Reporting from Nördlingen, Germany, in the “Free State of Bavaria” (Feistaat Bayern). With Maria Henzler, additional research and translations. This article is part one of a series that was originally published in the summer of 1998 on the Televisionary Oracle website. Here is an interview with Eric from that era — just before the creation of Planet Waves. Part two will be posted Thursday night.
AFTER ABOUT FIVE MINUTES in this city, I had the distinct feeling of being inside of something. The word that popped into my head as I walked along the sidewalk was “insular,” as in insulated.
True, we had driven under an arch to get into town, but you’re always driving under arches in Europe, and eating lunch in the castles of gallant knights and stopping for café in the first-known tower built by Chester the Magnificent. Some of these things officially date back 681 or 878 or 1,223 years, with polite little signs stuck to them explaining they’re actually older, but nobody knows by how much. Europe exudes the history of queens and kings like America exudes Dairy Queens and Burger Kings, and unfortunately there’s not always a tour guide around to tell you what you just leaned on to tie your shoe.
Insular. Actual fact: During World War II, MacArthur, or whoever’s job it was, forgot to bomb this place back to the Paleolithic, so it’s all here, or at least the buildings are. It turns out that the little arch we drove under is an entrance in a city wall, of a city that recently (till 1803) was an independent country (a freireichstadt, or “city-state”), and the entire wall is perfectly intact and there are just seven entrances, which are exactly wide enough for one car at a time; cars coming from the “in” direction wait in a line while other cars leave. Nördlingen is a national treasure, said to be the only existing ancient city, with its entire wall, left in all of Germany. Good old King Ludwig II started the wall back in 1327, and I’m sure he’d flip his crown if he heard that city employees still diligently maintain it in 1998.
Climb the stairs to the top and walk for one hour and you’ll end up back where you started, walking, as the huge cathedral in the center of the city slowly rotates and chimes, past the towers and bastions and hundreds of old gun turrets, little recessed areas with a slot that you would point your musket or your flaming arrows out of and shoot the invaders, and these gun turrets, one by one, are being filled with sculptures and collages and paintings. Progress.