A few weeks ago, I had to go to Strasbourg for professional reasons. This French city, located on the western bank of the Rhine River, has not always been part of France. For centuries, its inhabitants pledged their loyalty to the Germanic Holy Roman Empire. Early on, its clergy embraced the teachings of Martin Luther, and Strasbourg, a “Free City” granted self-rule, became an important center of the Protestant Reform.
In 1681, after a rapid siege, the Sun King Louis XIV made a triumphant entry into the city. The Alsace region, of which Strasbourg was the capital, had already become part of the Kingdom of France at the end of the bloody Thirty Years’ War. Ignoring previous treaties, Louis XIV claimed this independent Protestant city for France.
Though he granted Protestants a certain freedom of religion, he returned the city’s beautiful cathedral to the Catholics. At a time of fierce persecution of Protestants elsewhere in France, Strasbourg’s Protestants were subjected to many restrictions yet could discreetly practice their faith.
In the narrow streets around the red sandstone cathedral, once the highest building in the world, Catholics and Protestants, French and German voices, mingled. The city was on its way to becoming, as it still is today, a hub of two languages and cultures. At times, they coexisted in precarious harmony; at others, neighbor was pitted against neighbor as two great Empires fought over the city’s destiny.
In 1871, France’s Emperor Napoleon III lost the city to Bismarck, first Chancellor of the united German Empire. The French Republic won it back after World War I, only to lose the city to Nazi Germany, which occupied it from 1940 until 1944. In 1949, Strasbourg was proclaimed capital of Europe and today, the Council of Europe has its headquarters there. The city, disputed for centuries, has become the symbol of European aspirations to live in peace.
I have been to Strasbourg many times; I like to go there because it is the one place in France where I feel “at home.” When I speak, no one ever asks me where I’m from. Like me, many Strasburgers have a hint of an accent when they speak French. Many, again like me, are bilingual. In the place of my English, they speak the Alsatian dialect of German.
If they see my family name, they simply assume I’m one of them. It’s the “i” in Honicker—rather than an “e,” as in Erich Honecker, the leader of East Germany at time of the fall of the Berlin Wall—that suggests I share their Alsatian roots.
I have other good reasons for feeling at home in Strasbourg. In a bakery there, I discovered an almond ring, a favorite pastry of mine, tasting exactly like the one my mother used to buy at the Danish Bakery of Pottsville, once located at 20th and Market Streets. Some readers may remember the Vienna bread, fresh-sliced and warm when it was handed over the counter by Mrs. Frederickson. There were also glazed doughnuts, still the best I’ve ever tasted.
I discovered (or rediscovered) the almond ring in a bakery at the edge of a canal in Strasbourg’s Old Town. That little bakery, its façade painted burnt orange, could have been a setting for one of Hans Christian Andersen’s tales. As the buttery pastry and the almond filling melted in my mouth, I was transported back to childhood and the delights of discovering that “European” treat in a bakery on Market Street, once painted burnt orange, just like the one in Strasbourg.
My interest in the Rhine River began in high school, thanks to Herr Hartley, my German teacher. He was demanding; he made us learn poetry by heart, and one of those poems I can still recite today!
He had us learn “Die Lorelei” by Heinrich Heine. The poem is the story of a skipper and his boat, dashed against the rocks because he could not resist the voice of a golden-haired Mädchen. Seated on a rocky summit high above the Rhine, as she combs her dazzling hair, this entrancing beauty sings a mournful tune, casting a spell on the skipper just as for decades, her words have cast a spell on me.
On my last trip to Strasbourg, I did something I’d never done before. I travelled to the banks of the Rhine and crossed to Kehl, Germany, riding one of the newest lines of Strasbourg’s tramway. Though I was not dashed against the rocks like the skipper, I lost, not my life, but certain romantic illusions about the Rhine.
Or I may have simply been in the wrong place. The legendary Lorelei inhabits a summit about 160 miles north of Strasbourg. Where the tram crosses the river, there’s not a rocky cliff in sight. Worse still, once I reached the German side, I entered a zone of gas stations and discount alcohol and tobacco stores offering prices the French, on their own territory, can only dream about.
There were also tacky hotels surrounded by bleak, almost-empty parking lots. This is not where Strasburgers go for the weekend; this is where those willing to pay go for sex. In Germany sex is an industry and brothels are legal businesses. In France, prostitution is hidden from public view, and clients, not sex-workers, can receive fines for paying for sex.
The only positive note of that little excursion was the purchase of a delicious soft pretzel in a Kehl bakery.
I don’t know much about my family history, but I suspect my past is connected to Strasbourg and the banks of the Rhine. Despite my claim to French nationality, I’ll always be a foreigner in France—except for Strasbourg, where I get a sense I belong.
As for the Rhine, once back in my country home, I picked up a book I’ve been trailing for years, Rhine Journey: a novel, by English author Ann Schlee. I bought this book over 30 years ago in a book store in New York. I finally opened and read it last month.
There I found it, the Rhine I’d been dreaming of. In a 19th century journey down that river, a young woman undergoes a transformation that quietly but radically changes her life. We follow her inner journey; we also intensely experience the Rhine River as it was then.
You can find it at the Pottsville Library. Don’t wait 30 years like I did. Pick up Rhine Journey and enjoy it now!
