travel – Page 3 – wanderwarbler

December 20, 2018January 29, 2019

The Silent Death Of Giraffes

Free roaming Angolan giraffe in Damaraland, Namibia. It hasn’t rained in five years, survival is a fierce fight.

Giraffes are the supermodels of the animal kingdom, they turn the savannas of Africa into their cat walk with each sway of their elegant long necks, with each long-legged stride and each long-lashed bat of their eyes. They fill us with this warm feeling of satisfaction one gets when witnessing beauty and perfection. Humans adore giraffes – so much that the number of Sophie La Giraffe rubber toys sold each year in France alone is bigger than the number of Giraffes living on the entire African continent.

The world’s tallest animal is at the risk of extinction. Nearly 40% of the wild giraffe population in Africa (that means worldwide) was lost in the past thirty years, according to the authoritative list compiled and issued by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Masai giraffe in the Selous GR, Tanzania. Giraffes and oxpeckers live in symbiotic harmony. The gregarious little birds feast on the tics and keep the giraffe’s fur clean.

It is, as with any other endangered species, the growth of human population that led to this dramatic decline in numbers. Tackling the underlying causes requires economic and ecological collaboration on a global basis.

While poaching is a considerable problem – their natural curiosity makes giraffes easy prey, loss of habitat through agriculture, mining, urbanization and pollution seems to be the bigger problem. These giant animals need space to roam – space which many protected areas like national parks and reserves can’t offer. Loss of wild crops like mangoes and sunflowers, which are more resilient to droughts and diseases, and which provide food supplies when times get rough, constitutes another important problem.

Giraffes have exceptionally long tongues, extendable to 30cm, and are the only animal that can manoeuvre around the long thorns of the whistling tree to eat its leaves. Ants that live in the thorns are therefore the giraffes’ natural nemesis. They bite the giraffes in the tongue.

Silent Extinction

“These gentle giants have been overlooked. It’s well known that African elephants are in trouble and there are perhaps just under half a million left. But what no one realised is there are far fewer giraffes, which have already become extinct in seven countries,” the British naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough said.

While their conservation status has been considered of least concern, giraffes are now “vulnerable”. In numbers, giraffe population has plummeted from 157,000 to 97,500 since 1990. Today they count less than 100,000.

After the rain in KwazuluNatal. South Africa has been successful in raising the number of giraffes.

Recently, researchers have discovered through DNA analysis, that there is not just one species of giraffe, but four distinct species: The Southern Giraffe with two subspecies (the Angolan Giraffe and the South African Giraffe); the Massai giraffe; the reticulated giraffe; and the northern giraffe with another two subspecies (the Kordofan and the West-African giraffe).

This might seem like an irrelevant academic detail, but it is in fact problematic since in the wild distinct species do not interbreed. This means, that while the South African giraffe is actually growing in numbers due to successful protection efforts in South Africa, the three others are facing extinction.

According to IUCN chairman Julian Fennessy giraffes are especially under threat in war torn areas like northern Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia in the border area with South Sudan. With his wife, the biologist has founded GCF, the Giraffe Conservation Found that saves giraffes in their habitat. Their breathtaking work can be supported at their website: giraffeconservation.org .

This year, French babies are still happily squeezing their rubber Sophies, but they grow up into a dim future, where the living, breathing giraffes will be a nothing but a silent memory.

December 12, 2018December 15, 2018

Tanzania: Endangered Life

The Rufiji River in the Selous Game Reserve still there.

Yesterday, December 11^th 2018, a contract was signed between Tanzanian President John Magufuli, nicknamed the Bulldozer, and Egypt. For more than 300 milion US Dollars, The Arab Contractor’s Egyptian Company will build a dam and hydroelectric Power Station at the basin of the Rufiji River, the so called Stiegler’s Gorge. But the actual prize will be much higher, paid by generations to come.

Stiegler’s Gorge is located within the Selous Game Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage property and one of the only remaining wilderness areas in Africa, with – according to UNESCO – undisturbed ecological and biological processes and exceptional biodiversity. But of this little might remain, once the dam gets built.

Inhabitant of the Selous Game Reserve: A Velvet Monkey

The Selous Game Reserve is indeed nothing short of breathtaking: peach colored sunsets over endless grasslands, swaying palm forests and golden savannahs, lazy, meandering sand rivers peppered with hippos and crocodiles. The Selous is teeming with wildlife; not only home to the world’s biggest populations of elephants and rhinos, it’s a place of pristine nature: where the endless cycle of life and death continues, designating a vital role to every creature, from dung beetle to lion, from whistling fish eagle to whistling tree.

There is something magical, life-altering even about watching wildlife, in its natural habitat. To see this planet in the state it is supposed to be, which is a place of perfect balance. The lesson that nature teaches cuts deep: there is space for everybody, there is enough for everybody, and we humans, who have come to rule the world by means of technology, need to act according to a moral, and not ask for more and more, insatiably.

The area now known as Selous Game Reserve is located in South Eastern Tanzania and has known a breathtaking past. David Livingstone got lost there on his search for the source of the river Nile. And Morgan Stanley, who would later find Livingstone, barely made it through it alive. It is indeed an isolated area, remote and difficult to access because of natural barriers like rivers and mountain riffs, and biological barriers: the miombo – the local woodland – is the ideal habitat of the Tse Tse fly, which carries parasites that kill cattle and inflict the sleeping disease on humans.

Hippo fleeing the sun. A hippo’s skin is very sensitive to the sun. If it stays out if the water during the day, it will get sunburned.

Tse Tse flies, Malaria and Elephantiasis are not the sole reason why the area is free of any human settlement. In the 19^th century slave trade ravaged through the land, capturing humans and killing elephants: Slaves were forced to carry the ivory along two main corridors to the East coast, in massive convoys made up from thousands of slaves, that were cynically called Black and White Ivory. It was witnessing the inhuman living conditions of the slaves that turned Livingstone into the anti-slavery champion he is still venerated as in Tanzania. Yet, after the abolition of slavery, brutal colonialism by both England and Germany, as well as military battles between the same two European nations during WWI took care of the rest.

It was the German colonisateurs however who first realized that if not people, then wildlife needed to be protected in their Eastern German Africa and established the first Game Reserve. But under another name. The current name Selous – pronounced Seloo – goes back to an English daredevil, Frederique Selous, a hunter and ranger who spent his life in the wilderness of Tanzania. He is also the historic figure after whom screen hero Indiana Jones was modeled. A captain in the British Army, he fell in battle against the Germans in WWI, right there in the Selous, near the Beho Beho hills, right next to Stiegler’s gorge. His grave is still a pilgrimage site for modern day hunters, yet ignored by ecotourists for whom the Northern part of the Selous is reserved.

It is through a combination of eco-tourism in the North, hunting concessions in the South and a budget granted by UNESCO that the Selous Game Reserve has finally managed to prevent poaching and provide the high standards suitable for up scale safari- and ecotourism. That’s how local communities and businesses benefit from the Selous – by job creation in both wildlife protection and tourism, but also by strengthened social resilience, an important factor in a poverty ridden land like Tanzania. However, all this can soon be history once the bulldozer switches the engines on.

Lion cub. There are big prides at the Rufiji River. But for how long? Will the next generation still see wildlife?

The UNESCO “…is concerned that the construction of the Stiegler’s dam is likely to have a devastating and irreversible impact on Selous’ unique ecosystem, and that it will jeopardize the potential of the site to contribute to sustainable development”.

“The survival of our wildlife is a matter of grave concern to all of us in Africa. The wild creatures amid the wild places they inhabit are not only important as a source of wonder and inspiration, but are an integral part of our natural resources and our future livelihood and well being. In accepting the trusteeship of wild life we solemnly declare that we will do everything in our power to make sure that our children’s grandchildren will be able to enjoy this rich and precious inheritance.”

Julius Nyerere, First President of Tanzania and Father of the Nation, Arusha Manifesto, 1961

A Lilac Breasted Roller, the Africa’s most photographed bird, feeding its chick.

November 28, 2018November 29, 2018

Tanzania: Mtu Ni Watu or: The People United

In 1964, three years after President Julius Nyerere had peacefully walked the former Eastern African colony Tanganyika out of British colonial rule, he united his country with Zanzibar. This archipelago in the Indian ocean just off the African East coast was by the time an even younger democracy: it was two weeks since the end of the Sultanate.

Three syllables, Tan(ganyika), Zan(zibar) and Ia (the Swahili ending for together) melted into one new word, into one new nation: Tanzania.

Children playing in the harbor of Stone Town, Zanzibar

120 separate tribes with distinct languages had for centuries lived in Tanganyika, due the vastness of the land in relative peace and tranquility. It was colonialism that drained the soil and wildlife, and left cracks in society.

First it was the slave and ivory trade by European and Arab merchants that turned not only elephants, but humans into cheap and abundant merchandise. Unspeakable misery was cast over the land. When the Germans colonized and shamelessly exploited the country, rebellions against their ruthless regime ended in more bloodshed and tears. In WWI, enlisted as soldiers for their colonial powers, Askaris (as African soldiers working for their colonial powers were called) were made to kill their own neighbors, their own cousins even, in the name of Germany respectively Great Britain, or the colonies of German East Africa and Malawi. And after WWII, the new colonial power Great Britain tried to use the land as a granary to stave off a famine in their war torn homeland. The notoriously unsuccessful Groundnut Scheme afforded the UK a loss of 49 million pounds, and turned the land into a useless dust bowl.

When Great Britain finally dismissed Tanganyika into liberty, it was mainly because they had failed to draw enough profit out of a land that had been drained for too long. The Tanganyika Julius Nyerere took over was one of the poorest places in the world.

But the man had a plan. First, he re-united the estranged tribes by one common language: Kiswahili, a hybrid language that had formed in the run of centuries by mixing Arabic and tribal languages, was promoted through literature, drama, and poetry. It was also made official language and installed as educational language in the schooling system. For Nyerere also introduced obligatory schooling from the age of six.

Nyerere’s plan was a socio-economic system he called Ujamaa , family in Kiswahili, or commonly called African Socialism. Emancipation from colonial rule, pride and solidarity as a nation were paramount, economic self-reliance and cultural independence the goal.

But unlike other socialist economies, he didn’t build massive factories. Instead he villagized the economy and put family and solidarity into the center of attention. His policy showed success. Infant mortality dropped, life expectation rose, as did literacy. The Tanzanians called Nyerere The Father Of The Nation.

a man lugging two logs, an incidental cross. There is religious freedom in Tanzania. While Nyerere was a devout catholic, the language and culture of Swahili is muslim. Christians and Muslims live peacefully side by side in the villages.

But Ujamaa could not withstand the pressures of capitalism and neoliberalism. In 1985 Tanzania was still among the world’s poorest nations. Nyerere resigned and the chapter of Ujimaa
was forever closed.

On the beach. Also the proud Massai people, who have preserved their customs and dress codes for centuries, speak Swahili

Lately, it has been Safari tourism, nature and wildlife that brought Tanzania and its economy back into the game. Especially since the unrest in neighboring Kenya, hitherto a number one Safari Tourist destination, Tanzania has known an influx of upscale tourism. The secret is the social peace and stability that Kenya, which never unified its country under one language, lacks.

Tanzania’s current economic upswing is still owed to Ujamaa. Let’s hope it will continue – despite today’s different political and economic system. The current president of Tanzania, John Jospeh Magufuli, also has a nickname: The Bulldozer.

Fishermen in the Kilombero river. The people of Tanzania are still poor, but working hard on a brighter future.

October 20, 2018

South Africa: Come Back, Mama Africa

A dress with Miriam Makeba’s famous Drum cover at Neighbourgoods Market Johannesburg

Ten Years ago, on November 7th 2008, the South African Singer and human rights activist Miriam Makeba collapsed after a performance. She was immediately taken to a hospital, but died from cardiac arrest. Nelson Mandela, president of South Africa, issued a statement, saying that the death “of our beloved Miriam has saddened us and our nation. She was the mother of our struggle.”

Nelson Mandela smiles on his Rainbow nation on a mural in central Johannesburg

Zenzile Miriam Makeba was a fearless emblem of the travails of black people under the apartheid system. She was a symbol of integrity and pan-Africanism, singing in any language from her own Xhosa to Swahili, from Portuguese to Yiddish. Her love songs and lullabies, party songs and calls for unity spoke of a joyful tenacity, of a will to survive: a deep cultural memory. She stood not only against South African apartheid, but for a worldwide movement against racism. She was Mama Africa.

In 1967, Miriam Makeba was also the first black woman to have a Top-ten world hit: Pata Pata. She had produced the song in the USA, as she was exiled from her native South Africa and her music banned. But in her heart South Africa lived on. “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realizing.”

Pata Pata is a Xhosa word, her native language, and means Touch, Touch. In the 1950ies, when Zenzile Miriam was young, an aspiring singer, it was a popular dance in the shebeens of Sophiatown.

Apartheid had just been installed in South Africa, but the Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown was still spared segregation. Africans of all tribes lived door by door with Indians, Chinese, Jews, and Mulattos. Mansions and quaint cottages stood next to rusty wood-and-iron shacks ignoring race or class structures. There were gangs in Sophiatown, the Tsotsi – modelled themselves after the American Zootsuits, and Miriam was a gang member, too. She performed as a singer in the shebeens – illegal drinking dens.

Bhanzi, a dancer and performer from the Johannesburg township of Tembisa in Tsotsi style.

Music thrived in Sophiatown – giving birth to its own South African Jazz, Marabi, a mixture of American Bebop and African traditional grooves, with Hugh Masakela, Abdullah Ibrahim, Kippie Moeketsi and Dolly Rathebe starting their careers. Black intellectuals flocked to Sophiatown to talk, listen and dance to recordings of the newest jazz. And Drum Magazine, the only black magazine, covered this bubbling scene, with photographers Bob Gusani and Ernest Cole, and artist Gerard Sekoto.

Fra Stompie has been playing in the old days in Sophiatown, and does so again.

“For Africans it was the Left Bank in Paris, Greenwich Village in New York, the home of writers, artists, doctors and lawyers. It was both bohemian and conventional, lively and sedate.” Nelson Mandela wrote in his autobiography. He too, a young lawyer, had come to Sophiatown. For music and political resistance went hand in hand in South Africa. That’s how Miriam and Nelson met.

In 1955, the governing National Party (NP), sent two thousand policemen armed with guns and rifles. Influential musicians, writers or activists were exiled or imprisoned, 60 000 inhabitants removed. Sophiatown was flattened by bulldozers.

Nowadays, long after the fall of Apartheid, and a cultural organization is trying to preserve the legacy and memory of the once vibrant suburb, and revive its grooves by organizing jazz workshops and concerts.

For her last concert, Miriam Makeba had come to Naples to participate in a charity held in solidarity with the writer Roberto Saviano, whom the Camorra threatened with death. Her last song was Pata Pata.

The real Pata Pata Dance

October 11, 2018October 11, 2018

Dubrovnik: For No Gold Freedom Shall Be Sold

The terracotta roofs of Dubrovnik, the Old Town surrounded by thick walls.

In 1416, as one of the first countries in history, the Republic of Dubrovnik banned slavery. The decision of the Grand Chamber stated that none of our nationals or foreigners, and everyone who considers himself or herself from Dubrovnik, can in any way or under any pretext buy or sell slaves or female servants, or be a mediator in such trade. Then they coined a slogan, Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro – For no gold can Freedom be sold – and literally wrote it on their banners, or at least its abbreviation: Libertas – Freedom became the flag of the republic of Ragusa.

Freedom loving citizens of Dubrovnik. Slaves were 80% female, kept for domestic work or sexual pleasure.

Ragusa, as Dubrovnik was then called, was founded in the 7th century, when invading barbarians wiped out the Roman city Epidaurum, and the surviving inhabitants took refuge on a rocky islet. The islet was naturally hard to access, nevertheless they built a protective wall around it, for those were turbulent times. The Eastern Adriatic was a battle ground for the superpowers: the Serenissima Republic of Venice, the Byzantine Empire as the remaining Roman Empire, the Ottomans, and finally all got spiced up with the arrival of the Slavs – not to mention the pirates that haunted the Adriatic sea. Yet, Ragusa, the rocky islet, fared well.

It teamed up with the neighboring Croat settlement called oak forest, or Dubrovnik, and the city-state prospered. It was not warfare, however, but the city-state’s extraordinary gift for deal-making, for trading and money-making, that ensured safety and wealth for everybody. Soon the city-state turned its precarious location as a borderland into an asset, by trading goods with all the surrounding powers, who granted Dubrovnik free trading rights. Spices, copper, textiles and of course slaves passed through the city and Dubrovnik flourished. All the city-state had to do in exchange, was accept sovereignty. And so they did.

In the run of the centuries they became part of the Byzantine empire, the Serenissima Republic of Venice, of Hungary, of Hungary-Croatia, of the Ottoman Empire, of France, Austria, Yugoslavia and finally Croatia. All the while the citizens lived in peace and did what they did best: they made money.

It was in 1416, after their sovereign Venice had been defeated by Hungary and had to pass on the complete Dalmatian coast, and Dubrovnik searched to be integrated into the Ottoman Empire – for trading rights in the Orient – that slavery turned out to be a problem.

Marin Drziz – the Renaissance poet and writer. Tourists like to rub his nose.

In the middle ages, both Christians and Muslims happily engaged in slavery as long as their slaves would not adhere to the same religion. Accordingly it was a perfectly fine for Christians to keep Muslim or pagan slave. Or for Muslims to keep Christian, or a pagan slave. In fact, slaves were so frequently stolen or bought from the Slavic tribes of the Balkan hinterland that the word slave derives from the word Slavic, and not the Latin word servus. Being Christian under Muslim rule, the city-sate first had to make sure that its citizens would not get enslaved by their new sovereign. So they came up with a genial solution. They simply banned slavery.

The corniche of Dubrovnik and the azure Adriatic sea.

The following years were of unequaled growth and wealth for Dubrovnik. Trade provided safety for everybody, from aristocrats to lower social classes benefited. And in safety, the arts bloomed, operas were composed, and poems, by men and women alike. Those were the heydays of literature and science in Dubrovnik. For Freedom for everyone meant freedom for the mind – and the religions: also the Jewish community thrived. And last but not least, Dubrovnik built fabulous ships from oak wood, galleons called Karaka in Dubrovnik or Argusy abroad, which sailed not only the Adriatic Sea, but the oceans. Dubrovnik famously delivered their goods to London, and much later they crossed the Atlantic and sailed to New York. For Dubrovnik was among the first nations to recognize the independence of the United States of America.

Nowadays it’s Americans that travel to Dubrovnik by the millions and swarm in the old town. But it’s not a courteous return visit, nor Dubrovnik’s breathtaking history that attracts them.

The gate to the Old Town is clogged with tourists.

It’s Game of Thrones, the popular TV series, which used Dubrovnik as a setting for its fantasy plot. And of course, the citizens of Dubrovnik, shrewd business people as they have always been, won’t pass out on a deal: Practically every room in the city seems to be a hotel, a BnB or Airbnb. The streets are thronged with Game of Throne-tours of local TV savvies. The tables in the restaurants and cafés are taken to the last corner. Every summer, Dubrovnik bursts at the seams. Could it be that after two thousand years of navigating proudly through changing times and powers, the people of Dubrovnik have finally sold out?

October 1, 2018October 10, 2018

Montenegro: The Price of Salt

When by September the last tourists have left and the little Adriatic republic of Montenegro has fallen into peaceful slumber again, another kind of yearly visitor arrives. Thousands of migrating birds on their way to the African sun stop-over at the country’s lakes and rocky shores, but most importantly at the Ulcinj Saltpans, a lagoon at Montenegro’s Southern tip, bordering Albania.

Salt pans are an ideal nesting and resting spot for birds. They offer a unique salty fauna, plus amphibians and reptiles, to their avian guests: a win-win situation for local economy and ecology; or, in other words: the ideal cohabitation of humans and birds. For without the pumps and machines, not enough salt water would reach the lagoon and therefore the bird habitat.

Samphire – the salty flower of the saltpans – has risen to fame since Jamie Oliver recently introduced it into his modern cuisine.

The Ulcinj salt pans, created in 1934 for salt production, have since attracted millions of birds. Today, however the pumps stand still. The dried pans are left in dire need to be flooded with sea water, but the machines and salt-factories dilapidated and forgotten, a but a surreal setting for the flamingos, the Dalmatian Pelicans, spoonbills and many other waders – whose future is as uncertain as that of the salt factory.

Problems began when the salt pans were sold to a private company with the permission to turn the land into a hotel and golf resort. However, following protests by wildlife NGOs, the young state of Montenegro declared the saltpans an environmentally protected area in 2012, thereby thwarting any hotel plans. As a result, the private owner declared bankruptcy in 2013, stopped salt production, and sued the young Republic of Montenegro for breach of contract. A coincidence or probably not, the saltpans have also fallen prey to various acts of vandalism, pumps and flamingo nests were destroyed, water ways clogged.

While the situation still seems unclear today, as bankruptcy proceedings are apparently not settled, the saltpans have been turned into an open-air museum for birding tourists in 2014 – with three hides and educational signs at the path surrounding the pan. Not unlike the factories, though, the signs stand forgotten and bleached by the Mediterranean sun.

But there is hope. Nature and birds are resilient, and despite their run down state, the pans dazzle the visitor’s eyes with a sparkling display of colors and birds. Within the past years, awareness among the locals has risen, and with the support of various NGOs, efforts have taken place to reinstall salt production.

The price of salt doesn’t seem so high in Montenegro. For salt comes with the birds, which makes it all the more worth it.

September 18, 2018September 18, 2018

Montenegro: Paradise (Almost) Lost at Lake Skadar

Millions of years ago, tectonic shifts cut off a portion of the Adriatic sea and formed a basin, later named Skadar by the Montenegrinians, or Shkodar by the Albanians, who nowadays share this charming lake, one of the largest in Europe, with no one but a bunch of birds.

While the birds have nested in the high reeds and floating carpets of sea lilies ever since, humans only settled at the lake’s shores about a thousand years ago – and engaged in battle right away: the Slavs against the Turks, the Montenegrins against the Ottomans, back and forth through times and ages, Tito’s partisans even sank a steamboat in the lake, while the storks and herons, the egrets and ibises, kingfishers, turns, stilts, dived and sailed through waves and skies.

Pygmy cormorants rise with the morning sun.

Today, in times of peace and with the help of the EU, which invests heavily in Montenegro, the lake is of dreamy tranquility and breathtaking wilderness, glittering in the Mediterranean sun. For birders it is nothing short of a paradise.

Lake Skadar was declared a National Park in 1983 and two globally endangered species, the Dalmatian Pelican and the Pygmy Cormorant, are found at the lake in abundance.

Unlike humans, the Pelicans and Cormorants have teamed up, breading in vicinity and sharing the chores of hunting and babysitting. While the regal, imposing pelicans are surprisingly elegant gliders, the cormorants excel at fishing, diving meters deep into the waters and bringing with them fish too large for themselves to swallow, but just the right size for the big beaked pelicans.

Lake Skadar could be a paradise for the birds – if it weren’t for the humans. Despite its status as a natural park, Lake Skadar has a litter problem, the occasional plastic bottle drifting like flotsam in the undulating waves, getting caught in the reeds, and clogging the freshwater springs that feed the lake.

a channel through the water lilies for the fishing boat

But worst are the left over fishing nets. Once expensive and made of biodegradable fabric, they are nowadays made of plastic and extremely cheap, to the effect that fishermen don’t bother to retrieve them but leave them swaying in the water .

For the cormorants, those masterful divers, they are a deathly trap, in which they get entangled and drown. Their dead bodies can be seen floating with the empty canisters, tins and beer bottles. But if the cormorants can’t dive up the fish, not only the pelicans will go hungry.

August 17, 2018August 19, 2018

Vienna: No One Writes To The Emperor

“I am madly in love with you, virtuously or diabolically, I love you and I will love you to the grave,” his wife, Isabella of Parma, wrote. Unfortunately not to him, Emperor Joseph II, but to his sister, Marie Christine.

Joseph had married Isabella when they were both 18. His mother, Queen Maria Theresia of Austria, had set up the marriage to fortify the bonds between the Austrians and the Bourbons of France. That was how Maria Theresia did business. She used her children – of which she had sixteen – as merchandise.

The royal wedding was a flamboyant spectacle, the last baroque festivity of its kind, designed to impress the people with both empires’ unlimited wealth and military strength. Joseph was smitten with his bride, Isabella with her new sister-in-law.

Statue of Jospeh II at the Imperial Castle Vienna

Joseph II was Maria Theresia’s third child but first son and therefore the desperately awaited successor to the crown. The queen herself had inherited the title from her father for the sole reason that there were no male successors in sight. Now her first son filled her with pride and joy – the promise that the empire would soon have a male leader. She famously presented the new-born to the kings of Hungary, who in sympathy for the young mother, immediately took to arms and defeated the Prussians, Maria Theresia’s archenemy.

Joseph II opened the imperial parks to the publics, as well as the theatres, abolished censorhip and liberated the arts.

Other than that, Queen Maria Theresia spoiled and pampered her first son. He grew into an arrogant young man, who not only Isabella did not find charming. The people of the empire were not taken with him either. They despised his taciturn intellect, his fascination with the Enlightenment and rationality and preferred his mother, who despite being a conservative, catholic fundamentalist, appeared like their loving mother-figure.

After her husband’s death, Maria Theresa wore black for the remainder of her life.

At 24, after his father’s death, Joseph II was crowned co-regent of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. He immersed himself in state business. “A monarch must be the first servant of his people,” he said. He traveled, studied ways of improving the monarchy, socially, economically and militarily. Yet, his ideas of reforming and modernizing the state were stalled by his mother, who after her beloved husband’s death remained frozen in the past, clad in black eternally.

Young Isabella, intelligent and educated, did not enjoy her role as baby machine. She was said to be plagued with melancholy and depression, and despite her love affair with Marie Christine, she was pregnant five times. Three pregnancies resulted in miscarriages. One girl survived only to die from small pocks at seven years old, and one girl’s birth was so complicated, she took Isabella with her to the grave. Joseph was heart-broken. He never recuperated from the loss.

Joseph II had a General hospital built in Vienna and the world’s first asylum for the mentally insane.

After his own mother’s, Queen Maria Theresia’s, death Joseph as a regent could finally realize his reformatory ideas: He installed the freedom of religion and limited the hitherto unlimited rights of the Catholic Church. He abolished serfdom and equalized the tax system. He abolished censorship and liberated the arts – Vienna turned into a heaven for musicians and Mozart and Beethoven settled in the city. He opened the universities to all religions, not only the Catholics, and the imperial theaters and parks to the public. He had general hospitals built and the world’s first asylum for the insane. And the people – still hated him. To the extent, that after his premature death at 49, most of his reforms were revoked. Not the serfdom, though, which could not be re-established.

While the nobles hated him, among farmers Joseph II was always popular. Even before his death. They just couldn’t deal with his progessive ideas regarding the Catholic church, whose rights he severly cut..

His eulogy left no doubt:

“Der Bauern Gott, der Bürger Not, des Adels Spott liegt auf den Tod”
“On his deathbed lies the peasants’ God, the affliction of the burghers and the scorn of the nobility”

a popular satirical verse went.

Joseph II had been ahead of his time. A few decades later, he was indeed venerated and a multitude of monuments were erected in his memory. But there was more writing in his honor.

After Isabella’s death, and another unhappy and unconsumed marriage following mother’s wish, the widower Joseph remained single for the rest of his life, but frequented the whore houses of Vienna on a regular basis. One day in the year 1778, a prostitute refused herself to him and after some quarrel, the emperor Joseph II of Austria and Hungary was thrown out of a bordel in Spittelberggasse in the then suburbs of Vienna. Now, there was someone who wrote to the Emporer!

He came flying through this door

Joseph II, Emperor

Durch dieses Tor im Bogen kam Kaiser Joseph II. geflogen– 1778

Witwe Bolte, now an upscale restaurant, was once a brothel in Vienna’s redlight district. While the place underwent renovation, the 18th century inscription was left untouched.

July 29, 2018July 30, 2018

Vienna: Salt and Pepper

The Saliera, the only work of art undoubtedly attributed to the Florentine artist Benvenuto Cellini

In 1544, the Florentine artist Benvenuto Cellini sculptured an intricate little salt table, saliera in Italian, which, for different reasons, went on to become one of Vienna’s most famous works of art. The Saliera is insured for the breathtaking sum of 60 million Euros. And good that it is…

Created for Charles I of France, the Saliera is a virtuoso piece in the then fashionable style of Mannerism. While in Renaissance art natural beauty, symmetry and balance were enhanced, Mannerism exaggerated these qualities to an extent that artworks appeared asymmetric, artificial. Mannerism addressed intellect rather than emotion – complex and sophisticated, with style and technique outweighing beauty and – meaning. A characteristic that some might find quite suitable to Viennese etiquette and manners…

Made of ivory, gold and enamel, the Saliera depicts a man and a woman: an allegory to the Sea and the Earth. A small vessel next to the man holds salt, a temple-shaped box next to the female figure pepper. On its base it even has a set of roles, for convenience at dinner parties and banquets – or for pure appreciation.

Charles son, Charles II, gave the Saliera to the Habsburgers as a present to Ferdinand II of Tyrol, when the former married Elisabeth of Austria. The Habsburg emporers and archdukes were avid collectors of exotic and uncommon materials, like precious stones, ostrich eggs, shark teeth and their likes – many of which were believed to hold magic powers – and were turned into works of art by chosen artists.

The Vanitas Group – An Allegory of Transcience is another famous oeuvre at display at the Kunstkammer. Sculptured in Medival Ages by (most likely) Michel Erhart, it contrasts the chaste beauty of Youth with the frivolity of age. The world was in the tight grip of catholic chastity back then…

The Kunstkammern – arts and natural wonders rooms – were collections that attempted to represent the erudition of their time. When the Museum of Fine Arts in Vienna was completed in the 19th century, the Saliera was transferred to Vienna, and has been at public display, well protected, since the Museum was opened in 1891. The Kunstkammer at KHM, Vienna, is still considered the most important of its kind in the world.

The Saliera sat idly among other spectacular, delicate or bizarre statuettes, clocks or automatons – until 15th years ago, on May 11th 2003, when during a renovation the museum covered by a scaffolding, the salt dish was stolen. No alarms went off, the Saliera was simply gone.

The KHM – Kunsthistorisches Musem – Museum of Fine Arts, Vienna – after renovation and without scaffolding.

The museum offered a reward of one million Euros for its recovery. Without success. It was in January 2006 only that the Saliera was discovered, buried in a forest 90km North of Vienna. The thief – one by occasion rather than training – had turned himself in. He had been caught by surveillance cameras and recognized by his friends.

Ever since then, the Saliera is the most popular piece of art in Vienna.

The Saliera advertised on Banners in Vienna.

June 8, 2018July 30, 2018

Rome: A Woman’s Place Is In The Kitchen

For over thousand years, from around 700 BC to 400AD, the Vestal Virgins tended to the eternal flame in the Forum Romanum. The Vestal Virgins were emancipated women, meaning, they did not belong to a man – a father or husband – like their female contemporaries, but were devoted to the Goddess of Hearth, Vesta, who unlike other deities of their time, was not represented by statues, but by fire.

remains of the Vestal temple at the Forum Romanum

The Vestal Virgins enjoyed most of the honors and privileges of Roman citizens, and were allowed to handle their own property. Yet – this came at a price: Chosen at a very young age from Patrician families, the girls had to take a vow of chastity for thirty years. They were to live like nuns in the house of Vestales, which was basically a kitchen with adjacent living quarters, next to the Vestal temple, where the fire was burning.

Besides tending to the fire, an important and responsible task in a densely populated city, their duties were most importantly the preparation of the mola salsa, the holy cakes used for state sacrifices, and the holding of the Vestalia Festival around the Summer solstice each year. During these festivities their home quarters were opened to other women for visits. As priestesses of Vesta, the Vestal Virgins were also considered guardians of luck and could intervene on behalf of those in trouble.

Everything in Rome, it seems, depended on the everlasting burning flame, and the Vestales’ virginity. Their purity promised to create a magic bond for the community. As long as their virginity remained intact – Rome would remain safe.

Punishment was brutal and merciless, should a Virgin fail in her duties. If the fire went out – which meant that the Vestal was impure and the health and safety of the Romans therefore under threat – the Virgin was whipped to death. If the virgin committed the worst of all crimes, lose her virginity, she was to be buried alive. She then was led to an underground chamber at the Campus Sceleratus, where a bed, food and even a lamp was provided. After she entered, the entrance was locked and covered with dirt. It was a clearly defined ritual. Control and administration of these punishments fell to the one man who had initially chosen them for the job: the Pontifex Maximus. If a Virgin finished the 30 years alive, she was free to do as she pleases. Only a few married.

The most famous Vestal to have broken the vow of chastity, was Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus, the founders of the city of Rome. It is believed that Rhea Silvia was raped by an unknown man, but after discovering her unwanted pregnancy, she claimed immaculate conception and named Mars, the God of warfare, as the father. For fear of Mars’ wrath, Rhea Silvia was spared death, but the twin babies were to die – not by sword, but by the elements. Let fate decide! They were abandoned. The rest is history.