"Christmas letters"

I wish to invite you to the project "Christmas letters". You can write a letter about Christmas and New Year holidays in your land and send it via Snail mail. What are cooked for celebration, what presents made, what Christmas characters are in your country. Tell about your connection with this holidays, tell about best Christmas present you have got.

Postcard and letter from Germany:





Thank you Susanne!

Postcard from Germany

The Rhine is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe.

The Rhine and the Danube formed most of the northern inland frontier of the Roman Empire and, since those days, the Rhine has been a vital, navigable waterway, and carried trade and goods deep inland. It has also served as a defensive feature and has been the basis for regional and international borders. The many castles and prehistoric fortifications along the Rhine testify to its importance as a waterway. River traffic could be stopped at these locations, usually for the purpose of collecting tolls, by the state that controlled that portion of the river.

Rhine

Postcard from Germany

Postcard from Germany

Jonathan Borofsky, The Walking Man, 1995, Munich



The Walking Man, completed in 1995, stands in front of the new Munich Re insurance company headquarters on the Leopoldstrasse in Munich. The sculpture has been situated so that people end up walking through the legs of the figure to enter and leave the building.

This 56 foot tall sculpture was made in sections at the La Paloma factory in Sun Valley, California. The sections were then transported to Munich where we spent five weeks bringing the parts together. The sculpture has a steel inner structure and a fiberglass outer shell. In fact, there is a steel staircase inside the upper body of the figure which allowed us to assemble the final sections of the sculpture from the inside. Before the interior of the sculpture was completely sealed off, we placed a metal time capsule inside the sculpture with written statements from both the workers who built the sculpture, as well as the workers at Munich Re.

Jonathan Borofsky (born 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American artist who lives and works in Maine.

He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University in 1964, after which he continued his studies at France's Ecole de Fontainebleau and received his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University in 1966. In the 1960's, Mr. Borofsky's art sought to interconnect minimalism and pop art.

On May 21, 2006, Mr. Borofsky received an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon, his alma mater.

Jonathan Borofsky's most famous works, at least among the general public, are his Hammering Man sculptures. "Hammering Men" have been installed in various cities around the world. The largest Hammering Man is in Frankfurt, Germany and the second largest is in Seattle, Washington. Other Hammering Men are in New York City, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Basel, Seoul, and Washington, D.C..

In May 2006, Mr. Borofsky's "Walking to the Sky" was permanently installed on the campus of Carnegie Mellon near the intersection of Forbes Avenue and Morewood Avenue. The piece was temporarily installed at Rockefeller Center during the fall of 2004 and in 2005 at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas.

Jonathan Borofsky
borofsky.com

Postcard from Germany

Frankfurt am Main is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany. The city is at the centre of the larger Frankfurt Rhine Main Region which has a population of 5.3 million and is Germany's second largest metropolitan area. A part of early Franconia, the inhabitants were the early Franks. The city is located on an ancient ford on the river Main, which is a shallow crossing. The German word is "Furt". Thus the city's name receives its legacy as being the "ford of the Franks".

Situated on the Main River, Frankfurt is the financial and transportation centre of Germany and the largest financial centre in continental Europe. It is the place of residence of the European Central Bank, the German Federal Bank, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the Frankfurt Trade Fair, as well as several large commercial banks. Frankfurt International Airport is one of the world's busiest airports, Frankfurt Central Station is one of the largest terminal stations in Europe, and the Frankfurter Kreuz (Autobahn interchange) is the most heavily used interchange in continental Europe. Frankfurt is the only German city listed as one of ten Alpha world cities. Frankfurt lies in the former American Occupation Zone of Germany, and it was formerly the headquarters city of the U.S. Army in Germany, but what is left of that organization has moved out of Frankfurt to some more remote location.

Frankfurt am Main

Postcard from Germany

Postcard from Germany

Bad Oeynhausen is a spa town in the Minden-Lübbecke district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
Bad Oeynhausen is located on the banks of the Weser river, which runs along the eastern edges of the town. Bad Oeynhausen has the world's highest carbonated, thermal saltwater fountain, the Jordan Sprudel (or the Jordansprudel). On calm days the fountain gets up to 40 meters high. The water of the spring is believed to have many medicinal qualities, giving rise to a number of health spas.

Bad Oeynhausen

Postcard from Germany

Neuschwanstein Castle is a 19th-century Bavarian palace on a rugged hill near Hohenschwangau and Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as an homage to Richard Wagner, the King's inspiring muse. Although public photography of the interior is not permitted, it is the most photographed building in Germany and is one of the country's most popular tourist destinations.

Ludwig did not allow visitors to his castles, but after his death in 1886 the castle was opened to the public (in part due to the need to pay off the debts Ludwig incurred financing its construction). Since that time over 50 million people have visited the Neuschwanstein Castle. About 1.3 million people visit annually, with up to 6,000 per day in the summer. The palace has appeared in several movies, and was the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty Castle at both Disneyland Park and Hong Kong Disneyland and for the Cinderella Castles at the Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland.

The palace is owned by the state of Bavaria, unlike nearby Hohenschwangau Castle, which is owned by the head of the house of Wittelsbach, currently Franz, Duke of Bavaria. The Free State of Bavaria has spent more than €14.5 million on Neuschwanstein's maintenance, renovation and visitor services since 1990.

Wikipedia
neuschwanstein.de

Postcard from Germany

The Triumph of Galatea (Fragment), Raphael


Raphael Sanzio, usually known by his first name alone (in Italian Raffaello; April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520) was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop, and, despite his early death at thirty-seven, a large body of his work remains, especially in the Vatican, whose frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career, although unfinished at his death. After his early years in Rome, much of his work was designed by him and executed largely by the workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models.

His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (from 1504-1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.

The Triumph of Galatea
Raphael, 1512
Fresco
295 × 224 cm
Villa Farnesina, Rome



The Triumph of Galatea is a fresco masterpiece completed in 1512 by the Italian painter Raphael for the Villa Farnesina in Rome.

The Farnesina was built for the Sienese banker Agostino Chigi, one of the richest men of that age. The Farnese family later acquired and renamed the villa, smaller than the more ostentatious palazzo at the other side of the Tiber. The fresco is a mythological scene of a series embellishing the open gallery of the building, a series never completed which was inspired to the "Stanze per la giostra" of the poet Angelo Poliziano. In Greek mythology, the beautiful Nereid Galatea had fallen in love with the peasant shepherd Acis. Her consort, one-eyed giant, Polyphemus, after chancing upon the two lovers together, lobbed an enormous pillar and killed Acis.

Raphael did not paint any of the main events of the story. He chose the scene of the nymph's apotheosis (Stanze, I, 118-119). Galatea appears surrounded by other sea creatures whose forms are somewhat inspired by Michelangelo, whereas the bright colors and decoration are supposed to be inspired by ancient Roman painting. At the left, a Triton (partly man, partly fish) abducts a sea nymph; behind them, another Triton uses a shell as a trumpet. Galatea rides a shell-chariot drawn by two dolphins.

While some have seen in the model for Galatea the image of the courtesan, Imperia, Agostino Chigi's lover, Rafael's near-contemporary, the artist and art biographer Giorgio Vasari, wrote that Raphael did not mean for Galatea to resemble any one human person, but to represent ideal beauty. Her gaze is directed upward to heaven, reflecting Platonic love.

Raphael
Galatea