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Asharq Al-Awsat
5 days ago
- Business
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Germany and Last Kaiser's Heirs Agree to Keep Treasures on Display
The heirs of the former Prussian monarchy and Germany's state-run cultural foundations on Friday announced a deal that will allow thousands of the family's treasures and artefacts to remain on public display. The agreement ends a century-old dispute between the state and the Hohenzollern family, descendants of the last German emperor and king of Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who abdicated after World War I. "After 100 years, we have amicably resolved a dispute dating back to the transition from the monarchy to the republic," said Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer, hailing the "historic success". The collection reportedly covers 27,000 objects including paintings, sculptures, coins, books and furniture. "Countless works of art that are of great importance to the history of Brandenburg, Prussia, and thus Germany will now be permanently accessible to the public and continue to form the centerpieces of our museums and palaces," said Weimer. Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia said in a statement that "it has always been my goal to permanently preserve our shared cultural heritage for art-loving citizens and to make it publicly accessible". "The solution now found provides an excellent basis for a new partnership between the state cultural foundations and my family." Under the agreement, previously disputed objects will be transferred to a non-profit Hohenzollern Art Heritage Foundation, with two thirds of the board made up of public sector representatives, and one third by the aristocratic family. The ancient House of Hohenzollern ruled the German Empire from its establishment in 1871 until Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate in 1918, going into exile after Germany's defeat in World War I. The Prussian royals were initially to be stripped of their properties, but a deal was later worked out under a 1926 law. The imperial family received millions of Deutschmarks and kept dozens of castles, villas and other properties, mainly in and around Berlin but also as far away as today's Namibia. However, after Nazi Germany's World War II defeat, Soviet occupation of eastern Germany and communist rule led to additional expropriations. The riches lost behind the Iron Curtain only came back into reach for the Hohenzollern family with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Under a 1994 law, people whose property was expropriated by the Soviets have a right to claim compensation, but only if they did not "lend considerable support" to the Nazi regime. The family fought for years to recover the treasures but dropped the bid in 2023 when a family representative acknowledged that Kaiser Wilhelm II "sympathized with the Nazis at times". The deal announced on Friday was sealed after the German Historical Museum Foundation gave its approval, following the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Prussian Castles and Gardens Foundation in Berlin-Brandenburg.
The Guardian
08-06-2025
- The Guardian
Riding high in Germany on the world's oldest suspended railway
It's easy to be seduced by the romance of train travel. Think of sleeper trains, boat trains, vintage steam railways, elegant dining cars. But it's rare that an urban transport system can capture the imagination quite as much as the Wuppertal Schwebebahn in Germany caught mine, and that of anyone else who's clapped eyes on the world's oldest suspended railway. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. In October it will be 125 years since Kaiser Wilhelm II took a test ride in the Schwebebahn, just a few months before the hanging railway officially opened for business in March 1901. It was an incredible feat of engineering then, and remains so today. Even with sleek modern carriages having long replaced the original ones, it looks like something imagined by Jules Verne, with carriages smoothly gliding under the overhead track. They have even preserved the first 1901 carriage, nicknamed Kaiserwagen, which can be hired for private occasions. A childlike feeling of glee filled me as I sat in the rear of the long carriage and watched the city reveal itself as I floated anything from 8 to 9 metres (26ft to 39ft) above it. At the railway's westernmost end, Vohwinkel is the first of only four stations whose carriages run above the street, between iron arches. The rest of the railway, which in total runs for just over eight miles, follows the route of the river Wupper. As the hanging train curves and sways above the serpentine river, it turns this commuter service into something like a fairground ride for its 80,000 daily passengers. My hitherto unknown train geek had been unleashed and was utterly delighted. The Schwebebahn came about almost by accident. The Wupper valley, about 15 miles east of Düsseldorf, was a major textile production base when Germany was undergoing its own Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. As workers flooded to the growing cities of Barmen and Elberfeld – which merged in 1929 and were renamed Wuppertal in 1930 – the authorities realised a public transport system was needed. Other cities were going underground, but Wuppertal's rocky soil and narrow, steep valley made any sort of U-Bahn impossible, forcing the Schwebebahn's inventor, Eugen Langen, to look up instead. At Schwebodrom, the railway museum that opened in late 2023 near Werther Brücke station at the line's eastern end, the rich history of the Schwebebahn is laid out in three galleries, revealing one fascinating detail after another. One gallery tells the story of Tuffi, a young circus elephant loaded into the Schwebebahn for a publicity stunt in 1950. Poor Tuffi was so spooked by jostling journalists that she bolted through a window and tumbled into the river. Luckily she was only lightly bruised and lived for another 49 years, her landing spot in the Wupper now marked by an elephant statue between Alter Markt and Adler Brücke stations. You can't move in Wuppertal without seeing Tuffi on some souvenir or another – even on milk cartons. Among the museum's films and displays, the highlight for me was the reproduction of an original carriage, where I sat glued to my VR headset and found myself in 1920s Wuppertal. After riding the rails in real life, I was able to go back in time to see what had changed. Much of Wuppertal had to be rebuilt after heavy allied bombing in the second world war, and the railway itself has been completely reconstructed – including its art nouveau stations – while keeping the original steampunk-style design in the iron girders. But there is a Wuppertal beyond the Schwebebahn, and this city of about 350,000 people was as full of pleasant surprises as its railway. Local guide Heike Fragemann took me to the tree-lined streets around Laurentiusplatz, a square dominated by the austere-looking 19th-century basilica of St Lawrence, dedicated to Wuppertal's patron saint. Popular with many of the 23,000 students at the University of Wuppertal as well as people of all ages, the cosmopolitan streets hummed with cafes, delis, boutiques, bars and restaurants run by some of the many nationalities that have settled here over the decades – Italian, Turkish, Greek, Indian, Vietnamese and Spanish among them. In fact, the range of restaurants throughout the city was huge, and also included Lebanese, Chinese, Croatian and traditional German fare. Pointing out an example of Wuppertal's distinctive style of architecture – slate cladding, green shutters and white window frames – Heike led me along the narrow streets behind Laurentiusplatz as we steadily walked uphill. Not only was Wuppertal Germany's Manchester because of its industry, Heike told me, but it was also compared to San Francisco thanks to its steepness. 'We are the city of steps,' she said as we came to yet another one. 'We have 500 staircases, more than 12,000 steps within the city. This is the most famous one.' She pointed to a sign with the captivating name of Tippen-Tappen-Tönchen, in honour of those 19th-century workmen clopping in their wooden clogs towards the riverside factories – hence the tipping-tapping sound. One to add to my list of adorable street names. Sign up to The Traveller Get travel inspiration, featured trips and local tips for your next break, as well as the latest deals from Guardian Holidays after newsletter promotion It was the wealthy 19th-century industrialists who shaped the city, not just with their comfortable hillside villas, but also with Wuppertal's cultural institutions. The Von der Heydt Museum, named after an art-collecting banking family, houses its impressive collection of 19th- and early 20th-century art in what had been the neoclassical town hall. The entrance is flanked by two large sculptures by the Liverpool-born Turner prize-winner Tony Cragg, who made Wuppertal his home in 1977. The Historische Stadthalle concert hall, marking its 125th anniversary this year, had Richard Strauss as one of its first conductors and Sir Simon Rattle rated its acoustics among the best in the world. Public gardens fill many of the gaps in the city, including the vast hilly Botanical Garden. As I sat in the warm, bookish surroundings of Café Engel in Laurentiusplatz, I was reminded of Friedrich Engels, the son of a wealthy Wuppertal textile manufacturer, who turned his back on his bourgeois background to co-author The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx after seeing the appalling working conditions in mid-19th-century Manchester. Engels died in London six years before the Schwebebahn opened, and it was many years earlier that the city's industrialists had already implemented social reforms for working-class residents that were ahead of their time. The Schwebebahn, too, looks like something from the future, but its story is purely of Wuppertal's unique past. Here, in Germany's old industrial heartland, the high life is yours from €3.60 a ticket. This trip was provided by the German tourist board and Le Shuttle, which has return fares from Folkestone to Calais from £155 per vehicle. Further information at Doubles at Holiday Inn Express Wuppertal Hauptbahnhof (some with views of the Schwebebahn), start at £79B&B. Schwebebahn 24-hour tickets €8.80, and €4.40 for additional passengers. Schwebodrom adults tickets €16.50
Telegraph
14-05-2025
- Telegraph
Suffolk's secret seaside beauty – in the shadow of a mega port
A ride on the 9am number 75 bus from Ipswich to Felixstowe is a humdrum affair, through commuter traffic, suburbs, flat fields, housing and industrial estates. The slow service avoids the throbbing A14, but you keep catching glimpses of convoys of HGVs on their way to the UK's largest port. The beach, then, comes as a wonderful surprise. I arrived on a clear, sunny day; the Channel was calm and blue. Felixstowe's long pier, opened in 1905, looks best from a distance; it's home to a traditional amusement arcade, but the half a mile or so of rotting timber is off limits. The Prom ambles between rows of pastel-painted beach huts with names such as Buoys and Gulls, and a sweeping beach of sand and shingle, steep and protected by groynes. A proper seaside walk needs space; here there are four miles to fill your lungs. Turning round to face inland, things are equally lovely. Eight carefully tended gardens, inserted into the low coastal cliffs at the end of the Victorian era, sit between rows of low-slung houses and frilly porched guesthouses flanked by palm trees. Felixstowe is the only East Anglian seaside resort that faces south, and flowers and plants naturally love it. Architecturally, the accent is on unassuming prettiness rather than grandeur, but one prominent building is the white-painted Italianate South Beach Mansion, where Empress Augusta Victoria of Germany, the wife of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and her family stayed during their summer holiday in 1891. Some credit her visit with making the resort fashionable, but she would never have gone in the first place if it hadn't already been so. In an era when people take seaside holidays in the Persian Gulf, Maldives and Mexico, and faddish British resorts vie for attention in the media, it's perhaps hard to imagine Felixstowe as anything other than an also-ran or has-been. But the town has a rich heritage that adds depth to the surface appeal. In 1338, Edward III used Felixstowe as his base before sailing to fight the French. The grandson of Charles II and his mistress Nell Gwynne, Lord George Beauclerk, was governor of Landguard Fort – the extraordinary bulwark at the southern end of Felixstowe beach, built and rebuilt over several centuries to protect Harwich harbour. George V was a regular visitor. During the First World War, the late Queen Mother worked as a nurse in Felixstowe and allegedly turned 'spycatcher', alerting the authorities to suspicious-looking characters. In the 1930s, it was home to Wallis Simpson during the abdication crisis, and in the 1970s and 1980s the Princess Royal visited Felixstowe College (a part of which, called Tamarisk House, was once owned by Queen Camilla's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather). The excellent museum at Landguard Ford reminds visitors that Felixstowe has a storied naval and military history, from submarine mining to seaplanes. Perhaps it's time for the town to be rechristened Felixstowe Regis. Long established as a des res town for retirees – as I passed an open door at the leisure centre on the front, a group of silver-haired gymnasts could be seen cutting shapes to music – it also attracts lots of senior seaside tourists. Beside one of the town's three surviving Martello Towers, the Sea You café (naff names seem to be a thing) is a popular meeting place for locals as well as visiting coach parties. Arnold, 71, from Chelmsford, who had come up for the week with his wife, Sandra, said: 'Why would we travel the length of the country when we have this up the road? Felixstowe is safe, peaceful and beautiful on a day like today.' In another seafront café, the Alex, Mike, 66, said he was walking the coast path. 'There's a lot of birdlife on the riverside, just behind the port,' he explained. Sarah, 55, a local resident, was walking her dog. She said: 'We don't have a trendy gallery or anything like that, like Margate or Brighton, but we don't really want one. Felixstowe is happy being a bit of a secret.' If it's sedate, it's not sleepy. Beach Street is an open-air space for food vendors in repurposed shipping containers. Bao buns, waffles, stacked burgers, pizza, vegan food, craft ales, tapas, and 'wok wraps' are all on sale, as well as pie and mash and jellied eels for those who want to imagine it's 1950 while humming Cockney classics. To be fair, locals lamented the passing of a traditional pie and mash shop, Sally Jane's, in 2022, and this new venture has gone down very well. The Felixstowe Food Festival will be hosted at Beach Street on Friday June 6 and Saturday June 7. Before it boomed as a resort, Felixstowe was visited principally as a health-giving town. Bracing sea air was seen as curative; sea-bathing as a treatment for all manner of ailments. The town also boasted spa waters. Early on, a humble shed was built at the foot of the cliffs to provide private access to water sourced from a spring. An old advert declared it 'a capital medicine for those suffering from nervous deposition, depression and overwork'. The Spa Pavilion, originally opened in 1909 as the New Floral Hall and now a theatre and sea-view restaurant, pays homage to this history, as does the name of Convalescent Hill. After an excellent plate of haddock and chips at Fish Dish, near the front, I decided to weave together the health-giving theme with Mike's comments on the birdlife, as well as my need to get back to Ipswich. The Stour and Orwell Walk is now a section of the King Charles III England Coastal Path – just in case this corner of Suffolk needed a further regal connection. Forty miles long, it runs from Felixstowe to Cattawade. The leg to Ipswich follows the course of the Orwell and begins with a slightly surreal crossing of the railway tracks that bring freight trains into the port, but soon plunging you into woodland. Gantry cranes loom over the treetops and, to be honest, you can see them almost all the way to Ipswich. But my gaze soon switched away from the river and sea to the wonders inland. First came the glory of Trimley Marshes, an RSPB reserve that provides a habitat for avocet, marsh harrier, curlew, greylag and Canada goose, little egret and, the board on a hide claimed, nightingale. I could hear geese and ducks gossiping on one side, warning sirens from the port on the other. Approaching the last gantry, a small bulk tanker passed at the end of the footpath track. The much larger MSC Katie was being loaded with containers. It had come from Colombo, Sri Lanka, a shipping radar site informed me. The saltmarsh and mudflats, a 'managed realignment', are part of the Suffolk and Essex Coast and Heaths National Landscape. Lapwing and redshank populate the scrapes. Bitterns overwinter in the shelter of the reedbeds. At Levington Creek, a brackish lagoon, formed following the 1953 floods, was now a haven for estuarine birds. Approaching Nacton, I came upon a cool but sun-blessed, Caribbean-looking beach. I totted up my bird spots so far: two kestrels, a shag, lots of waders and seabirds, sandpipers, an egret, passerines galore. Ipswich announced itself with a big bridge, but it too turned out to be a surprisingly lovely and overlooked town – though that's another story. As for Felixstowe, it has to be one of the UK's most distinctive seaside towns. Tranquil and expansive, elegant but not stuffy, it has as much history as some small cities and the presence of the country's largest port is both an oddity and an irrelevance. The proximity of precious wetlands and wading birds adds a dimension not readily available in other resorts, and somehow links back to the original reason we travelled to the coast – to connect with nature and restore physical and mental health.
