EVA BRAUN - PRISONER OF LOVE.

Almost ten years after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, I visited the eastern part of the city. The Brandenburg Gate was now the symbol of re-unification. Hectic reconstruction work had taken place at the end of the Unter de Linden. The Reichstag the seat of the German Parliament which had been damaged during the war, had now been beautifully reconstructed, with an impressive glass dome over the Plenary Hall. We could now visit the Bundestag, and even climb up to the dome.

Somewhere in this region there used to be the infamous Berlin bunker, where Adolf Hitler in his last desperate hour, decided to make an honest woman out of Eva Braun his mistress of sixteen years. As Soviet troops closed in on the Reichstag and Chancellery, Walter Wagner a minor official in the Propaganda Ministry, solemnized the marriage, in the presence of his associates Bormann and Goebells. It was April 29th 1945, just a few hours before their suicide. The marriage document that survived bore the proud signature of ‘Eva Hitler.’

Eva Braun was a Bavarian lass belonging to a lower middleclass family. She worked as an assistant to Hitler’s personal photographer Henrich Hoffman. In 1929, when Hitler visited the studio, this 17 year old girl fell madly in love with him. She was the one who initiated the affair through her love letters. She agreed to follow him to his mountain retreat in Obersalzburg, and become his mistress, much to the dismay of her parents.

But though her material needs were provided for, it was a life of isolation and loss of freedom. In a small wooden house near the Buchtesgaden (Hitler’s office), her only companions were his two secretaries and some peasants who spun linen for him. For most of the time they lived apart, as he was mostly preoccupied with his work. Even while at Obersalzburg he was kept busy, and used her only at his convenience. Eva was aware of her dubious position and kept her distance, especially when members of the Third Reich visited. During long periods of separation she wrote long loving letters to him. In turn his phone calls were full of endearments.

Eva was always well groomed, soft spoken and pretty in her own way. She spent her days reading, exercising and brooding around the house. She was prohibited from smoking, dancing or mingling with other men. She loved sports and was a good skier. Occasionally he would give her a week off to go skiing in Zurs with her friends, but she had to travel incognito. Eva kept a secret diary into which she poured out her feelings of neglect and humiliation.

Hitler thought nothing about belittling her before his friends. Once while she was sitting beside him he said, “A highly intelligent man should always choose a stupid woman. Imagine if on top of everything, I had a woman who interfered with my work! In my leisure time I want to have peace….”

But Eva was not a stupid woman. Her’s was a quiet dignity and inner strength that helped her survive. She was not interested in politics, but she would protest and bring to his notice, the abuses of mean men like Bormann. When Goebells wanted party members to eschew luxuries like cosmetics and perfumed hair in 1943, she demanded that the ban be scrapped. Another time when some stupid official forbade women from going into the mountains around Munich for skiing, she had the ban revoked. Without Hitler’s knowledge she helped many women like Mrs. Hess financially, so that they could escape Bormann’s cruelty.

In 1939, she was assigned a bedroom in Hitler’s Berlin residence, adjoining his room. It was literally a prison, with the limited view of a courtyard. She had to steal in and out by a side entrance, and had no access to the area where he entertained his guests. She was glad to go back to Obersalzburg.

Eric Kempka the chauffer was sure that Hitler loved her in his own way and could relax in her company. Hitler had said, “Fraulien Braun is too young to be the wife of an important leader of the Third Reich. But one day when I cease to be Fuhrer, I will retire to Linz and to a house managed by a small staff, and I will marry her.”

In 1945, when the war had tilted against the Germans, friends suggested that Eva leave Germany. But she stubbornly refused, and flew from Munich to the besieged city of Berlin, and drove straight to the Reich Chancellery. Hitler ordered her to go back but she stubbornly refused.
“Do you think I’ll let you die alone?” she asked.

After the marriage formality, the couple retired to their private room. Both bit into glass vials of cyanide. Eva lay on her bed, and looked as though she had fallen asleep. Hitler sat in his chair and shot himself in the head, making doubly sure he died.
According to his wishes, their bodies were wrapped up in blankets and ignited with gasoline flames in the garden of the Chancellery.

Was Eva Braun a sinner or a saint? Or was she just an immature girl who got caught up in a love trap with a megalomaniac?

HILDEGARD VON BINGEN – THE MAVERICK SAINT.

The drive along the Rhine between Koblenz and Bingen is very picturesque. There are some thirty odd castles in the area, all built in the Middle Ages and each with a legend of its own.

Bingen is situated at the junction of the Nahe (dirty muddy water) and the Rhine. It once held a strategic position, and was destroyed eight times by wars, over the last 1000 years.
Today it is a quiet laid back town on the banks of the Rhine. One a small island on the Rhine is the Mouseturm (Mouse Tower), Bingen’s special landmark, where Hatto II the cruel Archbishop of Mainz was eaten up by mice. It later became a signal tower for shipping, and a custom’s outpost.

Bingen however, has been made famous by a woman called Hildegard, a courageous feminist who dared to oppose the powerful Roman Catholic Church’s teachings about women. She defied the Canon Law which prohibited women from preaching, and evolved into a powerful preacher and teacher. She composed music and attested it with her name, refusing to remain anonymous. She studied Botany and became a herbal physician and a healer. She also excelled as a writer of theological books like “Book of Life’s Merits,” and “Book of Divine Love,” which explained her understanding of Salvation History. She even invented her own coded language.

Born into an aristocratic family in 1098, Hildegard was the last of ten children, and was tithed to the Church at the age of eight. She was entrusted to the care of a hermit woman called Jutta of Sponheim, who ran a hermitage. This was attached to the Monastery of Disibod. Here she was provided with minimal education and two meals a day, served at 3 a.m. and 3 p.m. She was a sickly child, who suffered from asthma and migraine.

The Disibod Hermitage attracted so many young women that it grew into a large Benedictine Community. Hildegard took her vows in her teens (1114) and lived quietly in this community for twenty years. Her view of the outside world was only through a window, and her only male contact was her confessor Monk Volmar, who became her friend, and eventually her scribe.

By now, Hildegard was experiencing apocalyptic visions. But when she realized that no one else had similar experiences, she stopped talking about them. However, realization gradually dawned that these visions were prophetic revelations. It prompted her to write her most famous composition SCIVIAS. It took ten years to complete. Because she had the approval of Pope Eugene III, it was read out at the Synod of Trier (1147-1148.)

When Jatta died in1136 Hildegard became the Superior of the Convent. But as this community grew, she felt the compulsion to step out of the cloister. Taking fifty nuns with her, she opened a new convent at Rupertsberg. In 1165, a sister convent was opened at Eibingen, eight miles away.

Hildegard wrote many papers. She built up a voluminous correspondence with clergy, rulers and even lay people. Her focus was on Renewal of the Church. She travelled to different places on preaching tours, making known her views on Creation of mankind and Redemption of the World. Popes, Emperors, nuns and priests sent people to Rupertsberg to hear her messages.

Hildegard was a natural feminist. She would not allow the Church to relegate women to an inferior role. She argued that woman was for man and man for woman, thus making them both of equal status. She taught that sexual pleasure was not a sin, and therefore should not be tainted by guilt; that menstruation was not unclean, but the shedding of innocent blood in wars was definitely unclean. She also opposed the Church’s teaching that woman was not made in the image of God. Rather she believed that in the inner being of God, there was a feminine and masculine relationship, confirming the complementarity of the sexes.

The atmosphere in the convents which she established was liberal. She encouraged the nuns to develop their spiritual, intellectual and artistic talents. There was no dull, somber atmosphere that prevailed in most convents. Here they could sing, play instruments and grow spiritually by listening to lectures on Theology. The nuns lived as normally as possible. They were allowed the luxury of warm baths, daily exercises and beer to put flesh and redness into their cheeks.

During the forty years she presided over Rupertsberg Convent, thousands of pilgrims came there for healing of their medical ailments. The Church ordered her to stop these miracles.

Even at the age of eighty, this feisty lady defied the Church authority, by burying a young man excommunicated by the Church, in the cemetery at Rupertsberg. The Canons ordered the body to be exhumed, but they couldn’t find the spot, as Hildegard had removed all the markers from the graves. The Canons retaliated by prohibiting mass, sacraments and music in the Abbey. The case dragged on for some time and was finally lifted in 1179. She died six months later, and was buried in the Eibingen church.

The Rupertsberg Convent was completely destroyed during the Thirty Year War. All that is left is a vaulted cellar.

In 1998, on Hildegard’s 900th birth anniversary, the Hildegard Forum was constituted at Rocher’s Hill. Since then there has been a renaissance and renewed interest in her visions and mystical knowledge.
A historical museum was also opened in her honour in 1998, in an old electricity generating station on the Rhine.

This daring polymath – a scholar, theologian, healer, writer – will probably never be elevated to sainthood because of her radical views. But Pope John Paul II finally conceded that this maverick saint was a “Doctor of the Church.”

.Agnes Durer- A Shrewd Businesswoman.

Motoring along the Romantic Highway in Germany between the Maine River and the Alps, one drives through picturesque villages, churches of Baroque and Rococo splendour, convents, cloisters and luscious fruit orchards. Nuremberg the ancient city of Imperial Diets was my destination. This city was made notorious by Hitler’s National Socialist Party. Once upon a time, the dreaded swastika adorned not only important buildings but was subconsciously embossed on every German heart.

Nuremberg is steeped in history. But my interest took me to the house of Albrecht Durer the most famous inhabitant of Nuremberg, who lived at 39, Albrecht Street from 1509 to 1528. He was a famous painter and engraver, and the house is preserved as it was during his time.

A young woman dressed in a long billowing skirt and a housewife’s bonnet, with a key ring dangling from her waist, greeted visitors at the door. She was a German actress impersonating Agnes, the wife of Albrecht Durer. She blended into the background, weaving her way through many rooms, and smiling and nodding at visitors.

It was the voice of Agnes which made the audio tour interesting. She related the story of the Durer household, of her husband’s work, of his friends, her daily chores, and her bland relationship with her illustrious spouse. Somewhere through the commentary one discovers a pang of loneliness in that voice, and is touched by the candour in which she confessed that she could come into her own only after Albrecht’s death.

Albrecht Durer had a very charismatic personality. He exuded an irresistible animal charm. His curly shoulder length locks, his blue penetrating eyes, his friendly demeanour made him a very popular figure in the society of that day. But he was vain as he was clever, and was the first man to paint a frontal picture of himself, highlighting his uncanny resemblance to the picture of Jesus.

Durer belonged to an artisan family. His friends were artisans, sculptors and painters, who used his workshop on the ground floor during the day, and congregated upstairs in the dining room at night for a pint of beer, a meal and discussions on politics. These were interspersed with loud guffaws and bawdy jokes. One can visualize Agnes as she went about her job of cooking in that dark and dingy kitchen, to fill the belly of Albrecht’s boisterous friends.

Agnes was the daughter of a rich copper merchant. The marriage was an arranged affair which took place in July 1494. But soon after the wedding, Albrecht took off on his travels, leaving his new wife behind. The job of being mistress of such a Bohemian establishment must have been daunting to the young girl. Throughout their life together Albrecht never expressed any tenderness or affection for his wife. In spite of being an artist,he was unromantic, and just could not comprehend her emotional needs. He referred to her as his house mate, who helped in the sale of his paintings and sculptures.

This attitude must have given his cronies a wrong impression. Though they didn’t openly criticize her in his presence, they considered her a mate unworthy of such a great man, an “incorrigible shrew and skinflint.” She was supposed to be a thorn in his side, who brought about his premature death by forcing him to overwork for money, right into his old age.

Agnes had the exacting job of packing and sending his works for sale all over Europe, some in boxes and some in barrels. Some of those barrels have been preserved, and are on display on the ground floor of the house. Agnes maintained her quiet dignity, while toiling for what was best for her husband and his business. This kept him in good humour, and left him free to pursue his artistry. Ironically, her hard work and patience turned her into a shrewd business woman.

After Albrecht’s death on 6th April 1528, Agnes was very generous to his brothers and their families. Agnes was now a rich woman.

Researchers eventually identified the source of Agnes’ vilification. It was a crotchety old man called Willibald Perkheimer, a life long friend of Albrecht, who coveted a pair of antlers that hung in the Durer’s home. Agnes refused to part with it, and he retaliated by comparing her to the notorious wife of Socrates.

But the residents of Nuremberg still laud Agnes Durer for discharging her duties and privileges admirably, and safeguarding the priceless assets of her incomparable artist husband, even in the face of criticism from his friends.

CONSUELO – THE WOMAN WHO SAVED BLENHEIM PALACE

Ten miles away from the “dreaming spires” of Oxford, is the town of Woodstock, made famous by its Churchilian connections.
Set among 2100 acres of greenery with a landscaped garden and terraced waterfalls, is Blenheim Palace, where Sir Winston Churchill was born prematurely on November 30th, 1874. Blenheim was never his home, though he visited there frequently. He even brought his fiancée Clementina Hozier here in 1900, and proposed to her in the Temple of Diana which overlooks a lake on the property, and has a romantic ambience.

In 1965, he was laid to rest alongside his parents’ grave, in the churchyard at Bladon.
But the story that lingers in my mind is not of Churchill but of Consuelo Vanderbilt, the 9th Duchess of Marlborough, whose enormous dowry saved Blenheim palace from disintegration.
This 17-year old American beauty was forced into a loveless marriage with the 9th Duke – Charles, Richard. John Spencer. She was deeply in love with another young man, but was wrenched away from him by her “socially climbing vulture of a mother.”

In those days, Americans greatly coveted British titles and aristocracy, and were more than willing to part with their millions, for entry into these elite circles. The English dukes and counts were notorious for their high living, philandering ways and sporting pursuits, which left them teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. They welcomed American girls both for their wealth and their charming personalities. Unlike the British women with their Victorian pruderies, these girls were witty, vivacious and attractive.

Consuelo and the Duke were married at St. Thomas Church, New York on 6th November, 1895. They were mismatched from the word ‘Go.’ She was beautiful, elegant and a good six feet tall to his five feet and seven inches. Though he went by the pet name ‘Sunny’ he was apathetic and brooding by nature. Just 23 years old, he too was very much in love with another girl. But due to financial exigencies, he was forced into this marriage.

And so the “dollar princess” crossed the Atlantic in a luxury liner, carrying with her a dowry of 2.5 million dollars for the repair of Blenheim Palace. Her father William K Vanderbilt was one of the wealthiest business magnates in USA. During her stay at the palace, Consuelo spent many more millions to renovate the “decrepit heap” that was Blenheim.

Though they stayed married for many years, it was a loveless existence. Consuelo made her dislike quite apparent in many ways, even to the extent of placing a massive centerpiece of Louis XIV on their dinner table, so that the Duke’s face would be blocked from her sight at mealtimes.
By her estimate, he was an inferior husband. She blamed it on his loveless upbringing first by nannies, and then by strict boarding school masters.
Consuelo’s son was born in 1897, two years after her marriage. Her second son came soon after, and with this, she considered her obligations complete.
“I have borne my husband an heir and a spare,” she said.
They were separated for 12 years from 1907 to 1919, but reunited briefly again, only to start divorce proceedings. The marriage was dissolved in 1921.
Blenheim Palace today owes its splendour to Consuelo, who lived the best years of her life in a ‘gilded cage.’
Though her contribution is rarely spoken about, people who knew her said she was kind and compassionate, and devoted her time and money to worthy causes.

She found true love in her second marriage to Lt. Col. Jacques Balsan, a French aviator, and lived for many years in Normandy. But the last few years of her life were spent in New York. She lived to a ripe old age of 87, during which time she penned her autobiography, “The Glitter and the Gold.”

Consuelo was interred in Bladon churchyard on the Blenheim Estate in 1964, as befitting the 9th Duchess of Marlborough. Forced arranged marriages do have the potential for misery especially when they hinge on the amount of dowry brought in by the brides.

MARGARITA STEIFF – THE TOY WOMAN.

Along the Schwabian Alp highway, we drove towards Nordilingen, through fertile fruit growing villages and luscious green forests. Ruined castles and rich monasteries added to the serene beauty of the countryside. It was surely a favourite holiday route signposted by little boards showing a silver thimble on a green background.
We stopped briefly at a small town called Gingen on the river Brenz. The people here spoke a dialect called Frisian. A traveller once wrote about a ginger bread church in a bakery window, and we drove around to locate it.
But what was of more interest to me was the story of a woman called Margarita Steiff, who became a rich entrepreneur through her brand of soft animal toys.
Margarita was born in Gingen in1847, and lived there till her death in 1909. In her early childhood she contracted Polio, and spent the rest of her life in a wheel chair. But she was not to be discouraged. Her legs might have failed her. But she had two perfectly normal hands and an agile brain.
“I must go to school,” she told her reluctant parents, and wore down their objections through her persistence.
After her basic education, she learnt tailoring. Now she wanted to become economically independent. She considered her disability not an impediment but a mere inconvenience to be surmounted.
“You are a woman, you are disabled and running a business is not a woman’s job,” said her father.
“My determination will help me leap over these obstacles. You wait and see Papa,” she told her father.
She began to make soft animal toys. Her first bear was christened Teddy Bear after President Theodore Roosevelt, who once went on a bear hunt and rescued a bear cub from being shot. Hence ‘Teddy Bear.”
The soft animals she made were cuddly and attractive, and the first batch was sold out at a Christmas Market in Heidenheim on Brenz. This gave her the idea of manufacturing them on a large scale. She founded her business in 1886, giving employment to many disabled people like herself, living in and around that area. Margarita worked till the end of her life.
Worldwide success came to her when an American ordered 3000 animals at the Frankfurt Fair. Someone even made a film about her life called “Against All Odds.”
Margarita’s toys bear her trade mark – a button in one ear. Hence they are called Knopf toys.
Though she died in 1909, the manufacture of her toys continues to be big business even today. They are sold in major toy shops in Germany and all over the world. Many toy museums exhibit some of her earliest toys. However, they have always been expensive. Even today, they sell at comparatively higher rates than other toys.
Next time you hold a teddy bear with a button in his ear in your hand, think of a feisty woman in a wheel chair, who looked ‘disability’ in the eye and turned it into an opportunity to excel.

SISSY- RELUCTANT EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA

Vienna is one of the most beautiful and artistic cities in the world. No wonder that Karl Kraus said, “The streets of Vienna are surfaced with culture just as the streets of other cities with asphalt.”
Wherever one turns, the baroque buildings with their ornate facades and voluptuous sculptures, the gardens and fountains, provide a delightful feast to the eyes. Vienna is the home of western classical music. Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms lived here. In season, it is wonderful to hear the best operas being enacted.
But it is the Schonbrunn Palace – the Imperial summer residence of the Hapsburg Royalty that beckons. One of the greatest of European palaces, its 1500 rooms lavishly decorated in the Rococo style, and the rich velvet embroidery embossed with the logo of the pomegranate, reflect the resplendence of a bygone age.
Like all great palaces, Schonbronn has its own scandals and intrigues. One such story is of Elizabeth, the Empress of Austria and wife of Emperor Franz Joseph II. Her portrait adorns one of the palace walls – a woman of rare beauty, tall and angelic! With a mane of wavy hair cascading down her shoulders, she looks like a bird which has broken out of its gilded cage, only to find that one leg is still tethered to the cage, with a long leash.
“Marriage is a preposterous institution,” she said, “You are sold as a child of fifteen, swear vows you don’t understand, and you regret them for thirty years or so, but you can never break them.”
Popularly known as ‘Sissy’ she was the second daughter of Duke Max of Bavaria. But as he had no duties at the Bavarian Court, his family was not restricted by palace protocol. The children grew up in an atmosphere of freedom.
Sissy was born on Christmas Eve in 1837, with a ‘lucky tooth’ on her upper gum. It showed she was destined for great things. Her elder sister Helene was to be betrothed to Franz. But he fell in love with Sissy instead, and could not be persuaded to marry anyone else. Sissy was just fifteen, a free spirit full of boisterous energy. Marriage was nowhere in her thoughts. But her mother insisted, “You cannot turn down an Emperor.”
So despite her protests and much against the wishes of Franz’s mother Arch Duchess Sophie, she was betrothed to the Emperor who was twenty three years old. Between betrothal and marriage, Sissy was put through a rigorous routine of palace etiquette and protocol, under the hawk-like eyes of the Duchess. The study of French and Italian history was boring. Social graces like etiquette, conversation and dancing seemed so artificial to the 15-year old girl, who missed her siblings and her friends who were the common folks of Bavaria.
Though the Emperor was madly in love with his child bride, State duties and politics left very little time for romance. The Crimean War was looming on the horizon. After the week long wedding festivities, it was back to work. The honeymoon was cancelled. Loneliness and homesickness followed, and depression gradually crept in. The ebullient Bavarian lass turned into a tearful melancholic woman.
Two girls were born in quick succession, but until an heir was produced, Sissy couldn’t relax. Rudolph the Crown prince was born in 1858. The rift between the Arch Duchess and Sissy widened over the upbringing of the boy. Sissy’s ability to provide suitable guidance was questioned.
To make matters worse, Sissy discovered that her husband whom she loved, was involved in an extra marital affair. Now to boredom was added emotional isolation. It was the proverbial ‘last straw.’ Sissy fled to her natal home in Possenhofen, with her children and her personal staff. She could not forgive his infidelity.
This was a turning point in her life. Timidity gave place to a progressive self confidence. She became more demanding, and it eventually led to an idolatrous narcissism. Her self centredness made her immune to the feelings of others. The Emperor continued to be generous financially.
Moving first to the Island of Madeira, and then on to Venice and Corfu, she took charge of Rudolph’s training, and threatened to leave her husband if he or his mother interfered. The boy was not an outdoor type. Sissy wanted him to have a liberal education instead of being forced into excessive physical training and royal duties.
Sissy was in her mid twenties now. She stood 5’8” tall and was very conscious of her incomparable beauty. Her wavy copper coloured hair flowed down to her ankles. It took three hours for her maids to comb and braid it every day. She was so naturally pretty that she needed no cosmetics to enhance her looks. Preserving this beauty became her obsession to the point of narcissism. Foreign diplomats paid her court, and journalists from all over the world followed her around.
In many ways, her story is reminiscent of the life of Princess Diana. But there is one great difference. Sissy’s name was never romantically linked with any other man.
Sissy moved to Hungary in 1866, when Prussia threatened Austria. Here she dabbled in politics, showing a preference to Hungary rather than Vienna, in spite of the fact that Hungary had risen in rebellion against the House of Hapsburg. She even befriended a Hungarian rebel called Gyula Andrassy, who had been condemned to death.
Her final act of treachery was to force the Emperor to concede to the demands of Hungary and divide the Empire of the Hapsburgs into two, with two capitals, one at Budapest and the other at Vienna. The high point of her life was when Franz and she were crowned king and queen of Hungary. Sissy even had another daughter Marie Valerie whom she brought up as a Hungarian. The Viennese hated her. She had neglected the traditional duties of an Empress. She was neither a good wife nor mother. Rudolph and his elder sister reverted to the care of the Arch Duchess Sophie, while Sissy set her sights on new worlds to conquer.
Now she wanted to become the best woman horse rider in the kingdom, and spent a major time in equestrian pursuits. As ‘Queen of the Hunt,’ she travelled frequently to England and Ireland. Yet she was totally dependant on her husband for her flamboyant life style.
At his Silver Jubilee as Emperor, she refused to ride in his carriage through the streets of Vienna, but followed in a closed coach, with face veiled. Even their Silver Wedding celebration was treated with disdain.
But with age came insecurities. The myth of her matchless beauty could not be sustained forever. Thoughts of cloistering herself in Switzerland crossed her mind.
Belatedly, she felt remorse for the loneliness and misery she had caused the husband who loved her. At 58, she brought him a surrogate wife named Katrina Schratt from the Hofsburg Theatre.
Rudolph who craved for his mother’s love received only indifference. He was a sensitive timid soul with no king-like qualities. When he committed suicide with his teenage mistress in Myerling, deep in the Vienna woods, it shook her out of her self-obsession.
Premature ageing due to her punishing exercise schedules and excessive dieting drove her into deep depression. While travelling incognito through Europe, she was stabbed by an Italian anarchist in1898.
“The beautiful things of the world are the most useless,” said John Ruskin.
“Beauty for some brings escape,” was Aldous Huxley’s theory.
Did Sissy find escape for her loneliness and frustration in narcissism one wonders?
Yet Vienna has not forgotten their reluctant Empress. Immortalised in marble, she sits with dignity in the Volksgarten in Vienna.

VOICES

Travelling through Normandy in France, I arrive at the historical capital Rouen, a city dear to the heart of Victor Hugo, and to many Impressionist painters. From St. Catherine Hill, one has a panoramic view of the city – its buildings, its bridges, its churches and the spire of the Rouen Cathedral looming into the skies. From this vantage point Claude Monet painted 17 different views of the city. He even designed the façade of the Cathedral.
But it was the story of Joan of Arc that got me excited. Little did I dream that I would one day stand on the Square where Joan of Arc was burnt alive at the stakes as a sorceress and a charlatan. She was only 19, a wisp of a girl with the face of an angel. The last words on her lips were “My Jesus!” Legend has it that her heart refused to burn. So it was thrown along with her ashes, into the river Seine, so that no one could erect a monument to her, and turn her into a martyr.
But a quarter of a century later, the Church had to eat humble pie, and declare her trial null and void. She was canonized as a saint in 1920. But it was only in 1979, that a cross was erected on the site of her martyrdom.
On the right of the Square is the Joan of Arc church, built in the shape of a ship. The church’s modern exterior has slate and copper scales, and evokes a picture of the sea. A flight of steps leads down to the worship area, simulating the hold of a ship. The colourful stained glass windows are from St. Vincent’s Church which was destroyed in 1944. In one of the windows, Joan is pictured praying in prison. And in one corner of the church stands a bronze replica of the saint. This church is her memorial. Her feast is commemorated on the Sunday nearest to May 30th. Not only a saint, Joan has become the national heroine, and May 30th is a national holiday.
Opposite the church and across the square, is the Joan of Arc Museum. Here in this vaulted old cellar on the Place du Vieux Marche, her story comes alive through books, engravings, paintings and 50 wax models. Commentaries are in English, German and Italian.
Born on 6th January 1412 at Domremy, Joan grew up to be a humble and deeply religious shepherdess. At the age of 13, she began to hear “voices” of three saints urging her to help the king. Charles VII was a weak man. There were doubts about his legitimacy to the throne. Joan was convinced by the “voices” that he had the right to rule.
Donning men’s clothes and cutting her hair short, she travelled to meet the king, and offer to lead his army against the English. This was an outrageous demand that stirred up a lot of anger in court. The king wanted to test if she was really a mystic. He made one of his courtiers sit on the throne to impersonate the king, and he wore the courtier’s clothes.
But Joan when ushered into the room, went straight up to the king in disguise.
“Give me 10,000 soldiers and I will bring you victory,” she promised.
At the Battle of Orleans which took place on May 8th 1429, she led her troops to victory against the English, and liberated Orleans. In July that year, she stood beside Charles as he was anointed and crowned king, at Rheims.
But the newly crowned king did not appreciate her mission. When Paris came under siege, her request for more soldiers to fight the English, was denied. She was taken prisoner by the enemy, brought to Rouen under military escort, and held in a turret of the Chateau Bouvreuil. Though the chateau is no more, the turret has been preserved as the Joan of Arc Tower, and stands on the street of the same name.
Here she languished for six months and her lament was,
“Oh Rouen, Rouen, It is here that I have to die.”
A visitor to the tower wrote, “The sad history that has occurred in this place still permeates the walls.”
She was judged at the Inquisitorial Tribunal which was presided over by the notorious Bishop Cauchon, under pressure from the English.
Joan was her own advocate. She was fearless in claiming that the “voices” she heard were authentic, and was convinced that Charles was the legitimate ruler of France. She was martyred on May 30th 1431.
One marvels at the courage and conviction of this chit of a girl, who was pitted against a fanatically patriarchal church and State. Though renounced by the church as a charlatan, and ignored by a spineless king who she fought to save, the people were convinced that she was a mystical saint.
Today her memory is consigned to the archives of Time, and the old wooden cross in the Square is merely a tourist attraction. The locals barely give it a second look.