Figures 1-2. Christel in Halberstadt (2008); Silhouette of Christel entering the Stadtmarkt, Wolfenbüttel (2016).1

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Christel Ilse Gerhard in Memoriam (1931-2019)

Christel was an enigma. She was one of the best-known individuals in Wolfenbüttel because for the last 30 years of her life she went for a walk through the town practically every day. But there is not a single photo of her in Google Images. And although I took occasional photos of her, almost all I can find is a picture of her in Halberstadt and a silhouette in Wolfenbüttel (figs. 1-2). She always wore a cap: often red, but also blue and other colours, which reflected her inner weather. She almost always wore trousers to avoid attention to the swollen arteries of her legs. Sweaters were another staple feature of her dress code. And then there was her walking stick, which she used in the last decade of her life after someone had bumped into her with a shopping cart, and caused her to fall and break her hip. The clothes always gave a subtle statement, but they never followed the fashions of the day. They were primarily practical: to feel comfortable and to keep warm.

She was a teacher, who was always learning. She read the local papers as if it were a scientific task. Her main interests were astronomy, religion, art and botany. She was always gentle. If she was very annoyed, she would smile and in rare cases simply leave. She had many books: as often browsing, as reading them from cover to cover. Her main interest was reading persons’ minds, and hearts and souls (fig.15).

The beginning of our friendship was unusual. One evening in the late 1970s, in Wolfenbüttel, I was having a discussion about Wunderkammers with Dr. Gabriella Belloni, a fellow Stipendiat. If that topic really interests you, she said, I can show you one of the most amazing Wunderkammers in the world right here in Wolfenbüttel. I said yes and she took me to Stadtmarkt 14, the Alte Apotheke (fig. 3).

The House

She was right. The Alte Apotheke was a large house of some 35 rooms and was filled with surprises. It had originally been the second apothecary (after the Schloss Apotheke) in a town which now has at least 26 apothecaries. In the basement, there were a number of rooms, which stretched out beneath the Korn Markt and had served in the Second World War to hide Jews. In the attic, there was a hatch that opened out to give a view of the whole town. Long ago, it had been used by the fire brigade. Christel’s father, a doctor with a PhD, had used the same attic for a home-built telescope that he used for observing solar eclipses: a topic on which he was a national expert, which had led him to observe eclipses all around the world, sometimes with Christel in tow.

On the ground floor, was the Alte Apotheke itself which, although no longer in use, and rented out as a photography shop, had myriad ancient apothecary jars and a wonderful candelabrum. There was also a suite of several rooms that was sometimes rented out to a tenant. In the back there was a whole wing that was effectively a ruin. But it was the first floor (second floor in North American terms) that had the real treasures. The kitchen was nothing special, although it had a significant section devoted to Indian rice and spices. The dining room had paintings, and many jars of conserved fruit. The main sitting room was filled with book cases and family portraits. After Christel’s mother died, the room gradually acquired piles of newspaper clippings, which oft resembled the site of an archaeological dig. Beyond the living room was John’s bedroom, which had the same tendencies towards an archeological dig.

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Then there was a large room filled with paintings and antiques. It was a Wunderkammer in

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Figures 3-4. The Gerhard home at Stadtmarkt 14; Statue of Duke August in the Stadtmarkt Square donated by an ancestor.2

itself even if it lacked the traditional exotic animals. The red plush wall coverings were in need of restoration, but even now they exude an atmosphere that one might have expected in a late 19th century period-piece. There was one small passage for walking freely between rooms. The rest of the space was taken up with tables and bookcases overfilled with everything from knick-knacks to books, sculptures and vases. The walls had portraits of major family members from Thüringen, Braunschweig and locally. Beyond this was a room that served as Christel’s bedroom in the last decade of her life. Off to the side was an enormous tub in a bathroom, then in a separate wing, two rooms that served as guest bedrooms, which had been painted and decorated by Christel’s students, and a series of storage rooms.

On the top floor, there was what used to be Christel’s apartments with exotic silks that made it look like an Arabian 1001 nights with an Indian influence. There was also an apartment rented to a Vietnamese family and a room filled with further ancient apothecary vases. Christel had a particular fascination for one in particular, entitled Mummia Egyptica, which had for a time been imported into Europe as an aphrodisiac and was later used as fuel for trains.

The Family

At first, there was Christel’s mother, a Mater familias, who dominated the scene. I was given a thorough exam and passed. As a result, I was invited once a week to a Sunday lunch, where

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I met the family: there was Christel, her friend John, Christel’s sisters and occasionally their children.

The Larger Family

The Wolfenbüttel family was known for their links with medicine and theology and one of Christel’s delights was to bring out an enormous 17 th c. Bible from one of her forefathers. In the 19th century, one of her forefathers had been head of the Hauptkirche, opposite the house in the Kornmarkt, and the local painter Mirselis had depicted the pastor, the church and himself as a bystander. If one looked out of the drawing room windows one saw a fountain with a statue of Duke August (fig. 3), which had been donated by an ancestor, who had owned the house that is now the town hall. He had been merchant with his own ship, trading wool with Paramaribo in Surinam. In a great storm he had lost everything, and went bankrupt. He held a particular fascination for Christel, because he had managed to continue trading in spite of Napoleon’s blockade of continental shipping. With a certain regularity, Christel would ask me to look for clues, but without the precise name of the ancestor there was no progress on this front.

Christel’s sister Gerda married Graf Yorck von Wartenburg and thereby became linked with one of the great intellectual families of Northern Europe. A 19 th century forefather had a Gut in Klein-Öls (today Oleśnica Mała, in Poland), with 500 persons and a library of 250,000 books. In the 20th century, two members of the family had stood up to Hitler and paid with their lives. When Christel was put in what was effectively an asylum, Gerda’s youngest son, Marcus, took decisive steps to help her.

Thüringen

The family had originally come from Thüringen, e.g. Bad Köstritz. The Gerhards had been linked with the Werthers. They had a tree school (Baum Schule) and a chocolate factory (now owned by Storck). There was an uncle who used to visit and sometimes called. It was during

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Figures 5-6. Wolfenbüttel Schloss then and now.3

the time of the DDR with its strict separation between East and West Germany. I thought I understood German, but when the uncle called, there was an elaborate cipher language. It was assumed that everything was being intercepted which, in light of Das Leben der Anderen, was probably completely true. What one heard were questions such as how was the weather, what kind of clouds there were today, how are the chickens? and so on. What it meant was something quite different. The Thüringen families had and continue to have links with Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel

Braunschweig

In Braunschweig, the Gerhards were linked with the Court architect (Hofbaumeister), Carl Theodor Ottmer, who was a friend of Schinkel, and built amongst other things, the Braunschweig Palace, the old train station in Braunschweig and the theatre in the Wolfenbüttel Palace, Schloss Capelle in fig. 5).

Christel

With all this context, it took a good while to discover Christel herself. She had studied art at university and was an art teacher in a local Gymnasium, which had originally been the Palace of Duke August at a time (c.1630) when his library had been the largest in the world. She was single, but lived for over 62 years with an Indian chemist from Kerala whom everyone called

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John. They had no children. She was a devoted art teacher there for 40 years and had countless students. She always made me think of the wife of Mr. Chips who, when asked by a little boy whether she had children, replied: Yes, thousands.

When she retired she remained a passionate walker and going on a walk with her was like being introduced to everyone in the town, or that was what it felt like. In her 60s, the walks were often substantial, to her garden, a kind of Magic Garden grown semi-wild, to the cemetery; to friends such as Frau Pelzer, a Latin mistress, or simply to the The Prinzenpalais, which had belonged to her friend Frau Schünemann and, since 1999, was Dr. John’s house (figs. 10-11), which was merely a block away. The walks were interspersed by lunch at restaurants (especially the Nordsee) and rest stops at cafés. In her 70s, the walks became shorter and rest stops more frequent. In her 80s, the itinerary became ever simpler: a “stroll“ to the Nordsee (which could take an hour for two blocks) and then a return via 1, 2 or even 3 cafés for a coffee and (if I did not resist vigourously enough) a lovely Kuchen (which is much more than its prosaic English translation as a piece of cake).

Birds

The walks were never just walks. Occasionally, when we went to the garden there was a specific goal: usually climbing the apple trees to collect apples for apple tarts and apple sauce. Christel was a lover of animals and birds. She had a cat, who was like her personal body guard, and to all appearances they could communicate with one another both verbally and non-verbally in the form of remarkable purrs. Both the cat and Christel had grins like the Cheshire Cat and often they seemed to compete about whose grin would be the widest.

Then there were the ducks. The ducks in the various tributaries of the Oker, with numerous restaurants around, gave no appearance of being underfed. Yet every day, Christel set forth with pieces of bread to feed them with a fervor as if she was diminishing starvation in both Africa and India in one fell swoop. Of course, she had her own scraps from home, but that was

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Figures 7-8. Klein Venedig, (Little Vanice) then and now.4

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never enough. She assiduously developed friendships with the local bread bakers, who patiently collected scraps and crumbs from the process of cutting fresh baked loaves. Christel would deftly put them into one of her bags and off she would go. One of the places for duck encounters was Klein Venedig (Little Venice, figs. 7-8), where a uncommon friend we had in common, Burkhard von Hanstein, had lived.

Occasionally a new employee would arrive, fully unprepared for Christel’s gentle, but firm, determination. They would panic. There would be a scuffle – only verbal of course, though in desperate situations, a walking cane might be raised. For a few days the bakery was very carefully avoided. By the next week, the neophyte would have learned that Christel was a special case, she was treated accordingly, and everything went its peaceful way.

The ducks were not the only beneficiaries. More controversial were the pigeons because opinions were divided into two radically opposed camps. One camp viewed pigeons as a part of nature and associated them with the pigeons of postcards in Venice and Rome, with the doves of peace and all things lovey-dovey. The other camp could hardly see the birds, focused only on their droppings and were furious with anyone such as Christel, who treated them with kindness.

Unkind members of this camp said of her that she had a Vogel (literally, that she has a bird, i.e. was acting crazy, slightly mad or even more than somewhat mad).5 The accusation was as unjust as it was inaccurate. An aerial view of the “garden” behind her home, reveals only a clump of trees (fig. 9). But in that clump of trees was a large cage roughly 3 square meters. For decades, she kept dozens of pigeons and there was an elaborate ritual, whereby the cage had to be closed every evening and promptly opened again the next morning, with water and food: grains, or crumbs being provided at regular intervals. And then there was another group which never entered the cage and preferred to be fed in the privacy of the courtyard. When Christel was ill or too weak, the task fell on John. When John grew too weak or lost patience gradually the cage stopped functioning. But before that, for the record, Christel had not 1 Vogel but at least 30 birds.

To be sure, the naysayers had no access to the courtyard, so they could never count them, but they could see pigeons flying there and so it was constantly cited as if they had proof against Christel. But alas, this was only the surface of the real problem. Christel would regularly go to Rossmanns, buy various bags of bird-seed and then distribute them. Like a small child, who wants to rebel against its parents or guardian, the nerve points were carefully studied, and then used for maximum effect. For instance, she would place seeds just in front of the entrance to Rossmanns, or in front of a café in the Lange Herzog Strasse. On occasion, if the naysayers protested, Christel might dole out an extra portion. There were also pigeons, who needed to be fed from a given window. And there was even a marten (Marder) who was left fresh eggs which continued happily until a neighbour found suspicious numbers of egg shells in their attic and a period of secretive silence ensued.

The pigeons were extremely grateful and eminently attentive. Every morning there was a small and sometimes a larger of column of them sitting on the gable of the town hall. The moment that Christel emerged from the house, as if called for assembly, they would take off and land at Christel’s feet. The naysayers were most adamant about pigeons in the Stadtmarkt, where the weekly market also took place and protested the more vehemently. Christel’s reaction was

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Figure 9. Aerial view of Stadtmarkt 14 with clump of trees in garden.6

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priceless. Her large house had a series of windows at ground level, which had niches. She placed the seeds precisely in the niche so that they were technically still on her property. Almost mysterious was how injured pigeons had an intuitive penchant for her. One particular pigeon would fly to the different feeding places to profit each time. On several occasions, when a pigeon was more seriously wounded, she would take it home and nurse it until it was better again. There was a special arrangement with the cat that she would not take advantage of such situations. Christel had all the makings of an incipient, female Dr. Doolittle.

Tante Hänschen

Birds were a sideshow, but they were hardly the main attraction of the walks. In the early 20 th

century, there had been a rather remarkable lady called Tante Hänschen, although the name on her grave was Margarete Marie Selwig. Even in my first meetings with the Gerhard family, Christel’s mother told us anecdotes: One evening at the theatre, the protagonist kissed his beloved. In a booming voice, Tante Hänschen had exclaimed: “Sie posieren wohl.“

One of the unlikely characteristics was that she had lived in a series of places that seemed to define the limits of Christel’s walks. One place had been in the Schlossplatz, in a house near where Christel taught. Then there was a place near the Harztorwall, where she had a roof garden above what is today a Chinese restaurant. Then there was a place at the end of the Lange Herzog Strasse, where it meets the Herzogstor, which becomes the Neuer Weg. Each of these places functioned like triggers in a memory theatre to unleash new stories about Tante Hänschen and her adventures.

Local History

As one leaves the Stadtmarkt and begins to go along the Lange Herzog Strasse there was a house. In 1911, there had been a fire. Someone had shouted: Köppe weg, Beine weg, Pianoforte kommt runter (Heads away, feet away, piano is coming down). And then the piano had crashed to the ground. Tante Hänschen had seen it, of course, and had told the story as if it were her piano. On some days, Tante Hänschen simply seemed to be Christel in an earlier re-incarnation. On other days, she seemed an unlikely combination of Jiminy Cricket’s conscience and the Ghost of Christmas past. Almost daily Christel would remark: Tante Hänschen would have said. And frequently, what she would have said was a question: Es frägt sich (an elegant subjunctive form of quaerendum est). One had a feeling that she was somewhat like a female Socrates, except that she avoided drinking hemlock.

They were not only Tante Hänschen’s stories and they were not always happy stories. Just after the Greek coffee shop on the left-hand side, there was a home over a shop front. In early 1945, near the end of the second world war, an American soldier had landed with a parachute there. In the days thereafter he had shot his host. A few weeks later the Allied soldiers arrived and shot the American soldier. Christel told the story with all the clinical detachment of an excellent reporter. She had seen great suffering and with such anecdotal stories she gave glimpses into that world. She probably knew 90% of the persons on that main street and told only a small fraction of what she knew.

Remarkably, she was never a gossip. There was never the slightest sense of envy, malice or intrigue. Her questions were about facts and, like Tante Hänschen, there was a fascination with motivation: Why did your father go to Canada (when I was 2½)? Why did you study perspective and Leonardo? were among her early questions to me. She was not a psychologist

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Figures 10-11. Prinzenpalais and Festzaal which belonged to Christel’s friend Frau Schünemann and then to her partner Dr. John.7

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officially, but she was always trying to understand why persons acted, what made them tick, as the Canadians say. One had the impression that she had a psychological portrait of every student she ever had.

The amazing thing was that her knowledge spread far beyond the persons and streets of Wolfenbüttel. In the early 1980s, we would go on car trips to nearby places such as Königslutter or Quedlinburg. Along the way she would point out that in the Napoleonic wars a relative had fought in some field and that he was now buried in the cemetery of the next town through which we passed.

Thus far local history had been little more than stories of local churches and points of interest. Christel was much more than the proverbial walking encyclopaedia (or in current jargon, a Wikipedia on legs, as well as steroids). Through her I came to see Wolfenbüttel and Lower Saxony as part of (middle) Northern Europe: as a series of families and a set of values; as a local, which had impulses that affected regional, national and even international history. The town’s library, for example had had Leibniz and Lessing as librarians, and had, in its day, been far larger than the Vatican library.

Astronomy

Astronomy was a passion inherited from her father. Like the night sky, it was largely hidden from everyday conversation. However, the moment the word eclipse of the sun came up, she would manage to insert into the conversation how many partial and/or full eclipses there were this year and where they were best viewed. While her father had been alive, she had accompanied her father to far flung places in order to see such eclipses. After his passing, she and John would sometimes continue the tradition especially if the eclipse happened to be in India.

But long after her physical travels to eclipse sites stopped, her metaphysical travels to the heavens continued. She had more than a rudimentary knowledge of the constellations and frequently, on our way back from an event at the library or the Prinzenpalais, she would note the position of a given planet and reflect about some upcoming alignment or transit. She was familiar with much of the Greco-Roman mythology connected with the constellations. She had a certain interest in astrological predictions, which she viewed with a benign skepticism.

Religion

Officially, Christel, living next door to the first church specifically built for Luther’s religion, was an epitome of a Protestant. She went to mass on major feast days and especially when there were concerts. Music played a special role in her life. Choirs were good, but organ concerts, piano solos, string trios and quartets brought a deep contentment, when the Cheshire cat grin threatened to kidnap her entire physiognomy. She was by no means sectarian. If there was a concert in the Catholic church or in the library she would go.

At home, she was very fond of an Atlas der Kirchengeschichte, and an Atlas der Weltreligionen, so fond, that she had two copies of each, one copy of which was eventually given to yours truly. There were also many books on other religions: Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Islam. In public, religion was not a topic. But, at home, it led to fascinating personal conversations: often about a need for tolerance.

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Figures 12-13. Maastricht Chrysanthemums8

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Art

Art was truly one of Christel’s passions. One would be walking with her and suddenly she would state quite nonchalantly: Der (oder die) has ein schönes Po (that person has a beautiful posterior). She meant it purely from an artistic view, of course. In her mind’s eye, she was studying how it shaped up for a future drawing or painting. I noted that if I, as a man, were to make the same remark, I would be in danger of being arrested. But then Christel had a certain Narrenfreiheit (artistic license, originally accorded only to mediaeval jesters), which simple scholars as myself could not hope to have.

The posteriors of horses had a particular fascination. She was constantly looking forward to an occasion, when she might study the rump of a horse for a painting in the way that Leonardo had, but somehow it never happened. She did portraits, birds, plants, flowers but most of them were given away and a few which she had stored, disappeared. In the last decade of her life, her artistic activity dwindled to intentions to get back to it soon. However, until the end she was fascinated with looking at art books and we would discuss how Leonardo or Van Gogh, Cezanne or some other painter had tackled a problem.

Botany

The interest in botany was linked with the family’s profession as apothecaries. In the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Kräuterbücher (Herbals) were very much part of everyday life. Christel learned this tradition as a young girl. As a result, when we went for a walk in her almost wild, almost secret garden, she would casually point to some non-descript bit of greenery and explain its medicinal qualities in some detail.

If she was fascinated by the healing qualities of plants, she was no less enthralled about their beauty. She helped me to appreciate more the immense beauty of flowers. She marveled at the beauty of the lily and carefully traced its use in the local Fachwerk architecture. She grew eloquent about the fragile beauty of a rose, even if had never studied Ronsard. She delighted in bright gardens of flowers from lilies of the field to chrysanthemums (figs. 12-13). She delighted in all aspects of Nature and had a special love for trees. She fought gargantuan battles with the town, especially with the mayor, even with articles in the local newspaper, to resist the removal of trees from the town centre. In theory, she lost. The trees were removed. But in the Kornmarkt and in the newly renovated Schlossplatz, new trees have been planted. The spirit of Christel lives on.

The Person

As she grew old and had difficulty walking, she sometimes looked nearly a cripple, but she never lost her dignity. When persons covetous of her material possessions had her declared mad and put in an asylum, she kept her dignity. When she was reduced to a wheelchair, the subtle game of red or blue cap continued. When I took her “for a spin” her curiosity was unabated and we studied the horses in the stalls of a nearby farm, admired the charming little church in Schliestedt and the statue of Till Eugenspegel outside the Schloss. She might be forgetful, but her inquisitive spirit continued to the very end.

She was without guile, always truthful, always humble and grateful for even the smallest gesture as if it were an enormous gift. If one brought her flowers or chocolates, it was as if

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one had bequeathed some great gift of state. If one telephoned her, she would thank one for not

Lächeln

(Gedicht eines unbekannten Autors des 17. Jahrhunderts)

Ein Lächeln kostet nichts, aber es gibt viel.Es macht den reich, der es bekommt, ohne den,der es gibt, ärmer zu machen.Es dauert nur einen Augenblick, aber dieErinnerung bleibt - manchmal für immer.Niemand ist so reich, dass er ohne es auskommenkann und niemand so arm, dass er nicht durch einLächeln reicher gemacht werden könnte.Ein Lachen bringt Glück ins Haus, fördert denguten Willen im Geschäft und ist ein Zeichen fürFreundschaft.Es gibt dem Erschöpften Ruh, dem MutlosenHoffnung, dem Traurigen Sonnenschein und es istder Natur bestes Mittel gegen Ärger.Man kann es nicht kaufen, nicht erbetteln, leihenoder stehlen, denn es ist so lange wertlos, bis eswirklich gegeben wird.Manche Leute sind zu müde, dir ein Lächeln zugeben. Schenke ihnen deines, denn niemandbraucht ein Lächeln nötiger als jener, der keinesmehr zu geben hat.

Smile(Poem by an unknown author of the 17th century)A smile costs nothing, but gives a lot.It makes the person who receives it rich, without the giver becoming poorer.It only takes a moment, but the memory remains - sometimes forever.No one is so rich that he can do without it,and nobody is so poor that he could not be made richer through a smile. A laugh brings happiness into the home, promotes goodwill in business and is a sign of friendship.It gives rest to the weary, hope to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad and it isnature's best remedy for anger.You cannot buy it, it cannot be begged for, borrowed or stolen,

for it is worthless until it is really given.Some people are too tired, to give you a smile.Give them yours, because nobodyneeds a smile more than the one who no longer has one to give.

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Figure 14. Poem Lächeln and translation by this author.9

forgetting her. She was always concerned with the other person’s well-being. Bleib mir gesund (stay healthy) was one of her most familiar sayings. When I called her three days before her passing, her last words were: Bleib mir gesund.

She was a great story teller. There was one about the first train ride from Braunschweig to Vienenburg and Harz at the end of the 1830s concerning which, she once had an original document. She had learned it by heart and recited it heartily. In the last years, the story had abridged forms, until one day it did not return. In the midst of a conversation, she was apt to come out with some poetry. They might be rather prosaic verses about not whether fish make love. Above water they don’t do it and below water, we can’t see them. But it might equally be a short citation from Goethe or Schiller.

One day we were speaking about laughing and smiling. Without hesitating, she recited from memory a poem about a smile (fig. 14) which has become a favourite. Christel was not an intellectual. She would not have considered herself learned. She was almost always quiet. But beneath that quiet surface lay a world as vast and uncharted as the sky of astronomy, which she studied carefully. It was a serene world, a transcendent world, always true and honest, always generous, always magnanimous. She looked at bodies to paint them and occasionally to sculpt them. Ultimately, however, her eyes were focused on what went on inside: in the mind, in the heart and soul (fig. 15). Officially she was a teacher: unofficially she was a physician of the spirit and the soul (a Seelsorger in the literal sense), completely rooted in the here and now, but always with an eye upwards to the heavens, the stars, the unending, the eternal. Physically, we never came closer than a hug. Metaphysically, she was one of the great loves of my life. She called me Bruderherz (Brother heart). I called her Schwesterherz (Sister heart).

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Figure 15. A poster in Berlin in front of the Staatsoper, with a saying: “Who can read hearts so well, knows what love is,” which could have been written for Christel.10

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1Notes Figures 1-2. Photographs by the Author2 Figure 3. Alte Apotheke: https://www.wolfenbuettel.de/Tourismus/Erleben/Kultur-erleben/Stadtansichten?NavID=2672.50&nhv=1&srb=1&id=5d383dc0a21e9e0a9d000003 Figure 4. Duke August: https://www.wikiwand.com/de/Wolfenb%C3%BCttel3 Figure 5. Altes Schloss: https://www.wolfenbuettel.de/Stadtleben/Die-Stadt/Stadtgeschichte Figure 6. Wolfenbüttel Schloss: https://www.google.nl/search?q=schloss+wolfenbuttel&newwindow=1&sxsrf=ACYBGNT8G494QxIicoXFcHfJh_bl95ionA:1577617627201&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjiyIrS29rmAhXBPFAKHfSsAzUQ_AUoAXoECBAQAw&biw=2048&bih=1034#imgrc=abxC3tozUUmhGM:&spf=15776176321904 Figure 7. Klein Venedig then: https://www.facebook.com/pg/nostalgisches.wolfenbuettel/posts/ Figure 8: Klein Venedig now: https://www.wolfenbuettel.de/Tourismus/Erleben/Kultur-erleben/Stadtansichten?NavID=2672.50&nhv=1&srb=1&id=565f04226465762c515e02005 The traditional idea was that such persons literally had a little bird in their heads: https://www.expath.de/useful-german-idiom-einen-vogel-haben/6 Figure 9. Aerial View of Stadtmarkt 14: https://www.wolfenbuettel.de/Stadtleben/Die-Stadt/Daten-und-Statistik7 Figure 10. Prinzenpalais: https://www.nordmedia.de/pages/service/location_guide/subpages/festsaal__prinzenpalais_wolfenbuettel/index.htmlFigure 11: Festzaal: https://www.nordmedia.de/pages/service/location_guide/subpages/festsaal__prinzenpalais_wolfenbuettel/index.htmlHistory of Prinzenpalais: http://tonart-wf.de/das-prinzenpalais-pp/die-bewohner/8 Figures 12-13. Photographs by author. 9 Figure 14. Lächeln: https://www.wissensuchtwege.de/Archiv/download/einlaecheln.pdf910Notes Figure 15. Photograph by author.