choco_frosh | Realm: Architecture - Subrealm: Kloster Petershausen

As you all know by now, I spend the greatest proportion of my time (when not asleep or mostly so) in the Stadtarchiv Konstanz. It’s housed in a rather attractive 18th century building in pink and cream, with thick masonry walls (mostly—there’s a bit on the third floor where they’ve redone the layout and you can see that some of it’s half-timbered), a few remaining Rococco excrescences around the dormers, massive hallways, and hardwood floors (rather scuffed here in the Benutzersall, but hey). My Tandem Partner didn’t know it, but it was formerly a dormitory building for the ancient Abbey of Petershausen, around which the suburb which now constitutes most of Konstanz grew up. The things they don’t teach people...though she’s from near Mülhausen, so she has an excuse.
The history of this building is really a paradigm for that of Germany as a whole. The Abbey was heavily damaged by the Swedes (yes, you heard correctly) in the Thirty Years War, but the Abbey recovered sufficiently to totally rebuild itself. And from various plans of the city, I discover that in 1840 it was a Lyceum; under the second and third Reichs it was a barracks. It now houses a museum, the Stadtarchiv, one or two other local government thingies, a daycare center, and a café. Yeah. German social history in one structure...

Other notes:
1: while typing this, I spelled ‘housed’ with an a, and twice mixed up y and z. I’ve been in Germany too long…

2: Since my last post, we got our exams back. I somehow managed to pass (by the skin of my teeth), despite making some very dumb mistakes--given my backgrouond, they should’ve just failed me for getting diplomatic edition critical editions mixed up, instead of giving me partial credit on that question for having some clue what they were talking about. In fact, the exam, as well as being extremely easy, was very generously graded. In fact, I couldn’t see how anyone had failed, and made the mistake of saying so to the person next to me...

3: Also since last post, we’ve had a visit from Margaret and Catherine (sister-in-law and her flatmate, for those who don’t know them). Details will probably go up on the blog of someone who actually did all the touristy stuff. I just helped translate the menu at a couple of restaurants and alarmed Grace by talking about Harry Potter and the Writers of Fanfic. Still, this took up enough time to restrain me somewhat from posting.