Collegiate Church, Castle and Old Town of Quedlinburg
Quedlinburg, Germany has been known since the early 9th century. In 919 A.D. Quedlinburg became the capital of the East Franconian German Empire in 919. This had happened during the Saxonian- Ottonian dynasty. Quedlinburg is located in the state of Saxony- Anhalt, which was part of the former GDR. The town of Quedlinburg is one of Germany’s largest monuments. Lining the streets is large number of high quality timber-framed buildings.
Beginning in the Middle Ages Quedlinburg had been a prosperous trading and market town. In 919 A.D. King Heinrich I (Henry the Fowler) became King of Germany. He was the first King to be crowned in Quedlinburg. Quedlinburg is centered around the Markt. The Markt is the town square. Quedlinburg also has two hills. On one hill is the castle, the abbey that King Heinrich’s wife founded, and the church. This complex is known as Burgberg. The church on Burgberg is the Collegiate Church of St. Servatius. This church holds the graves of the first royal couple, King Heinrich I and his wife, along with all the Abbesses. The church of St. Servatius is also one of the master pieces of Romanesque architecture. The other hill is known as the Muenzenberg and when standing on Muenzenberg you are able to see the rest of this beautiful town.
The Abbey of Quedlinburg played a big part of Quedlinburg’s history. For 800 years Quedlinburg was ruled by the Abbesses of the Quedlinburg convent. These women ruled until 1802, which is when Napolieon had invaded Quedlinburg and disbanded the Abbey. Then in 1754 another women made history. Dorothea Erxleben became the first women to win the right to attend a university. She then went on to receive the academic title of Medical Doctor. Dorothea was a native of Quedlinburg.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
16 German States
- Schleswig: Holstein : The Flounder fish here lay in the mud flats where people come for a tour.
- Hamburg: Thomas Cotterell's company controls and houses imported goods like spices, rubber, coffee and cocoa and has been around for 122 years.
- Bremen: Has ports for trading goods, but the ships are becoming sparce because of the high docking fees.
- Lower Saxony: Wolfsburg is where the VW headquarters is located. (I stayed here for 11 days!)
- North Rhine-Westphalia: Steel mill that had a two month strike.
- Hesse: All the banks in Frankfurt make this state very international.
- Rhineland Palatinate: Two-thirds of Germany's wine is produced in this state.
- Saarland: Food is celebrated here because of the the closeness to France.
- Baden-Wuerttemberg: Ulrich Ruediger created the scanning tunneling microscope which costs around a million euros.
- Bavaria: Bernhard Mumm makes three-dimensional ultrasound images that can be turned and manipulated.
- Thuringia: Is the German capital for glass art.
- Saxony: The Technical University in Freiberg is one of the trend-setting universities in silicon research and the development of large solar energy plants.
- Saxony-Anhalt: Are the nation's earliest risers.
- Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Mecklenburg is a state devoted to tourism, farming and livestock breeding.
- Berlin: Most famous street snack, the currywurst, is located in Berlin.
- Brandenburg: One third of this state's acreage is all nature.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Berlin Wall Project
The Berlin Wall
How
The barrier was built by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting August 13, 1961. In the city of Berlin the wall stretched 43 kilometers long and is also known as “The Death Strip”. The total wall, including the length outside of Berlin, was 140 Kilometers. The wall was 12 feet high with smooth pipe lining the top to make it more difficult to scale. It also included Barbed wire, dogs on leashes, beds of nails, 116 guard towers and, anti-vehicle trenches.
The Berlin Wall went through 4 stages of construction before it was torn down
1. Wire fence (1961)
2. Improved wire fence (1962–1965)
3. Concrete wall (1965–1975)
4. Concrete wall with trenches (Border Wall 75) (1975–1989)
Why
The life in West Germany was much better than in the East after 1948. West Germany, including West Berlin, had financial help through the Marshall Plan from the USA. In East Germany a communist system was established and many people had to suffer under repressions of the Communist party. The wall served to prevent the massive emigration
Rescue and Escape Stories
-The East German families of Peter Strelzyk and Günter Wetzel worked together to create a homemade hot-air balloon. Their wives stitched together curtains, bed-sheets, and random scraps to construct a 65-foot-wide, 75-foot-high balloon. On the night of September 15, 1979, the group launched their contraption, which had just enough fuel to make it over the wall and into the land of Coca Cola and fancy Levi jeans.
-Professional gangs built tunnels that would go under the Berlin Wall (and charged extortionate fees for refugees to use them). One tunnel began in an East Berlin graveyard, where “mourners” brought flowers to a grave and then disappeared underground. And they would have gotten away with it to until Communist officers discovered a baby carriage left by the “grave”. Sealing up the tunnel followed.
-Holger Bethke shot an arrow from an East German rooftop over the Berlin Wall and managed to rig a makeshift pulley system and swing himself to freedom. Years later he flew across the Wall in a micro light aircraft, that he decorated with Russian stars, to rescue his brother Egbert.
-The East German government issued shooting orders to border guards dealing with defectors, though such orders are not the same as "shoot to kill" orders. GDR officials denied issuing the latter. In an October 1973 order later discovered by researchers, guards were instructed that people attempting to cross the wall were criminals and needed to be shot: "Do not hesitate to use your firearm, not even when the border is breached in the company of women and children, which is a tactic the traitors have often used".
-Early successful escapes involved people jumping the initial barbed wire or leaping out of apartment windows along the line, but these ended as the wall was fortified. East German authorities no longer permitted apartments near the wall to be occupied, and any building near the wall had its windows boarded and later bricked up. On August 15, 1961, Conrad Schumann was the first East German border guard to escape by jumping the barbed wire to West Berlin.[57] On 22 August 1961 Ida Siekmann was the first casualty at the Berlin Wall: she died after she jumped out of her third floor apartment at 48 Bernauer Strasse.
-Another dramatic escape was carried out on April 1963 by Wolfgang Engels, a 19-year-old civilian employee of the Nationale Volksarmee. Engels stole a Soviet armored personnel carrier from a base where he was deployed and drove it right into the wall. He was fired at and seriously wounded by border guards. But a West German policeman intervened, firing his weapon at the East German border guards. The policeman removed Engels from the vehicle, which had become entangled in the barbed wire.
-East Germans successfully defected by a variety of methods: digging long tunnels under the wall, waiting for favorable winds and taking a hot air balloon, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultra lights, and in one instance, simply driving a sports car at full speed through the basic, initial fortifications. When metal beams were placed at checkpoints to prevent this kind of defection, up to four people (two in the front seats and possibly two in the boot) drove under the bar in a sports car that had been modified to allow the roof and windscreen to come away when it made contact with the beam. They lay flat and kept driving forward. The East Germans then built zigzagging roads at checkpoints. The sewer system predated the wall, and some people escaped through the sewers, in a number of cases with assistance from the German student group.
-If an escapee was wounded in a crossing attempt and lay on the death strip, no matter how close they were to the Western wall, Westerners could not intervene for fear of triggering engaging fire from the 'Grepos', the East Berlin border guards. The guards often let fugitives bleed to death in the middle of this ground, as in the most notorious failed attempt, that of Peter Fechter (aged 18). He was shot and bled to death, in full view of the Western media, on August 17, 1962. Fechter's death created negative publicity worldwide that led the leaders of East Berlin to place more restrictions on shooting in public places, and provide medical care for possible “would-be escapers”. The last person to be shot while trying to cross the border was Chris Gueffroy on February 6, 1989.
Why the Berlin Wall Came Down
Russia lost its strong hold on East Germany in the 1980's. Then, East German leadership lacked the power and ability to handle the growing discontent of its people.
The boarders between East and West Germany were opened on November 9, 1989 and the Berlin wall was torn down by the end of 1990. The collapse of the Berlin Wall contributed to the collapse of communism and ended the cold war.
Although the opening of the wall was seen as a good thing, fear and anxiety spread throughout the rest of Europe. The fears of reunifying East and West Germany would again lead to war as it had in 1939. Over the next year steps were taken to reunite Germany after 31 years of separation. In the following weeks of November 9, 1989 people from both sides gathered to watch bulldozers make new border crossings. Even though sections of the wall were dismantled or demolished on November 9, 1989, the official dismantling of the wall did not start until June 13, 1990 by the East German Military.
Facts About the Berlin Wall
• Around 5,000 people successfully escaped into West Berlin.
• The Berlin Wall was erected in the night.
• The second generation wall was built to prevent escape.
• There were over 190 people killed on the Berlin Wall.
• There were over 200 people injured by shooting from the Berlin Wall.
• Gunter Litwin was the first victim who was shot down by an East German border guard in Berlin on August 24, 1961.
• The Berlin Wall stopped East German laborers from working in West Berlin.
• East Germans were imprisoned in their own country.
• Berlin became a place of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.
• The Berlin Wall split up families and friends.
• The Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989.
http://www.berlin.de/mauer/geschichte/index.en.html
http://www.freedomhaters.org/content/craziest-berlin-wall-escape-stories?page=2
www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/history/facts.htm
www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/history/escape.htm
www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/faq/index.htm
http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/history-of-the-berlin-wall-4685.html
www.helium.com/items/306623-the-history-of-the-berlin-wall
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