by Gert Fischer | May, 2025 | EN, famous people from Bonn, history
Apart from the seemingly inevitable local crime novels and a few autobiographical special cases, Bonn hardly ever appears as the setting for a novel. This also applies to its years as the capital city of Germany. Of the few novels that deal with the politics of the ‘Bonn Republic,’ Wolfgang Koeppen’s ‘Das Treibhaus’ (The Greenhouse) alone satisfies the highest literary standards as a roman à clef of the young Federal Republic. Unfortunately, it is hardly known outside Germany.
This means that Bonn makes only one appearance in world literature. It was created by John Le Carré (actually David John Moore Cornwell, 1931-2020) in his novel ‘A Small Town in Germany’, published in 1968. The author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and literary father of George Smiley is usually classified as a writer of pulp fiction in Germany. In the English-speaking world, he is rightly regarded as one of the most important authors of the recent past.
A Small Town in Germany is one of Le Carré’s lesser-known books. This may be because, unlike most of his works from the 1960s and 1970s, it does not revolve around the theme of the Cold War and does not feature the anti-Bond character George Smiley. Instead, the plot is embedded in the domestic politics of the Federal Republic of Germany and is therefore less accessible to an international audience than the global East-West conflict. It is set exclusively in Bonn and its immediate surroundings. Le Carré draws on his own experiences. From 1961 to 1963, he was stationed in Germany by the British Secret Service working undercover as Second Secretary at the British Embassy in Bonn. At that time writing was a part-time endeavour.
As Le Carré once remarked elsewhere, the plot takes place in the ‘near future’ from the year the book was published – if you look closely: in May 1970. The political panorama that forms the backdrop is bleak. Le Carré composes it from elements that helped shape the domestic politics of the Federal Republic in the 1960s, adding fictional and exaggerated elements to create an ugly dystopia: the grand coalition is still in power. The opposition FDP is infiltrated by shady figures with roots in the Nazi era. There is a powerful political alliance between the student movement and what we would today call right-wing populists. The target of their hatred is Great Britain. The Bundestag is still debating emergency laws, an amnesty for Nazi criminals comes into force, and accession negotiations between the EEC and Great Britain are going badly in Brussels. The country is on the brink of major unrest.
In this situation, a troubleshooter arrives in Bonn from London. A junior embassy employee has disappeared, apparently gone into hiding. Suspicions of espionage are rife. Alan Turner is tasked with getting to the bottom of the matter. Over the course of several weeks in May, he scrutinises the embassy’s operations, uncovers some of the staff’s dirty secrets and gets closer and closer to the man he is looking for, his character and his motives. This man is, if you will, the real protagonist of the novel. Yet he hardly ever appears in the book – only briefly at the beginning and end. This much can be revealed: it does not end well.
Le Carré’s picture of Bonn is as bleak as the plot. It begins with the weather – although it is May, it is consistently hazy and damp. There is no sign of warmth, and much of the action takes place at night. Le Carré anticipates an atmosphere that J.K. Rowling’s dementors would later spread. The city is cramped and narrow-minded – just like the republic that gave birth to it. This image is further embellished with all the prejudices that have always hurt Bonn’s local patriots: it rains, or the railroad crossing barriers are down; the nightlife is in Cologne; Bonn became the capital because Adenauer wanted it to be; it’s a waiting room for Berlin, etc. The tongue-in-cheek humour with which these sayings were often accompanied in Bonn is completely absent. The author is deadly serious. He even invents his own nastiness. In Bonn, even the flies are civil servants.
Woven into the backdrop of the book are many detailed descriptions. They range from the university and the railway station to the town hall and the British Embassy (sacrificed to Telekom in 2004) to the diplomatic settlements in Plittersdorf and Bad Godesberg. The protagonist lives on the slopes of the Petersberg, and the traffic problems are closely observed. Anyone reading the novel from this perspective may notice how Le Carré alters the city’s geography and even individual buildings to suit the needs of the plot. And, of course, he describes the buildings and structures as he remembers them from the early 1960s. They no longer correspond to the Bonn of 1970, let alone to the Bonn of today. Such a search for clues is great fun!
Why Bonn comes across so negatively in its only appearance in world literature remains an open question. It may have something to do with Le Carré’s bad memories of his time in Bonn. And, of course, it is also due to the dark subject matter. It may be comforting to know that he actually shows all the locations in his books from their ugly side. And perhaps there is a tiny grain of truth in his Bonn.
by Gert Fischer | May, 2025 | architecture, EN, Rhine region
Anyone strolling along Bonn’s Rhine promenade usually has their eyes fixed on the river and the sights on the horizon: the Siebengebirge mountains, the government district or the Schwarzrheindorfer Doppelkirche church, for example. But it’s worth taking a look to the right at the landing stage of the ‘Köln-Düsseldorfer’ shipping line. At the lower end of Vogtsgasse, in the shadow of the retaining wall of the Department of History, there is a small wayside shrine. It commemorates the Gertrudis Chapel, which stood a few metres away and has now been almost forgotten. Like the entire old town of Bonn, it was destroyed in the air raid of 18 October 1944. What remained of it was literally buried in the rubble. Shortly after the war, the mountains of debris in the city centre were used to raise the area between Belderberg and the banks of the Rhine by several metres. Unattractive new buildings from the 1950s were erected on what was once the ‘Rheinviertel’ (Rhine district).
The chapel was dedicated to Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, who lived in the first half of the 7th century. As a patron saint, she had a very broad portfolio. She was invoked against plagues of rats and mice (hence the mice as her attribute), and was considered the protector of travellers, pilgrims and sailors, gardeners, spinners and even cats. In addition, her historically documented commitment to nursing and the education of girls and women is still remembered today.
It was probably these diverse connections that brought together a rather unlikely cooperation: the ‘Schiffer-Verein Beuel 1862’ (Beuel Boatmen’s Association), the Bonn Women’s Museum and the Bonn drag artist Curt Delander joined forces to ensure that the wayside shrine was built in memory of the chapel. It was built from bricks from the destroyed old town and stones from the St. Gertrudis Church in Nivelles (Belgium), which was destroyed by German bombs. This makes it a small memorial to peace, and it also reminds us that reconciled enemies drank the ‘St. Gertrudis Minne’ in the Middle Ages.
The building, which was destroyed in 1944, was not an architectural gem and no longer had any great spiritual significance. It was a simple single-nave hall building from the 15th century with modest furnishings. It was originally located directly behind the city wall next to the ‘Gierpforte’ whose name is derived from ‘Gertrud’. Even after the wall was demolished in the 19th century, there was no unobstructed view of the Rhine. A hotel building between the riverbank and the chapel ensured that the backyard situation remained unchanged. The parish church of the district was St. Remigius on what is now Remigiusplatz, with the Gertrudiskapelle chapel merely a branch. For a long time, its main users were the local boatmen and their brotherhood. This Cinderella existence may explain why there was hardly any opposition to the demolition of the little church.
Despite its unattractive exterior and its minor importance at the time, the Gertrudiskapelle was considered the ‘most distinguished’ church in Bonn after the cathedral in the oral tradition of the 19th century. Even back then, this statement did not fit with what was known about its history: first mentioned in 1258, a small hermitage of Cistercian nuns, later a temporary home for Capuchin and Franciscan Recollect monks – each before they moved into their spacious new monasteries. In 2010/11, an archaeological excavation with sensational results revealed just how much truth there can be in oral tradition. It found the remains of two previous buildings – the earliest dating from the 8th century and thus Carolingian and about as old as the two oldest inner-city parish churches, St. Remigius and St. Martin. It is very likely that this first chapel was dedicated to St. Gertrude. This can be deduced from the fact that, like Remigius and Martin, the name was often used for churches in the Carolingian period – no wonder, since the historical Gertrude was one of the leading figures in the lineage of Charlemagne.
We do not know whether this first Gertrudis Chapel was built as a parish church or whether it has a different origin. In any case, by the middle of the twelfth century, it must have been the spiritual centre of a fairly extensive settlement along the Rhine, as evidenced by archaeological finds. This settlement lost much of its importance during the Middle Ages, and with it the Church of St. Gertrude. Today, the small wayside shrine on Vogtsgasse is the last link to this period.
by Gert Fischer | Mar, 2025 | EN, points of interest, tradition
With the Old Cemetery in the city centre, the Bad Godesberg Castle Cemetery and the Poppelsdorf Cemetery, Bonn has three outstanding burial sites due to their significance, ambience or location. If you add to this the village churchyards in some districts that are still preserved and date back even further, Bonn’s cemetery landscape is almost worth a trip. This historical heritage overshadows the more modern facilities.
Photo: A. Savin
Thus, Bonn’s largest cemetery by far, the Nordfriedhof on Kölnstraße in today’s Auerberg district, is perhaps the Cinderella of cemeteries. Opened in 1884 as the official successor to the Old Cemetery, which could no longer be expanded, the Nordfriedhof got off to a bad start mainly due to its location. More than three kilometres from the centre of Bonn, it was on the far northern outskirts of the city. It only received a rail connection in 1906, when the Rheinuferbahn (Rhine bank railway) started operating. In the first decades of its existence, it was located in an open field. On the way there, you passed the smouldering rubbish heap where today’s Sportpark Nord is located, the Rheinische Provinzial-Irrenanstalt (today the LVR-Klinik Bonn), the Städtische Hilfshospital für Geisteskranke, Epileptiker und Trunksüchtige (a municipal hospital for the mentally ill, epileptics and alcoholics) and the orphanage and correctional home, which was located on the former site of the leprosarium (an isolation ward for infectious diseases). And contemporaries were certainly also aware that the cemetery area included the former place of execution with the gallows and the Schindanger, where animal carcasses that could no longer be used were disposed of. It is therefore not surprising that the so-called ‘better circles’ at the time sought burial sites elsewhere. After 1905, this was also officially possible. Those who lived ‘west of the railway’ could be buried in the cemetery of the recently incorporated Poppelsdorf. The inhabitants of the southern and western parts of the city made ample use of this opportunity. The Nordfriedhof thus became the cemetery for the city centre and the northern part of the city. Accordingly, the names of the families buried here that are significant in local history are linked to this part of the city. The graves of professors and wealthy individuals were buried mainly in the Poppelsdorf Cemetery, as were those of many of Bonn’s dignitaries.
Nevertheless, the North Cemetery gradually gained its place in the Bonn cemetery landscape. It changed for the better as a park, designed in an exemplary manner including a large chapel added in 1913. Its subsequent three expansions prove that it has become a popular cemetery. Even the reckless handling of some of its remnants could not prevent this. In the 1960s, for example, rows of gravestones were cleared when the main entrance was widened, and the neo-Romanesque gate was demolished. As a result, the list of ‘preserving-worthy’ grave monuments is short compared to the size of the cemetery.
The character of the Nordfriedhof as a cemetery of honour represents a special chapter. The beginnings of this development lie in the First World War. Today, not only the German victims of two world wars are buried here, but also numerous forced and foreign labourers as well as prisoners of war. Initially a place of local remembrance, the war cemetery and cemetery of honour became the central ‘Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and the Victims of Tyranny’ in 1980 (today in Berlin at the Neue Wache). At that time, the bronze plate designed by Hans Schwippert – known as the architect who converted the Pedagogical Academy into the Bundeshaus and Palais Schaumburg into the Federal Chancellery – was transferred from the Hofgarten to the Nordfriedhof for this purpose. One of the more embarrassing chapters in Bonn’s history is that in 2017 it was stolen and replaced by a copy in sandstone.
As a relatively modern cemetery, the Nordfriedhof was not consecrated by a Catholic priest and was not bound to historical structures. Therefore, it reflects the developments that have shaped the funeral industry in the recent past better than many older cemeteries and those that are subject to preservation orders that restrict them to an earlier state. For example, a Yazidi cemetery is integrated into the Nordfriedhof. There are graves where the Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox rites were observed, as well as an area for children who died in the womb or at birth. And since 1990, it has had an Islamic burial ground.
A walk through the Nordfriedhof Cemetery is therefore not so interesting if you are interested in art, historically significant graves and famous names. Rather, it is a generously laid out park that reflects the social structure of Bonn city centre and the north of Bonn. Nevertheless, exciting discoveries are not out of the question. For example, there are three graves of members of the Sikh religious community who came to Bonn with the British occupation troops after the First World War. Or the grave of the singer and entertainer Fereydun Farrochsad, who was murdered in Bonn in 1992 in the name of the Islamic revolution in Iran.
Furthermore, the Nordfriedhof is of ecological interest. It has remarkable trees and, due to its size, a wide variety of animal and plant life. With the support of the Rotary Club, the city of Bonn is using it as an experimental area for ‘future trees’ – as a ‘climate grove’.
It is to be hoped that the restoration work on the cemetery chapel, which has been going on for two years now, will finally be completed. Until then, funeral services are held in an unworthy plastic tent. The North Cemetery is still worth a visit!
by Gert Fischer | Dec, 2024 | Bonn Sights, EN, points of interest, tradition, Uncategorized
The flight of steps at the Old City Hall has seen better days. Its grand appearances have become rare. Nowadays it only takes centre stage on Carnival Sunday, when the carnival revellers storm the town hall. In addition, there are rare events in which it briefly regains its former grandeur as a big stage. This occurred in 2023, when the Telekom Baskets (Bonn’s professional basketball team) were celebrated by their fans after winning the Champions League. Although there was a good turn-out by the fans, they still did not fill the market square, not unlike the party-goers on Carnival Sunday. It was a completely different scenario when Charles de Gaulle signed the city’s Golden Book on the September 5, 1962. He stepped out onto the staircase together with Konrad Adenauer to a storm of enthusiasm. The market square and the Bischofsplatz were packed with people, who were overflowing into the Sternstraße and the Wenzelgasse. After delivering a seemingly extemporaneous speech in German, the then assassination-threatened French President strode down the stairs and was swallowed up by the crowd, much to the dismay of his security staff.
The steps of Bonn’s old City Hall have seen similar scenes time and again, especially when Bonn was the capital city of Germany. The list of visitors ranged from Theodor Heuss, who addressed the German people from the steps immediately after his election as the first Federal President, to John F. Kennedy in 1963, the Queen Elizabeth of England in 1965, and as late as 1989 when Gorbachev visited. Not all occasions were as spectacular as in the 60s, and over time, state visits became routine. Nevertheless, the steps of the town hall remained something of a stage for the Bonn Republic. The reason for this was mundane: the government district was somewhat remote and, as a provisional arrangement, had no representative assembly area. The market square helped out.
Incidentally, the same applies to demonstrations. Up until the 1980s the Bonn market was the most important demonstration site in the Federal Republic of Germany. The steps of the town hall also played a role there – perhaps most ingloriously on 10 April 1973, when members of a communist splinter group, hidden by a student demonstration against the visit of the South Vietnamese president to Germany, stormed the town hall and smashed its interior. It was only then that, because of the sheer volume, the protests against rearmament had to move to the Hofgarten. They may not have been aware of the meaning of their actions in terms of the carnival. At that time, we lived nearby, and I still remember how the demonstrators, linked arms and running, turned from Suttnerplatz into Rathausgasse, chanting the name of Ho Chi Minh. The rest is history.
The staircase was also the scene of much earlier revolutionary events: on 20 March 1848, for example, Gottfried Kinkel led a procession of citizens, professors and students. Armed with the black, red and gold flag of the democratic movement, he climbed the steps of the town hall and spoke, as Carl Schurz put it, with ‘wondrous eloquence’. Things were less lively on October 24, 1923 when local separatists, under the protection of French soldiers, climbed the steps at 6 am and claimed the ‘Rhenish Republic’. The nightmare was soon over due to a lack of support from the population.
The importance the Bonn market once played, both in front of the town hall and with the town hall steps as a natural stage, has now almost been forgotten. Recently a major radio station, the SWR, stated that de Gaulle gave his speech in the Hofgarten. And Bonn only occasionally remembers the possibilities that the town hall panorama offers. A big festival where the stage covers the old town hall is a wasted opportunity. Nowadays, the people who make the most of the opportunities are the bridal couples who get married at this historic site. They are happy to use the flight of steps for their guests to form a guard of honour, thus preserving some of the charm of the place. It’s just a shame that the delivery truck traffic is increasingly disrupting the beautiful images. This impression may be subjective.
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