Buch, Englisch, 210 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 250 g
Buch, Englisch, 210 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 250 g
ISBN: 978-3-00-061619-8
Verlag: Edition Frankfurter Ansichten
Frankfurt is more love at second sight. People come to Frankfurt either by chance or because of a job. So things start rather unromantically. But once you've digested your first Handkäs, explored the green belt by bike, or stared in awe at the bright skyline from Eisener Steg, then at the latest you're hooked. The start of a wonderful friendship. Frankfurt for Beginners is the ideal way to feel your way into the German city where life is best, the perfect companion for new arrivals in the city, for firm lovers of Frankfurt, and for those about to fall in love with the city.
Zielgruppe
Der perfekte Begleiter für Neu-Frankfurter, Frankfurt-Liebhaber und alle, die es werden wollen. "Frankfurt für Anfänger" ist die ideale Einstimmung auf eine der liebenswertesten Städte der Republik. Für Interessierte von 16-99 Jahren
Weitere Infos & Material
FRANKFURT FOR BEGINNERS
Instructions für use
Love at second sight
Frankfurt Classics
Eiserner Steg – Bridging the gap
Handkäs – Love at second bite
Adorno – In the name of Enlightenent
Bornheim – the village in the city
Green Sauce – The Frankfurt classic
Eintracht Frankfurt – Elegantly unreliable
Book fair – The world in Frankfurt
Frankfurter Rundschau – Left-liberal newspaper with a greenish hue
Café Grössenwahn – One last glass
Sachsenhausen – Frankfurt urban
Kleinmarkthalle – Tripe and rosewater
Babbling before babelfish – Friedrich Stoltze, local poet
Frankfurter Kranz – From the bottom to the top
Landmarks
The Paulskirche – In the cradle of democracy
Festhalle – In the Name of Progress
Kaiserdom – For Europe
Main – There’s real depth to it
Skyline – Way up in the clouds
City Hall – They’re crazy, those guys at the Römer
Airport – Down below the clouds so low
Small escapes
Botanischer Garten – Senckenberg’s Herb
Hausener Freibad – For early birds
Ich-Denkmal – Four steps to fams
The Hauptfriedhof – Paulinchen and Goethe’s love
Palmengarten (Frankfurt’s Jeu de Paums) – Paradise of plants
Green belt – 75 kilometres of fields, parks and meadow orchards
Schwanheim Dune – Almost like being at the seaside
Milestones
Goethe University – Eventful legacy
New Frankfurt – Living Ernst May-style
Frankfurter Kreuz intersection – All change
Hauptwache – First Impression
City of publishers – a place for book culture
Liebieghaus – Barbara’s strong facial expression
German National Library- A peaceful, quiet place
Justinuskirche – Small Christ, massive impact
Eschersheim Garden City – The unfinished project
Senckenberg – Learning from burdocks
The Behrens Building – Höchst color palette
Frankfurt Auschwitz trial – Justice, not revenge
Strandgut
Offenbach – Our dear neighbors
Carnal lust – Steaks from a vending machine
Goethe’s mother – A childhood in Frankfurt
Beer Riot – Angry consumers
Carnival revelers – Carnival in “Klaa Paris (“Little Paris”)
Patisserie art – Unimagined delicacies
Views of Frankfurt
Cycling – True heroes
New Old Town – Narrow alleyways and a pining for timber framing
Judengasse – A part of Frankfurt’s history
Charles Hallgarten – For ordinary people facing extraordinary hardships
Riedberg – New and green
Secret capital – Frankfurt am Main after 1945
Multicultural – Fair and respectful
Foreword
Frankfurt am Main
Love at second sight
The myth of the dull city is persistent: “Frankfurt is half as big and twice as dead as the Manhattan cemetery,” goes the malicious gossip in London post-Brexit referendum. A cliché that had long been put to rest gets dug up and is given a new lease of life.
The immense quality of life in Frankfurt admittedly only reveals itself at second glance. To those who are happy to immerse themselves in the city. Often by necessity. Because who would ever move to Frankfurt by free choice – the way you relocate to Berlin or settle in Munich? People often end up in Frankfurt by chance – or to make money. It tends to start as unromantically as that. However, once they get over the initial shock, most realize: Life in Frankfurt is not just about work, it’s about enjoying a great place. And they end up crying crocodile tears when they let the next transfer pass them by and stay in Frankfurt. Frankfurt has long since stopped being “uninhabitable, like the moon”. It is manageably small. A city where everything is close at hand. Green. Family-friendly. Lovable. Frankfurt – that’s love at second sight.
It is a city in the center of Europe. Where all paths come together and then radiate outward again. The Frankfurt North/South/East/West autobahn cloverleaf is emblematic of this. As is Frankfurt Airport. Or the largest internet hub world-wide, likewise located here.
Frankfurt is a city most people only know from driving past it: On the A 5 interstate, you pass the office district Bürostadt Niederrad, a dreadful monument to concrete. By car it takes less than a minute. Frankfurt, many of those rushing past say, with pity in their voices. If they actually say anything, because you pass Frankfurt rather quickly. Once you reach the Gambacher interchange heading North hardly anyone still talks about it.
Unless you’re heading South, and it’s dusk, and the skyline glitters in the last rays of sun. That’s when the banking high-rises start to have a glamorous quality. And the heart of the common Frankfurt native misses a beat. “Mainhattan,” they invariably sigh in moments like these. Yet while this nickname is meant in the nicest possible way, that doesn’t make it any less absurd – like many things done out of love. That said, the dyed-in-the-wool Frankfurt citizen typically suffers from a healthy dose of megalomania anyway. Strangely this tends to be paired with having both feet firmly on the ground. People from Frankfurt don’t spiel. They’re all hands-on and have a sense for business. They’re prosaic. They’re tough but sincere – once you’ve learnt to read the subtle indications of their warm-hearted nature.
Frankfurt is not something that falls into your lap. You have to conquer Frankfurt for yourself. You have to get used to it, like you do to your first Handkäs – this Frankfurt specialty also tends to be love at second bite. Just like the first glass of the local apple wine – or Ebbelwoi as the locals call it – which is certainly anything but sweet and ingratiating. Having completed the appropriate initiation phase, however, the new arrival in Frankfurt will begin to appreciate the tangy freshness of it – and most certainly so during the summer under the gnarled chestnut trees of watering holes such as “Zur Sonne,” and “Drosselbart,” two marvelous apple wine taverns.
In any case, the under-the-radar-screen magic of the city becomes readily apparent in the various districts of town. When drinking a Wacker’s coffee in the eponymous café on the Uhrtürmchen plaza on upper Berger Strasse. Ideally on a market day. Or flying kites on the erstwhile air strip next to the Nidda river in Bonames, accompanied by a choir of toads. When jogging in Grüneburgpark. Or on the terrace of the restaurant Lohrberg up on the hill of the same name outside Seckbach. When the Eintracht hymn rings out in the football stadium and the announcer calls out the player’s names in numerical order. Surely there’s no helping anyone immune to such heart-warming appeal...
Frankfurt is not necessarily cozy, but it is disarming.
And Frankfurt is growing. According to official surveys, the city currently has 736,000 inhabitants, and the trend is effectively upward. Forecasts suggest that in two years’ time, there will be 25,000 more. The Nordend district is already full to bursting, and many are moving to Offenbach. Not long ago, this was a running gag. Offenbach, although it abuts on Frankfurt, was a different world, enemy territory. Nowadays, no one would speak of Offenbach leading a shadow existence. But it’s still best to leave the “Offenbach” football club unmentioned. Not that the matches of yore, veritable duels of honor, between Offenbach and “the Eintracht” tend to be remembered by the younger generation of fans.
There’s really no reason not to love Frankfurt. Many want to move to Frankfurt. Not lastly the Londoners driven out by Brexit. Experts predict that several thousand bankers will move to the continent from the island, and that they will not be settling in Paris but in the Rhine-Main region. To the promised land, so to say, or more precisely: To Frankfurt.
Back in the 1970s, no one would have thought this possible. At the time, people said that the city rising from the wreckage of World War II was the most American town that was not stateside. Which sounded very much as if Frankfurt locals wanted consolation. The idiosyncratic superlative stood for “modern”. Today, the US Army has long since left and Eisenhower’s European headquarters downtown in the former IG Farben building have been turned into the main south-facing building of the Goethe University. And, without exaggeration serves as the face of the most beautiful university campuses in Germany.
Frankfurt has long since stopped being seen as the ugly side of life; in fact, even its sandstone is now en vogue. And at the very latest when the question of moving away arises, many feel this to simply be out of the question. People want to stay here.
But what actually goes to make up this Frankfurt?
It is certainly a place that likes to reinvent itself. Which estate agents call “dynamic”. Which means you better brace yourself, as much of Frankfurt is always a construction site. Frankfurt does not stand still. It is a work in progress.
Many of the Gründerzeit villas built in the late 19th century period that survived World War II fell victim to the wrecking balls of the post-war era or even of today. And poignant places entrenched in the memory of the city’s inhabitants, such as the Rundschau Haus, a building with its rounded corners on Grosse Eschenheimer Strasse that was once home to the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper – where countless generations of students looking for a flat queued to get a copy of the latest ads for vacant flats, have been ruthlessly erased from the urban fabric. Frankfurt citizens like to tear everything down and then wonder why they no longer recognize their own city. There was no sign of sentimental attachment even when it came down to demolishing the legendary AFN (American Forces Networks) building on Bertramstrasse. That said, the city is now reviving traditions no one remembers with its newly built Old Town, which most definitely leaves the splendid imperial cathedral less space.
There was a time when Frankfurt stood for cutting-edge intellectual thought: Adorno, Horkheimer, the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Habermas – but that’s all over now. Or is it? At Goethe University, critical rigor is still strongly championed, and the interdisciplinary research center on “Normative Orders” continues to be a role model project for the examination of the transformation of rule.
Frankfurt is a constant source of stories. Many small ones. Of the seven herbs that go into making the local specialty “Green Sauce”. Of the last resting place of Goethe’s mother, hidden away on a downtown school yard not far from a basketball hoop. Of the pregnant Germania on the mural in the rotunda of the Paulskirche. And of the Japanese pastry chef who sells green tea chiffon cake and the best New York cheesecake in the world, just down the road and round the corner from the cathedral.
Despite being so international, Frankfurt is mostly characterized by its manageable size. The city hasn’t turned into a disorienting behemoth. It’s much too small for that. Frankfurt is a convenient metropolis where everything is close at hand. Which cyclists love. Even if the city still hasn’t managed to bring itself to ban commuters from using SUVs to reach downtown once and for all and consistently give the eco-friendly two-wheelers right of way.
Frankfurt is still, as the saying goes, merely a conglomeration of villages. A place inhabited by many different kinds of people, all with their very own idiosyncrasies and different expectations.
Yet Frankfurt aspires to be there for “all,” and not just when it comes to its cultural offerings. It was no coincidence that the first civic office for multi-cultural affairs was established here. Critical discussion doesn’t just happen on Saturday mornings while drinking apple wine at the farmer’s market on Konstablerwache, or over the world’s best cappuccino in the Kleinmarkthalle. Frankfurt inhabitants love to state their very own opinions on the state of the nation in general - and on the local dignitaries in particular. Each reflecting a different view of Frankfurt, as it were.
That is also the spirit of “Frankfurt for Beginners”. It doesn’t matter whether you start reading at the beginning of the book, whether you take your cue from the city’s geography, head from the North or the South of the city and never lose sight of the tall downtown buildings. You’ll find your own way of arriving in Frankfurt, that’s for certain. A city in the heart of Europe. A chance acquaintance or an arranged marriage of convenience. For many it turns into a real love story. A love for life.
Love at second sight, to be precise.
