Europe 2019, Cont.: Trier and Bonn

Trier, June 24-25

We drove from Munich to Trier in the Mosel Valley close to the border with Luxembourg.  Our hotel, located on a ridge overlooking the city, provided some relief from the European heat wave that reached 100 degrees F. during our stay.  

Trier from our hotel

Our hotel from Trier

The oldest city in Germany, Trier served as Emperor Constantine’s headquarters before he decamped to Byzantium on the Bosporus—an extraordinary change of venue.  Its principal Roman ruin is the Porta Nigra, one of the old city’s gates that was saved from destruction by its conversion into a Christian church.

Porta Nigra

Although not as ancient, the Trier cathedral claims to be the oldest church in the country.  Its massive size dominated the view of Trier from our hotel.

Trier cathedral

Arguably as impressive is the Basilika or Aula Palatina, built as the throne hall for Constantine.  The huge building was incorporated into the palace of the local princes, but when the (mainly Catholic) area was annexed to Prussia after the Napoleonic Wars, Frederick William IV decided to make it a freestanding Protestant church.  None of the Roman marble interior remains, but the size of the hall is impressive.

Interior of Bazilika

Naturally, we paid tribute to Trier’s “favorite son” (well, maybe), Karl Marx.  His birthplace was purchased by a Socialist Party supporter in the 1920s and reconstructed ahistorically as a medieval townhouse.  It now contains a worthwhile historical museum explaining Marx’s works and their later significance.  However, the Marx family only lived in the house for one year after Karl’s birth.

Bonn, June 26-28

En route to Bonn, we stopped at Burg Eltz, one of the few medieval castles never severely damaged over the centuries.  Curiously, it was occupied by three branches of the Eltz family, and the successor of one branch has restored most of the castle and opened it to the public.

Burg Eltz

We stayed in Bonn as guests of Christoph Hinz, Todd’s valued German colleague when he headed State’s maritime office, and Christoph’s friend Roswitha Schmitt.  We had enjoyed the cultural attractions (think Beethoven) of the area on many previous occasions so this time we concentrated on recent political history.

The Rhine near Bonn

Despite his years as mayor of West Berlin, former Chancellor Willy Brandt moved in retirement to a Rhine town across from Bonn.  A citizens group there has established a memorial center presenting the highlights of his extraordinary career.  At the center, for example, we learned that Brandt, exiled from Germany, had traveled to Barcelona as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War and met George Orwell.

Children playing at the Brandt memorial fountain

The Konrad Adenauer center in Rhöndorf, also across the Rhine, was still more impressive as it benefits from federal government funding and includes Der Alte’s home, where he lived from the 1930s until his death in 1967 at age 91.  The house is built on an extremely steep hillside, an almost unimaginable residence for an elderly man, but Adenauer took great pride in climbing up and down the slope to tend his magnificent rose garden.  The house tour gave us a new appreciation of Adenauer, who had stepped down as Chancellor when Todd was a vice consul in Munich.

Adenauer home

DeGaulle and Adenauer in the garden