Barbarossa tour to medieval Germany

May 31-June 13, 2003

Early Booking Price, before January 31, 2003: $3550

Regular Price, from January 31, 2003: $3850

Single Supplement $480, Deposit $600

Tour Director: Professor Peter Gravgaard

Itinerary

Day 1 (May 31, 2003)

You fly from the USA to Düsseldorf, Germany. (Please ask your travel agent for a flight arriving at Düsseldorf on Day 2 of the tour, between 08:00 am and 12:00 noon.)

Day 2 (June 1, 2003)

You arrive at Düsseldorf Airport where the tour director will meet you and take you to your hotel in Aachen.

Day 3 (June 2, 2003)

Today we visit Aachen. It was the capital of Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, an attempt to renew the Roman Empire on German soil. It lasted from 800 when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne until 1800 when Napolean abolished it. We will visit the Cathedral which Charlemagne built between 786 and 800 and the Cathedral Treasury. We will have lunch in Aachen and go for a walk in the center of the city which is very attractive. In the afternoon we will drive to Trier via Bitburg.

Day 4 (June 3, 2003)

In the morning we will visit the city center of Trier, the eldest city of Germany, founded by the Romans in 16 BC. You will see the great Basilica which together with the Pantheon in Rome, is the largest Roman Building interior still in existence. It is now the Protestant parish church. You will also see the Cathedral and the Liebfrauenkirche (Our Lady's Church) and the Porta Nigra (the largest remaining city gate in the Roman Empire. And you really must treat yourself to a cup of coffee in the main market watching the fountain and contemplating the virtues of Wisdom, Justice, Moderation and Strength which it celebrates.

In the afternoon we will take you to Annweiler to visit the Imperial Castle of Trifels where the Emperor, Henry VI, kept King Richard Lionheart of England prisoner from 1193 to 1194.

From Trifels we will drive to Heidelberg, the university town, where we will spend the night.

Day 5 (June 4, 2003)

This morning we will go for a walk through Heidelberg, one of the loveliest towns in Germany. In the afternoon we will drive to Wäschenbeuren outside Göppingen, this is the earliest Hohenstaufen castle - remember that Emperor Frederick Barbarossa was a member of the Hohenstaufen dynasty…

From here we drive to Nurnberg (Nuremberg) where we will spend two nights.

Day 6 (June 5, 2003)

Before the Second World War Nürnberg was a splendid medieval city, and it was probably because of its historical prestige that Hitler used it as the scene for his great theatrical, almost religious mystical party rallies in the nineteen thirties. It was, perhaps for this reason, heavily bombed during the war and after the war, chosen as the seat for the Nürnberg trials in 1945 - 1946 when Allied judges tried all the major German war criminals.

However, though the war destructions were huge, this is still a magnificent city, so today we will visit Nürnberg and see the major sights: the St Sebaldus Church, the St Lorenz Church, the Our Lady's Church, the Elizabeth Church, the Castle, the Cityhall, the Albrecht Dürer House, the Maut (grainstore), and the colossal Germanic National Museum.

There will be ample time for shopping.

Day 7 (June 6, 2003)

This morning we will make a detour to visit Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber; this is a charming little medieval town, conserved almost as it was in the fourteenth century. You will see the Holy-Blood-Altar in St Jakobs Church, created by Tilman Riemenschneider, and you will see the fine cityhall. After Rothenburg we will drive to Weimar where we will spend the night.

Day 8 (June 7, 2003)

Weimar was the city of Goethe (he worked for the local duke), and after the First World War it became the capital of Germany. So we will explore the city in the morning. In the afternoon we will drive to Frankenhausen to see the battlefield where in 1525 took place the great battle between the army of the Nobility and the Peasants - the Nobles, as could have been predicted, annihilated the Peasants. There is a fascinating panorama painting which attempts to explain this important historical event. Nearby we will visit the Kyffhäuser Monument in the Barbarossa Cave. (The Kyffhäuser legend says that Frederick Barbarossa is sleeping in the cave, but that some day he will return to lead his people to new glory - this is a German parallel to King Arthur as the Once and Future King.)

From Frankenhausen we drive to Goslar where we will spend the night.

Day 9 (June 8, 2003)

Goslar is important in German history because of the meetings of the German princes which took place here: the first time in 1009 when the Emperor Henry II called the meeting. You will visit the Imperial Palace which was built by Henry III, 1039 - 56. It holds the Hall of the Empire and the emperor (Reichs - und Kaisersaal) with the Imperial Throne from the 11^th century. The hall is decorated with paintings depicting episodes from German history and painted by H. Wislicenus (1979 - 97).

From Goslar we drive to Braunschweig to see the city of the Guelph dynasty. Their main representative was Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, 1152 - 95. He was the opponent of Frederick Barbarossa, 1152 - 90. In Braunsweig you will see the cathedral with epitaphs for Henry and his wife, Mathilda. You will also see his castle, Dankwarderode.

From Braunschweig we will drive to Berlin where we will stay for three nights.

Day 10 (June 9, 2003)

This morning we will start our exploration of Berlin with a visit to the old center of the city between Alexanderplatz in the east and the Brandenburger Gate in the west, a distance of about one and a half mile. This is the entire old cultural center of Berlin: the Museum Island with its magnificent ancient treasures distributed in the Pergamon Museum, the Old Museum, the New Museum, the National Gallery and the Bode Museum. Notice where they are - you may want to come back here tomorrow. Besides the Museum Island there are the following high points: the Nikolai Quarter (almost completely reconstructed), the Red Town Hall (it used to be Communist, but now?), the Nikolai Church, the Ephraim Palace, the Ribbeck House (now City Library), the Molkenmarkt (oldest market square in Berlin), nearby is the Märkisches Museum (historical museum for Mark Brandenburg: the area around Berlin). Walking west from the Nikolai area you will get to the Gendarmenmarkt with French Cathedral, the St Hedwigs Cathedral, the University Library, the State Opera, the Humboldt University and the State Library. In terms of Culture per Square Meter this is overwhelming! Next stop is the Old Reichstag (parliament) Building which is being restored in an interesting modern way.

In the afternoon we will make a city drive to try to get an impression of the many new building projects - we will drive through Schöneberg, Charlottenburg, Dahlem and Wannsee.

Day 11 (June 10, 2003)

This day is free so you can go shopping or do what you like on your own. I would be more than happy to help you with advice and suggestions.

Day 12 (June 11, 2003)

Today we drive to Potsdam to visit Sans Souci, the pleasant little castle which Frederick the Great built as his retreat from the cares of the world. From here we will drive to Detmold where we spend the night. On the way we will stop to see two monuments: first, south of Detmold we will stop to see the Externsteine; this is an extraordinary sight: 'steine' means 'stones', of course, and they are natural stones that have been turned into a monument, probably religious, but for what? Also it seems that it has then been transformed into a Christian place of devotion. Perhaps it should be seen in the context of Irminsul, the sacred grove of the Saxons which Charlemange attacked and destroyed at the beginning of his Saxon Wars (772 - 804).

The second thing to see is the Herman Monument, erected by Wilhelm I in 1875 to honor Herman (Arminius), the German commander of an army of the Cherusci tribe who here attacked and destroyed three Roman legions in the battle of the Teutoburger Forest which in the nineteenth century was thought to have been close to Detmold.

Day 13 (June 12, 2003)

This morning we will drive northwest of Detmold to Kalkriese, north of Osnabruck, where the discoveries of Captain Tony Clunn seem to locate the battlefield where in 9 AD the three legions (about 20,000 soldiers), under the command of the Roman General Quintilius Varus, had been defeated and destroyed. This defeat which supposedly caused the Emperor Augutus to bang his head against the door, crying: "Varus, Varus, give me back my legions". The outcome of the battle of Teutoburger Forest halted the expansion of the Roman empire into Germanic Europe, so that the Rhine became the border between Romance Europe and Germanic Europe. Without Herman even we Scandinavians would have been speaking French now.

From Kalkriese we drive to Wewelsburg, just south of Paderborn to see the castle which Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsfurer SS chose as the ritual headquarter for his new order of knights, the SS. He had won this position when he helped Hitler by doing away with the organization of the SA which had been commanded by Captain Ernst Röhm. On June 30, 1934, Himmler's SS men executed the plan of the 'Night of the Long Knives' and murdered Röhm and his top officers. Now Himmler and his SS men were in control of Germany; he saw a great future for the SS: they were to become the bodyguard of the Nazi Revolution.

His models for the SS were taken from history, there were three: first: the institution of the Inquisition, the Catholic Church used the Dominican Order to suppress and exterminate the Cathars in the 13^th century. Second: the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola organized the Society of Jesus as an elite order to fight the Protestant Reformation in the 16^th century. Third: the Teutonic Knights who fought in Palestine during the Crusades and who finally carved out a special 'Ordensland' in the Baltic States which ultimately became Prussia. Likewise Himmler had plans of a new Ordensland for the SS: the historical Burgundy should be resurrected and much enlarged. Here the SS could create a superior German-speaking country with unknown, but possible-to guess functions.

Wewelsburg seems to have been destined for the rites of initiation of the SS. Himmler is said to have spent 13 million marks to restore and furnish the castle.

From Wewelsburg we will drive to our hotel in Düsseldorf. In the evening we will have our FAREWELL DINNER.

Day 14 (June 13, 2003)

It is the last day of the Barbarossa tour. We will drive you to Düsseldorf Airport so you can take your plane to the USA.

BON VOYAGE!