Too beautiful to leave: Frankfurt
Coming from Frankfurt, staying in Frankfurt: There are so many good reasons. This week of our series belongs to the elderly.
Frankfurt – 7000 years ago the first settlers took place, that would be a good place to stay. You are still here today. And what for? Rightly so. Also found Charlemagne.
had 500 years ago Frankfurt then already 10,000 inhabitants. Fluctuation was moderate, but so was the quality of life. Local public transport was considered enormously unreliable, you could forget the TV program, and it took 470 years for a website like this to finally load. However, emigration was difficult. Fraport didn’t exist yet. At least no aircraft noise. But lots and lots of healthy forest. Ultimately, the package is right. “If someone asks me where I think the place of my cradle is more comfortable, more in line with my bourgeois sentiment or my poetic view,” wrote a certain Johann Wolfgang von Goethe later, “I couldn’t think of a better city than Frankfurt.”
Frankfurt: A good 110,000 people have lived here for more than 40 years
The conditions would not be bad at all for Frankfurt to develop into a real metropolis. For that you needed people who stayed. And that’s what this week’s series “Frankfurt – meine Stadt” is all about. More than 110,000 people have lived in Frankfurt for more than 40 years. If this isn’t a permanent sympathy demo.
If I may be personal for a moment: I was born in Frankfurt (Katharinen-Krankenhaus), grew up in Bernem and continued to mature in Eschersheim. Then came a two-year phase of exile because the parents bought a property; Even then, houses were much cheaper if they weren’t in Frankfurt. But as soon as school was over and the first income of his own was foreseeable, the young man returned to his roots and only left the city briefly for journalism school. After that: Frankfurt forever.
The natives of Frankfurt say Gude as a greeting and a sidewalk on the pavement, a small stool is a Schawellsche and an idiot either a Hannebambel or a Labbeduddel. In this week of our series, we’ll meet more people who came from here and stayed here. Why? There are so many good reasons.
Frankfurt: Stolze had to know
“There is no city in the wide world that I like as much as I like Frankfurt,” wrote Friedrich Stoltze, the poet and democrat, a good 140 years ago. The fact that he could compare Frankfurt with all other cities “all over the world” from his own experience is probably just as controversial as Karl May’s personal America expertise; there are also people who would rather have written “uff de weide Welt”. But rein may have contributed to the fact that Stoltze was right, no doubt about it. At least among the old-timers. Poet Stoltze didn’t even know the green belt, one of many good reasons for being a Frankfurter.
You’ll get run over there by speeding cyclists or peed on by a strange work of art (a tree!), but this 68-kilometer greenway around the city, over hills and through meadows, through the forest with its Frankfurt public holiday, the Wäldchestag, are a great asset.
At some point Goethe moved away from Frankfurt for professional reasons. But his house is still there. And his tower. Well, he didn’t know anything about it, but the Goethe Tower is also a symbol that shows how attached people are to their homeland. Didn’t rest until the torched steady lookout stood again. Donated what the stuff held. And celebrated the reopening enthusiastically.
Grabowski also stayed in Frankfurt – with Eintracht
Grabowski, on the other hand, did not move away from Eintracht. One of the best footballers of all time stayed here, like Charly Körbel and Bernd Hölzenbein. Eintracht, anyway, a criterion that binds many emotionally to Frankfurt. To the place “In the heart of Europe”, the official address of the heart association. The whole city sees itself there, in the center of society – the multicultural society, to be precise. Frankfurt lives this cultural diversity longer and more consistently than most other cities. Another reason to stay, no matter where your ancestors came from.
Tipeni, for example, is a Frankfurt veteran, even though his ancestors were New Zealanders. Hatched at the zoo on March 24, 1987 and stayed here. Faithful northern striped kiwi. 35 years and seven months old: “That’s a very proud age, even for a life in human care,” says zoo spokeswoman Christine Kurrle.
Quickly away – and quickly back to Frankfurt
What keeps people here? Often it is the job, because there are many jobs in Frankfurt. But those who come to liability are often gone quickly if there is a better job elsewhere. Frankfurt is also the most conveniently located city imaginable – if you are not stuck in a traffic jam at the Frankfurter Kreuz on a Friday afternoon. The airport, the main train station: Yes, it’s easy to get away, on the way to the wide world. But we’ll be back soon. “But it’s also an advantage that I can still come home at night from a lot of performances,” said cabaret artist Lara Ermer so charmingly in a recent interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau – “and I’m very happy to come back to Frankfurt”.
But be careful: there are pitfalls that very quickly unmask the “self-scourged”, i.e. those who have moved here. Praising the skyline too effusively – controversial. To still go shopping on the Zeil, although there is no longer a Wronker, no Tietz, no Ammerschläger and no M. Schneider: well. Of course, these are small sins compared to what can go wrong in an Ebbelwei economy.
For example, no one will ever forget how abruptly the room temperature drops when a guest asks the waiter to please deliver the fork with the hand cheese, or how else should one eat “that”? The hand cheese is only eaten with the help of a knife and a slice of bread. Law. It is just as unforgivable to order a “sweet splash” (just mentioning it could lead to this newspaper issue being banned) or (ow, ow!) an “apple wine spritzer”. Anyone who does, however, has to recite the seven herbs of the Green Sauce by heart in order to save his or her honor as a Frankfurter.
Long-time residents in Frankfurt: knotty, but quickly reconciled
All right, so it’s not serious after all. Our week about the long-established in this Frankfurt series will show: The original population is knotty, but also quickly reconciled (if you spend a round of Mispelchen). So, I have to stop now – the pretzel boy is coming.
And if something goes wrong for someone from the native population: Eh isch uffresch, isses mer liewer doesn’t matter. Lebbe goes on. (Thomas Stillbauer)