Rügen

In vain did their deputies plead the danger which menaced their fairs, their privileges, perhaps their constitution itself, if, by espousing the party of the Swedes, they were to incur the emperor's displeasure.

gustavus adolphus expressed to them his astonishment that while the liberties of germany and the protestant religion were at stake the citizens of frankfort should talk of their annual affairs and postpone for temporal interests the great cause of their country and their conscience He had, he continued in a menacing tone, found the keys of every town and fortress from the Isle of Rugen to the Main, and knew also where to find a key to Frankfurt.

The safety of Germany and the freedom of the Protestant Church were, he assured them, the sole objects of his invasion.

Conscious of the justice of his cause, he was determined not to allow any obstacle to impede his progress.

and sang it

like this by which brahms's intention of emphasizing the word heavens was still carried out the note c remaining the highest of the phrase coblentz on the rhine february twenty sixth rams and i were the soloists at the orchestral concert which took place last night under moskowski's conductorship the day before was a final full rehearsal generalprobe to which in most places in germany the public are admitted brahms had played schumann's concerto in a minor and missed a good many notes so in the morning of the day of the concert he went to the concert hall to practise he had asked me to follow him thither a little later and to rehearse with him the songs his of course he was to accompany me in the evening when i arrived at the hall i found him quite alone seated at the piano and working away for all he was worth on beethoven's choral fantasia and schumann's concerto he was quite red in the face and interrupting himself for a moment on seeing me stand beside him said with that childlike confiding expression in his eyes really this is too bad those people to-night expect to hear something especially good and here i am likely to treat them to a hoggish mess i assure you i could play to-day with the greatest ease far more difficult things with wider stretches for the fingers my own concerto for example but those simple diatonic runs are exasperating i keep saying to myself but johannes pull yourself together do play decently but no use it's really horrid after our little private rehearsal of the songs brahms moskowski who had in the meantime joined us and i repaired to councillor brahms's host in accordance with an invitation to inspect the celebrated and really wonderful wine-cellars of his firm and to partake of a little luncheon in the sample-room afterwards toward the end of the repast which turned out to be a rather sumptuous affair relished by brahms as much as by any of us a bottle of old rowenthaler of the year sixty five was opened with due ceremony by our host it proved indeed to be a rare drop and we all sat in almost reverential silence bent over the high light-green goblets which we held in close proximity to our respective noses wegeler at last broke the silence with the solemn words yes gentlemen what brahms is among the composers this rauenthaler is among the wines quick as lightning brahms exclaimed ah then let's have a bottle of bach now the concert went off well as did the supper afterward brahms was in particularly high spirits the many proofs of sincere admiration and affection he had received during his stay in coblentz had greatly pleased and touched him and he went so far as to make a speech a very rare thing with him biesbaden february twenty seventh eighteen seventy six yesterday brahms and i left coblentz we were quite alone in our compartment and i had the happiness of finding him in regard to his own self and his way of working more communicative than ever before commencing by speaking of the events of the past days we soon drifted into talking about art in general and music in particular there is no real creating he said without hard work that which you would call invention that is to say a thought an idea is simply an inspiration from above for which i am not responsible which is no merit of mine yea it is a present a gift which i ought even to despise until i have made it my own by right of hard work and there need be no hurry about that either it is as with the seed-corn it germinates unconsciously and in spite of ourselves when i for instance have found the first phrase of a song say i might shut the book there and then go for a walk do some other work and perhaps not think of it again for months nothing however is lost if afterward i approach the subject again it is sure to have taken shape i can now begin to really work at it but there are composers who sit at the piano with a poem before them putting music to it from a to z until it is done they write themselves into a state of enthusiasm which makes them see something finished something important in every bar immediately after our arrival here we had a rehearsal for to-night's concert brahms played his concerto in d minor magnificently his touch is wonderfully crisp and clear after the concert we went to the house of the princess of hesse bachfeld to supper although brahms ernst frank the genial composer and conductor who had come over from mannheim and i were the only non aristocratic guests present the affair was very charming and gemütlich brahms's neighbour at table was the very handsome and fascinating wife of a celebrated general and this fact together with the fiery rhine wine had a most animating effect on him after supper the greater part of the company had a very lively game of billiards and just before leaving the princess presented brahms with a handsome box of ebony to the lid of which a laurel wreath of silver was attached each leaf of the wreath had the title of one of brahms's works engraved on it he was delighted though much amused at finding on one of the leaves triumph lied that colossal song of triumph for double chorus and orchestra and on the very one next to it wiegenlied the sweet little lullaby of eighteen bars berlin february twenty eighth eighteen seventy six just arrived home from wiesbaden spent another highly interesting day there with brahms yesterday in the morning there was a matine musicale at the house of the same princess of hesse barchfeld the frankfort string quartet hugo hermann leading had come over for the purpose brahms played with them his quartet in c minor opus sixty and then accompanied me in the longest and to me the finest of his romances from tieck's beautiful magellone so ich die freude die wohnen den tragen opus thirty three number six after the matinee brahms took me to the langrabian anna of hesse a princess of considerable musical talent whom however as he told me he mostly admired for her simple and modest yet extremely cordial and affable manners otherwise he does not particularly care for personal intercourse with the highest spheres of society as he called it last night being sunday before shrove tuesday we had intended to go to the masked ball at the kursaal to which he had already taken tickets in the afternoon however brahms came to my room in the hotel and said i say i have another idea let us give the tickets to the head waiter and ourselves rather go to mr x footnote a composer of the most wonderful fertility at that time quite celebrated and rather popular and a footnote which will entertain us just as well you know i am really fond of the man but can't help being amused at his good-natured loquacity which to me is as good as a play do make him speak of wagner i like that especially and also ask him to show you one of his orchestral scores they are really models of what copying ought to be you will see that mr x is an extraordinary fellow he is not happy unless he composes a certain number of hours every day and with all that he copies even the parts of his symphonies himself well to mr x's house we went accordingly finding to our satisfaction both him and his wife at home brown seemed tired he spoke little which however was only natural since both mr x and his wife seemed to vie with each other as to which could talk most and quickest at last mr x who constantly reminded me of don bartolo without the wig was called away into the next room by his barber who had come to shave him and the task of entertaining us rested on mrs x's shoulders alone you have no idea she said how hard a worker x is she never said my husband i am proud and happy to have at last prevailed upon him to go for a walk with our daughter every day for two hours thus keeping him at least for two hours a day from composing ah that's good that's very good said brahms instantly again looking as innocent as a new-born babe mr x upon our taking leave offered to accompany us on a little stroll through the park during which he told us he had received an invitation to conduct one of his symphonies at a coming musical festival in silesia upon my speaking rather disparagingly of the musical achievements of the moving spirit of that festival a member of the highest aristocracy who had published and produced several pretentious and very inferior compositions of his own brahm said to me with the pretence of a serious rebuke in his voice my dear let me warn you to be more cautious when speaking of a nobleman's compositions for you can never know who did em we left wiesbaden last night for frankfort on the main on arriving at the old hotel where i had been in the habit of putting up room number forty two was allotted to us by one of the menials while however we were sitting in the tap-room over a farewell bottle of rhine wine the head waiter who knew us came up to me announcing that a far better room number eleven had been placed at our disposal after a cosy chat in the course of which to my great delight brahms had asked me if i knew of a very remote quiet spot untrodden by excursionists where during the summer vacation we might spend a week or two together we retired to room number eleven and it was my instant and most ardent endeavour to go to sleep before brahms did as i knew from past experience that otherwise his impertinently healthy habit of snoring would mean death to any hope of sleep on my part my delight at seeing him take up a book and read in bed was equalled only by my horror when after a few minutes i saw him blow out the light of his candle a few seconds later the room was fairly ringing with the most unearthly noises issuing from his nasal and vocal organs what should i do i was in despair for i wanted sleep and moreover had to leave for berlin early next morning a sudden inspiration made me remember room number forty two i got up went downstairs to the lodge of the porter whom not without some difficulty i succeeded in arousing from a sound sleep explaining cause and object i made him open room number forty two for me after a good night's rest i returned early in the morning to the room in which i had left brahms he was awake and affectionately looking at me with a familiar little twinkle in his eye and mock seriousness in his voice said to me well knowing what had driven me away oh when i woke and found your bed empty i said to myself there he's gone and hanged himself but really why didn't you throw a boot at me the idea of my throwing a boot at brahms during our hurried breakfast brahms returning to vienna also had to take an early train we again spoke of the coming summer and he seemed rather attracted by the glowing description i gave him of the island of rugen in the baltic sea which i had visited before and was very fond of but which was quite unknown to him so we parted with a hearty auf wiedersehen which made me very happy i love him dearly Sassnitz, on the island of Rügen, Saturday, July 8, 1876.

Arrived here last night.

The diligence was delayed by one of the heaviest thunderstorms I can remember, and I did not pull up at the little hostelry, which also contains the post office, until half past eleven.

Abbey.

The folk legends of Pommern Pomerania and the Iceland of Rügen form a rich tapestry of pre-Christian Slavic mythology, Viking history and Germanic folklore.

For centuries, collectors like Jodikus Diodatus Hubertus Temme, Die Volkssagen von Pommern und Rügen, 1840, and Alfred Haas gathered these stories, preserving tales of pagan gods, mysterious Iceland, and sunken civilizations.

Cheap among these tales is the legendary story of Veneta, famously known as the Atlantis of the Baltic Sea.

The Wallen-Jongsborg connection, most contemporary researchers identify Veneta with the early medieval Slavic Viking trade port of Wallin, located on the modern Polish island of Wallin.

It was zealously cultivated by, like, a year just before Yeah, like a year after the revolution had been consolidated, Daniel Ortega, who was the chief executive of the Sandinista regime, he'd received enough material from East Berlin to equip an army, like literally an army, like 45,000 uniforms, 10,000 battle dress uniforms, thousands of binoculars and compasses, thousands of rifles from the DDR and the Soviet Union.

And of course, the core of this effort, of the military aid effort, was a training course for Sandinista officers that lasted up to three years, whereby Nicaraguan officer candidates would be flown to East Germany and trained on the island of Rugen, basically in what was then cutting edge Warsaw Pact tactics.

And I mean, obviously what they were doing, what the Warsaw Pact was doing was, um they were trying to rectify the geostrategic imbalance that always no matter what other variables were present always always um you know, had Warsaw Pact in a precarious situation, only to the fact that America could deploy within decapitation range of Moscow, okay? America could literally deploy, and again, as regards to conventional forces, I mean, they could literally deploy, you know, like on the inner German border, you know? So in an event of war, this, the Warsaw Pact was always, they were starting, you know, the onset of us potential hostilities they're basically fighting like what almost amounted to like a rear guard action like even uh you know even before they they'd taken a single casualty you know this had to be this had to be remedied um if uh if the strategic balance conventional or uh otherwise was going to be swayed in their favor and obviously the only way this was going to happen is if you know real estate coveted real estate in in the Americas could be turned to red.

And not just turned to red, but flipped and transformed or cultivated as reliable client governments.

It's up in the north, but it's in the eastern part of Germany.

And it's the island of Rügen.

R-U-U-M-L-A-U-T-G-E-N.

Okay.

Yeah, this is a really good question.

And I would definitely say, you know, I live on the island of Rügen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and I spend a lot of time here in Stralsund and the kind of surrounding cities.

My day-to-day experiences are not ones of xenophobia or of people showing any signs of kind of mistrust or anything like that.

I have lovely neighbours.

Uh, one in particular, start with Freya, who is the most fascinating character perhaps of this entire story.

Well, the team consisted of seven people who used a leased boat, a pleasure yacht called Andromeda, which they rented out on the island of Rügen, uh, uh, on the German shores.

Three of the crew were soldiers and four were civilians.

Uh, the four were deep-sea divers, in fact, deep-sea diving instructors, all of them internationally certified.

And after kind of a long while, they established that two, uh, men with Eastern European travel documents had leased the boat in the exact same period when the pipelines were blown up.

And they then figured that in order to get to the port where, where the boats set sail, the perpetrators or the suspect had, had to come by land, by car, and there were only two roads leading up to that port.

It is on an island, the island of Rügen, in the Baltic Sea, off the shore of Germany.

So what they did is the chief investigator had the brilliant idea to send his detectives to kind of wade through every single photograph taken by a speed camera in the region, in the hope that perhaps one of the perpetrators had exceeded the speed limits.