Martin T.C. Jenter This Is My Land Dedication

To My Tree Sons Carl, Bill, Martin.

Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death. Jeremiah 21:8

To Carl, Bill, Marty: As actual, existing names are used throughout my narrative, please make sure about the persons to whom you loan it. One or the other might be hurt and that is not the object, as I have no ax to grind. Martin Jenter February 1944 Table of Contents Looking for the promised land ...... 4 Preface ...... 5 About ancestors ...... 6 Der Deutsche Stammbaum (drawing) ...... 7 The German Stammbaum (10¢ per name) ...... 8 Some more ancestors ...... 8 Relatives (The Family) ...... 10 About the greatest guy in the world ...... 12 Der strenge Grossvater (the strict grandfather) ...... 13 The other Grandma and laughing about sour grapes ...... 16 My Birthplace—about its past ...... 17 Castrum Optimum—The most important castle in the land ...... 18 1885 to 1904 in Schleswig ...... 20 The Dom—the church of my boyhood ...... 21 4 Looking for the promised land

I have not told you of 24 years of romance, drama and the joy of working in this haven, nor the proving of real friendships and otherwise. I promise you that story someday. 5 Preface Funny enough, when I wrote the printed line on the first page, 6 weeks ago I did not dream I would start so soon to tell my story. But then, I was with Mr Rosenberg1 who wants to know my whole history before he goes into our big trials. I can't blame him, in fact that's the way I work, when I paint or write. Know your subject. The more you know the better the result. Incidentally, in spite of the fact that we Jenters are usually loquacious, I never told you much about your immediate ancestors or myself. I “pictured” the story for I always greatly regret to read a book without illustrations, and see how “Life” [magazine] grew because it believed in pictures. Not that mine could compare with Luce's brainchild and splendid action pictures and great variety of attractions, based on millions of busy people's lives. After all, it's only the story of one little man you know and who happens to be your dad, but use your imagination and memory of many places you have seen, and my story may have enough sunshine and shadows to pay you for reading it to the end. You probably remember the sculptor Vincent Miserendino2, who among other works, gave America the finest Teddy Roosevelt busts. You remember his great bronze monument in front of your high school3 (pictured below). Well, at a party in our studio he made a bust of Willy Pogany4 while he told us about lights and shadows. There were only two light sources. One above the subject, one above a hunk of clay. Half an hour later they were alike in shape and form. Close by or far away the likeness was perfect. With front light – without shadows in the face – he could not have done it in 12 hours, he said. A face-like life should have light and shadows. All sunshine only was flat – in the Arts, the building of character and in life.

1Lawyer hired to sue former business partners 2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenzo_Miserendino 3https://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profle=all&source=~!siartinventories&uri=full=3100001~!323537~!0#focus 4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Pogany 6 About ancestors Well, talking about ancestry – let's start at the beginning. When I came home from the “sexta” [6th grade] with marks that showed I was doing poorly as a lad of nearly nine years in my French lessons, dad said “That's laziness!! You have Huguenot ancestors, it ought to be easy for you, your sisters are doing fine in French.” Somewhere around 1580 or 1590 they fled during the huguenots wars. Some fled early, some only after the massacres of the Saint Bartholomew's night. Some went as far as America, some to England and some to Lorraine and some kept going to . Ours went to Wurttenbourg, there in a small village called Balingen, a village within sight of the old Hohenzollern castle5, they remained. They kept on speaking French for a hundred or more years and it became known as the Franzosene Dorf (French Village Hessel Wangen). Some of them went further into Bavaria, some became Judges, and Mayors of towns. 10 Generations from Laux Jenter (born around 1580) have been kept track of in the Church Registries of Hesselwangen. He had four sons. Hannsz was the oldest – your forefather – Laux, the next, who became a judge. Endres (the 3rd son) family died without further issue in 1663, but Eberhard his last son, had a boy by name of Gallus, who also became a Judge and who was followed by three more generations dying out in 1774. Laux’s family offsprings are still alive and so are we Hannsz successors. His son Johannes married an aristocratic lady with two coats of arms and Johannes son Hans [married] one with only one. Among the next five generations three more ladies appear with a coat of arms, topped by a helmet (meaning some of their ancestors were Knights). As Huguenots never had a coat of arms I am sorry I can't leave you one, but I am sure our lady ancestors have done well by now, my sons, as far as “non – Mayflowery” ancestors go. After all – today it's not the coat of arms but the code of honor a man has.

Hohenzollern Castle

5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenzollern_Castle 7 Der Deutsche Stammbaum (drawing) Art TK Family tree 8 The German Stammbaum (10¢ per name) But as this is a book of facts without fiction, to be authenticated by exhibits A. B. C. etc., as my lawyers insist on calling proofs, I shall point out a few details that can be checked. When Hitler came to power, a third cousin of yours, Helmet Backe, who was then an attorney in Berlin, was “prompted” to look up his ancestry and have it “certified”. As it was too expensive for him – he wrote me would I share in the cost of the research and transaction. I must say for the $50 [~$1000 in 2019] I got a bargain – for I have somewhere in the “morgue” the names of over 500 Jenters through 10 generations. [actual tree from Backe pictured on right] Now, who could have given you that many authentic names with birth, marriage, baptism and death dates included, for $0.10 [~$1.90] a piece. By going to the N. Y. Public Library I was able to check on the aforementioned 6 coats of arms and copy them, enabling me to make a fairly accurate family tree. If we were Chinese, who revere their ancestors, I probably would not speak slightingly of the fact – these ladies of our ancestry might have the distinction of having brought some nightly holdup men into the family tree. Let's hope they did not kill the innocent merchant men and wayfarers – they so often held up according to history – particularly during the Hundred Year and the 30-year Wars. One peculiarity can be seen on the accompanying picture. [Martin’s hand drawn Family Tree, previous page] 10 Generations ago Laux fled to a peaceful country – married and had four sons. For 10 generations there never were four sons again in his oldest son's offsprings. I did not flee Germany but I ran away from it, as you will see in later pages. I also married in a new and peaceful land and had four sons. Backe was unable to find out any dates about Laux’s wife but I hope he was not left alone as early as I was, when your mother died with your baby brother as an aftermath of the flu in the first World War. Some more ancestors

I told you about getting 500 names for the family tree yet I used only 64. Well, on sketching up the names, (just writing space) by A. D. 1774 they filled a paper 6 foot wide, without using some of the ancestral ladies Family trees. I had to omit and simplify. 9

It would have been a forest otherwise. What I regret is, that I will probably never be able to verify or even get any more information about that two splendid women closest to you – your mother and grandmother. The monument to their memory is in my heart–that they did not live to see you grow up and give you a chance to love them as I did is your hardest loss. So, there is no line of ancestors to look up to, but you can take it from your dad, those two were worth all the rest of the Jenters, including myself, put together. Their kindness, not their family tree, is your . You can be proud of two glorious women, your mother Milly Lohse and your grandmother Margarethe Schlüter. Around 1910 uncle Theodore Schlüter was in Auberurea where a massive stone before the entrance of a very old house had been worn hollow by centuries of busy feet. They were going to turn it over to give the other flat side a chance to take a shuffling and beating. But nobody walked on that side or on that stone. For engraved or chiseled into it was the burial dates of several Schlüter’s – the last date 1463. It's in the church now, uncle Ted saw to it being set – he was an important man, having been bicycle champion of Germany and in the Gay 90's. So your grandmother was either of Anglen6, Saxon, Danish or Swedish forefather's stock. Maybe they were there when King Sven Gabelbart left this, his homeland, and conquered England with his Vikings (A.D. 963 – 1014), according to the runestone set around 1090 in Haithabu [now home of a Museum of Viking life and culture], the village on the opposite shore of Schleswig, where I was born. Maybe they were there before the tribes had grouped themselves into Anglen and Saxons or when the Jutlanders and Danes had moved in, when this great peninsula above Charlemagne's empire became de–populated by the migration of the Anglen and Saxons to Angle–land7 (England). Of your mother's family tree I am even less informed. Knowing that most of the records must have been in the archives at Hamburg there is hardly a likelihood that anything of records could have outlasted this war’s destruction. We were not race or “ancestry” conscious when we were married, we had no time for anything but work and fun raising three boys, owning a house – paying for it and starting a business, as you may glean out of succeeding pages. This then is all there is to the stories of where we came from. If in later life you are fortunate enough to be able to add to it, so much the better, but never, never look down on a man who knows nothing whatsoever of any relatives or forefathers. He may be a better man. I have never heard of Lincoln boasting of ancestors, though undoubtedly he must have had some good ones.

6 Anglia is a small peninsula within the larger Jutland Peninsula in the region of Southern Schleswig, which constitutes the northern part of the northernmost German federal state of Schleswig–, protruding into the Bay of Kiel of the . Wikipedia 7 Te Angles (Old English: Ængle, Engle; Latin: Angli; German: Angeln) were one of the main Germanic peoples[1] who settled in Great Britain in the post–Roman period. Tey founded a number of kingdoms of Anglo–Saxon England, and their name is the root of the name England ("land of Ængle"). According to Tacitus, before their move to Britain, Angles lived alongside Langobardi and Semnones in historical regions of Schleswig and Holstein, which are today part of northern Germany (Schleswig–Holstein) 10

Relatives (The Family) Ancestors are relatives (I have not looked it up) but I always think they are the ones I never met or saw. Here then let me tell you about the ones I knew before I tell you about my boyhood. The greatest guy in my world was not a hero with medals I knew, nor the Kaiser, whom I did not know, nor the friendly policeman, nor the uncle who came several times a year with a big box of candy, but my grandfather on mothers side, Theodore Schlüter. He was the principal in a village school in Rieseby, also Church organist on Sundays before he moved to my home town after 50 years of faithful labor. Here he is sitting before his thatched house with pretty little grandma, my oldest sister between them, I suppose. That's extraordinary, those two would sit so close together, as I remember, there was no room usually for anybody to sit or stand between their chairs. When on Gala occasions 50 couples had to be consulted as to how the partners were to be selected, they would not dare separate grandpa and grandma. I remember when two of my cousins from a larger town, unusually smart and fresh (not with him however) were visiting. They were not affectionate or demonstrative like my family.

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So, it was kind of embarrassing to the old Gent to come over to grandma just for a kiss, with us in the same room. But he was smart. He invented some excuse about the asparagus bed meeting some attention and had to say goodbye naturally with kiss--and soon he was back to say hello, naturally with kiss— snickering of the to Smart offsprings not withstanding. And this performance was repeated on and off. They new nothing about spreading disease by kissing and would not have dared, they were never sick and wanted to die together if they had been sick. Though he never thought School in my hometown, every teacher of the 10 Schools came to him. Some came for advice and some just to chat. Pretty soon he formed a teachers union. Friction and jealousies, when he, “the Emeritus”, got them organized, disappeared. None of them were missing at birthday parties for members. These were the unofficial meetings and minor celebrations filling in between the three holiday seasons of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Shortly after he died they went back to their three boroughs and petty jealousies reined again. I was the only living grandson in town and the only boy allowed to climb the highest appletree in his garden. It was of the rare Gravenstein variety apple which all over the province were collected for the emperor’s table in Berlin. But ours stayed in the family and I had plenty. He was born in 1818 four years after his parents went through the bitter Russian winter. The Kossaks under general Tetenborn, fresh from the battle of Leipzig, victorious over Napoleon, were supposed to clean up remnants of French, Dutch and Spanish soldiers overrunning the province for four years. The city and next two counties of Angeln and Schwausen were pauperized before the Duke Carl brought peace and welfare again. Grandpa had his nationality changed by decrees, protocols and wars, six times in his 50 years as teacher. Starting as an independent Schleswig-Holsteiner under Duke Carl for 18 years and 10 more under Prinz Friedrich of Schleswig Holstein, he was changed to a Dane by the “incorporation” decree in 1846. The rebellion of 1848 to 1850 made him a Schleswiger; after the London “Protocoll” peace of 1851 he was a Protocol Dane until 1864. Then under duke Friedrich VIII he was an Augustenburger. After the peace of Gastein in 1865, Prussian, under a . After the defeat of Austria in 1866 German, under Wilhelm I. 12

About the greatest guy in the world His School and church, however, Word tucked away far from the main wagon roads and the Baltic Sea. The first railroad to rouzbeh was built Long after the wars had stopped. Politics and wars did not affect him much, except that two of his sons got sick of it and emigrated to the US. They too were lovers of peace. He was never rich in worldly goods. But I have never met a richer man in contentment and happiness. He enjoyed music, books, art and human beings. His Golden wedding was about the greatest family celebration ever held in town. His two sons who had become fairly well-to-do in America were there with grand children. A grandstand had been built to photograph all the guests. [Picture TK] To place them right must have taken an hour or more. It was a show in itself. Six rows over each other, with us grandchildren on carpets sitting on the ground. Resting from the restless ordeal of a seven-course dinner of four hours duration. With not less than three speeches by the best, or at least the best “intentioned” speakers between each course. The following day, the visit of our American relatives was cut short.they had to go back to Montana. There was a Silver panic and they had lost a fortune selling twenty thousand or more sheep in a hurry. Why—I could not guess—but I was sorry to see cousin Ernst and his little sister go back; they were the first to make me want to go to America some day. Our dear grandfather never saw them again. One early morning several years later he got out of bed to see who was at the front door—he slipped and broke his leg. He dragged himself back to bed, told grandmother who alarmed the neighbors. In the meantime he fainted never to wake again. Three hours later with a peaceful smile on his kind old face he sighed and died in the arms of the woman he had adored all his life. He was 84 years old. I had witnessed the first tragedy of my youth. Grandmother lived fourteen years longer, quiet and kind, always a friendly but sad smile on her face. To the last day of her 96th year she sat up straight without leaning back, doing her needlework without glasses. She could hear what she wanted to hear and let the rest go by unheard.She had his picture in front of her. He was her life and memory. I can see him now—the kind, white-haired old gentleman with his six foot pipe. I had to look up to him, he was so tall. I look up to him now as an example of a great and simple character, the personification of happiness and all that’s worthwhile in this turmoil called the world. 13

Der strenge Grossvater (the strict grandfather) Grandfather Jenter was different—oh, so serious—so busy and preoccupied with the affairs of business and of the town. He may have smiled, but I never saw it. They say he was very intelligent and industrious. Never working less than 15 hours a day—7 days a week. I won’t swear to it. He made and sold hospital supplies and as he had apprenticed in cutlery making in Solingen, he became well known for his surgical instruments. He had customers all over northern Europe. Dad used to say that half the assorted funny scissors and tools in the hospitals were invented and produced by grandfather and the chief surgeon Dr. Suadicani. But then Dad was always a good story teller. Grandfather came to Schleswig around 1850 when it was under King Fredreich VII of . At that time it was finally connected with the railroad which went from Altona-Germany to Jutland. Progress and opportunities were supposed to be following the railroad. He settled in the most unimportant part of the city, which was run by a paid Burgomaster (the city manager type) two stadtrathe (city councilors) and twelve assemblymen all serving without compensation. The centuries of court life at Gottorf [castle]8 gave the town of 14,000 souls the upper-upper crust, thence government officials, military, academicians in the next crust, then manufacturers, then merchants, then crafts, guild artisans and finally the lowest form of human classification, the laborer and servants. Those were not classes, they were castes. With a derisive adjective about the “Kastengeist” [caste-spirit] Granddad proceeded to ignore it. Especially for him, the charter of the town was changed to admit an artisan to the highest honorary city post. He was elected by a plurality in all three boroughs. The highest taxpayers had 3 votes, the lower 2 votes and non-taxpayers one. Seemingly he had the confidence of all. Grandfather certainly could talk to them all, when they called on him or he on them. He’d give his opinion to the Prince, the Duke the same as if he talked to the farmer or his scissor grinders. Sorry, I really never got to know the rather small gentleman. Three times a week he would pass Dad’s store on the way to the city hall. On the opposite sidewalk never looking over to our side, or seeing my sister or me playing on the narrow troittoir (the French word used customarily for sidewalk). About 1874 Dad had started a store in the center of the Alfstadt (formerly protected by wall and moat built around A.D. 800). In the late 1880’s he had about the best store in town but needed more capital. He went to Grandfather who refused him, saying he was saving his money to send his oldest grandson (a cousin 15 years older than I) to the University to become a doctor. To set him up in practice would take more years of saving. It would take 20,000 Marks. [~$400,000 in 2019] Father could never quite forget it. Years later some sort of rapprochement and reconciliation was effected and my sisters and I went to Grandfathers house from then on once a year on the second Christmas day.

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottorf_Castle 14

We were given little presents and played with eight other cousins, children of Dad’s sisters. They were all nice kids, but during the year we still hardly ever saw them, for Dad’s sisters sided with Grandfather staying disgruntled. I presume it was more important to have somebody in the family as a doctor than seeing their only brother getting richer and more successful. After all, as a merchant he was only in class six and the bürgers who could afford it, tried to get up in the world by sending their boys to the universities so that they could look down on the merchants. The second sisters oldest son got just as an expensive education from Grandfather. In 1896 father bought the old 54 room (built in 1635) hospital across the street from his first store and rebuilt it to become the nicest store in town. We moved there in 1897. Grandfather was proud of his son, not jealous, but he never had a chance to make good, for father did not need financial help any more. When the old gentleman died, I was still too small to be permitted to follow the hearse, drawn by four horses. The first man immediately behind the coffin was all dressed up and he carried a pillow with medals given to Grandpa and which had to be returned to the donors. Then followed my Dad, my two uncles with city officials, medical men and some officers, and a line of high-hatted men—four abreast as far as you could see. They would not go to a funeral those days on a long march unless they loved a man or honored him. Maybe, I was the loser for never having known him. But it was the first time I was kind of proud of him. 15 16

The other Grandma and laughing about sour grapes Grandmother Jenter I knew even less, she was friendly when I saw her and would take me to their large garden that ran all the way down to the bay. She was proud of her roses and her vegetables. As my father would not take any inheritance from her husband, she promised that I would get the old secretary cabinet, in her family for hundreds of years. Father said there was no room fo it in his house, so I never got it. When it was restored or renovated some years later they found some secret drawers, which contained a gold watch, rare coins and documents from the 17th century. My maiden Aunt Louise, Dad’s youngest sister, said the cabinet belonged to her, she had taken it because Dad would not give it house room. She sold it with contents for 8000 Marks, about $2000 at the time, [~$62,000 in 2019] keeping the money for herself. I have heard Dad tell the story many times and he laughed as much as we all did about admitting his unintentional generosity. I don’t know what reason I had to laugh, except he could tell it in such a funny way. 17

My Birthplace—about its past Schleswig an der . It’s at the end of an 8 mile long inlet of the baltic Sea called the Schlei. The [viking] museum9 contains the proofs that it was a settlement around the 3rd or 4th century. That in A.D. 840 it was a Swedish trading post, which boasted of a large cemetery. Four “Runen” stones (shown below) from the end of the first millennium have the facts engraved on them that Sven10 [King ] had gone to England and conquered it, that his greatest hero Skartha was killed here after the return from England and the stone was set there by King Sven the conquering viking. It is still standing there in the same place in a little park built around it centuries later. The history of the city is colossal, the shortest, short story is by H. Philippsen, printed in Schleswig in 1926 only 141 pages long. I’ll try to tell you in a few pages if I can and a few pictures will show proofs. The stone pronouncing the conquering of England is the first. As old drawings and plans are no exhibits in this case you have to depend on existing historical knowledge believe facts before I again use photographs. In the Vatican in Rome is the proof that Schleswig was the seat of a Bishop in 947, his dominion included the Angelns, Saxons and Wendens living on the shores the Baltic as far east as present East . Maybe the same artisans who chiseled the Runen stones carved the granite lions in the portal of the cathedrals oldest part. King Knud, the son of the conqueror of England [Sweyn] built a castle on the island in the center of the bay called Jürgensburg, and also probably the beginning of this first cathedral of the north. Here the Bishop Eckehard or Egico (until 1026) reigned. He lived in the burg on the island connected with the walled-in city by a bridge, the foundations of which are still visible at extremely low tide.

Some of the old Viking rune stones displayed at the Viking Museum Haithabu.

9 https://haithabu.de/en/history 10https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweyn_Forkbeard 18

Castrum Optimum—The most important castle in the land

Later bishops lived in Castle Gottorf11 on another island at the extreme end of the bay. This became known as the cradle of Royalty. Many Princes and Kings were born here after Frederic I made his residence in 1494. The first beginning of this castle are noted as of the year 1160. The picture I am showing is the result of hundreds of years of growth and an entirely new front (added around A.D. 1600). It is built entirely of granite (even the stairs)—3 fires in six centuries could only burn wood decorations in parts of the big building. The folklore says that there will be Kings in Europe as long as this cradle stands. If it has been destroyed by bombing in this war [WW II], the citizens are apt to predict the end of all royalty. [It survives] It houses the priceless carved and decorated princes chair, a room (pictured right) over the chancel where royalty would listen unseen to the sermon given below. Up to 1721 it was the royal residence. Then the Dukes and Princes of Schleswig-Holstein lived there as . One of the last Princes, Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, became King Christian IX of Denmark, moving to , the last to reign over all Scandinavia and Denmark. After the Danish wars the castle degraded into barracks for cavalry and with the 1919 revolution it changed into workman’s family quarters and children laughter rang through the enormous corridors

11 https://schloss-gottorf.de/en/schloss-gottorf 19 again. the castle of Jürgensburg on the other hand disappeared entirely in the 13th century, not a stone left on the island. It was cursed. Around AD 1230 the Duke Abel had his royal brother Erich drowned in the Schlei, tying him up with heavy chains. The body was found and rests in a grotto of the church 3 yards of a heavy rusty old chain can be seen through the beautiful iron gate which is never opened. Only seagulls live on the lonesome island. To the fraternal murderer the cry of the gulls which flew eternally around the castle sounded like “Erich, Erich”. It drove him crazy and the castle was deserted after he fled. And to Schleswigers the ten to twenty thousand sea gulls that come exactly on the same day every year, back from winter quarters, the gulls still complain loudly, Erich, Erich. For it is the exact date of the murder over 700 years ago that they are coming back. No wonder we had two thousand inmates at the Provincial “Iren Austalt” (insane asylum) if they take life [as] so tragic—like the prince of Denmark. There is one more proof (exhibit) in these pictures of the previous statement of class distinction. Look at the two houses. Here is the Kalands house (left) built around 1420 according to an inscription. How could a man living in it be in the same class with the man who lived in houses like the Plessen Court (below) with its own park, or at a historic castle. I never heard them, however, say anything about the master race —certainly—some of the fellows who lived in town may have hallucinations along that line. The only thing, they certainly would not have included housepainters in the lower classes in such a category. Never!

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1885 to 1904 in Schleswig

Schleswig got a city charter in 1257. It had about 5000 inhabitants then and 17000 nearly 650 years later. It’s a very quiet town, particularly for adventurous youngsters who want to see things and who inherited wanderlust from their fathers. Weather and Water

The town is beautiful, the sky tearful, the people cheerful. The longest “drought” was about 4 1/2 days. There are not many days entirely without a shower. There are about 3 evenings in the summer when you can sit outside at a concert without an overcoat. Your daily swim in the bay during the summer season can be enjoyed if you care for cold baths at from 40 to 50º Fahrenheit. But then you have much longer daylight hours to swim. I remember going to a party at 10:30 in the last bright evening light and coming back by the dawn’s early light at 1:30 three hours later. Not too much snow in winter and hardly ever colder than 20º above. The few days it got to be 80º at 11 in the morning, the schools would close. I was baptized in the cathedral12 in the center of the picture, also confirmed 14 years later. I played football on the field at the extreme right. The Dom school was halfway over to the Castle Gottorf on the extreme left. Seagull island, the flat part, light green in front of the castle in this picture hides the wider part of the bay where I almost drowned in a home-made boat. I was saved by a picolo (name for a 10 to 14 year-old waiter apprentice or busboy). I thanked him for his fast rowing and rescue and gave him a 20 mark gold piece, for which he thanked me with the remark that it was too much, for he could not make that much in tips in a years time (and you don’t get paid a salary while an apprentice).

12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleswig_Cathedral 21

The picture, by Junghanns, made in 1916 must have been painted with the help of binoculars, as the water is much wider, nearly a mile wide, as the little photograph shows. I know it, because there were whitecaps often and high waves, when I was out rowing with other schoolboys—so much for the bay which gave the town its’ name, which was then given to the entire northern Dukedom. Schlei—Schleiswick—Schleswig. [wick—town, hamlet or district] The Dom—the church of my boyhood

Let’s go to the cathedral.13 The “Apostle of the North” Ansgar,14 the Benedictine monk, came to this place after his baptism in Mainz in A.D. 828. The first church in all the northlands was built on this spot around AD 900. The stones there at the south portal, show a lion, and another a lamb, granite blocks 3’x3’ outside and six feet deep, exposed in the return reveal—above as the keystone an inscription which shows that a King started to build this cathedral on the spot of the old Laurenturs church. The tower was started in 1880 and was finished in 1890 as the last possible addition. As it is 360 feet high I thought it was great, but some classical architect visiting us one day called it a bastard . Frieda, my youngest sister and comrade and I were allowed to take our visitors the 312 steps up to the outlook gallery. Half- way up most of them became dizzy turning so many times in the 5 foot circle of the spiral stairwell.

13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleswig_Cathedral 14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansgar 22

We would be up past the open shuttered fifty-foot windows to the bells— past the frightening howl of the winds, on steel ladders and catwalks until the visitors got to the gallery calling for us to come down. We regretted we never reached the four giant clocks. Sometimes in my dreams I am racing down a spiral staircase turning and turning in a little circle and finally giving upon disgust just sliding down another mile or so until I wake. Before leaving the cathedral the visitors were taken to the marble Sarcophagus of Frederic I erected in the 16th century pictured below—as well as the famous Alterblatt of Hans Brüggemann.15

Each of the 12 groups of sculptures of Christs’ story was carved out of a single oak trunk. No joints visible. It is nearly 50 feet high but has the elegance of lacework. During a war the two side panels would be closed, covering up and protecting the entire inside carvings.

After he spent years of his life producing a great masterpiece Brüggemanns’ eyes were pierced by a jealous monk so that he could never make another one. He had been engaged to produce another alter for the largest church in Prussia. He never did and died soon afterwords. It is the most inspiring work of art of any left after most of the gallery and other treasures were taken to Copenhagen between 1737 and 1854.

15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brüggemann