Prince Ludwig of Bavaria's wedding in 1810

The original Oktoberfest occurred in Munich in October 1810 as part of the public celebrations of a very special wedding, that of Crown Prince Ludwig (1786 – 1868), later King Ludwig I, and Princess Therese of Saxe Hildburghausen. Although the marriage had naturally been arranged for political purposes, most historians suggest that it turned out to be a very happy one. Anyhow, the citizens of Munich were invited to join in the festivities which were held over five days on the fields in front of Munich's gates. There was food and drink, but the main event of that distant festival appeared to be a horse race.

Bräurosl beer tent

By the next year, 1811, the programme was already starting to expand. An agricultural show was added to the horse race, I am assuming with an eye to boosting Bavarian agriculture. In 1816, carnival booths appeared; the main prizes beautiful decorative objects like jewellery. Swings, slides, merry-go-rounds and wheelbarrow races entertained the crowds. In time Munich’s town council took over management of the festival and in 1819, Oktoberfest became a formal and annual event. It was changed to September, I am guessing, because October is a bit too cool and a bit too unreliable, weatherwise.

Since 1850, a “wedding” parade has become a yearly event and an important component of the Oktoberfest. There is nothing quite as awesome as seeing 8,000 Bavarians in traditional costumes walking through the centre of the city. According to Daniel Wroe, real Lederhosen, the traditional Bavarian men's clothing, are still made from deer leather, not the cheaper cow leather. They last a lifetime and are often passed from father to son.

Oktoberfest musicians (Life Magazine)

Improvement followed improvement. In 1880, the electric light made the 400 booths and tents blaze brightly at night. In 1881, booths selling Bavaria’s favourite snack foods opened. Beer was first served in glass mugs in 1892. But the humble beginnings had long been inadequate; by the end of the 19th century, people wanted more sophistication, and much more space. The small booths were expanded into large beer halls and large groups of professional musicians were included in the entertainment. Tree climbing games were no longer the cultural highlight of the festival.

brewery horses on parade

In 1887 the Entry of the Oktoberfest Staff and Breweries began, a vast parade where the breweries competed with  great teams of decorated horses and the Oktoberfest bands marched. This event always took place on the first Saturday of the Oktoberfest and was used to mark the official opening of the festivities. In 1908, the festival built the first roller coaster found on German soil and best of all, in 1913, the huge Bräurosl opened for business. This was the largest Oktoberfest beer tent, holding some 12,000 revellers.

Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese's wedding, 1810 

Only six Munich breweries - Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Paulaner and Spaten -were formally sanctioned to serve beer at the festival. But for most people, that is enough. Luckily Oktoberfest beer steins were typically made from heavy glass, with a decorative brewery logo on the side, and big enough to hold a litre of beer! These days, once the beer has been consumed, steins can be purchased in the tents.

Over the decades the festival was occasionally cancelled, because of an epidemic sweeping the city or because German-French warfare had broken out. But mostly the tradition was so entrenched and so loved that it went ahead regardless. Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen would not recognise the Oktoberfest today. The city hopes this year to break both its visitor record of 7.1 million and its beer drinking record of 6.9 million litres.

One litre beer steins

Munich's oldest townhouse, which first opened in 1340, is looking good once again. Visitors can inspect a small permanent exhibition that focuses on beers from Bavaria, including of course a documentary about Oktoberfest. To ensure that the museum is scholarly and not just a commercial excuse for opening yet another beer house, visitors are encouraged to taste the different beers and to eat the traditional foods. This Bier und Oktoberfest Museum, which first opened in 2005, is near Marienplatz.

Arts and Crafts home, Ramsgate

How do we describe Arts and Crafts architecture, a style that was popular in the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras? Certainly it was a statement against the cheap, machine-made uniformity of the industrial revolution. But what did it stand for? The movement advocated truth to materials and traditional craftsmanship, with a preference for medieval or folk tastes. Arts and Crafts architects elected to build in the materials that could be found locally, but they could choose steep roofs, asymmetrical gables, clay tiling, corbelled brick work or any other decorative elements that they enjoyed. In the end, all Arts and Crafts architects wanted their houses to sit comfortably in their surroundings.

I don’t suppose there are many Arts and Crafts homes still standing these days in their original condition. They were very expensive to build and decorate in the late C19th, and even those that were built have been renovated since. But I found one in Country Life magazine (7th July 2010) that does not seem to have been changed. All photo credits belong to Country Life.

In the 1880s, tobacco magnate Sir William Henry Wills needed a seaside holiday home for the family. Ramsgate was an excellent choice; already by the later Victorian era, this east Kent coastal town was a well-known destination for affluent families to 'take the sea air'.

East Court: exterior, gardens and the sea

The house was designed by the very classy architects Ernest George and Harold Peto in 1889. George was so classy that Edwin Lutyens was one of his pupils. And Peto came from the minor nobility himself. After a highly successful career as an architect, Peto became increasingly interested in garden design and was commissioned to build a number of gardens in Edwardian England. In the 1890s, Peto built his own dream home, Iford Manor in Wiltshire, which of course displayed his Arts and crafts approach, especially to garden design.

Strutt and Parker call the home East Court, a magnificent example of an Arts and Crafts House, set high above the sea below. Note that The Architecture of Sir Ernest George and His Partners c1860-1922 gives this grade II-listed house’s name as East Hill.

Externally the house was given striking green slate roof tiles. The design incorporated over-hanging jetties, verandas and oriel windows, details which gave the house a distinctive, Elizabethaneque feel.

The main reception rooms were arranged around an airy reception hall with marble floors and dominated by a stained glass window depicting scenes from the Book of Revelations. A fine, wide oak staircase took the family to a galleried landing.

dining room

There were 6 main rooms accessed off the hall, the principal reception rooms displaying fine panelling and moulded ceilings. Two of these rooms formed a lovely drawing room. The most Arts and Crafts features of the drawing room were the plaster ceilings and the deeply recessed fireplace with ornate carved mantel surrounds. A glazed door opened onto a veranda overlooking the garden and sea. Adjacent to this, the half-panelled dining room was dominated by a wonderful carved wooden mantel surround, with inset marble slips and a matching fitted dresser. Beyond was the former billiard room with a semi-domed ceiling, glazed skylight, carved wooden mantel surround and panelled walls.

reception room

The first floor accommodation was arranged around a galleried landing area with a fireplace to one end. The upstairs rooms were only for the family, so I must confine myself to one comment about this private area - the rooms to the front of the house enjoyed truly wonderful sea views.

As you would expect from a late Victorian Arts and Crafts home, the gardens at East Court were very special. Shrubs, trees, evergreen hedges, brick and flint walls formed the boundaries of the garden. A coach house was added, built in the same distinctive style as the main house, with slate tile hung elevations and multi-pane leaded light windows.

stairs

The house passed to Sir William Wills' niece, Dame Janet Stancomb-Wills, on his death in 1911. Carrying on what seemed to be a family history of benevolence, Dame Janet was a keen supporter of the Antarctic expeditions. Ernest Shackleton became a close personal friend, and often stayed at East Court. Since Dame Janet's death, the house became a children’s home and then a school, however the building retains its architectural integrity and survives largely in its original layout.

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Ernest Gimson 1864-1919 carried on the ideals of  William Morris into next generation, moving to the Cotswolds in 1893. He lived from 1894-1901 at Pinbury Park, leading a second generation of Cotswold Arts and Crafts furniture workshops and showrooms, both on the Cirencester Estate at Sapperton. 

Examine Stoneywell which was built in 1898 in Leicester. Ernest Gimson designed this house for his older brother Sydney Gimson. The house is built on a slope and approached from above, so one walks round the house to get to the front door, which looks out on a very rural landscape. Note the dominant chimney stacks along the south wall.  The original roof, like many of Gimson's houses, was thatched, but a fire just before WW2 meant it had to be re-roofed in Swithland slate.

If the Arts and Crafts movement could be seen as a clear rejection of the excesses of Victorian domestic architecture, Stoneywell represented the movement well. When the National Trust opened Stoneywell to visitors in February 2015, it was possible to see most of the original furniture still in the house eg Gimson's ladder-back chairs and oak bed, plus the Barnsleys' table and dresser. 

 Stoneywell in Leicestershire

The artist Reuven Rubin, From Romania to Israel

Young Reuven Zelicovici  1893-1974 was born in Galati (east Romania) and spent his childhood and adolescence in Falticeni (in Bukovina, north Romania). The family may have been poor, but they certainly had a horse and cart. Thus the lad was able to travel around. He was exposed to 15th and C16th art in the local monasteries and via the icons in the Bucharest Museum. Inspired by the frescoes, which were on the outside of the Bukovina churches as well as inside, Zelicovici adopted a didactic style himself.

Sucevita Monastery, exterior frescoes, Romania

Falticeni was the place where people thought that Zelicovici used the brush with a "godly grace". Yet it was a city with a small population, so I wonder why Falticeni seemed to have attracted a number of national or international celebrities, who were either born or who settled there: writers, theatre artists, painters and scientists. Did Reuven Zelicovici dream of being famous, as he might have been in the more important cities of Bucharest or Iassy?

On leaving Romania in 1912, Zelicovici became Rubin; he studied briefly at Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem. Then he moved for some years to Paris, studying at Ecole des Beaux Arts and Academie Colarossi. Plus he visited Italy. Some naive works from that era survive eg Houses of Tel Aviv 1912 which is in the Israel Museum. In 1916, he returned to Falticeni, missing his family and home town.

Still unsettled, Rubin went in 1920 to New York, where his work was noticed by Alfred Stieglitz. With the support of this important gallery owner, Rubin had his first one-man show at the Anderson Gallery that year, a large and successful exhibition. The painter met a young woman called Esther on the ship going back to Israel; there may have been a large age difference between them because her parents were sceptical about the union. However they married and had children, and were apparently very happy all their life.

In 1922 the Romanian-educated and French-trained Rubin finally settled in Israel and opened his Tel Aviv studio. That same year he exhibited in the first art exhibitions in Jerusalem, when he was 29. A collection of woodcuts entitled the God Seekers was published in 1923 and he painted a startling self portrait 1923. The maritime nature of his home and studio was very clear. As was his professional position in society as an artist.

Rubin, Self portrait, 1923, 
Israel Museum Jerusalem

His 1924 exhibit was the first one-man show in Jerusalem; his 1932 one-man show launched the Tel Aviv Art Museum. He was appointed chairman of the Association of Palestine’s Painters & Sculptors. Perhaps Rubin wasn’t at the very centre of the Bezalel movement, but he was gaining a reputation and influence as an important modern painter.

Although academically trained, Rubin's energetic depiction of a Fisherman 1922 looks naïve. It was a reflection of the artist's admiration for the hard working Arab and Jewish inhabitants of the country. Perhaps he loved their close, harmonious ties to the unspoiled world of nature, on land and sea. The bond between Arabs and Jews, and their animals, was often a motif found in Rubin's works.

Rubin continued to be enchanted with Arab and Jewish fisherman throughout the years. He depicted them on canvas spreading their nets into the waters of the Sea of Galilee, along the shores of the Mediterranean, or proudly displaying their catch with their families by their side. Goldfish Vendor late 1920s, one of his most famous, in the collection of The Jewish Museum in New York. What sets this painting apart from similar fishermen images was the single goldfish that had just been removed from the water and was flopping in the fisherman's hand. It is a typical Rubin work from the in its naïve depiction and style: the rounded forms, the flowing contours and the bright colours.

Rubin, Goldfish Vendor, late 1920s, 
Jewish Museum New York

His paintings from the 1920s were defined by a modern and naive style, portraying the landscape and inhabitants of Israel in quite an emotional manner. Then his style changed during the late 1920s and early 30s, from the naïve to an impressionist style. While other pre-State painters had to either earn their living as teachers, or to paint and live in poverty, Reuven Rubin was able to live entirely from his art. His paintings fetched high prices and were especially popular among wealthy American collectors. In particular there was very high demand for his landscapes paintings: The Orange Pickers, Road to Safed, the Road to Jerusalem, Tiberias and The Galilee.

Rubin, Ramparts of Jerusalem, 1924, 
Sotheby's

Was Rubin specifically attempting to create an indigenous style of art? Perhaps the modernising, Israelifying tradition had always been with the early Jewish settler-artists of Israel, from the early Bezalel School in Jerusalem (founded in 1906). Certainly these young artists were eager to find a new artistic language through which their unique experience could be expressed. But eventually the young Bezalel artists rebelled against their academic teachers and went to Paris in the 1920s. Reuven Rubin was one of the most important artists who reacted against Bezalel’s classic Western orientation. Instead of 19th century Orientalism, Rubin and his colleagues drew everyday visions of the Near East in a modernistic style.

It was said that Rubin’s paintings in the 1920s-1930s era retained a naive style reminiscent of Henri Rousseau. Rousseau's innocence matched the need to return to basics, because Rubin felt his generation were exiles returning to their ancient land, rediscovering its landscape and remodelling its culture. Rubin might have incorporated Rousseau's influence but I think he was even more impressed with Cezanne.

Rubin, Safed in the Galillee, 1927, 
Sotheby's

Rubin’s paintings focused on the landscape and life of Israel, but they were not fantastical. His landscape paintings in particular paid special detail to a spiritual, translucent light. It was clear that he had a great devotion to his people, his country and his religion. He may have been Romanian educated and French trained in art, but he became the distinctively Israeli artist!

Rubin put forward two of the losing designs for a national flag, just before Israel became a state in 1948. And he served as Israel's first ambassador to Romania, from 1948-1950. This was totally appropriate for the young man who had left his parents and homeland back in 1912.

In Bialik St Tel Aviv, see that some of the old houses, combining European and Middle Eastern tastes, have been restored. Reuven and Esther lived here and were friendly with Jascha Haifetz, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, Edward G. Robinson, Ira Gershwin etc who dropped in on them, either in Tel Aviv or on their New York visits. Their Rechov Bialik home and studio has since became The Rubin Museum.

That studio is left just as it was on the day Rubin died in 1973, at the age of 81. Canvases being worked upon still lean on two easels. Everywhere pots and vases remain, filled with brushes. Mounds of hardened oil paints cover the palettes. Rubin had bequeathed his home and a selection of paintings to the city of Tel Aviv a month before his death.

This article was first written as a guest post for The Romanian Way

Rubin’s Tel Aviv house, now a museum

Genetic Health Courts in Germany 1933-9

The science of eugenics in the early 20th century was based on a simple principle: If the most disabled citizens in society were not prevented from reproducing their genetic flaws in the next generation, society as a whole would be heavily burdened. This might sound bizarre to modern ears, but in societies where “national health” was allowed to take total precedence over “individual health”, it seemed perfectly acceptable.

A eugenic utopia in the Inter-War period was thought of as providing a very healthy environment for society, maximising the possibility of desirable genetic qualities and minimising the possibility of undesirable genetic qualities. If a eugenically sound society could be achieved, improvement of the social environment would be both inevitable and admirable. And the society would save a fortune in health care costs, at least for those people who needed to be cared for in asylums.

Such a utopia was desired in more than one country. I'll cite just two examples. By the 1930s, more than half the states in the USA had passed laws that authorised the sterilisation of "inmates of mental institutions, persons convicted more than one of sex crimes, those doomed to be feeble-minded by 10 tests, morally degenerate persons and epileptics." Sweden also had eugenics-based legislation enacted in 1934, primarily to prevent mental illness and disease in the general community. It is estimated that c60,000 Swedes were sterilised under the 1934 law, before the law was eventually overturned well after WW2.

But it was German race hygiene that had a more radical vision of a eugenic utopia than other countries, largely because the pre-1933 political climate in Germany was already hospitable to such ideas. Dr Franzblau noted that even before Hitler came to power, there were 23 chairs of racial hygiene in German Universities.
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The assumption of power by the Nazis in 1933 made the implementation of eugenic legislation even better accepted. The new German legislation said: “Any person suffering from a hereditary disease may be rendered incapable of procreation by means of surgical sterilisation, if the experience of medical science shows that it is highly probable that his descendants would suffer from some serious physical or mental hereditary defect”.

The poster asked: Who would want to be responsible for these three handicapped children?

At no stage was the German policy anti-natal. The Nazi government paid for top quality research, designed and delivered public education campaigns, and introduced laws that aimed at eliminating alcohol, tobacco and syphilis from young couples. A vast public health scheme was developed and clinics were created to deal with the problems of child and maternal health. Abortion was banned. Getting married and having children wasn't just tolerated; it became a national duty for the racially fit.

More than that, it was emphasised that sterilisation should be seen as national liberation, not as an individual punishment. Advertising campaigns stressed that responsible young couples would naturally want to avoid bringing damaged babies into the world who would cost the state a fortune to sustain.

The German law clearly applied to each and every individual in the entire German population, presumably including members of the Nazi Party and the Hitler Youth! Thus its scope was much larger than the compulsory American sterilisation laws, which were most often applied only to inmates in psychiatric hospitals or prisons. And German practice differed from Swedish practice where, under Swedish law, no sterilisation would be carried out without the consent of the patient, or his/her parents.

There was another important difference. In Germany every undergraduate medical student was taught from films of feeble-minded, drooling and crippled children, and shown many films of sterilisation procedures. This was to familiarise them and involve them in the process, even before their medical careers started. In the USA and Sweden, only specialist practitioners were involved in the decision-making and in the surgical procedures.

Child candidates for compulsory sterilisation, waiting for the court's decision, 1934

A Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring via sterilisation became a German statute in July 1933. It demanded the compulsory sterilisation of any citizen who, in the opinion of a court, suffered from a list of specific disorders: congenital mental deficiency, schizophrenia, manic-depression, hereditary blindness or deafness, severe alcoholism, Huntington’s Chorea or hereditary physical deformities including epilepsy.

As the numbers of potential candidates for sterilisation grew and grew, it was feared that the ordinary court system would be clogged up with sterilisation cases. So a separate, dedicated court was established, to hurry cases through without the hassles of needing a qualified judge, trained lawyers and properly empanelled juries. Instead 200 Genetic Health Courts were established across Germany, with doctors inspecting the medical evidence and giving the final verdict. In total, these Genetic Health Courts ordered the compulsory sterilisation of just under 400,000 German children, teenagers and adults by the time war broke out in late 1939.

If the court decided that the person in question was to be sterilised, the decision could be appealed to a Higher Genetic Health Court where doctors and not judges also made all legally binding decisions. If the appeal failed, the sterilisation was to be carried out, with "the use of force being permissible".

One later amendment (1935) was very telling; it fined physicians who did not report patients who the doctors KNEW would qualify for sterilisation under the law. Teachers and kindergarten staff were encouraged to report their pupils for sterilisation, but were not fined if they failed to do so.

The UK tv series on Nazi Doctors (Oct 2009) reported three main outcomes, albeit unintended, that blighted The Genetic Health Courts programme:

1. The post-operative mortality and morbidity rates were higher than expected and were largely not reported. Bachrach recorded that as many as 5,000 patients died as a result of the surgery, most of them women.

2. The post-operative damage to the patients’ psychological health was much greater. This was true for all patients, of course. It was even more so for otherwise perfectly healthy people who would have loved to have had children, but were sterilised for a trivial reason eg distorted toes. Recently I saw the evidence given by elderly men and women who, sterilised in the 1930s, had been grief stricken all their lives.

3. The reputation of doctors was accidentally destroyed. They changed from being seen as healers to being seen as policemen, judges and punishment-inflicters. Families no longer trusted their own doctors, if and when their children became ill with ordinary childhood diseases.

I personally would add another important outcome. Even within the moral context of the 1930s science of eugenics, terrible decisions were made by the Genetic Health Courts. Either knowledge of genetics was not yet adequate, or it was adequate but political policy-makers overrode the medical decisions. Many people were forcibly sterilised for conditions that we (now) know are not genetically based. And as the programme didn’t continue for enough decades, I also wonder if the geneticists had any idea about how recessive genes could skip generations.

Read Susan Bachrach “In the Name of Public Health: Nazi Racial Hygiene”, in New England Journal of Medicine, 29th July 2004. And see Science and the Swastika 2001,  an analysis of science and morality during the Third Reich, especially (for the purpose of this post) the practice of eugenics and euthanasia.