When I was trying to decide on the map of my memory whether I wanted to visit Karlovy Vary, Františkovy Lázně or Mariánské Lázně, Goethe came to my rescue. I was still familiar with the “Marienbad Elegy” as a poem and as an episode from his life. And so the decision was made quite quickly, helped by the easy accessibility from the Nuremberg-Prague highway.
The Upper Palatinate, which you cross on the way to Marienbad, is by no means as barren and poor as it may have been in the days of the composer Max Reger. Well-kept, small villages with top modern industrial estates speak eloquently of the dynamic change that the former agricultural state of Bavaria has undergone.
For me, the unoccupied border fortifications with the Czech Republic are still one of the wonders of modern European history. The fanatically precise and almost sadistic border controls of the defunct communist regime are still too vivid for me.
The Sudetenland across the border is still marked by the exodus of the German population. Compared to the rest of the Czech Republic, the economy here is still lagging far behind.
Sparsely populated, often interspersed with slightly dilapidated small old farmhouses, you can experience the tranquillity and romance of the countryside here, which has long since been lost behind the highly efficient hustle and bustle over in Bavaria.
The magic of a country road with its delicate birch trees is difficult to capture in words. The outer branches wave back and forth like garlands, doubling their effect when they are reflected in the water of the nearby ponds. You are already expecting a secluded country life when Marienbad appears like a mirage of the 19th century in this tranquil idyll.
A grandeur that is incomparable and almost pales in comparison to the other famous spa resorts in Europe rises up between the large forests of the region in a wild and romantic valley. The architecture is overwhelming in its sense of proportion and beauty. It’s incredible how all the tragedies of the 20th century could do so little to this world. Marienbad is still a symbol of the most beautiful thing in European culture today.
Thus, Goethe’s Marienbad Elegy, which today seems almost grotesque in its infatuation with old age, but which then rises to unbelievable passion, fits wonderfully into this gem between the high beech forests of western Bohemia.
The whole place seems completely removed from the information overload and the imagined or perceived disasters of the 21st century. And then it isn’t at all: many of the aristocratic apartments are empty and the inhabitants migrate to Prague or to work in Germany.
On Sunday there is a bilingual Protestant mass, with the priest also acting as organist. A true all-purpose weapon of the Lord, who even puts the songs from the sheet music into the right key for the congregation. Many songs have wandered between the cultural circles of Europe and show once again how closely this continent is culturally interwoven.
The message of the sermon, which admonishes us not to become too involved in the temptations of the present, has an authentic effect in this context and testifies to the long periods of time in which the Church thinks. But the priest’s careful German is also a blessing, perhaps without intending to, drawing attention to the beauty of the language.
When I set off the next morning, I feel refreshed, a word I had almost forgotten. It’s hard to know what was more refreshing: the mineral springs bubbling up everywhere or the feeling of having arrived in the homeland of my own culture.
Finally, a few lines from Goethe’s Marienbad Elegy:
A striving surges in the purity of our bosom,
To a higher, purer, unknown
To give voluntarily out of gratitude,
Unraveling the eternally unnamed;
We call it: being pious! – Such blessed heights
I feel a sense of sharing when I stand before her.
And here is the most beautiful setting that can be given to this poem:
Stefan Zweig’s “Sternstunden der Menschheit”:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sternstunden_der_Menschheit