Dr. Stefan Christmann

January 8, 2023January 22, 2023

Restoration

What many people don’t know is that Hildesheim was once a location for military important productions. Different companies produced tank parts, fuzes, aircraft engines and torpedoes as well as machine parts that were needed for the tanks and lorries of the Wehrmacht. Because of that Hildesheim was seven times the target of British, Canadian and US-American air raids in 1944 and 1945. On March 22nd, 1945, the historic city center was destroyed by 90 percent. 1,300 of the once 1,500 half-timbered houses were lost in a firestorm.

January 7, 2023May 6, 2023

Why I will never book a flight via Booking.com again

Booking.com is a large international travel agency located at Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It provides access to a vast amount of accommodations, but also offers flights and car rentals. I had booked a lot of hotels via Booking.com and never had problems. They claim their mission to be ‘to make it easier for everyone to experience the world‘. The reality looks totally different.

January 1, 2023January 15, 2023

Borderland

The Elbe is a 1094 kilometers long river which starts at the Giant Mountains (Krkonoše) of the Czech Republic and floats through Hamburg and into the North Sea close to Cuxhaven. During the times when Germany was separated into two different states the river was part of the inner-German border: after 1945 the US-American and British occupation zones met the Soviet zone here. On the side of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, DDR) a metal fence was created, towers built, villages removed and mines were placed.

December 29, 2022January 15, 2023

Inselstädtchen

Hitzacker, Dannenberg, Gorleben – these are the names of small cities known well throughout Germany. They are part of the Wendland, a very secluded region of Lower Saxony. Here a temporary storage for atomic waste was created and a final storage was planned, without any good reasons. It was merely the fact that this region was at the inner-German border which supported the idea of storing this long-term dangerous waste there. Between 1995 and 2011 thirteen so-called Castor transports arrived there and protests grew massively over time. That brought the region onto the inner maps of Germans.

December 28, 2022January 15, 2023

Kamerun

Germans have been very creative in the past on how they name their settlements. You can find many funny names and many international references on the map. In East Frisia you can walk from America (Amerika) to Russia (Russland). At the Baltic Sea you can enjoy Brazil (Brasilien) as well as California (Kalifornien). If you want to visit Canada (Kanada) you need to go to Thuringia; Norway (Norwegen) and Egypt (Ägypten) can be found in Lower Saxony. And there are different Cameroons (Kamerun) in this country, the one I like most can be found in the Wendland.

December 28, 2022January 15, 2023

Deutsches Salzmuseum

Did you know that Lüneburg became rich because of the salt underneath the city? It is said that while hunting a wild boar appeared who was covered in salt. By that the people found out about the salt that was washed out by ground water. They pumped this so called brine to the surface, distributed it with wooden pipes throughout the city, cooked it in large pans and thereby recovered the white gold.

December 28, 2022January 15, 2023

Wasserturm

Where to find the best views on the city of Lüneburg, Germany? A brilliant option is the Wasserturm, an old water reservoir created in 1907 which was used until 1986. The technology inside was removed and the building is now protected as a cultural heritage. If you buy a ticket you can take an elevator to the top of the 56 meters high tower (okay, there is a little amount of steps that you still have to take) and enjoy the city from up above.

December 28, 2022January 21, 2023

Red bricks, salt and the moon

Lüneburg is a city in northern Germany that is only 50 kilometers southeast of Hamburg and it is mostly known for the Lüneburg Heath named after the city. Reducing the city to the beautiful landscape it is located nearby would be really unfair, the city center is amazing itself. That has to do with salt production and trade, bringing wealth to the city.

December 26, 2022January 14, 2023

Flown away

In the south of Göttingen, in a quite prominent location at the intersection of the Geismar Landstraße and the Friedländer Weg you can find the stub of a memorial that is pretty much unknown to the citizens of Göttingen. It is the Süd-West-Afrika-Denkmal, commemorating the fallen of the 82nd regiment (once located at the city) during the uprising of the Herero and Nama against the colonial forces in former Deutsch-Südwestafrika, todays Namibia.

December 23, 2022April 23, 2023

Centerpiece

At the heart of the ancient city center of Göttingen you can find the Altes Rathaus, the old town hall building dating back to the year 1270 CE. It was changed multiple times over the centuries and was used by the city administration and city council until the year 1978. After that time both institutions use a skyscraper created outside the city center, the Neues Rathaus at the Hiroshima-Platz.