YCGL - Day 11 - April 13, 2025 - Nuremburg - Saving our Culture (final)

Look, I'm really sorry.  You would not believe the amount of time I've put in to writing about Prague.  About the only thing I can say is it was an incredible city and in my three days there, I felt like what people talk about falling in love with Paris.  It has taken my heart in ways that I can hardly express, but tried really hard to.  

This has been a fantastic trip all around, and I will try to convey more about the cities and sites, fellow passengers, ship's crew and staff, and the Viking experience.  I really have enjoyed it all, and hope that I continue to feel this way.  One evening in the ship's lounge, Anthony, the ship's activities director (and New York city clown), asked the passengers how many Viking cruises have people been on.  The winner had been on 12 (which Anthony had verified before hand).  And you would never guess it by looking at the couple.  Of course, I don't know their story.  But out of 185 passengers, at least 10 couples had been on 8 or more.  

But what I want to talk about is a tour from today in Nuremburg.  I had read about it a couple of times during the months before, thought it might be interesting, but not that much.  However, I heard several people talking about it last night, and it had a different sound to me.  I asked Verona at the front desk if there was still space on the tour and she said she had two left, so I took one of them, assuming by 8:30 the night before that likely no couple would make the decision to go.  Well, I did it anyway....

The name of the tour was "Surviving the War - Art in Nuremburg".  The discussion I heard was about the "Monuments Men" from WWII.  It turns out that a beer cellar in Nuremburg held a significant collection of art from the city and the region.  (I'll talk about the city and the other tour later.  I just want to focus on the Surviving tour now).  This is the northern part of the old city which is surrounded by two city walls and a moat.  The red "3" at the top is the castle at the top of the hill, started in the 1300's.(Click on the picture to blow it up larger.)  The black messy ink star underneath it is the location of the entrance to the beer cellar.  The other interesting landmark is the red "5" to the lower left of the castle.  That is the painter Albert Dürer's house.

The entrance to the beer cellar, i.e., museum.  Work on this was started in September, 1939, before Hitler declared war on Austria.  The city father's decided before any official hostilities began to start protecting the art in the city.  

So, why a beer cellar?  Culturally, beer was a fact of life in the middle ages.  Water wasn't safe to drink and water for beer was boiled.  Also, beer was made with hops, which is used to enhance the bitter flavor to combat the sugary sweetness of the grain used to make it and hops contains anti-microbial compounds which preserves the beer longer.  Both factors made beer safer to drink than water.  The beer is preserved longer when it is cooler, between 40 to 50 degrees.  During the middle ages and later, there were many small breweries inside the walled city, each of which would require a cellar.  

Beer was made in large casks (approximately 60 gallons) which would be moved by rolling on its side.  By keeping the slopes of the floors in the cellars flat, made them easier to store and move.  However, the invention of refrigeration in the 1890's allowed beer to be brewed in large quantities without requiring the cellars.  And mass production lowered the price, which eventually drove most of the small breweries out of business.  This meant there were a lot of empty cellars around and underneath the old city.

What made this cellar special?  Primarily, it was under the castle.  That made it convenient for the castle dwellers to have access.  It also meant that was 50-60 feet of sandstone above the cellar.  It was the largest beer cellar in the city at the time.  It also meant that the water from the surface was less a problem due to the slope of the hill the castle was located on.  It also kept the temperature stable down below.  

Dang, it happened again.  About two hours work just got erased when my internet connection on the ship got lost during a save.  Good night.  I'll try again later.  

Note, I believe my problem has been the ship's wireless connection.  My PC keeps adding and dropping the wifi connection about every 30 seconds.  I've decided to not connect my PC to the ship's wifi anymore.  Instead, I'm only going to hotspot it off my phone from now on.  Hopefully that will be more stable and I won't lose as much work.  We'll see.....

Hitler convinced the German people that the Luftwaffe (the air force) would protect Germany from foreign invaders.   The poster says 

"Air Defense is Self-Defense", 

"Reich Air Defense League" and

"Help Protect Your Homeland".  

The Air Defense League was formed in 1933 and the poster is from 1935.  The message is "we will protect you, but you also need to protect yourself.  If there is a fire, you must help to put it out.  If there is damage to your city, you must help clean it up.  

 Above ground bunkers were built with walls up to 6 feet thick for people to hide in during air raids (that weren't supposed to happen).  And, the underground cellars were used as shelters also.  Work done by forced labor built tunnels to connect the cellars and to build new ones and expand existing ones.

The brown caves were for people and the yellow ones were for the art.  The art cellars couldn't be expanded because they were to be secret and the excavation would damage the art.  

A close-up showing the main cellar used for art.  You enter the cellar through the long hallway pointing down.  You are 50-60 feet below the ground surface when you get to the main gallery.

The storage rooms looked like this.  The cellar was three stories deep, so the top two stories had wooden floors.  The posts supported braces holding the ceiling.  The walls were lined with 1/2" thick panels made from paper and concrete.  The guide said they helped stabilize the humidity in the rooms.

Well, I updated my file about 20 minutes ago, and I've now lost about three hours work.  I was just about finished.......

Air handling was extremely important in the moist environment.  Air shafts were all over.


If the city above lost electrical power, they could run an electric generator to keep the air blowers running.

Office spaces...

The art work was stored in wooden crates or just leaned up against the walls.  Much of it was local, paintings from castles and churches, statues, silver and gold from church candle sticks and serving plates, church robes, i.e., anything of value that could be removed from the churches.  Some of it was private, from homes of the wealthy that wanted it protected during the war.  Some of it came from cities around Nuremburg.  

Nuremburg was an Imperial city.  Holy Roman Emperors stayed here and lived here.  

One of the galleries in the cellar and a photo taken at the time of what was in there.  Note the ventilation tube.

Many pieces came from surrounding communities.  

The Krakow Alterpiece of the Virgin Mary (1477-86)

This masterpiece of Gothic woodcarving by Velt Stoss (1447-1533) is considered one of the largest altars to the Virgin Mary in the world.  The altarpiece's figures were stored in the art bunker as looted art in 1942 when Hitler tried to invade Russia.  

The Sachsenspiegel (1220-1235)   The Sachsenspiegel is considered the most important legal text of the German Middle Ages.  It was written by Elke von Repgow as the first major legal document in Low German.  

The Manesse Song Manuscript (c.1300-1340)    The most extensive and famous German song manuscript of the MIddle Ages has been kept in Heidelberg since 1888.  It consists of 426 parchment leaves, written on both sides, with 138 miniatures.  

Monuments and Buildings that could not be hidden away.  Structural containers were built around them to protect them.  

Der Schöne Brunnen (1389-1396)  -  The Beautiful Fountain - Decorated with 40 colorfully painted sculptures, the fountain - a copy from 1902 - was protected by a masonry splinter guard.

A legend was that when this tower was completed, the apprentice asked the master sculpture if he could married the master's daughter.  The master said no because you will never become good enough to be a master.  That night, the apprentice crafted a brass ring and inserted it into the railing around the tower.  When the apprentice showed the master the next day, he was amazed and allowed the apprentice to marry his daughter.  The story continues that if a girl will spin the ring around in the gate seven times, she will marry her true love.  

The Frauenkirke (1352-1355)  -  The magnificent Gothic main portal beneath St. Michael's Choir was surrounded by a concrete, board-clad protective wall during the Second World War.

St. Lorenz Church (from 1243)  -  The tabernacle by Adam Kraft (built 1493-1496) which extends up to the vault, was already surrounded by a brick wall in 1941.  

St. Sebaldus Church (from c. 1230)  (we were in the St. Sebaldus church).

The heavy brass-cast tomb of St. Sebaldus (1508-1519)  from the workshop of Peter Vischer the Elder  was temporarily protected by wooden cladding in 1940 and encased in a concrete wall in 1941.  

Was it worth it?  

Nuremburg was one of Hitler's favorite cities.  He held his million person rallies here during the 1930's.  He loved the Teutonic culture of the city and its people.  This alone woulmake it a city to make it an example of.  

The British and the American Air Forces conducted 59 air raids which destroy 94% of the cities buildings and killed over 5000 people.  The red zones on the right represents "significant damage."  The yellow zones indicate "severe damage".  

A display of bombing rubble.  The guide told us about people wearing regular gloves picking up active  incendiary bombs and throwing them out the broken windows.  

The tanks are 300 lb British bombs.  The shell sitting on top is an armor piercing bullet and the red stick is an incendiary bomb.  They reached temperatures of over 2000 degrees F.  

This is the end.  Let us hope that it saves safely.  I think of all the things I've seen, this may stick with me the most.  What a different world we would live in if people had not done what they did.  I hope we will never have to protect our art and our culture in the future like they did.