Sometime between traipsing along the Harz Mountains’ Grimm-like forest trails and tucking into a frothy beer at yet another charmingly nondescript rathskeller, Simon Winder casually mentions to his undoubtedly nerdy reader: “There could be an argument that this entire book should be understood to be in brackets.” Indeed, it takes a special sort of enthusiasm (for such a complicated country as Germany, no less!) and a special skill-set of hunting for precious trivia of insight in the crevasses of pompous historical brass to produce such a bursting beehive of architecture, history, folklore, Prussian militarism, Viennese nostalgia, cuisine, music, cabinets of curiosity, chocolate with ostriches, turrets, suspenders, and oompah.
Winder takes us across Germany, from the Roman times and until the morbid 1933 (although I do wish he’d continue until Goodbye Lenin! era or, if he’s feeling particularly ambitious, all the way to the Age of Merkel, arguably the other great leading female German since little Sophie Zerbst aka Catherine the Great). Much like his other fantastic book Danubia, Germania is a historical narrative knitted out of love and compassion, with generous attention paid to stuff from the arcane margins, from weirdo backwaters, from the cornucopia of Germany’s “doll’s handkerchief states,” ancient homes of Wagnerian heroes in bearskin, now reduced to comfy second-rate magnets for the middle-aged tourist whose poorly disguised modus operandi involves “sitting in groups around tables, eating astonishing amounts of sausage and cake, drinking massive glasses of lager and smoking furiously.” Stumbling in this gluttonous stupor one will inevitably walk into yet another painfully picturesque Schloss, at which point Winder will lovingly guide his reader up the winding staircase and into:
“… an attic room filled with wigs, pictures of basilisks, a giant model of the solar system, pickled geckoes, a little dog made out of seashells, wax heads, a dried cow-fish, a speculative engraving of the Ark of the Covenant, an opium pipe, shoes from around the world and, hanging from the rafters, the best and biggest stuffed crocodile ever, an ancient, gnarled Behemoth which, if it fell to the ground, would detonate in a great cloud of evil-smelling dust.”
From his ridiculously adorable glee over a nautilus-shaped drinking cup, to vivacious awe at the sight of a four hundred year old King of Sweden’s horse in an Ingolstadt museum, to a poetic moment on a Freising trek to the oldest brewery in the world where Winder feels like he’s walking through Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow, one can only feel pure envy at his unbridled passion. May we all feel as strongly about our hobbies, interests, and fancies, for it would truly be the most delicious sort of life to live – a joyous wanderer with a massive heart, a contemplative mind, and a stomach tough enough for this:
“I once went with some friends to a traditional Frankfurt restaurant which turned out to be a sort of a temple to German hard-core, with undrinkable apple-wine and guests greedily tucking into blocks of lard on black bread. On the disturbingly narrow menu, the only choices seemed to be between cuts of hot fatty ham served with the notorious Frankfurt ‘green sauce’ (an old enemy – vinegared chopped herbs), yet another bratwurst of a kind that even I was getting bored with, or something described as a ‘slaughterhouse platter.’ In a spirit of fatalism I went for the platter. This turned out to be a central ridge of sauerkraut flanked by two skin canisters, sealed with metal surgical clips – the one filled with blendered liver, fat, and water, the other with blood and a kind of mealy material. Sticking a fork in one cause the canister to detumesce, jetting its content over the sauerkraut.”
The man should do restaurant reviews.
Image: Nose Dance, by Hans Sebald Beham (1500-1550).
Epigraph. 