Contrasts

The Court of Appeals building, Colmar

Art Nouveau

Gates in Colmar

Textures

Bergheim

Meisenthal

The Alsatian village of Meisenthal nestles in a deep valley amid the mountains of the Vosges du Nord. Meisenthal, famous for its crystal glasses and art works, served as the second part of our weekend theme of regional artisanal industries. Like Sarreguemines, Meisenthal had grown as a one-company town--in this case the Meisenthal glassworks--that had lost its industry in by the end of the 20th Century.

Meisenthal was one of the original sites of the Alsatian glass industry. As early as the 15th Century, semi-mobile glassmakers were at work here. The main glassworks was founded in 1704, producing lead crystal ware of high quality and superb craft. The workforce--glass makers, glass blowers, glass cutters, and glass painters--maintained high levels of skill from generation to generation.

In the face of competition, especially from mechanized production from Belgium and Germany, the Meisenthal glass works closed on December 31, 1969. Indeed, many other glass works in the region closed over the years--Montbronn in 1957, Lemberg in 1997, Harzviller in 2004, and Goetzenbruck in 2005.

Former Meisenthal workers lead tours of the Museum of Glass and Crystal, housed in one of the former factory buildings. The museum showcases some of the highlights of Meisenthal's work and explains, through two films, how the crystal was produced by hand, from start to finish. One of the guides, pointing to a cut-glass goblet (identical to one shown in one of the films) that retailed for $260 per glass joked that he could get us a great price if we bought a dozen.

During its apogee in the early 20th Century, the Meisenthal factory was a key center for Art Nouveau glass. Émile Gallé, one of the most famous members of the Nancy School of Art Nouveau, designed many pieces produced at Meisenthal, such as this vase.

And here's a contrasting style of vase from the same period.

A large factory building across from the museum has been repurposed as a performance space, the Halle Verrière de Meisenthal. The huge building, some 34,000 square feet, retains some of the factory's most interesting features, such as a central raised platform from which supervisors could survey the workers. The building had been abandoned with the closing of the plant at the end of 1969, and stood unused and neglected until a local artistic collective spearheaded its renovation, which was completed in 2004.

The International Center of Art Glass, housed in another, adjacent building of the old factory, seeks to preserve the memory of the Glass Country and to trace the perspectives of contemporary art glass through its roots in the glassmaking tradition. Contemporary artists come to Meisenthal to create new works at the Center. Some artists send their designs to the Center, where the Center's craftspeople produce the new pieces.

Two of the glassblowers gave a remarkable demonstration from the start to the finish of creating a contemporary art-glass piece. We could observe them working from a balcony that surrounded the studio. Here the glassblowers are transferring the partially finished vase from one pole to another, so that they can work on the vase's mouth.



The vase they created before our eyes was identical to one of the vases for sale in the Center's shop.

After the glassworkers completed the vase, they talked with us for a little while. In response to questions from Susie, the man in the white shirt explained that he became a glass blower because his father and both his grandfathers were glass blowers at Meisenthal. He said that he learned his skills as a child who spent many hours under the factory's tables while his father and fellow glassblowers worked.

Even if the glass ovens at Meisenthal are limited to demonstrations and works of art, Alsace still has some active commercial glass producers. As you travel along the roads of the Vosges du Nord, you pass numerous large glassware stores and even some factory stores.

Le Chateau de Schoeneck

One afternoon during Susie's and my visit to the Vosges du Nord, I hiked to the ruins of the Chateau de Schoeneck. Even at a fast clip, the walk was pretty much 15 minutes of steep climb, through a mixed forest.

As I neared the top, through the trees I could begin to see the castle, built on top of the red sandstone that is typical of the region.

The original castle at Schoeneck appears to have been built by the 12th Century. In the 13th Century it traded hands between the bishops of Strasbourg and Lichtenberg. By the 16th Century, the castle's lords were adapting it to artillery, and during the Thirty Years War it served as a refuge for the residents of three neighboring villages. By the mid-17th Century the garrison had dwindled to four men. And in 1680 French troops occupied the castle and dismantled it. So by the 19th Century, the castle looked like this--a romantic ruin.

Schoeneck looks much the same today. It has the same towers, walls and ramparts, in the same state of ruin.

A dedicated group of volunteers is working to preserve the Chateau de Schoeneck. Their Web page describes the castle's history, shows pictures, explains the parts of the castle, shows how to get there, and describes their restoration work. When I visited, two volunteers, accompanied by an exceptionally large dog, were restoring the foundations of one of the artillery bastions.

Here's the castle's main gate, from the outside, where people seeking entry would cross a draw bridge.




The northern end of the castle has the seigneur's residence. Even in the castle's ruined state, you can make out important elements of daily life in the Middle Ages, such as fireplaces.

To me, Schoeneck's most remarkable aspect involves the staircases carved directly into the rock on which the castle was built. This the north staircase.

The double window, visible from below, is another striking feature, with its twin arches and window seats. You can easily imagine the residents of the castle looking out.

From the highest point of the Chateau de Schoeneck you can appreciate its strategic position. Trotting down the path takes you back to the parking lot, and from there the road takes you down the valley to right, toward Niederbronn-les-Bains.

Textures

Colmar

Contrasts

Colmar

Textures

Bergheim

Chateaux d'Alsace

The ridges above the Alsace's Route des Vins are crammed with ruined castles. In the 30 kilometers between Dambach-la-Ville and Eguisheim I count no fewer than 16 castles, plus Haut-Kœnigsbourg, and not counting the fortified villages. None appears to have survived intact; most were were slighted after the Thirty Years War or after Alsace was integrated into France. A few--such as the Chateau de Haut-Kœnigsbourg and the Chateau du Hohlandsbourg--have been restored. Most of the rest are pretty much in ruins, such as these castles above Ribeauvillé.

The castles above the Route des Vins served a military rather than residential purpose, as attested to by their destruction in the mid-17th Century. So these castles were never updated, like Blois or even Chaumont, into Renaissance chateaux. Thus they kept their medieval form when they were used, and because they were ruined they were never transformed into residences. So there they are, above vineyard and above forest, some close to town and others a real hike.

The Chateau du Hohlandsbourg is one of five castles standing on the lower ridges of the Vosges mountains just outside the village of Eguisheim. A ten-minute uphill walk takes you to from a parking lot to the the castle, now partially restored, and notably big and forbidding.

Construction on the castle started in 1279. Unlike most of the neighboring castles, Hohlandsbourg was built from granite. You can get an idea of the huge size of this castle from this view of its central courtyard. The buildings below all stand within the castle's inner walls.

The castle was taken in the Thirty Years War, and then dismantled, four years later in 1637, by the French. Together, the local villages have helped to in part restore Hohlandsbourg. The ramparts, especially on the east side, provide views over the valley of the Rhine and the Vosges Mountains.

To the north, you can see the Donjon de Pflixenbourg, a doleful tower that once served as the residence of the Emperor's representative in Alsace.

To the south, you can see the towers of the Donjons de Eguisheim, which we visited next.


A short hike from the road takes you to these three red sandstone ruins, named Weckmund, Wahlenbourg, and Dagsbourg, respectively. They belonged to the Eguisheim family and then to the Bishops of Strasbourg. They were burned in 1466 during a conflict between the burghers of the city of Mulhouse and the local nobility.

Some of the ruins show traces of how the castles served as residences. I noticed, in this section in particular, stones to support beams and columns, perhaps on the sides of fireplace, on the walls.





This tower, like the one shown above, has its entry far above the ground. This was a key defensive feature: access was only by a tall ladder that could be pulled up in case of danger.








Here we are amid the ruins, with the valley of the Rhine behind us.

I mentioned that local fortifications included not only these castles but also many villages that had city walls and sometimes a castle in the center. Some of these village fortifications still remain. Here, for example, are part of the walls of Bergheim.


And this is Bergheim's main gate to the city, built in 1300 and still in use. We had to drive through the gate to reach the center of the village.

Colmar by Skiff

La Petite Venise, one of the most picturesque neighborhoods of Colmar, was built around the Lauch River. So one of the fun things Susie and I did during our day in Colmar was to tour this area by boat. In Paris, Metz or Strasbourg, you would ride on a bateau mouche that seats 100 or more people. In Colmar, because the river is small and its bridges low, you ride in a skiff that seats six in a pinch and that is powered by a battery.

The boat ride first heads south toward the newer area developed after the annexation, something like the Imperial Quarter in Metz. Ivy-covered banks and budding trees create a bucolic feel in the heart of the city. To preserve the area's calm, a section of this part of the river is a "no-commentary" zone.

Our guide was a charming young woman who provided commentary in English for us. Although her umbrella was at the ready, we managed to make it through the tour without being rained on.

Some of the bridges were really low. You had to duck seriously. And speaking of ducks, as we left the little dock, a half-dozen ducks flew out from under a bridge, coming very close to us. We joked that these must be the famous killer ducks of Colmar.




After turning around and heading down-river, we reached the quaint haunts of Petite Venise. Other tourists, on bridges, took pictures of us on our skiff as we passed.






In earlier days, the main fish market bordered the Lauch. Boats would tie up to the market using iron rings like this one. For a while the market was being used as a parking lot, but it's now being renovated as a covered market.

This building is a former convent. Deliveries would be made by boat.

Here are your intrepid boaters on the Lauch.

Our ride on the skiff gave us wonderful views, that we would not otherwise have had, of spring in full swing in Colmar.

Textures

Ribeauvillé

Colmar

Susie and took the better part of a day to leave the Route des Vins and its rural vine-scapes and instead visit the nearby city of Colmar, which was the home town of the chef/owner of our hotel in Zellenberg. I wasn't sure what to expect, as the distant views of Colmar that I had from the ridges above the Route des Vins suggested that the city was a chiefly built of uninteresting modern apartment blocks.

If you look closer at the picture, though, you'll start to notice things like a large church, then some interesting buildings to its right, and then crowded buildings that promise old, narrow streets. And that is, in fact, the reality of Colmar: The areas outside the immediate center are geometric apartment blocks, contemporary malls, and parking lots. But if you walk past the new movie multiplex and through the mall, you emerge into an entirely different world of pedestrian streets, half-timbered buildings, and quaint squares.

Colmar serves as the capital of the Haut-Rhin, one of Alsace's two departments. The city was part of the Holy Roman Empire, was conquered by the forces of Louis XIV, and became part of France in 1679. It retains buildings from the 15th and 16th Centuries, including the remarkable Maison Pfister, a German Renaissance house of 1537.


The survival (and like-minded replacement) of Colmar's traditional buildings has created spaces that charm without reserve, such as this square on the Rue des Tanneurs.

And if you're really looking for picturesque, head to the Petite Venise (little Venice) district, along the banks of the Lauch river. In earlier times, the Lauch served as a major route for transporting goods and attracted water-oriented businesses, such as tanners and fishmongers. Today, the river's banks are lined with restaurants and shops.

Colmar actually has a great variety of architectural riches, most of the interesting points between all those half-timbered buildings of Petite Venise and the modernist blocks just outside the city center. Buildings in the grand-boulevard style of the late 19th Century border this park near the old water tower.

The main railway station reflects the architecture of the annexation period. Built in 1907, it embodies a Prussian style. Interestingly, the city reused the plans from which the main station in Gdansk, then also under German rule, had been built; the Colmar and Gdansk stations are nearly twins.

The annexation era also produced some remarkably odd buildings. The Cercle St-Martin, built in 1895 as a gymnasium for the Parish of Colmar, included both neo-romanesque and neo-gothic elements in its design. In the 1920s and 1930s it hosted the city's big sports and musical events.



Art Nouveau was also taking hold. We saw a number of terrrific Art-Nouveau houses and businesses. Here's one of the windows from the "Maison aux Raisins," built in 1904.



Not far from the Maison aux Raisins stands a statue of Frédéric Bartholdi, designer of the Statue of Liberty and a son of Colmar.



The city sponsors an Easter market, similar in concept to the Christmas market we visited in Metz and which takes place in Colmar, too. In April, of course, springtime symbols such as rabbits and eggs substituted for le Père Noel. The market was laid out in a square next to the Church of the Dominicans.

Colors of spring shined bright in the very buildings of the old city.

And these colors were complemented, as here in la Petite Venise, with the even brighter colors of flowering plum trees.