The Quest of the Unholy Mountain

I think I wrote not too long ago that Winter is a great time to shoot low light landscapes and such because the sun rises late and sets early.  Well, that's all well and good if the weather is agreeable.

Somehow I don't think the specs are necessary here.

Believe it or not you're looking at a big arena that can seat several thousand people.  Last Sunday we headed to Heidelberg, not to see the world's largest wine barrel, visit the castle ruins, or walk through the shopping district.  We intended to climb the "Holy Mountain" (Heilingenberg) and photograph some rather curious sights.  Instead, we climbed Heilingenberg, into a snowy fog, got lost a couple times (once again due to a lack of proper signage) and saw just a shadow of what we intended to see.  The first place was the above arena.  Truth be told, I was hoping there'd be snow or fog, but this was a little more than I was thinking.  This arena has a sinister past, and some gloomy atmospherics would fit it nicely.  It was built in 1935.  That date is probably a clue to who had it built.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, came up with the idea of building 1,000 of these arenas for the purpose of holding Nazi propaganda plays, presentations, and films.  These arenas were called Thingstatte or Thingplatz, in a typical Nazi attempt to tie into a fanciful Germanic past.  "Things" were actually Medieval Norse (Scandinavian) and Germanic gatherings of free men held to settle clan issues and make group decisions.  They are a very rudimentary basis for today's parliaments.  As usual, the Nazis perverted German culture heritage, in this case twisting a gathering of free people with equal voices into a tool for cultural brainwashing.  The movement wasn't a priority for Hitler, so the Thingstatte above Heidelberg turned out to be one of only 45 that were actually constructed.  This one housed 20,000 participants on its opening day, when Goebbels himself oversaw the ceremony.  After the war, the arena was abandoned for the most part.  Today it is sometimes used for concerts and open air movies.  But, mostly it sits as an empty and moss draped curiosity.  It is a popular spot to explore on Sundays, even if it is covered in ice and shrouded in a thick fog.

Fujifilm X-E2 ISO 1600 30mm f/4 1/250  

Fujifilm X-E2 ISO 1600 18mm f/11 1/60

The other site I was hoping to photograph were the ruins of the church of the Michaelkloster, a 11th century monastery.  The church incorporates the ruins of a Roman temple to Mercury.  The mountain is covered in archaeological sites; this is one of most important.  But...

iPhone 5s

Well, we climbed the Holy Mountain as fast as possible despite the lack of signs in the super thick mist and finally arrived at St. Michael's Cloister to find an actual useful sign which conveyed a great deal of information (don't sell things here, don't set things on fire, don't come in when the gate is shut, respect the premises, the authorities will track you down if you do any of this stuff...).  However, what it did not say was that it won't be open even when the sign says it should be.  While tourists can haul themselves up here through snow, ice, and fog, the person responsible for making sure people don't sell stuff or light stuff on fire couldn't be bothered.

Thankfully, the hut at the top of the mountain was open so we could grab a drink and thaw out.  That was that.  No pictures of ruins, just pictures of mist over a barely recognizable, uh, thing.  Ok, Winter, you're tough.

We did grab this shot of the Alte Brucke on our way to dinner.

Fujifilm X-E2 ISO 200 46mm f/10 15secs, soft focus filter

 Somehow over the course of all this I managed to tweak the index and middle finger of my right hand.  Being a righty, this causes me a bit of a problem in just about everything, but most definitely for holding or operating a camera.  So, I'm out of commission until things heal up.  Perhaps I'll do a little indoor work this week.  Perhaps.