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Magazine
ROUNDABOUT
Layered in time
HUGH AND COLLEEN GANTZER
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Schaffhausen is a palimpsest: a manuscript that has been repeatedly written and overwritten by 10 centuries of history.
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Church towers stood like religious sentinels guarding disciplined rows of medieval houses winding down cobbled streets. In the distance, wooded mountains hunched protectively, softened by river mist.
Photo: Hugh and Colleen Gantzer
Magical old-world ambience: Schaffhausen.
From the high Munot Fortress, the Swiss town of Schaffhausen resembled a scene from a Disney film.
Church towers stood like religious sentinels guarding disciplined rows of medieval houses winding down cobbled streets. In the distance, wooded mountains hunched protectively, softened by river mist. Many of Walt Disney’s films had been set in such fairy tale towns. But, for all its magical ambience, Schaffhausen is really a palimpsest: a manuscript that has been repeatedly written and overwritten by 10 centuries of history.
We discovered this as we looked beyond the touristic glitter of the town.
In nearby Neuhausen, we rode a bobbing, spray-drenched boat across the turbulent Rhine to the widest waterfall in Europe: 150 meters from end to surging end. Today they are a tourist attraction. One thousand years ago, they were an impassable riverine barrier and gave birth to Schaffhausen. Since all cargo and passengers to and from its giant neighbour, Germany had to be transhipped around the falls, Count Eberhard III founded this town to serve this burgeoning trade route. He also opened his own mint, underscoring the town’s status as a business hub. Then, inevitably, because the church and the State were virtual extensions of each other in the Middle Ages, he established an abbey here. Soon, the abbot became the ruler of the town.
We walked round the abbey’s beautiful Romanesque Cathedral of All Saints. The Romans drew heavily on the architectural idioms of the Greeks in the same way as the British adapted Hindu and Islamic forms while creating their imperialistic and, so-called, Indo-Saracenic style. All Saints is still a living church though it has been shorn of much of its original Roman Catholic ebullience. Oddly, in spite of the fact that a bishop no longer presides over the town, his crest of a rampant ram still stands outside his former palace. This has also become the emblem of the canton of Schaffhausen. The ram, the male sheep, could have given the town its name; or it could have come from the ships that had to unload here; or it could even have arisen from the German word for the row-houses of the labourers who transhipped the cargo from the ships around the daunting Rhine Falls.
Growing prosperity
Thanks to this growing transhipment business, and the commercial activities generated by it, the town became so prosperous that it supported 12 craftsmen’s guilds. The guild-houses were exclusive clubs noted for the roistering of their members and the flamboyance of their facades. Walking across the town square, we were struck by the guild houses’ oriel windows …status symbols in those days… and the elaborate rococo stucco work. Some of the other houses had been destroyed in a great fire after which wooden houses were prohibited. The Town Council, however, permitted the beautiful, old, half-timbered mint to stand because it marked the beginning of the prosperity of the town.
We were now in the late 15th century but already there were rumblings of a storm brewing across its borders.
In the beginning of the 16th century, the storm erupted. The cultural tsunami of the Reformation swept out from Germany and engulfed the whole of Europe. Martin Luther, a German Catholic priest, railed against the avariciousness of many of his fellow prelates. He called for a reformation of the Church, a shunning of pomp and ostentation, a return to simpler rituals and practices. Others took up his call and religious wars raged across the continent. To improve Schaffhausen’s defences, all men were conscripted to work on the building of the Munot Fortress. We drove up to it and walked around its grounds, shaded by spreading old trees with glittering bronze-gold foliage. Its circular, stone bastion stands free with a deep moat encircling it. It gives extensive views of the town and the countryside around, and a watchman and his family still live in the Tower House and ring the 9 p.m. curfew bell every night. Today, however, the town’s gates are no longer closed at the sound of the bell.
Turbulent times
The Protestant Reformation was as traumatic for Europe as Partition was for us. Suddenly, religious beliefs built vicious barriers of hatred between neighbours, even between close relatives, as Catholics and Protestants fought to worship in their chosen way. Curiously, in the midst of all this ferment, a man named Joachim Habrecht created, and installed, an astronomical clock in a tower in the market. It still works after 450 years. It not only shows the hours and the days of the week, the phases of the moon and five other horological events but a special hand also indicates the rising and setting nodes. We, in India, refer to these as the serpent navagrahas, Rahu and Ketu. In this clock, the hand that indicates these is shaped like a snake-like dragon.
Also in this square is a statue to Caspar, the youngest of the Three Kings from the Orient who visited the infant Jesus. According to Father Heras, the famed Orientalist of St. Xaviers College, Mumbai, the Three Kings were from India.
Do the dragon hand of the clock and the Caspar statue indicate an old trade connection with India?
Most of Schaffhausen’s trade was with Germany: they share a common border. From Germany came its prosperity. From Germany, too, came the Reformation. And, in the 19th century, from Germany, came a change in trading patterns that almost brought economic disaster to Schaffhausen. But, from Germany, also comes the Rhine. The people of the canton turned back to the Rhine. Using hydro turbines to tap the force of the river, they brought industrial power to factories across the valley. One of these factories is the famed IWC producing some of the world’s most sophisticated, and expensive, watches. As Romi Hebden, their PR Manager, told us in their glittering Museum, “Our Platinum Grande Complication , costs 364,000 Swiss Franks.”
It’s appropriate that the surging Rhine that was responsible for the birth of Schaffhausen, helped to resurrect the town, eight long centuries later.
Quick facts
Getting there: Less than an hour by train from Zurich Airport Station
Accommodation: One of the hotels is Hotel Ruden — e-mail: info@ruden.ch — conveniently within walking distance of the station and the attractions of the old town.
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