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| Saturday, 26 April 2003 |
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Frankfurt the global village by Lionel Wijesiri
At the Frankfurt airport, my German friend asked me :"Do you know what German city has the highest percentage of foreigners, the most drugs and crime and the biggest budget for culture?" I said, "Berlin". "No, Guess again" he said. "It's Frankfurt". I have visited Frankfurt many a time during the past decade yet it has always been a fascinating city to me. As the city is at the point where major European trunk roads intersect, it is the ideal location for the head offices of the numerous multi national companies and banks and for international trade fairs. It is also the ideal starting point for exploring the romantic side of Germany along the Rhine, Mosel, Main and Neckar. Nevertheless, this business centre is also well worth visiting in its own right; it has its own unique mixture of historic buildings and skyscrapers in the Manhattan style. There is an unimaginable wealth of cultural exhibits spread round more than 40 museums , over 20 theatres and hundreds of libraries and archives. It is no wonder Frankfurt has the largest culture budget in Germany.
The city has had to reinvent itself since wartime air raids destroyed most of its historical monuments and well-preserved medieval quarter - so today it does not proffer much in the way of Old World charm. This financial capital on the River Main (pronounced "Mine") is abrasive, hard-headed and rich; its glass and concrete skyscrapers are occupied by banks or insurance companies and its nickname is "Mainhattan." In addition to finance, wealth is generated by industry, particularly in engineering, chemicals and printing and publishing. As a result, most travellers who venture to Frankfurt are actually bound not for the city itself but for a trade fair, (in my case, ISH exhibition), one of the 50,000 congresses, conferences and seminars held each year. The Congress Center Messe - Frankfurt has recently completed a massive expansion, and now 2,300 participants can sleep under the same roof in the new hotel next door. It's logical to think of Frankfurt as a great port city that thrives off airborne rather than sea borne trade. The city's largest employer (52,000 people), the airport handles over 40 million passengers a year - and is expanding, spurred on by the deregulation of airline travel in Europe. Its facilities include a shopping mall with 100 shops, three movie theatres, 20 restaurants, a disco, a chapel and an exhibition gallery.
The traffic-free R"merberg (main square) of the old town was reconstructed after World War II. The R"mer is the town hall where Holy Roman emperors held lavish coronation banquets. The "medieval" buildings facing it are pure reconstructions, with modern interiors. Just east of the main square (on Domplatz) is a more authentic piece of the past, St. Bartholomew's Cathedral, a Gothic church where 30 emperors of the Holy Roman Empire were crowned. It is one of the few historic buildings that escaped serious damage during World War II. Another church, just west of the square, commemorates events of 150 years ago, a year of living dangerously that ended in bloodshed and repression. Germany was not a unified country in 1848, of course, when its various city-states and principalities elected Germany's first national parliament. Its members sat in St. Paul's Church for much of the year, drawing up plans for a union of German-speaking peoples based on democratic principles. Unfortunately, they neglected to create an army while debating the finer points of constitutional government, and an alliance of reactionaries and Prussian militarists put an end to their work.
The Goethehaus and Museum, also in the old town, was the birthplace and first home of Germany's most famous writer. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe studied law and became a member of the bar in Frankfurt before turning his full attention to writing. He sealed his fame with the tragic love story, "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" ("The Sorrows of Young Werther"), a novel that has inspired countless copycat suicides. This is also where Goethe wrote the first version of his masterpiece, "Faust" (minus the pious, happy ending of Part II). The recently reopened museum overflows with works of art that inspired Goethe, himself an amateur painter, and exhibits about Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress), a movement of writers and artists who promoted the romantic cult of the young genius in rebellion against society - an idea still going strong a century and a half later. On the opposite bank of the Main River, in the neighbourhood of Sachsenhausen, the Museum Embankment offers a remarkable landscape of exhibits within the space of two long blocks. Strolling down Schaumainkai, you pass the Liebieghaus, a collection of sculpture spanning two millennia displayed in a 19th century villa; the Staedelsches Kunstinstitut (Stadel Art Institute), housing some of Germany's major art treasures, including paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Renoir and Monet; and museums dedicated to the German postal system, architecture, cinema, non-European ethnology and applied arts.
At the end of the exhausted third day, my German friend asked me whether I am in need of what they call Gem tlichkeit (a cross between cosiness and companionship). When I said "yes", he sent me to a communal table in a Sachsenhausen apple-wine tavern. It was a pleasant meal of eggs and green sauce, with a Japanese tourist at one elbow and a visiting Italian engineer at the other. After a few rounds of apfelwein, served in earthenware krugs, my weariness began to dissolve and then I began to understand what Frankfurt really is. Apfelwein and sushi, skyscrapers and half-timber houses: Frankfurt is full of contrasts and in its own fascinating way blends the modern and the traditional, the urban and the rustic. In its broadest sense, Frankfurt is a classic global village. |
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