For the next few weeks, I’m living in a small apartment in Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart, Germany, and on the weekends, I’ll be teaching a brief seminar on Montana literature at Pädagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg or Ludwigsburg University of Education. Since I arrived on Monday, I’ve been settling into time zone and location, organizing my life, and walking. I like the way travel focuses a person on basic concerns—where to sleep, what to eat, how to return after venturing out. It appeals to my inner hunter-gatherer. Rather than using GPS, I prefer to discover where the road goes, a method that does not guarantee success but is satisfying on its own. So far, I’ve come across crisp fallen apples, fresh blackberries along a walking path, and kale planted at the end of a field for anyone to pick. The Waldorf School just above the campus seems to be surrounded by small farms, complete with resident goats, and today there were perhaps fifteen small wild sheep called muffelwild in Favoritepark.
Favoritepark is a small forest situated directly beside the campus leading first to a colorful hunting lodge and then to the palace built by Duke Eberhard Ludwig who famously said, “There are already enough boring towns.” Ludwigsburg is not old by the usual standards. It’s an 18th century city that developed because of the Duke, and it is lovely and spacious, full of trails designed for walking and biking. One path I especially like is the Planetenweg that connects Ludwigsburg to other towns on a path where large steles with sculptures on both sides represent the planets, and the entire system is built to scale. Made by students at the University, these steles feature dismembered human/god figures in relief on the front side and engraved images on the back, where parts of the body are connected but less recognizable, more like a being made of fire. Exhibited on a tree-lined walking path, these sculptures extend out from a gold metal sphere that represents the sun.
There is something about seeing the dismembered Erde, or Earth, that feels ominous. I don’t know if this is intentional since all of the figures are similarly portrayed. Because I don’t know German well, I go through the motions of reading the explanatory plaques, and then I make things up. I recognize some words and add my own false assumptions, as if conducting that familiar writing exercise of creating a poem by pretending to translate an unfamiliar language. I imagine climate change and a troubled world as I view this portrait of the Earth, but I don’t think that’s what the students had in mind.
Apparently Ludwigsburg is also the center of Swabian poetry. The first night I was here, my hosts mentioned the Swabian dialect, which is connected to a 2000-year-old ethnic group in this area. Friedrich von Schiller, from Marbach am Neckar, and Eduard Mörike, who was born in Ludwigsburg, appear to be the two most prominent poets connected to Swabia. In the 19th century, Longfellow anthologized Schiller’s “Count Eberhard, the Weeper of Würtemberg,” elsewhere translated as “Count Eberhard, the Groaner.” It’s a battle narrative written in quintains that specifically mentions Swabian lands. What appeals to me more, though, is this short poem from Mörike, “September Morning,” translated by Charles L. Cingolani, which provides a sense of this place, where “colors / Stream forth in molten gold.”
Of course we’re a month past that kind of brilliance, but there are still leaves on the trees, the weather is mild, and Ludwigsburg is celebrating the season with a pumpkin festival. Some say it’s the biggest in the world.
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