The night had been cool and miserable, and Lieutenant Joseph Naus had spent most of it sitting by the fire cracking fleas. On August 27, 1820, at four in the morning, Naus set out on an arduous journey together with a mountain guide and an assistant. Around noon the men stood on the western summit of the Zugspitze, swept away by a snowstorm. They had managed the first datable ascent of Germany’s highest mountain. However, the unpredictable weather made it impossible to think about the actual mission of their venture. Naus was a geometer, he was to create the basis for a Werdenfelser map. The large-scale land survey project in Bavaria had been running since 1810.
The historian Christof Paulus places this episode at the beginning of his great presentation of Bavarian history; it is a start that comes as a bit of a surprise. Because all major works of Bavarian historiography have so far followed a chronological sequence that began at the latest in the days of the Celts and Romans and was then continued step by step.
Paulus took a different path, which makes reading his 620-page work “Bavaria’s Times” a pleasure for the most part. The book proves to be a treasure trove of interesting, instructive and curious stories, some of which are well known, but illuminate the subject of regional history from an unfamiliar point of view and thus enable new insights.
Paulus, adjunct professor of regional history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, has already tried out as a research assistant at the House of Bavarian History, how the past can be conveyed in an exciting way, even if one uses little-noticed sources and methods. Above all, you have to reach the senses, he says, and that makes sense immediately.
It is difficult to generate enthusiasm for history with written sources alone, which is why Paul also relies on the expressiveness of old buildings, votive tablets, bells, frescoes, folk songs and beer gardens and incorporates these sources lavishly and profitably into his narrative.
Some may have heard the name of the pastor Candid Huber (1747-1813), who began studying fruit and forest trees in the Bavarian Forest. He quickly rose to become a well-known naturalist, he created wooden libraries and wrote 130 specialist books. In the book, Paul describes, among other things, Huber’s funeral and the unfortunate circumstance that they forgot to have a coffin made for him. In the funeral speech, the director of the Old Botanical Garden in Munich made an assumption whose rhetorical beauty shines to this day: “It was as if the trees of the forest had refused the necessary boards for the one who lived and wrote for them deliver.”
The Soiernkessel viewed from the Schöttelkarspitze. On the left you can see the former bridle path of King Ludwig II to the summit of the Schöttelkarspitze.
(Photo: Sebastian Beck)
Bismarck scales in Bad Kissingen. The current weight of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was the talk of the day in the spa town of Bad Kissingen when the overweight politician traveled to the spa.
(Photo: Gerhard Nixdorf/City of Bad Kissingen (photo collection))
The book is laid out in such a way that you don’t have to read it cover to cover. You open it somewhere and you are right in the middle of the overflowing wealth of Bavarian history, which Paul describes as a “history treasure trove”. No wonder there are only a few countries that have produced as many famous works of history. Even today, historians like to quote from the chronicle of Johannes Aventinus (1477-1534), who is considered the father of Bavarian historiography.
In the 19th century, the eight-volume edition by Siegmund Riezler stands out, as it were the forerunner of the “Handbook of Bavarian History” published by Max Spindler. The monographs by Michael Doeberl, Benno Hubensteiner, Karl Bosl, Andreas Kraus, Friedrich Prinz, Claus Hartmann and Teja Fiedler also gained fame, most recently the history of modern Bavaria by Manfred Treml.
Of course, Paul does not rely on the proven line of sight, which primarily focuses on the powerful and their savings. It tells the cultural history of Bavaria from the first mention around the year 500 to the fall of the wall in 1989 in a different order. “I wanted to set up new headlights,” as he puts it. You learn a lot of things that you don’t even think of as a reader. For example, what the alpine landscapes, but also the painted church vaults, tell us about the variety of fruit, vegetables and plants that once existed in Bavaria?
Another chapter deals with the tonsure of Duke Tassilo III of Agilolfing. and how to evaluate it. It’s about the deposition of the Bavarian duke, whose hair had been shaved in order to dishonor him. The trial dates back more than 1200 years, but it is still engraved in the collective Bavarian memory and is still able to arouse anger and indignation. While phenomena such as the Bismarck cult, which grew around 1880, quickly dissipated.
The pilgrimage church of the Scourged Savior on the Wies, better known as the Wieskirche, is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
(Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa)
In May 1919, an armed vigilante led away captured Red Guards in Munich.
(Photo: SZ Photo)
“Sounds, noises, voices are also part of historical construction and meaning,” says Paulus. It makes sense to take the chapters War and Revolution as examples, which are unthinkable without the screams of the wounded and without the thunder of rifles and cannons. Just looking at the sound worlds constantly opens up new perspectives – from the noise of battle to the “sound of money” to the monastic silence. But Paulus also draws on the history of beauty, starting with King Ludwig I’s gallery of beauties and ending with the all-encompassing aesthetics and illusionary art of the Baroque and Rococo periods. With the fullness of that splendor that can be found in the Wieskirche and with those light spaces in all kinds of churches that have lost nothing of their fascination to this day.
Paul then counters the whole thing with the aesthetics of the ugly and the fascination of death, which already unfolds its full force in the depictions of the dance of death. How did all this, how did colour, climate and disease affect the course of history? Paul asks questions after questions, not least about the history of the media and communication, but also about the change in dealing with homosexuality and people with disabilities, whereby he usually finds convincing answers with his broad-based methodology.
In the middle of the depiction, he spreads out the history of Bavaria during the Nazi dictatorship, and here too, with diary entries from the period 1932 to 1945, he chose a depiction that does not correspond to the classic form, but opens up new approaches to the terrible events which makes the suffering of the persecuted painfully recognizable.
Christof Paulus, Bavarian times. A cultural-historical illumination, Pustet Verlag, 34.95 euros.