Ann Laemmlen Lewis

1st Century Roman Temple in Mainz

I asked our museum guide if there was anything else we should see before leaving Mainz (John and I had a little more time after saying farewell to the group). He recommended we visit a 1st Century Roman Temple that was discovered in 1995 under a shopping mall.

The Roman Temple was really interesting. It was down under street level. They call it the Sanctuary for Isis and Mater Magna, two Roman Gods. You get to it through the Römerpassage shopping center. Visiting was free (donation appreciated). There’s no money for funding from the city.

This temple in Mainz is the only excavated building of this type dedicated to Isis in Germany. They’ve found some similar ones in Aachen and Cologne and Augsburg, that only have some inscriptions or reason to guess what they were by inscriptions found there.

There was a walkway all the way around the Temple, so we could look down into it. The stone walls were all intact, and well-defined. Around the sides we looked at displays of all the things they excavated there–many were things brought to the altar of sacrifice: pots, glass, figures, oil lamps, messages rolled on small metal sheets, lots of bones of things like chickens and small animals, and more. They had movies playing on the walls of what happened here. It was really interesting. Glad we saw it. It’s pretty thrilling to see something that was here when Jesus walked on the earth.

We enjoyed a delicious dinner before heading back to Bad Homburg and home.

Stolpersteine on the way to the carpark:

Always a reminder.

Mainz, The Temporary Gutenberg Museum

Next we went to the new location of the Gutenberg Museum. It’s moved temporarily into the Natural History Museum, next to an old church, that also houses part of the Gutenberg Museum (one large room of modern-day applications of the press in printing).

The new location holds just a small fraction of the museum–they showed the movie, we saw the vault room, and there was the room in the church. The real museum was large and covered 3 floors. We spent about an hour here today, divided again into 2 groups, with 2 tour guides.

Here we are in the Natural History Museum waiting to go in.

We saw an English version of the film telling the story of Gutenberg.

Then a guide demonstrated how the printing press works.

This is the device Gutenberg invented that changed the printing world:

Pigments used in the illuminations:

Here are the precious books kept in the vault:

In the vault we saw 3 original Bibles, one OT, one NT and one combined. We also saw a hand-written Bible from the same time period, to show the contrast and difference.

To see more of the museum (last year), now under renovation, take a look here.

Mainz, St. Stephan’s Church and the Chagall Windows

St. Stephan’s Church was our next meeting point at 1:00. We had a paid tour guide to teach our group about Marc Chagall and his 9 famous windows with 18 shades of blue. The filtered light in the chapel was also blue.

It was interesting to learn more about Chagall. I didn’t know he was Jewish and most of his family was killed in WWII. He’d fled to France. The Bishop in Mainz begged him to create a single window for the church here. It took him 2 years to decide to do it and when he finally agreed, he wanted it to represent reconciliation and peace. His themes were from the Old Testament.

From Wikipedia:

Marc Chagall[a] (born Moishe Shagal; 6 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985) was a Russian and French artist. An early modernist, he was associated with the École de Paris, as well as several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.

Chagall was born in 1887, into a Jewish family near Vitebsk, today in Belarus, but at that time in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire. Before World War I, he traveled between Saint Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin. During that period, he created his own mixture and style of modern art, based on his ideas of Eastern European and Jewish folklore. He spent the wartime years in his native Belarus, becoming one of the country’s most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College. He later worked in and near Moscow in difficult conditions during hard times in Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution, before leaving again for Paris in 1923. During World War II, he escaped occupied France to the United States, where he lived in New York City for seven years before returning to France in 1948.

Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as “the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century.” According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be “the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists.” For decades, he “had also been respected as the world’s pre-eminent Jewish artist.” Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz as well as the Fraumünster in Zürich, windows for the UN and the Art Institute of Chicago and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra. He experienced modernism’s “golden age” in Paris, where “he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism”. Yet throughout these phases of his style “he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk.” “When Matisse dies,” Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, “Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is.”

The Windows of Marc Chagall

Genesis: After completing the restoration of the church, which had been badly damaged in the war, Pastor Klaus Mayer turned to the Jewish-Russian artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985), the master of color and the biblical message, in the spring of 1973 with the request to make a statement in the east choir of St. Stephen’s Church with church windows designed by him. The contact was followed by letters and later meetings. The artist began designing a central window in December 1976. On September 23, 1978, the first Chagall window with the “Vision of the God of the Fathers” was presented to the parish.

A few days later, the then 91-year-old artist began designing the two flanking central windows with the “Vision of Salvation History”. These two windows were inaugurated on September 15, 1979.

The elderly artist went to work again at the turn of the year 1979/1980 to create the side windows of the east choir with the theme “Praise of Creation” and thus close off the choir area. On September 19, 1981, the three side windows were handed over to the parish. With them, the east choir has gained its closedness and thus the choir area its optimal light fluid, since the windows also influence each other in terms of light.

At the end of 1982, at the age of 96, Marc Chagall created the designs for the three large, three-track windows in the transept, completely unexpectedly. He wanted to create a “vestibule” and “preparation” for the biblical message in the windows of the east choir. On May 11, 1985, the parish received Marc Chagall’s last windows, shortly after his death on March 28, 1985.

The glass surface of all nine windows created by Marc Chagall in the east choir and the transept totals 177.6 square meters.

(Text by Monsignor Klaus Mayer, quoted from the “Small Art Guide to St. Stephan in Mainz”, Verlag Schnell & Steiner, 16th expanded edition 2012).

These are the stickers that are placed on doorways on Three Kings Day (Epiphany), commemorating the biblical journey of the magi, or three wise men, to visit the baby Jesus. They presented gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The tradition of chalking the door dates back to the 16th century and involves dressing up as the three kings and going door to door singing carols and collecting money for charity. At each house they visit, children chalk the year, an asterisk, and “C+M+B” on the door. Sometimes they use these stickers.

Here’s a marker that says on 27 Feb 1945, 1200 people died here in the heaviest bombing unleashed by Hitler in Mainz. NEVER AGAIN WAR.

And here is a little house filled with food and nesting materials for birds.

Mainz, Shot Put Christmas Trees!

Have you ever seen a Christmas Tree Shot Put? This very fun activity was going on in the plaza. I’m calling it “Shot Put Christmas Trees.” They call it “Baumweitwurfmeisterschaft” (tree far throw master). The contest area was laid out like a shot put field (all in pink). The meter distances were marked. Anyone could try. Ikea was a sponsor and the top 3 winners got gift cards for 100, 50 and 20 Euro to Ikea. They had 2 or 3 different size old dead crispy Christmas trees for small, medium and large people to throw like a javelin. It was pretty fun to watch.

Mainz, St. Augustine’s Church and some lunch

From the Dom, we walked down the street, enjoying the old shops and homes along the way, to the Augustine Church with its large ornate Baroque street front.

I am always amazed at how large these homes are for being so old.

In places like this I have to remember to look both up and down and all around. Everything is interesting.

Here is the Augustine Church, sandwiched between other buildings:

Another beautiful and interesting Nativity.

Sometimes you just have to sit and take it all in.

So many beautiful details.

Next we split into smaller groups to go find places to have some lunch.

Several of us enjoyed finding this little shop full of Nativities and wood carvings.

This Farmer’s Market almost had us believing that Spring is coming.

The Nail Monument (Nagelsäuele, or nail column) that was erected after WWI, around 1916 when they raised donations to help the wounded and needy after the war.

The locals from the surrounding apartments come to do their weekly shopping at these farmer’s markets. It’s fun and festive. There was a live marching band playing music and there were politicians passing out flyers. Lots of color and festivity.

Mr. Guttenberg watched over us all.

Our little group stopped at this bakery for lunch. Mmmm.

Our next meeting place was the St Stephan’s Church to see the Chagall windows.

A Zone Activity in Mainz, the Cathedral

We met our missionary group this morning at 10:00 at the Dom. We had about 40 missionaries, including many of our new ones. A few were traveling. A few stayed home.

Everywhere we go, we are reminded of hard things that happened here.

Roman ruins:

This is the Carnival memorial. It’s fun. Look at the details.

The Saturday Farmer’s Market by the Dom:

We started in the Dom and everyone just wandered, looking up in awe at the massive gothic beauty. Christmas trees and the Nativity were still set up. Most churches have several trees, usually decorated with the straw stars and ornaments. Sometimes they have white lights. They are simple and beautiful. The Dom had white poinsettias on the steps to the alter area. Also beautiful.

We enjoyed the majesty of it all, then went out into the courtyard in the back, surrounded by a covered an pillared area with headstones and monuments. One was made to represent Christ’s tomb with his crucified body laid out in it, with the nail holes in his hands and feet and side. I really hope someone is indexing all of the tombs and memorials in these churches. Most of the words are in Latin. We spent about 45 minutes in the Dom.