Explore Lower Saxony and Bremen
Never mind that the donkey, dog, cat and cockerel celebrated in the folk tale forgot all about their goal as soon as they had a roof over their heads, brochures and innumerable souvenirs cheerfully proclaim BREMEN “die Stadt der Stadtmusikanten” (the Town of the Town Musicians). A more eloquent insight into what makes Bremen tick is that it is the smallest Land of the Federal Republic, a declaration of Bremeners’ independence that is a leitmotif of a 1200-year history. In the twentieth century alone, Bremen proclaimed itself a socialist republic in 1918, and in 1949 it was the only former Land except Hamburg to wrest back its city-state accreditation. Small wonder that Germans view it as a stronghold of provocative politics. Blame the medieval port.
Brief history
Bremen’s port introduced free-thinking attitudes as part and parcel of the wealth the city enjoyed after it received free-market rights in 965 AD, just two hundred years after Charlemagne’s Bishop Willehad planted a crucifix among the Saxons and Bremen was officially born. By the eleventh century, when Bremen was being acclaimed a Rome of the North, the grumbles of a merchant class about its ecclesiastical governors crescendoed until, emboldened by the city’s admission to Europe’s elite trading-club, the Hanseatic League, in 1358, they flared into open hostility. Its legacy is one-upmanship in bricks and mortar – the Rathaus and chivalric Roland statue, both on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, and the nearby Dom, are a squabble in stone.
Bremen today
Self-confidence and a university have made Bremen a liberal city free of conservative hang-ups. Few southern German cities would allow an architectural fantasy like Böttcherstrasse to be dreamed up in their midst. As appealing, Bremen feels far smaller than a place with a population of one million – only around half that number live within the confines of the city (as opposed to its municipal boundaries) – and the centre feels more like a large town than city-state. The majority of sights are within the Altstadt elongated along the north bank of the Weser, bound to the north by its former moat. When the city burst outside its defences in the nineteenth century, it created the Ostertorviertel, aka “das Viertel”, today the home of a lively bar district whose only rivals in summer are the riverside beer gardens on the Schlachte.
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Bremen’s awesome foursome
Bremen’s awesome foursome
It was the Grimm Brothers, during their collation of Lower Saxony folk tales, who popularized the age-old story of the Bremener Stadtmusikanten (Town Musicians of Bremen). The story goes that a donkey, dog, cat and cockerel, fearful of the slaughterhouse and cooking pot in their elderly years, journeyed to Bremen to seek a future as musicians. At nightfall they sought shelter in a house only to discover it was occupied by thieves. Undeterred, our heroes form an animal pyramid, the cockerel at the top and donkey at its base, and unleash their first performance – a caterwaul of brays, barks, meows and crowing. The robbers flee from the banshee outside the door and the four settle down to live happily ever after.
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Decaffeinated coffee and degenerate art
Decaffeinated coffee and degenerate art
Ludwig Roselius, who made his fortune through decaffeinated coffee, Kaffee Hag – the story goes he stumbled upon the secret using beans that had been soused in sea water – commissioned a team of avant-garde artists, notably sculptor Bernhard Hoetger, to jazz up the then-derelict Gothic houses of Böttcherstrasse with cutting-edge Jugendstil, Art Deco and Expressionist styles. Soon after the opening of his 110m “Kunst Schau” (Art Show) in 1931, the Third Reich condemned it as degenerate. Only Roselius’s wily suggestion that it should stand as a warning against further cultural depravity saved it from demolition.
