After passing through Prague, the landscape quickly becomes wider. A lovely wide country with idyllic small towns. Here, at the latest, the crowdedness of West Germany in terms of buildings and lifestyle is far behind you. Certainly, the history, the type of building, even the food, make you realize that you are still in Central Europe. But it no longer has this hustle and bustle. Despite the occasional invasion of West German discounters, every village has its own small grocery store in the center and a pub for socializing. At lunchtime it still smells of dumplings and roast meat and not of that unspeakable mixture of kebab and pizza.
On the ascent into the Krkonoše Mountains, nature has even more space despite a few tourist resorts. The magic of the region has been preserved in its wild, pristine state.
Again without border controls to Bad Warmbrunn in what is now Silesian Poland.
The small town near Hirschberg has a long history as a health resort and boasts a wonderful, spacious park surrounded by a castle, restaurants and a theater. The tourist boards in the town show how the past has changed. The older plaques from the communist era try to negate German history and make great efforts to create a Polish continuity that was not there.
It is fitting that after the Second World War the Polish government founded a ministry for the resettlement of the western Polish territories, which was to serve to legitimize the expulsion of the German population.
Thankfully, the newer panels are also a reference to the rich German history of the area.
In the pub, I then offer my reference to the Silesian cuisine of my youth: potato pancakes with porcini mushrooms, served with coleslaw and, as a concession to adulthood, dark beer.
A wonderful kitchen!
The next day, the decisive stage for me was the journey to Upper Silesia in the industrial region around Katowice, Gliwice and Zabrze / Hindenburg, the home of my mother’s family.
Unfortunately, my mother’s birthplace did not survive the surrounding Polish economic miracle. It still stands there like an outdated 19th century tenement block, half-ruined, the stairwell filthy, the dirt-smeared courtyard still with the barracks to the outhouses, half-wrecked cars in front of it: not a pretty sight. Surrounded by prefabricated buildings and a modernized coal-fired power station.
But what is striking compared to before: you can see the sky! In the 1980s, the windows were still full of soot and dirt after half an hour’s drive by car or train. The coal drew in the breath with its acrid dust. You never saw the sun.
The neighborhood in Zarbze was by far the worst I saw. Otherwise, you can see everywhere how much progress has been made in recent decades. Much of it financed by the EU. However, all this would have remained pointless if a strong economy had not been created through the efficiency and diligence of the people.
After making my way through the not necessarily beautiful but vibrant Gliwice, I soon come to country roads lined with avenues and not far beyond the city limits the first village surprises me with a somewhat neglected but imposing castle. Now the signs are bilingual, and the birch and pine forests once again tell of the vastness of the country. The meadows with their grace and tall grasses hint at the nearby Oder.
A few more small, winding street villages, some surprising hills that are almost mountains, then you enter Lubowitz, the home of the romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff.
The imposing church made of reddish bricks was consecrated in 1907 to replace a wooden church that had become too small, as can often be found further towards the Beskids, desecrated by the Red Army, as the chronicle says, and then gradually restored to its former glory. The signposts to Eichendorff’s castle, which unfortunately only remains in ruins, start right next to the vicarage. Eichendorff’s poems in German and Polish show you the way. First to the cemetery, in a magically idyllic location, blessed with old trees full of character and the improvised old bells of the church.
Eichendorff’s grave is only imperceptibly larger than the other graves. When you look from his grave at the small, enchanted gate that opens up to the outside world between graves and trees, slightly crooked and angled, you can already feel like the protagonist in one of his poems.
Especially if you continue under the nearby oak tree to the castle. An oak tree that has been growing here for over 200 years and has calmly endured all the ups and downs of time.
I doubt whether the soccer pitch a few meters away already existed in Eichendorff’s time. The rather socialist-looking garages also tell of the hopeless attempt to impose a kolkhoz-like atmosphere on this eternally enchanting place.
The castle park is so enchanted and overgrown that one imagines oneself close to Sleeping Beauty’s home. Small frogs in the undergrowth enjoy the fact that so few visitors come here.
But those who make it will be rewarded with the feeling of having found something eternally precious.
As Rüdiger Safranski so aptly described in an interview with the NZZ, the wall of fire of National Socialism that separates Germans from their past: here you have stepped through it or it simply no longer has any meaning. And something that was thought to be completely lost opens up again:
The people of poets and thinkers, beyond ideology and nationalism, beyond guilt and self-denial.
And so I end the day with cabbage rolls and the strange realization that an entire country with 80 million people like Germany is best found beyond its borders.