This is part 9 of 16 of a journey through my home country: Germany.

I invite everyone to take a closer look at what I call home. I will show you sides of today-Germany you didn't know of - especially when you are not German.
A lot of "foreigners" (actually I don't really like this word) connect Germany with beer, cars, lederhosen and sauerkraut. I admit these are parts of Germany and important ones too (especially the beer and the cars), but they by far are not everything!

This article serie will show you the 16 countries of Germany, some quite similar to each other, some totally different. Sure, this serie will mainly feature photography, but perhaps I will link to other styles of art like modern German music or so.

Our journey leads us through (click the ones in italic to see that article):

_{Bavaria
Saxony
Brandenburg
Berlin
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Schleswig-Holstein
Hamburg
Lower Saxony
Saxony-Anhalt
Thuringia
Hesse
Baden-Wuerttemberg
Rhineland-Palatinate
Saarland
North Rhine-Westphalia
Bremen}

... or if you want to take a look at our southern neighbour, Austria, please read Exploring Austria by =Glasperlenspielerin.

Please, come and see...

Part 9 of 16 - Saxony-Anhalt (Sachsenanhalt)

Welcome back to my little tour through my home country, Germany.
Before we cross the Harz mountain range to visit the neighbouring state of last week's Lower Saxony, let me note that last weekend, our republic celebrated it's 60th anniversary. Germany is an old country, but the Federal Republic of Germany that we live in nowadays is a rather young entity. Our constitution, called Grundgesetz, is one of the best things that could've happened to us Germans. Thanks to it's creators and their bad experiences with monarchy and fascism (and thanks to the rules set by the western allies), we now are one of the freest - and probably richest - countries in the world. We should try everything to keep it this way - and to help others gaining the same.

Now back to the topic: Saxony-Anhalt, or Sachsen-Anhalt, as it is correctly called in German.
Sachsen-Anhalt is one of the five socalled "new states" that were part of the GDR before 1989/90. It is a state with no direct border with either an ocean or a foreign country.
Sachsen-Anhalt is not such a big state as his western neighbour Lower Saxony, yet one of the bigger East German states. It has about 2.4 million inhabitants and ranks 8th in area among German states.

Saxony-Anhalt only has two cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. The first - and smaller - one is it's capital, Magdeburg. Magdeburg is over 1200 years old and was founded by famous medieval ruler Charlemagne. Even if not near any coast, it was a member of the Hanseatic League and as such one of the biggest and riches cities in the Holy Roman Empire for ages. As in many German towns, lots of the historic buildings got lost in bombing raids during World War II, so that big areas of the city are filled with 1950s-70s socialist concrete buildings. Yet, there still are some old or restored buildings like the Cathedral of Saints Catherine and Maurice, where emperor Otto I. is buried.

The biggest city of Sachsen-Anhalt, and only one year younger than Magdeburg, is Halle (Saale). In the medieval, it was a center of salt mining and in the last century a center of the chemical industry. Nowadays, it's mainly known for the TV-station MDR being located here, as for Germanys oldest chocolate factory still in use. It shares a well known university with the neighbouring city of Wittenberg.

As I just mentioned it above, let me show you Wittenberg. It's really small but rather important in German history and in Christian history. It was in this town, where the Protestant Revolution started in 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his theses against the doors of the town's church and so changed the course of Western civilization.

Before we come to the landscape, let me mention one more "city"-thing. It has to do with the city of Dessau, yet I don't want do show the city as such. There is a crafts and fine arts school in Dessau, called Bauhaus. Originally founded by Gropius in a Thuringian city, the school moved to Sachsen-Anhalt in 1925. It was closed by the Nazi regime.
The bauhaus-style was one of most successful styles in modernist design, especially architecture. One can find bauhaus-buildings everywhere, not only in Germany.

There are other interesting towns like Stendal or Salzwedel, perhaps Bitterfeld. Yet, what's really inpressing about the state of Sachsen-Anhalt is the landscape. Like I mentioned in my article about Lower Saxony last week, those two states share the impressive mountain range called Harz - and the top of it's highest mountain, the Brocken (= hunk), is located in Saxony-Anhalt. This mountain is also known as Blocksberg and it is said that all witches gather here at Walpurgis Night.
In the times of the Cold War, it's top hosted a soviet radar center. So, it's an interesting incident that the next equal elevation, when travelling eastwards, would be in the Ural Mountains, Russia. Though it's only 1,141 meters high, it has weather conditions like 2,000 and more meters high mountains - and it is surrounded by fog for about 300 days a year.

Well, the Harz covers big parts of Sachsen-Anhalt. To the south, the landscape resembles that of Thuringia: hilly. To the north, in the socalled Altmark, it's more like Lower Saxony or Brandenburg: a flat lowland.
These landcapes are influenced by the rivers that flow through Sachsen-Anhalt, mainly the Elbe, the Saale and their smaller feeders.

Some last words:
After the collapse of the GDR, most of the industry in Sachen-Anhalt vanished. As a result, it has one of the highest unemployment rates in Germany. Nowadays, tourism plays a big role, especially in the Harz mountains. At the same time, Sachen-Anhalt is widely known for their great soil and therefore for it's high quality argrarian products like vegetables and crops.
Luckily, lots of it's cultural heritage survived the Second World War, so that Saxony-Anhalt is the state with the most UNESCO world heritage sites in Germany.

Now, this was only a very, very short trip through Saxony-Anhalty and I know I missed a lot (if not almost everything). But this is supposed to be a short, informative journal and not a travel guide. I hope you like the pictures - if you do, please give the artists a visit and/or a fav, they really deserve it.

If you have any questions about this station of our trip or Germany as a whole: please ask, I'll try to answer as quick as possible.
And if you have any suggestions about how to make this trip any better, please don't hesitate to write me, either.

Special thanks

As you may have recognized, a lot of the pictures above were shot by four single photographes. I have not done so before, but will do it now: Without their great art, this article would not have been possible. I deeply thank them for sharing their views on this wonderful state - and for inspiring me a lot!

Thank you, danke:




*hardmoppy, =slamdunker, =brandybuck and ~stg123

Artists featured in this article

Looking forward for your comments - and the next station of this trip...