, and other areas less again. Nevertheless, I have spent enough time there to get to know state well.

My base in Bavaria is a town of 8,700 named Volkach am Main. Volkach ist in the province of Lower Franconia in the north west of the Bavarian Free State.  It's approximately midway between Frankfurt and Nuremberg.  The town is located on the bend of the River Main between Kitzingen and Würzburg.

The Main valley is one of the three principal wine producing regions in Germany - the others are the Rhine and the Moselle. As such, Volkach is in a valley surrounded by vineyards, with the pilgrimage chapel of Maria im Weingarten (literally Our Lady in the Vineyard) looking down. 

Volkach derives its name from the River Volkach, a tributary to the Main. The ending -ach means stream or brook, but there is some dispute over Volk- . There is a suggestion it comes from the Germanic Folk- meaning a military hosting. Alternatively, if area came under attack by the Slavic Wends, it may come from Vlk which means wolf. The two ideas are not that distant and you can get a flavour in Kim McCone's article: Werewolves, cyclopes, díberga and fíanna: juvenile delinquency in early Ireland in Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 12, Winter 1986. I am not being facetious. Slavs, Teutons and Celts had similar arrangements before civilisation caught up. 

The area around Volkach was Celtic before the Franks or Wends arrived.  There may have been something like the fulacht fia which the Fianna used in Ireland.  The earliest name in manuscript form is Folchaa.  The modern pronunciation is not far from this and I have always got the impression of the Irish words fliuch and folcadh when I have heard Volkach pronounced, so I believe the original Celtic occupants made a much clearer mark.