Local Blitz Economy

Here in the Wiesbaden area....blitz cameras (the speed cameras) are a day-to-day threat.  There are seventeen stationary cameras, and three mobile units.

The local paper, the Kurier....put up an interesting story over the current trend.  What folks are generally saying....is that the percentage of speeders caught via the camera....is decreasing.  In certain words....the amount of capital that the city made....is less than expected.

Back in 2009, the city took in around 1.2 million Euro off their camera system with speeders.  It's generally gone down ever since.

Right now....for 2014 and the first five months....we are around 22,000 folks caught speeding.  For all of last year?  Around 62,000 cases for 2013.  You can figure if the trend holds....we won't go past the 55,000 point.

What's this all lead onto?  Well....the chief of Wiesbaden's police has written up a directive for the guys who maintain the blitz deal.....to start planning on optimal use of the cameras.  Back at the end of March.....he sent the statement out and kinda hinted that the boys need to think of better ways to use the cameras and ensure better numbers.

The truth here?  Generally, a guy might be willing to accept one or two speeding tickets in his life....but after that....at least in urban areas....he lightens his foot and finds various ways to stay within the speed limit.  Most folks have a mental listing of the seventeen stationary cameras and will rattle them off quickly if asked where they are.

Why have stationary cameras?  Well.....German experts got smart and figured out around thirty years ago how to challenge the mobile cameras in court.  The two-man team that usually sets up the mobile cameras.....have a checklist.....and will typically spend two hours setting up the angle and ensuring correct measurements.  If they fail on any part of the set-up of the mobile camera....then the case can be challenged in court.  All of this led German planners to get into the idea of permanent cameras.....around-the-clock type tickets....twenty-four hours a day.  Course, this means a vast amount of money, and you need to get a fair return on your investment.

Years ago.....I made a trip up into the Netherlands, and came to a town of 250,000 people.  My little GPS went nuts and displayed what was probably around 200 installed blitz cameras in the town.  I doubt if you could have driven more than two minutes in any direction, and you would have come across a blitz camera.  I've often wondered about pay-back, and if the town ever made their money back off the installation.

All of this leads me to one conclusion.....it just doesn't make sense to speed in any urban area of German.  If you got a GPS unit and it's got the potential alarm to warn of you on excessive speed.....I'd use it.

History on Grand Duchy

When you mess around with German history (the stuff before WW II).....you end up with this topic of Grand Duchy.  If you sit and try to get a normal German to explain this....they just look at you and note that they got rid of the Kaiser in 1919, and it's all been thrilling ever since.  More or less....few know or understand the Grand Duchy term or what it involves.

So, a simplified explanation.

Going back into the 1500s, the Grand Duchy status was invented.  A guy, his army and local people of importance....designed the Grand Duchy as a 'kingdom'.  The neat thing about a Grand Duchy is that it's not run by emperors or kings.  Yeah, that's attractive to most regions because you avoid all that royal stuff, along with the taxation it usually involves.

A Grand Duchy was run by a Grand Duke....or a prince.

It was a status that was dissolving by the end of the 1700s....then Napoleon's era helped to bring it back.  Areas taken over by Napoleon's army....would turn various regions into Grand Duchy operations....to benefit those who were cooperative and helpful.  Here in Germany....after 1815 and the defeat of Napoleon, the status grew more popular.

All total, in this period of the 1800s....there were sixteen authentic Grand Duchy regions (note: some are German or Prussian related, and some fall into French, Italian or Poland related):

1.  The Grand Duchy of Tuscany (1569–1860)
2.  The Grand Duchy of Berg (1806–1813)
3.  The Grand Duchy of Würzburg (1806–1814)
4.  The Grand Duchy of Baden (1806–1918)
5.  The Grand Duchy of Hesse (1806–1918)
6.  The Grand Duchy of Fulda (1816–1866)
7.  The Grand Duchy of Finland (1809–1917)
8.  The Grand Duchy of Frankfurt (1810–1813)
9.  The Grand Duchy of the Lower Rhine (1815–1822)
10.  The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (since 1815 and still a Grand Duchy today)
11.  The Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1815–1918)
12.  The Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1815–1918)
13  The Grand Duchy of Posen (1815–1848)
14. The Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1815–1918)
15. The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg (1829–1918)
16.  The Grand Duchy of Cracow (1846–1918)

Hessen or Nassau?  Well....after 1871, the area was forced into Prussia.  The Duke was nullified and zero'ed out.  On the paperwork, they can claim some status of existence as a Grand Duchy until the end of WW I, but there was no Grand Duke running the show.

What all this tends to show.....is a significant number of small communities what is Germany or part of Europe today.....which were smaller in scale and controlling their own destiny.  People were proud of the status of belonging to a Grand Duchy, and they tended to stay out of wars.

If the Grand Duchy design had survived on?  Without the Napoleonic wars and the growth of Prussian dominance....these sixteen Grand Duchy situations would likely all have survived on.  The Grand Duchy of Hesse, without WW I or WW II....would likely be one of the richest communities in Europe today.

The Frankfurt Gutenberg Statue

Down in the center of Frankfurt, about twenty minutes walking from the train station along Kaiser Strasse (heading east)....you will come to a large stoned 'park', with a huge statue on one side of it.  It's the Gutenberg Statue.

Course, you will notice that there are three guys on top....and only one being Gutenberg himself.  The other two?  Peter Schoeffer (considered Germany's first publisher), and Johannes Fust (the German who turned publishing into a business operation).

The statue was put up around 1845, and is supposed to represent four key elements of German culture: natural science, religion, poetry and industry.  The four below them?  Well....they are to represent the four key cities where printing became a lucrative business: Venice, Frankfurt, Mainz, and Strasbourg (France).

Generally, I'd rate the statue as one of the twenty-odd things in Frankfurt which you ought to see if you had a weekend.

The Gutenberg Museum

 Down in the old part of Mainz, is the Gutenberg Museum.  It's right across from the Mainz Cathedral. For a trip?  It'll cost five Euro to enter, and is an interesting collection of printing history.

I wouldn't suggest dragging some six-year old kids to it.....but maybe kids in the fourteen and over group might get something out of it.

On the history of Gutenberg?  Well.....he was a Mainz resident who was born in 1495, and around 1539....the combination blacksmith/goldsmith and eventual printer came to this idea of pressing metal against paper to 'print' something.

What he opens up.....is a pandoras box.  Up until this idea was commercialized.....was that all books (in particular the Bible).....were hand-written.  At this point, a guy could put the press work up and print copies of the Bible, and sell them outside of the Catholic Church monopoly system.

At the time.....few today realize that....all Bibles were heavily controlled and were all in Latin.  Since only the trained or educated Catholic Church 'players' had use of Latin.....they were controlling the verbiage and sermon content.

What Gutenberg then offers.....is a translated capability....with Bibles in German, French and English.  A merchant, with a fair amount of money.....simply buys it and can read it in his own language.  At that point, it opens up an entire new way of interpreting the Bible and it's values.  You can look around from 1550 to 1650, and note various wars and conflicts underway....strictly over the religious views of people, and the light that Gutenberg's printing press allowed.

One of the things you will notice from the contents of the museum are the church hymn books.  From this period on.....people could write various verses for songs, and it could be bulk-produced and created a totally new environment for the musical side of life.

The Age of Enlightenment?  It only comes....because of Gutenberg's printing press.  Once you can create knowledge, publish it, mass distribute it......you have not just hundreds who get the 'message'.....but literally tens of thousands.

You can look back today, and truthfully say that Gutenberg's simple idea....radically changed society and took the Catholic Church down several notches.  The Mayflower's occupants?  They would never have been so radicalized....if they hadn't had the Bibles in English or been able to debate standard religious doctrine.

So, if you happen to be in Mainz....the museum is worth visiting.  Note, you are better off using the train and bus system to get over to the area (parking just isn't that plentiful).  There's also a dozen-odd things to see in the old city of Mainz and you might as well plan for an entire day (with plenty of good food).  The museum itself?  Figure you need 2.5 hours max.  Note, it's closed on Mondays.  

A Little Freedom Rarely Noted

There's an odd freedom, that Americans have enjoyed for several hundred years....never thinking much about it or the implications of denial.....or wondering if it was just luck.  The freedom?  Movement.

Germany has a history lesson related to freedom, which few ever think about or discuss.

While the Constitution of the German Reich (1871) covered all citizens of the newly formed German state, and said that all participants enjoyed the same rights....from state to state, it kinda left the act of moving from one state to another (within Germany) as a question mark.  If you were caring for the poor or serving the Prussian Army....there was no question to you walking over the state line of one German state....to another.  Beyond that....it was a question mark.

You can stand there and imagine your place in life.  You were born in a village....say of the state of Nassau, and you were pretty much limited to that region.

Prior to the Germanification or Prussian attachment to Nassau (our Hessen state of today)....some hostile feelings had arisen in the early 1800s.  The private secretary of the Duke of Nassau....Carl Friedrich Emil....came to the conclusion that citizens of Nassau....ought to be able to move around the state itself.  So in 1810, the freedom of movement became reality....over fifty years ahead of Germany's 1871 Constitution which barely inferred that.  It wasn't until 1919, with the Weimar Constitution....that it was clear that citizens of Germany could move to any part of the land they desired, for any reason.

It's a freedom that Americans have enjoyed for a fairly long period....no limits...no exceptions.  For Germans, you find that people accepted this for the most part.  They grew up in their village.....they built their own house in that village....things stayed fairly stable.  With the exception of the Germans who got on the boat to leave Germany....that was the only group of the 1800s who found the freedom of movement.

It's hard to say what happened after 1810 in Nassau (the Hessen or Wiesbaden of today).  Did people suddenly start to pack up and move?  Did merchants start opening up new business operations in other towns?  Did craftsmen pack a bag and venture forty miles north to better economic conditions?  You don't know.

The population of Wiesbaden in 1800 was noted at 2,239 (Wiki numbers)....about half the size of my current village (Naurod).  By 1840....it'd grown to 11,648.  A significant jump.....which you might attribute to the 1810 change allowing freedom of movement.

If you asked Germans about this little freedom....I doubt if one out of a thousand would comment on the previous mentality and the various limits that most Germans endured until the last hundred years.  It's a rather new freedom....just not noticed like you'd think.

The Mainz Church

Built around 1240, Saint Christophers Church in Mainz is one of the few examples around of Gothic design. It's about ten minutes walking from the Theodor Heuss Bridge.

The church was hit early on in WW II....August of 1942, and mostly burned down.  The walls came down in Feb 1945 after another bombing raid.

The city of Mainz made the decision to rebuild the church.....to the feature of walls only (no roof or interior).  The church is still in some stage of project.

The Iron Tower

Near the old city area of Mainz, is the Iron Tower.  It is one of the last three towers left to the walled city area.  What the locals say is that it dates back to around 260AD, during the Roman period.  For roughly a hundred years, the Romans utilized the walled city and the various towers....then vacated.

The original Iron Tower?  Well....to be honest, it's been renovated several times, and got bombed during WW II. So, this is a more updated version of the tower.

If you make a trip to Mainz....it's worth seeing.  Location?  Down on Rhein Strasse along the river....maybe five minutes walking from the Theodor Heuss Bridge.  Parking?  No.  So it's best to take the tram or bus to the general location.

What exists of the old walled area?  Not much except the three towers.  Unlike some cities that retained the walled look for tourism or merchant activities....Mainz tore their wall down.

Business Observations

I tend to point out odd businesses when I walk around urban Germany.  This is a Catholic priest shop....about one minute walking from the Frankfurt Cathedral in the old part of town.

Basically, all the garments, the crosses, and statues that would accompany the Catholic religion.  Cost?  Not sure....because I chose not to walk in and browse.  Yeah, it'd look odd....they'd figure quickly that I wasn't a Catholic probably.

Business booming?  It's hard to say.  They have a good location, and there's probably plenty of visiting Catholic priests and bishops to the local establishment.  Spending cash on a new robe or cross?  Well....maybe it helps with appearances.