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The Lost City of Frankfurt
The first time I visited Frankfurt my impression was mostly the usual one that people have and which going there can seem to confirm; it’s a drab modern city full of skyscrapers owned by banks devoted to European finance. I’d gone to visit a friend who lives there who opened my eyes a little, but I missed the clues I was given, ignored the signs. I did pretty much the same thing on my second visit a few years later; my expectations were fixed, already resigned to the alienating and ugly modernist styles that I hate so much in parts of London.
Before my third visit I learned something that completely changed my outlook of Frankfurt and made me consider much more deeply what had actually happened to it. Of course, it had been bombed in World War 2, but prior to that it had been able to boast one of the finest medieval quarters in Germany, which the American air force destroyed apparently by mistake.
I’d been looking for websites related to Frankfurt to see what would be going on during my trip and quite unexpectedly found one called altfrankfurt.com. I knew enough German to know that this meant ‘old Frankfurt’ and just out of curiosity decided to have a quick look at the site.
What I found amazed me. The people running the site had managed, with the help of the public, to amass a collection of photographs of the city before it was bombed, and had been able to ‘reconstruct’ large parts of it through these images. They are a fascinating record of how the city used to be, especially if you’re able to superimpose these images in your mind over what’s there now – this was my key to discovering ‘lost Frankfurt’.
So, on my third visit, I actually spent the best part of a day walking around parts of the city spreading out from the Cathedral and using my imagination to picture the streets as they once were and picking up on something of the atmosphere that still lingers here and there if you stand quietly and contemplate.
Something that helps immensely is the only part of this area that was re-constructed in the original manner, the Roemerberg. This is the square where the town hall stands along one side, the opposite side being occupied by tall, thin medieval style buildings that are typical of many of those that would have stood in the old town.
If you stand with your back to the town hall and to the left side of the square you will be able to see along Market Street (Markt) with a view of the cathedral tower at the end. This is a view that is still remarkably similar to how it would have looked before the bombing; from here it’s possible to begin your walk, armed with images from the website, and to begin your own reconstruction.
Some of the original street names have been kept, giving important clues to what once stood or took place there, such as ‘Weckmarkt’ (the roll market), ‘Kruggasse’ (jug lane) and Munzgasse (coin lane). Part of the original street pattern also survives, particularly near to the cathedral, retaining some of the typically narrow medieval lanes.
A visit to the city’s Jewish museum will also greatly help to picture the old town – the Jewish quarter was also there. There are photographs, scale models and some re-constructed masonry, all of which add their own colour to the destruction that took place and the efforts to piece it back together again.
If you’re up for some virtual tourism, travel in time as well as space, then altfrankfurt.com is hard to beat in the sheer volume alone of images of a vanished city. If you’re prepared to take some time to visit Frankfurt and employ your imagination then the experience will be that much more rewarding.
Copyright Bare Nibs 2009