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In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry”
Wm. Blake

Well, Philipp Harth (1887-1968, son of a local stone mason, huge talent, works in places such as the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco) could.

His tiger stands guard on the Rhine promenade, snarling across the river at the state of Hesse.

Which is unsurprising, because they stole big chunks of Mainz after the war and animosity sits deep.

Happened like this.

During the post-world war 2 occupation period, the Russians got the east, the Brits got the north, the French got the southwest (again), the Americans got the southeast.

Using rivers as arbitrary boundaries (as one does – look at the Middle East, as a prime example), Mainz – which has straddled both sides of the Rhine since Roman times – was split between Hesse (American) and the Palatinate (French).

So Mainz found itself short of the suburbs of Amoeneberg, Kastel and Kostheim (known as AKK), plus Bischofsheim, Ginsheim and Gustavsburg.

And 100,000 inhabitants, compared with 1935.

And its industrial and tax base.

They’re still trying to get them back from Wiesbaden which absorbed them. (Though they’re still called Mainz-Kastel etc…).

I don’t really see it happening….

14 Mar This entry was published on 14 March, 2007 at 11:51. It’s filed under Uncategorized and tagged Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.