Landscape and details in urban areas in Germany

Hello all,

I will start this thread to collect information about details in landscaping and urban details in Germany in different times.

@Brad: maybe it would be a good idea to open a separate forum for this kind of thread. Just like the line of forums for differnt engines and rolling stock. If you decide to open such a forum please move this thread over to the forum.


In a row of comments about a kitbash from Beverly56 this idea got born. If you think that this thread is a thing we could use, than don't hesitate to say so.


I will begin with a small detail that is very different from Germany to all the other countrys around.

If you ever see a picture from a German town before the reunification in the 1990s, you will see that there are almost no flagpoles around at privat houses.

When I drove back then up to Denmark, or when I was in the US in 1987 the first thing I recognized was the flagpoles in a lot of private propertys. Back home I wasn't used to this. We had flagpoles in front of the town hall, the police station, the school, the railway station and maybe the post office. And it almost always were three poles. One for the local flag of the town or the county (If wanted I can elborate about those units in another post), one for the "Bundesland" (like Schleswig-Holstein, Bavaria, Hessen or Hamburg: well... Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin were towns and Bundesländer at the same time). And the third pole for the German flag. If there wasn't a flagpole in front of the postoffice then the had a small flag that were set into a holder at the front wall of the house.

Those flags were hoisted at officially dates, and in case of mourning they were set on half pole. Especially he last point was something were people got notivce that something had happend in times before radio, TV or Internet were running almost constantly during the day. I remeber often when I came home from school and saw on my way past the post office that the flag was set with a black ribbon that I went home and asked what happend they have the falg out with a black ribbon.

Any poles set out in towns along the streets were of the kind that were set up for special occasions only and almost excusivly for decoration purposes.

Well this should be it for the moment, please let me know if you want more of this kind of details. Also let me know if there are special details you want to know, or want to read about.

Uwe,

Thank you for starting this new thread. I will check it often for photos as well as for historical information and personal stories about Germany.

Perhaps some of the people on the German speaking forum might post photos they have of their locations, and perhaps you could do short translations of what's in the photos.

Uwe:

This is great information. As Americans, we would tend to Americanize a German landscape. Though I'm sure that some American landscapes in Germany were Germanized. While I'm sure other Europeans would get it right, they may not understand some of the subtle differences.

So, why the difference before and after unification? Did the unification cause a swell in national pride that folks wanted their own flagpoles?

Jeremy

First time EVERYONE was waving a German flag was when they were winning or playing the World Cup Soccer Match!! All i had was a East German flag and one from the time of the kaiser..but it was good enough. One place you do see flags in private at least here in Hessen, is in places that have garden houses. Most Germans don't have a lot of yard, so there are patches of land where people have little garden plots and small garden houses. They are usually fenced off and people spend their summers there relaxing or puttering around in a little garden. There is one in Frankfurt that has a narrow Gauge line though it, and they have a small club that runs the engines. They have a Brigadelok and Brigade Wagons as well as an old WW1 American diesel (its inoperative)
You see them flying their flags in these garden plots, but you might see a Croatian or Italian flag, A flag of a Soccer team, a pirate flag, or perhaps a US or even Rebel flag! I have seen these as far back as the 80s and don't know what was around before that.
Now if you go back to Epoch 1 and 2..almost every house has this thing that can hold a flag..I will get pictures They are still on the houses.. Before 1945 Germans would show their patriotism and I would almost bet that it was a must to have these flag holders. They are still used once in a while like Uwe said, at Fests and Holidays. Where I am from the flags are Red White (Hessen) and down in Barvaria of course the White/Blue checked flag.
During WW1 you would see a Black White Red flag of Germany. This same flag was also flown during the NS time of the 30s and 40s along with the Nazi flag. That is why it is associated with the Nazis today, even though that flag itself is not a Nazi flag

Hello JeremyRadialman wrote:

So, why the difference before and after unification? Did the unification cause a swell in national pride that folks wanted their own flagpoles?

As Kelley wrote a flagpole in our front or back yard still isn't very usual. If there is a private flagpole in Germany it is mostly in those " Schrebergaerten ". But as Kelley wrote there you will see all kind of flags, but almost never the black/red/gold of our own flag. Foreign flags either showed that the owner of the allotment was from that nation, or that it is the prefered place for the vacation of the owner of the allotment. After 1960 a lot of foreign people came to work into Germany. Or you would see the flag of the prefered soccer team or a Jolly Roger. The closest that one came to a official German flag was the flag of the area where you were or originally came from. For me that would have been the blue/white/red of Schleswig-Holstein .
Sidenote: in the wiki-article the area number 2 is stated as:
Lauenburg (formally a duchy - Herzogtum)
which is wrong. It is not formally a duchy, but it is named after the duchy it long ago was. The name today is " Herzogtum Lauenburg ". It is one of only two districts that have a aristocratic name. The other one is the Grafschaft Bentheim . The reason for me to mention this is that I'm from Mölln , and now living in Grambek . Besides if you change the language of those wiki-articles and also of those that are linked within to German then you often will get more information and sometimes also some better pictures.

The very first time that I saw public use of the black/red/gold was when the people partied under the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin during those crazy days in late 1989 and 1990. And then again in the "Summer fairy tale" when the soccer world championship was hold in Germany. All of a sudden everybody mounted the flag at their cars and waved them at every opportunity.

I believe that it was because the Germans were forced to show the flag during the Nazi regime, and if one didn't do so, he got at least a reminder by the " Blockwart ". So showing the flag back then wasn't solely a show of patriotism, but more often a must do to prevent negative consequences. This might be a reason why showing the flag wasn't very popular during the years after the war.

The reunification as a time stamp to change this is also because the reunification had to be allowed by the four allied powers America, England, France and Russia. Therefore the proceedings leading to the reunification were named the "4 plus 1 proceedings". Finally Germany was at peace with the world. Until then we still only had a armistice. Now Germany was really a free country again.

But then the term: "I'm proud to be a German!" still is very unpopular among the democratic German population. This because the term is a slogan that is used by the NeoNazis.

This should be enough for tonight, and I will close with the words used today in Hannover at the opening of the Cebit by the Gouvenour of the "Partner State 2009":

"I'll be back... Hasta laVista Baby..."

...and that's true, he did say that, I heard it on the radio today...

Many thanks for starting this thread Uwe. I know it's going to be a gold mine for me, especially with the East-West locality (as someone on here put it) for my layout.

Ewe, I thought the King of Hanover said those words to the King of Prussia and Herr Bismark?!!
Some people were talking about doors and how to judge the proper scale. Well I am 68 inches tall and in some doors of the older houses I just fit in and other doors I have about a foot or more over me. I wouldn't use doors as an absolute gauge. Funny that in Germany there is a standard and norm for everything except doors, and in America we have no standards and norms for anything but doors. Just my opinion

Hello Kelley,
Kelley wrote:

Some people were talking about doors and how to judge the proper scale. Well I am 68 inches tall and in some doors of the older houses I just fit in and other doors I have about a foot or more over me. I wouldn't use doors as an absolute gauge. Funny that in Germany there is a standard and norm for everything except doors, and in America we have no standards and norms for anything but doors. Just my opinion

The Faller, Kibri and Vollmer kits are or houses that are from relativly modern times. Therefore I think we can use the doors to compare the scale of a house. But you're right, in most of the older house I also have problems walking through doors. As I call it it is a very polite live you live: bowing all the time when you enter a room...

About standard for doors. When I did build my house I got asked by the contractor, a Danish company, if I want German or Scandinavian doors. If I remember it right then German doors are 2.0 meter high, and Scandinavian doors would have been 2.1 meter high. Well those scandinavians are higher then the Germans...
...or is it just because of the helmets those vikings are wearing...

Anyway, in my IKEA kitchen from 1988 the counter was higher then the counter from the German kitchens I could buy back then. I got to knew it when I installed the dishwasher later...

Now let's hope for som good weather tomorrow, so I can take a few good pictures.

Hello Matt,

you wrote in the thread about the "Kibri, Faller And Vollmer Buildings":

mdvholland wrote:

Keep your thread coming! Coming nice spring weather, hop on a bike, take a camera with you, and inform us on your surrounding landscape and towns. If I migth make a suggestion? Get the unusual normal stuff: phone booth, police office, supermarket (there´s no supermarkets in Z, but every town has one! why not on your layout?), is a German gas station different from US or other European countries? Etcetera

I'm already gone on some walks through my hometown to take pictures since the weather was good to me: some sun, some clouds, but no rain. And yes I try hard to make lots of this normal stuff. People were looking at me while I took pictures of the cobblestones on the street...

@Kelley: I found a lot of houses that were as crooked as you could imagine...

One thing I learned, and saw more clearly while going out with open eyes:

There's a lot of details that changed gradualy over time without that I really noticed before. I had a picture of my town in my mind that got a hard reality check. So it might be hard to find those spots that still shows details of older eras. But they are there, I just have to find them, and maybe some old black and whites from my old albums can help here. I have a scanner for those too.

Supermarkets nowadays look a lot like their counterpart in the US, maybe just a little bit smaller. Lots of names you will find here and in the US, and many of those chains seems to use one blueprint for every place they open. Look at McDonalds, or ALDI or others of this kind. This is called Corporate Identity I believe.

Something else is it about having a supermarket everywhere. Back when I was a kid we had small shops for everything. In my street we had a small shop where we could buy only milk. And we went there with a canteen and they filled them up from a big can with a kind of ladle, and we had a small shop for grocerys and everydays stuff. There were more of those shops just a few streets away. Today my mother has to go more then a mile for the next supermarket, because all those small shops in the neighbourhood are gone. In the village I'm living now we don't have a shop. The baker is coming around once a week with his van, selling bread and such, but for everything else we have to drive to the next town.

Gas stations today also are a lot alike, just the price signs are different in names and prices:

while we have

Benzin
Super
Super Plus
Diesel

in Germany you find

93 Oktan
95 Oktan
Diesel

in Denmark. The main brands you can find at all places, and in the same design, and maybe some local brands too.

Berverly asked also about the back yards of the houses. I will take a train ride in the next few days, to make some pictures of those from this perspective, and try to get some views elsewhere too. But I think that will mainly wait until it is somewhat warmer, because right now those backyards still look a lot like winter without snow... I will do the ride again as soon as it looks greener again.

About those houses of the Adlerstreet kits:

Houses styles changed over time. While really old houses mostly are build with natures doing in mind, at some point a kind of disregard for natures laws came to view. In the beginning the roof was mostly overhanging the sides of a house, and thus protecting the top of the side walls from hard rain. Especially protecting the walls from getting water into the wall. Then those roofs were going just to the outside edge of the wall, and the only kind of overhang came from the roof gutter. I remember in my childhood home (the house build in 1935) that when it rained hard, or when snow got blown under the roof and started thawing the walls got wet. Back in 1935 the electric cables used often had a fabric insulations instead of the plastics from today. In this situtions I often had a tingling feeling in my fingers when touching the wallpaper. We changed the complete cables back then...
Nowadays houses get more overhang in the roof again. I think people are getting more concerned about building fitting for natures law instead of fighting against the laws followings.

Other things about nature being the reason for details:

Those old houses in the mountains often had stones on the roof. This was also for protection against the snow sliding down from the roof, and hitting people. And the snow created a insulation when on the roof.

At thatched houses the roof had to be steeper, because then the rain would better run down the straws to the edge, and not seeping through the straws into the house.

Near our coasts houses are build so that that the small side is facing into the main direction of the wind.


Well, I love those walks, because I learn so much just by doing this myself.

Uwe,

Thank you for your insights. I find them valuable in ways I never thought possible. Please wait for spring to arrive to find the best photos. It should be starting to be spring in my location now, but instead it has snowed quite a bit yesterday and the overnight temperatures are going down to -20 and -30 for the next few days. Weather here is what it should be in January

Uwe,

Very interesting information. Thank you. I find it interesting builders are going back to the old ways. I guess our ancestors were on the right track.

Thanks,
Jerry

Hello,

since I forgot to charge the accu of my camera fully for todays trip, I will start with some other pictures now...

Those are examples of the newer use of cobblestones in Germany. More in the next post. Just one picture for comparison of the size for the stones. The shoe is size 11:

here we see our market place:

the guy sitting on the stone is like me. For more details about him read about Till Eulenspiegel , and a closer picture of this statue you find in the German wikipedia version:

Uwe, Nice picture. Where are the people? Cheers, Jim CCRR:)

those cobblestones are like the old way to do streets. Just like here behind the church hill:



This could be created perhaps if you use small stones for aquarium use in white glue as material. And at the sides a little bit of powdery green foliage stuff.

Socalz44 wrote:

Uwe, Nice picture. Where are the people? Cheers, Jim CCRR:)

I was out around time to prepare dinner...

Here we have a old road out in a village:

Often those old cobblestones road got paved over, or were replaced by asphalt. But lately in inner citys cobblesstones had a kind of come back. Just tody they laid the stones like this:

and sometimes they don't use white colour for the pedestrian crossing marking:

often those roads are clearly not made for todays means of traffic: