The Great Breton Bride Robbery

or

Why it is important to consummate your proxy marriage as soon as possible

Sometime in the 19^th century, Emperor Maximilian I came to be known as 'The Last Knight'. Whether or not that's an accurate nickname is another subject, but he was a knight, and as such, did his share of rescuing damsels in distress, with varying degrees of success. 

Emperor Maximilian I by Burgkmair
(1508)

Here I relate one of his less successful rescue attempts.

The province of Brittany (Bretagne) is now part of France, but it used to be an independent duchy. Anne of Brittany (born 1477) became duchess upon the death of her father.

Anne of Brittany by Bourdichon
(detail)

The first thing she needed to do was find a husband, preferably one who was not allied with France, so that Brittany could remain independent. He also needed to be powerful enough to keep France at bay, since they were very interested in absorbing the wealthy little duchy into their territory.

Anne approached Maximilian, in a kind of 15^th century speed dating. He fit both of the criteria, and had been a widower since the death of his first wife, Mary of Burgundy, in 1482. He agreed, and they were married by proxy in Rennes on December 19, 1490, with Wolfgang von Polheim, a longtime noble servant of the house of Habsburg standing in for Maximilian.

Why wasn't Maximilian present at his own wedding, you ask? Because he was busy fighting off the Hungarians back home in Austria, and had a lot on his mind. It was also sort of a habit with him: Maximilian was married three times, all three by proxy.

King Charles VIII of France was not amused by this development.

Charles VIII of France
Artist unknown

First of all, the fact that Anne had married without his consent was a treaty violation. The fact that she had married Maximilian meant that France was now hemmed in by Habsburg territories and/or allies.

So, he pounced. He sent troops to Brittany, and placed Anne under house arrest. She found herself in an impossible position; Charles would give her safe conduct to leave Brittany to join her husband in Austria, but that would essentially mean surrendering her land to France.

Anne begged Maximilian for help, but in typical Max fashion, he was too wrapped up in his own affairs (and too strapped for cash) to fight a war on two fronts, so he sent neither money nor troops to aid his wife.

Charles pounced again. He wrote to Rome for papal dispensation to have the marriage by proxy dissolved, due to non-consummation, and married Anne himself. They say he dragged her off to bed as soon as the ceremony was completed.

Charles wasn't done twisting the knife. While he was at it, he also obtained dispensation to dissolve his existing betrothal.

He had been betrothed to Maximilian's daughter, Margaret of Austria since 1483.

Margaret of Austria
c. 1500
attr. to Pieter van Coninxloo

Maximilian wasn't the type to forgive and forget. Years later he was heard to complain that no one had ever double-crossed him like Charles VIII.

He wouldn't let Charles forget it either. Years later, during some negotiations with France, the French emissary asked Maximilian if he had any special messages for the King. Max sneered, “Give the queen my regards!”

Anne and Maximilian were eventually connected in a unique way: they shared a funeral motet. When Anne died in 1514, Costanzo Festa composed this motet for her: Costanzo Festa – Quis dabit oculis.

No original funeral motet for Maximilian has survived. What has been transmitted is a reworking of Festa's motet, which is sometimes attributed to Ludwig Senfl. Manfred Cordes: Weser-Renaissance Bremen – Quis dabit oculis

History will have her little jokes. 

Life in the Hellgrüner Hood

Satellite view, with a marker on our street

So what is daily life in the Hellgrüner Gang like? 

Blissfully free of car traffic, for one thing. The nearest busy street with cars is called An der Untertrave, which runs along the Trave River. It's about 50 paces from our door, accessible on foot through a narrow passageway, but not one you have to bend over to walk through!

To An der Untertrave

Unlike this one!

We've had a very pleasant summer weather-wise, so we keep our windows open most of the time. There are no screens, but neither are there stinging insects (this place is surrounded by water, but somehow free of mosquitos. I'm tellin' ya, Lübeck is a magic place!)

So, we get a lot of neighborhood ambience through the windows. Like kids playing in the playground behind our terrace.

Sometimes a soccer ball comes sailing over the hedge, and then an emissary (or an entire scouting party) comes to retrieve it. They can't climb the hedge, so they have to come knocking at the front door. Last evening, three solemn little boys (I'd say age 5-8 or so) came looking for their ball, which was stuck in our hedge. Jim found it for them, and all three of them very politely said 'Danke' before racing back to the playground.

Other ambient sounds: a man who lives somewhere in our little warren, who sometimes goes around calling for his dog. I have not been able to discern what the dog is called. It sounds something like “Oh-Vay”, which, if true, would mean that the dog is named “Woe is me”. I hope that is not the case, for both of their sakes!

The bells of nearest church (the Jakobikirche) chime every quarter hour: one bell at 15 minutes past, two bells at 30 minutes past, and so on. You have to keep track of the hour on your own!

Jakobikirche in the evening light

Sometimes we can hear boat horns from the Trave or the harbor.

During the World Cup semi-final game between Germany and Brazil (you know, the one where Germany won 7-1!), I could clearly hear cheers from all over the neighborhood when Germany scored, even though I was watching a movie on my computer and wearing headphones! Ha!

Germans seem to live out of doors when the weather is nice. So we've heard our next-door neighbors having coffee on their terrace several times, reading the paper or chatting quietly to each other.

We've nodded to the lady who lives on the end of our row as we're both hanging up or taking down our respective loads of wash. One day, she loaned some garden shears to Jim when she saw him trimming some over-ambitious hedge inhabitants with scissors. :-)

And then there are the tour groups who visit regularly, as mentioned here. 

All in all, the Hellgrüner Gang is a quiet, friendly place to live, and we feel like we're part of the neighborhood!

Musical Friends, Part II

A couple of weeks ago, our friends Harm and Trinette from the Netherlands came to visit us here in Lübeck. From 1993-1999, I took organ lessons from Harm while studying musicology at the University of Amsterdam, and we've remained friends ever since.

I had the chance to play a couple of remarkable instruments during my tenure as his student, including this one: an organ dating from the late 15th- or early 16^th century, located in Oosthuizen, the Netherlands: 

Click here for a picture of the facade. Some of the pipes may actually date from the early 15^th century!

Harm has a broad repertoire as an instrumentalist, but Buxtehude's music remains a favorite of his. You're starting to see why we get along so well. Yet he had never visited Lübeck! So when I told him we'd be moving here, and that it was a must-see for any Buxtehude aficionado, he promised to come visit once we got settled. 

We had a couple of nice meals together, and plenty of time to catch up. We also visited one of Lübeck's coolest museums: the St. Annen-Museum. 

The building in which the museum is housed dates from 1502. It originally served as a place where unmarried (and presumably unmarriageable!) daughters of wealthy Lübeck merchants could live. Walking through the galleries with their stone floors, pillars, gothic vaults and stained glass windows really lets you enjoy the art in its proper context. Click here for a cool picture.

My favorite artifact is a gorgeous altarpiece by Hans Memling, which dates from 1491. Click here for a picture.

This is one of those works of art that you could just stare at for hours. It tells the story of the entire Passion (plus the resurrection and ascension!) in three panels with stunning colors, quirky details (monkey hitching a ride on a horse!) and an engaging sense of action throughout.

We also saw the new exhibit on music in Lübeck, with plenty of time and space dedicated to the great DB, including several instruments dating from his tenure as organist of St. Mary's.

Visiting a museum with Harm and Trinette felt like going back in time, since we took a couple of 'field trips' to Belgium together when I was his student, visiting Antwerp and Ghent, and museums were always on the itinerary!

Then...
Ghent, March 1998, I think?

And now!
Cafe Affenbrot, Lübeck
June 2014

It was such a treat to see them again, and we hope to do so more often now that there's no ocean in the way! 

Musical Friends, Part One

After our trip to Buxtehude, Jim and I took the train back to Hamburg and met up with our friend Gwen Toth, a specialist in historic keyboard instruments and the director of the New York-based early music ensemble ARTEK. 

Gwen was a woman on a mission, and Jim and I were privileged to be along for the ride! Here's the story:

In 2013, a brand new organ was inaugurated in one of Hamburg's five primary churches: St. Catherine's. It was built by Flentrop Orgelbouw, which is based in the Netherlands. I used to pass their facility in Zaandam nearly every day in the train when I lived in upper Noord-Holland and studied in Amsterdam.

Gwen is a multi-facetted instrumentalist, but her favorite music was composed by early Baroque composer Heinrich Scheidemann. 

Scheidemann lived from circa 1595 to 1663, was the son of an organist, and studied with the man they called the 'Maker of German Organists', Jan-Pieterszoon Sweelinck, in Amsterdam. Scheidemann was the organist at St. Catherine's in Hamburg for more than thirty years. 

Katharinenkirche Hamburg

When I asked Gwen what she especially likes about Scheidemann's music in an interview a couple of years ago, she said it was the unique mixture of sweetness and severity, which I thought was a great description.

Flentrop Orgelbouw sought to recreate the instrument Scheidemann would have known, which like so many others, was destroyed in World War II. But this newborn organ also contains some 'DNA' from its parent in the form of several hundred original pipes!

As a self-professed 'organ nerd', I was delighted to observe Gwen's process of discovery and document it with pictures.

She played Scheidemann's setting of 'Vater unser im Himmelreich' and his teacher Sweelinck's Hexachord Fantasia, both of which sounded fantastic to me!

If you are curious about Scheidemann's music, I can recommend a CD that Gwen made several years ago on an historic instrument in the Netherlands.

Here are a couple more pictures from St. Catherine's:

Pedal pipes

Visiting Buxtehude

On July 4, Jim and I visited Buxtehude.

<awkward silence>

No, seriously!

<crickets>

Look, there's even a magic chariot to take you there! 

Kidding! We visited the city of Buxtehude, a so-called 'Hansestadt', which means it was a member of the Hanseatic League. It's about 40 minutes southwest of Hamburg by train.

It was very cute and charming, with lovely old 'Fachwerk' (half-timbered) buildings: 

A pretty church, which was closed, unfortunately: 

And many, many things that said 'Buxtehude', of which we took many, many pictures: 

It had to happen sometime.

Didn't see that coming, did you?

Sara, why are you standing next to a gigantic hedgehog?

I'm so glad you asked! One of the fun things about the city of Buxtehude (besides the name) is that it has a couple of fairy tales associated with it. The most famous one is 'The Hare and the Hedgehog'. You can read it in English here, if you are interested!

Anyway, those two little mascots are everywhere in the city, which is just delightful.

One more thing: in case you are wondering whether the city and the composer have anything to do with one another, the answer is no. We're not 100% sure where Dieterich Buxtehude was born, but it may have been in Helsingborg, then part of Denmark, or a small town near Lübeck called Bad Oldesloe. At any rate, somewhere where his father had an organist gig. But it stands to reason that the family originated in the city of Buxtehude at some point in the distant past. It's not the sort of name you just get by accident.

:-)