Baden Baden, Germany 10.5.24

Guten morgen from the famed springs of Baden Baden in the misty hills of the Black Forest. Being a sucker for UNESCO World Heritage sites and natural hot springs, when I needed a place to escape the city for the weekend before re-entering the working world, I immediately thought, “Boy wouldn’t Baden-Baden be amazing?” Turns out it is not only amazing, but remarkably cost effective (author’s note: this is all on a curve and this is still the EU, not 2014 Vietnam)

As Kit and I walked, slightly struggling from a few too many beers at Oktoberfest the night before, through the Residenz Museum in Munich there were a few random intellectual pursuits in my life that came neatly together. The incredible former seat of the Wittelsbach dynasty, the Residenz satisfied the peaceable goal of castle builders, to show in stone and gilt the immense power of a dynasty. Walking past the Bavarian equivalent of the Field of Mars in Ancient Rome, there was a feeling of comprehension when I felt like I’d seen it before. I had, festooned in Nazi paraphernalia from the black and white newsreels of Hitler’s rise.

Whether the Marshall Plan or the destruction wrought by two World Wars or just the petering out of the genetic predisposition, today’s Germans would be considered total impostors to the legacy of the Germanic tribes that were the terror of the Romans:

To quote our old friend Tacitus:

“Statim arma capiunt; non ante deponunt quam senectus. Nulli domus aut ager aut aliqua cura; sola regum liberi libertique armati agunt. Idque proprium et perpetuum signum est libertatis, arma ferre.”

“Arms are taken up at once and never laid aside; no one can go about unarmed. To carry arms is to show you are free.”

“Tamquam mollia et infirmi ingenii corpora labore quaerere quod possis sanguine parare.”

“They actually think it tame and spiritless to accumulate by the sweat of toil what they can gain by their blood.”

Today’s Germans are remarkably domesticated by comparison. A report that came out last week said that in the event of a real war for survival against Russia, the German military would have only two days worth of ammunition. To see that change in the lifetime of my “Grandmother” Mickey is one of modernity’s remarkable transformations.

Now after that digression, back to the point I was trying to make. The Residenz had a hall filled with the busts of Roman emperors and their consorts. It was nearly a full football field long, filled with all those old friends and monsters from Mike Duncan’s incredible podcast, The History of Rome. 

There was Augustus as both a young Octavian and the elder statesman who consolidated chaos into the peak of human civilization that would not again be seen for a millennia and a half. There was Vespasian, that humble soldier who merely laughed as courtiers brought him a family tree tracing his lineage to the gods. There was Marcus Aurelias, the last of the five good emperors, next to his grand mistake and heir, Commodus.

There was Septimius Severus, the first African to be hailed Emperator, and my personal favorite, the black sheep of the Julio-Claudian dynasty Claudius, who attempted to hide in a curtain assuming he’d be killed in the aftermath of Caligula’s assassination, only to be hailed as Caesar and arguably ruled as well as anyone not named Augustus.

To try to piece together the Latin names into the men whom I’ve read and listened to so much about was its own joy, but to see the importance that nearly modern rulers gave to the legacy of Rome nearly two millennia later made me think quite a bit about modernity’s proud disdain for the lessons of history.

From that grand hall to the hills of the Black Forest, Rome is never far away in Germany. There were no shortage of attempts to conquer the Germans. Marius, Augustus, Germanicus, Aurelias all had their run-ins with those warlike giants from the North, but somehow Germany was never fully Latinized. The spot where I sit today had the first Roman baths built in the time of Caracalla, one of the true monsters of the Caesars. The Romans were very serious about their baths, and seemed to set about building them just about as soon as the fighting stopped. This particular spot had no shortage of hot springs at over 150 degrees out of the ground, so it was a bit easier engineering feat than building a central boiler system as they did in other places.

Baden Baden was THE spa town for the European elite for centuries. I’m always a bit hesitant to describe healing properties to waters, but after five hours in one of the complexes yesterday, I can say that I haven’t felt quite this balanced in years.

It becomes ironic that this spot, with its millennia of history, happens to have a corollary with my upbringing in the hills of Southern Indiana. The sulfur waters of French Lick and West Baden brought the wealthy to what could have just as easily been a blank spot on a map. Grand dreams of the Carlsbad of America were hatched by businessmen (circus owners) in the late 1800s. The waters that had been used by Native Americans for healing purposes were commercialized and sold as America’s equivalent to Baden-Baden. Lee Sinclair built the world’s largest freestanding dome, which, at least anecdotally, had to be the tallest structure for 100s of miles. He filled it with neo-classical statues made from local limestone, mosaics to imitate the Italians, and brought plenty of Germans in to ply their ancestral trades as POWs from WW1. His creation brought characters as diverse as Joe Lewis, FDR and Al Capone.

Unfortunately it didn’t have nearly the staying power of Baden-Baden and fell into complete disrepair by the time I was a child.

While Americans don’t have nobility, we do have plenty of homegrown wealth, and in a fit of truly magnificent noblesse oblige, Bill Cook funded the restoration of the resort and dome to preserve these Hoosier architectural marvels in the late 1990s.

To be sitting almost 5000 miles away in the original is a really special experience.

But now its time to figure out how in shape my legs are. There are plenty of wineries in these hills, and I’m about to hire a pushbike to go see a few.

At least I’ll get to have some healing waters when I return.