Church of the Holy Introvert: field trip report: Schwarzwald and the House of Zähringen

So on Monday I went on a church field trip.

I love church field trips because:

Field Trip! That I don't have to organize!
I get a day off kid duty!
Lunch at a restaurant with adults!
History! Which was my absolute worst subject at school, but it's a completely different experience in person?
Church! Not infrequently cringeworthy, but totally fascinating how religion and culture and politics and folk beliefs get mixed together and come out as art and architecture.

Of course these field trips also fill me with anxiety because they are a full day of German (often dialect) and name-remembering (eeeeeeeeek) and small talk (in the bus there is nowhere to run!!). Added to which yesterday I had the job of collecting everyone's money, which l had to do once on a field trip last year and it was super awkward and embarrassing.

But sometimes life cuts you some slack, and yesterday I arrived "late" (note: I was honest-to-God *not* late, just somehow the last one onto the bus because I do not possess the psychic timekeeping powers of a genuine Swiss person) and the only available seat was right up front next to the priest, which meant the best view in the bus plus someone I enjoy talking to, so, yay! Also the money collection went relatively smoothly, although it led to many jokes about how I was making my way through the bus on my knees, is this my penance for Lent etc. (Blogger does not offer me an eye-roll emoji but you can imagine one here.)

Aside: a Swiss friend who reads my blog wanted to know if "living in Switzerland is like living 40 years in the past" is a criticism of the Swiss, like do I think this country is backward or something? It's not that. It's just...that is the most apt analogy I can think of for describing to my American friends what it is like to live here. Perhaps a less controversial (though not as evocative) way to say this would be, "Switzerland has a very conservative society." Conservative, as in the Swiss are far less likely than Americans to throw caution to the wind and march wildly off course in the name of "progress"- but also conservative, as in there are things that do need to change and have changed in the US and will eventually change here...but haven't quite changed yet. For example: as I got to the back of the bus, a certain guy who is very sweet and volunteers a lot at church and coincidentally has the same name as my father and is married to the woman who is currently in charge of HR (!) made a comment along the lines of "nice, I've never had a woman kneel before me before, not even my wife, heh heh." Which would very much not be ok any more in the US, right??

A view of the Black Forest out the window of the bus. It was overcast like this all day, which lent a certain heaviness to the proceedings - also Google offered to "fix lighting" on nearly all my photos.

The theme of the trip was "on the trail of the House of Zähringen." The House of Zähringen, in case you are, like me, historically clueless and haven't memorized your European aristocracy, were a powerful family in the 11th and 12th centuries. It's a complicated story and I thought yesterday that maybe my German wasn't up to it, but reading their Wikipedia page I think it's more like my brain isn't up to it. You can give it a try yourself if you want, but in short, these people were very rich, at one point controlled a big swath of land in what is now Germany and Switzerland, and were often named Berthold.

The first place we visited was Kloster St. Peter, aka St. Peter's Abbey, a former Benedictine monastery in the Black Forest. It has a big baroque church and the accompanying monastery buildings are still standing - they was used for some time as a seminary and now they're a (sort of cold and imposing?) retreat house.

St. Peter's Abbey

here's the monastery and its walls

St. Peter's was founded by a one of the early Bertholds of Zähringen and hosts the family burial grounds. We heard two stories about why it's called St. Peter's - one explanation, from the historian who leads our tours, was that there are St. Peter and St. Paul monasteries scattered across Europe and their names are a signal that they were at one point under the direct control of the pope. Another explanation, from the man who gave us a tour of the church and monastery, was that the locals chose their patron saints carefully to protect them against the threats they faced, and St. Peter is particularly appropriate here because he chased away demons - critical because there are, of course, witches living in the Black Forest.

The baroque interior of the church is...not at all my cup of tea. High on the walls, where one usually finds statues of the apostles, there are statues of various Zähringers. There are frescoes on the ceiling, lots of gold, and a good deal of that awful fake-marble-paint effect (in addition to some actual marble). One nice detail - and you can just barely see it on the right side of the second photo below - is the "sick window" above the choir that made it possible for the invalid monks to be wheeled over in their beds and participate in prayers.

Spot the Zähringers

view from the choir

Our tour continued through the monastery, where we weren't allowed to take pictures "on legal grounds," which is probably for the best because as you can see my pictures weren't coming out very well anyway. The guide's story about the details of the Rococo library (here's a photo) was fascinating: it was built in the 18th century, he said, more for show than for study - and what the monks were trying to show was (a) that they were every bit as good as the other abbeys with libraries, and also (b) that the Enlightenment was a thing they believed in. He pointed out the pictures on the ceiling, which show a whole range of relationships between learned men and God - one writer (a prophet, maybe?) is taking dictation from an angel, another writer is having his work checked by an angel, still another man (the astronomer) has no angel at all because he is thinking for himself. Crazy.

After this tour we had lunch in the restaurant across the street: salad followed by pork chops and potato croquettes followed by ice cream and alcoholic cherries. Many people complained that the portions were too large, but I noticed that everyone still managed to polish off dessert because you can't really say no to alcoholic cherries.

yum

Then it was on to the village of Villingen (officially, Villingen-Schwenningen, which has a cool ring to it no?), a medieval city once owned by the Zähringers. Our guide said that he likes the city because it's a real living place, not at all touristy, and that's cool - but probably as a consequence of this, it wasn't overly photogenic. The church inside the city walls, the Villinger Münster, was, to quote Wikipedia (my translation):

...built beginning in 1130 in the Romanesque style and finished in 1284 in a Gothic style, but later expanded (after the fire in Villingen in 1271, which destroyed parts of the church). Two 50-meter towers were added in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Villinger Münster (1)

Villinger Münster (2)

So basically, something of a hodgepodge - and inside things are even worse. The bronze main doors are modern, the windows and pulpit are gothic, the ceiling is baroque (I think?), and there's a side chapel for the Nägelinkreuz, a 14th century crucifix that is said to have healing powers and to protect the city. I can't hope to explain the whole impression but here are a few pictures:

view from the back of the church

A very old piece of art that someone found somewhere and decided to hang here. It shows two pilgrims being crowned at the end of their journey.

detail from the stairs up to the pulpit, which depict the story of Jesus's death

Gothic windows and pseudo-romanesque(??) frescoes

These are not chandeliers, though I guess they might have once been? Now they are hung with strings of crystals? I don't get it.

nothing to see here

After looking through the church we had some free time to have a coffee or wander around the city, then it was back on the bus so we could arrive back in Zurich (pünktlich, of course) at 7 pm.