Teltow’s Turnips and the History of Berlin

 

At the end of January, Jan, David and I accompanied John to Berlin, where on his birthday on 2 February, he was to undergo the defense of his PhD dissertation at the Free University of Berlin. More of that later.

 

While John prepared in his hotel room, Jan, David and I did a little sightseeing. Because the university is in Dahlem, part of the old American zone, we stayed at our usual hotel in the suburb of Lichterfelde Ost, which was convenient for transport links and restaurants and shops. Transport was rather more tricky than usual because of strikes and the closure of a large part of the S Bahn line through the centre of Berlin, so David suggested a short ride south to the station at Lichterfelde Sud and a walk to Teltow at the end of the S Bahn line. As we crossed the boundary of Lichterfelde, the southern extent of Berlin, we entered Teltow in the municipal district of Potsdam.

 

Teltow's avenue of cherry trees

Four decades earlier, we could not have strolled into Teltow, for this was the dividing line between the GDR and West Berlin. Today the line of the wall is marked by an avenue of cherry trees planted in 1990 by the Japanese broadcaster TV-Asahi. We followed the long rows of trees to the Teltowkanal and a pleasant canal-side path through the woods that line the waterway – 40 years ago the area was stripped of vegetation and lined by fencing and watchtowers, since the other side of the canal was Lichterfelde and West Berlin.

 

After walking for a while, we came across two commemorative markers with information about some of those who died trying to cross the canal to the western side. One rather sad case was that of Roland Hoff, who had fled to the East to escape a drunk-driving charge, and then found himself confined there by the newly erected barriers. He protested about the closure of the border and was dismissed from his work for ‘absenteeism’ and charged with ‘inciting slander against the state.’ Roland decided not to attend court for his hearing, but rather packed his belongings (they must have been very few) and sent them by mail to his mother in Hanover. Then he mingled unobserved with workers carrying out maintenance on the canal. He jumped into the water and began swimming to the West Berlin side, but four border guards shot him. His mother was not told of his death. To guard against attempts like Roland’s to escape across the canal, the East German authorities took some care to ensure only trusty types were allowed to live in Teltow. They slipped up in Roland’s case.

 

Breite Strasse, Teltow

Teltow was was first mentioned in a deed dated 1265, but it must have been founded earlier because its church of St Andrew dates to the 12^th century (although the present church was built in 1812). Lyonel Feininger depicted the church in Teltow II, painted in 1918. Almost all the other buildings in central Teltow were demolished in the 1960s and the town ‘redeveloped’. Still, there’s a reasonably pleasant central, mostly traffic-free, area which conveys some flavour (I imagine) of the old Teltow, much better than do the 1960s apartment blocks and shopping area beyond where the traffic roars constantly by. Nevertheless, the town hall has a tourist office. I think we were probably the only tourists to visit it that day, probably all week.  There we discovered that the culinary delicacy of Teltow and its region is a prized variety of turnip. Perhaps poor Roland Hoff was able to enjoy some before border guards brought his life to a premature end.

 

The church of St Andrew, Teltow

Our other visit during this trip was to the Berlinische Galerie Museum für Moderne Kunst, a modern art gallery in a converted industrial building. The permanent collection surveys the art scene in Berlin from the late 19^th-century on. The art simultaneously tells the story of the rise of Berlin from sleepy provincial town to national capital.

 

Max Liebermann's villa at Wansee

The first works in the gallery are showy, traditional pieces designed to please a regional potentate. One of the first pieces to signal a new era of experimentation is a self-portrait by Max Liebermann (1847-1935). At the turn of the century Liebermann was the leading figure in the Berlin Secession, inspired by avant garde experimentation elsewhere in Europe, especially the French Impressionists. One of Jan’s favourite visits during our trips to Berlin has been the Liebermann Villa, on the shores of Lake Wansee to the south of the city. Liebermann and Alfed Lichtwark, director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, designed the villa’s garden, which Liebermann lovingly portrayed in many paintings. The villa, much changed after it was seized by the Nazis, has been restored to something close to its condition in Liebermann’s days, as has the garden.

 

Liebermann's self-portrait

As one browses the collection, one is reminded that the current borders of Europe, which politicians encourage us to consider inalienable and immutable, and to be used to keep others firmly out, are really no such thing. Theo von Brockhusen (1882-1919), a fellow member of the Berlin Secession, was, we are told, born in German Marggrabowa, now Olecko in Poland. Von Brockhusen’s Beach with Bathing Machines, 1909, clearly documents the influence of French Impressionism, and particularly, I think, of Van Gogh.

 

Von Brockhusen, Beach with Bathing Machines

Eugen Spiro (1874-1972) reflected another new European style, Art Nouveau, in his work. The model in his portrait The Dancer Baladine Klossowska (Merline), 1901 is Spiro’s sister, herself a painter of the Berlin avant garde, who married the painter and art historian Erich Klosskowski. Spiro’s life again reminds us of the vagaries and tragedies of European history. He was born in Breslau, in Silesia, now Polish Wrocław, a town which has ‘belonged’ to Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, Prussia and Germany at various times. Like many a Jewish artist of the first half of the 20^th century, Spiro ended his life in New York.

 

Spiro's portrait of his sister Baladine

Hannah Höch (1889-1978) was a Dadaist, whose work was much concerned with gender identity, and who liked to poke fun at conservative Weimar society. Roma, 1925, shows us a playful, yet acerbic, personality who enjoyed provoking those she disagreed with. Her art was a natural target for censorship under Nazi rule as Entartete Kunst (‘degenerate art’). Although other members of the Berlin Dada group left Germany, Höch stayed, living quietly in a remote Berlin suburb where she continued working until her death.

 

Hannah Höch, Roma

Otto Dix  (1891-1969) was another member of the Berlin Secession, famous particularly for his fiercely anti-war images based on his experiences in the German army (he volunteered for service and was awarded the Iron Cross second class). Like Hoch’s Dada works, Dix’s depictions of war were exhibited by the Nazis in Munich in 1937 as Entartete Kunst. Dix, however, was also a portraitist and The Poet Iwar von Lücken, 1926, is one of several portraits of this avant garde poet who lived in severely straitened circumstances. Dix depicts him as a lanky, undernourished man living in a garret that would have served well as a stage design for La Bohème. Oskar Kokoschka also painted several portraits of von Lücken (1874-1935), but the audience for his work was tiny and, apparently he published only one edition of poems (in 1928), of which only two copies remain.

 

Dix's portrait of Iwar von Lücken

Georg Schrimpf (1889-1938) was a self-taught artist and, like Dix, a member of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement. His Two Girls at a Window, 1928, is a charming image sandwiched between the horrors of two world wars. Schrimpf, who was born in Munich, became a professor at the Royal School of Art in Berlin but was fired in 1937 for having been a member of a socialist organization, and public exhibitions of his work were prohibited.

Schrimpf, Two Girls at a Window

 

One of the ironies of the avant garde, of course, is that sooner or later it becomes a rear guard, as Felix Nussbaum’s The Folly Square, 1931, suggests. Nussbaum (1904–1944), a surrealist, depicts a group of art students rebelling against the strictures of their elders and betters who, once innovators now uphold out-of-date traditions. Max Liebermann himself is shown on the roof of his house near the Brandenburg Gate painting a self-portrait held by Victoria, goddess of victory (from the victory column to the right). Felix and his wife, as well as his parents and several other family members were murdered at Auschwitz.

 

Nussbaum The Folly Square

Berlin’s history is, of course, ever present wherever you go in the city. As a visual overview the Berlinische Galerie is a s good an overview as you can get, and unlike most of the landmarks and tourist sites, it is a testament to human creativity, dissent, a refusal to conform and the questioning of what others tell us is the norm and good for us. The visitor also notices that many of the German artists on show were born in places that are no longer in Germany, and many died elsewhere, driven by Nazi dictatorship to take refuge in other countries, while others less fortunate or who for some reason did not flee died for their art or beliefs.

 A panoramic photo of Potsdamer Platz after the enf of the war converys powerfully the enormous damage the city endured, yet still people are seen going about their lives.

Potsdamer Platz (detail)

To return to John’s exam on the afternoon of Friday 2 February, he gave a 30-minute presentation of his dissertation to five professors who then grilled him (grilled is the word) for almost an hour. We were then asked to leave the room so that the professors could confer. When we were asked back in, we discovered that our son now has a PhD and were all poured a glass of sparkling wine to relieve the tension.

Integrity in New Jersey

 

The former New Jersey State Senator, Paul Contillo, died aged 94 on 6 February. He was a politician of a school that believed in using public office for the public good, rather than simply to achieve power or for personal enrichment. I had the pleasure of meeting him several times and wish that more of our contemporary politicians were of Paul’s kind. This does not mean that he was averse to slugging it out with his opponents, but his politics were rooted in personal integrity and a stubborn insistence on doing what he considered to be the right thing.

 

Senator Paul Contillo

Shortly after we married in 1979, Jan and I moved into a two-bedroom rented apartment on Flower Avenue in Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. Our neighbours in the apartment below ours were a young lawyer working as a clerk for a DC judge and a nurse. Bob and Chris Contillo became lifelong friends.

 

Bob was born and raised in Paramus, New Jersey, and after his stint clerking for Judge George Goodrich in DC he returned to work as a lawyer and later as a Judge in Bergen County. I knew from conversations with Bob that his father, Paul, had been a prominent figure in Jersey politics who stood out as (to quote an obituary written by a Republican) “an impeccably honest and stubborn Bergen County Democrat,” in a state not notable for the honesty of its politics.

 

My publishing travels enabled me to be a quite frequent visitor to Bob and Chris’ home in Haworth and during those visits to be introduced to many parts of northern Jersey. Occasionally, I would be welcomed into Paul’s home in Paramus or his beach home on Long Beach Island, sometimes for large and lively gatherings of the Contillo family. Paul was ever a generous and genial host, welcoming a wandering Englishman into family occasions and putting him at his ease. On one occasion he and Bob took me out in his boat on the calm waters sheltered from the Atlantic by Long Beach’s narrow strip of land so that I could try my hand at water-skiing. After multiple failures to get up on my skis, we returned home to a family dinner where Paul’s son-in-law Jimmy showed me how to open a clam by smashing the shell with his fist – Jimmy was a large powerful character. I failed at clam smashing also.

 

Paul was an accomplished water-skier

Unfortunately, I never had time to talk to Paul about New Jersey politics. As is often the case, I now know more about him from his obituaries than I learned from our meetings. It is clear from the tributes paid to him that Paul was, to quote a current state Senator, a titan of Bergen County politics. Paul was born in Brooklyn in 1929 into a large family of Italian American and German American heritage. At school he met his future wife Kathleen McConville – they were married for 69 years. He was an accomplished footballer (American, of course) at James Madison High School in Brooklyn. Most of the students at James Madison were Jewish and some went on to prominent national careers: Ruth Bader Ginsburg became a Supreme Court Justice, Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer US Senators. Paul would prove that those who make their mark at more local and state levels could also make contributions to the common good. He began by founding a successful business. He and a friend established a printing company, Allied Reproductions, in New York City. They developed the firm into a substantial enterprise serving Wall Street financial businesses.

 

Paul and Kathleen made their home in Paramus, where his public service career began as chair of the Paramus Zoning Board (in British terms the planning committee). He was a Paramus Councilman from 1971-1973. Then he was elected to be a New Jersey General Assemblyman in 1974, serving until he was defeated in 1980. From 1984-1991 he was a State Senator. He was also Chairman of Common Cause (1986-1988), a non-party-political organization that that works to support democratic principles in the USA, and Vice Chairman of the New Jersey Parole Board (2004-2009).

 

New Jersey politics is a rough-tough business. Paul’s acknowledged integrity must have appealed to voters, but he could wage a tough fight when he needed to. He accused a Republican opponent, John Paolella, of using his position in the Jersey Senate to promote his law firm, of being immature and a flip-flopper, and of not being a serious politician. He described another Paramus Republican and arch-rival, John Kosco, Chairman of the Assembly Banking Committee of being a pawn of the banking industry. Politics is, in the end, a game that nearly always ends in defeat – it was his bitter rival Kosco who defeated Paul in his last campaign in 1991.

 

Paul’s accomplishments as a legislator were notable. He sponsored America’s first mandatory recycling law, and the Local Ethics Law, which compelled all public servants to disclose their sources of income, including local bodies such as planning and zoning boards which provide many opportunities for corruption. Another of Paul’s initiatives prohibited building on land owned by the Hackensack Water Company, a law which still protects Bergen County’s water supply from pollution. He also campaigned to allocate state funds to cleaning up hazardous waste sites. He was an advocate of Bergen County’s “blue laws” which prohibit shops, including the county’s several large shopping malls, from opening on Sundays. He argued quite simply that retail workers should have a day off with their families, an opinion which I suspect was rooted in his Catholic faith. Paul and Kathleen were, Bob told me politically liberal, but socially conservative. Not all his initiatives were successful, however. One of Paramus’ most intractable problems was the intersection of route 4 and route 17, a source of many a traffic jam. A Mexican traffic engineer somehow heard of this problem and headed to Paramus to offer a solution: an intersection design he had successfully implemented in Mexico. Alas, on examination the economics of his proposal were based on Mexican labour rates, which New Jersey unions would never accept. However, Bob tells me that the intersection problem was eventually fixed with a solution based roughly on the Mexican’s design, although his contribution is probably lost to history.

 

I have a great affection for America, where I lived for four years and worked for four decades. I admired a political system that allowed for vigorous debate, protected the right of free speech, and had a can-do mentality, but I find the current political scene appalling. Too many are in thrall to demagogues for whom the art of politics is fear and the demonization of others. If only there were more Paul Contillos for whom the purpose of politics was to improve life for all in their community.

How many pianos are there in Gaza?

 

On 19 January I received an email from PalMusic UK, a charity that supports the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Palestine. The conservatory provides music education to 2,000 students in Bethlehem, Gaza, Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah. The email informed me that:

“We are deeply saddened to report that the ESNCM is Gaza has been severely damaged. The branch’s door has been bombed open and a large proportion of the building has been burned and heavily damaged, and instruments and equipment destroyed.”

 

However, the email also recorded that:

“The Yamaha piano, however, has miraculously survived the destruction. It was donated to Gaza by Japan in 1998 and has survived years of bombing. Restored by the Music Fund, it was given to the ESNCM in 2018. It is a poignant symbol of the resilience of the Palestinian people.”

The Yamaha is the only piano concert grand piano in Gaza. Some years after its arrival from Japan, it was bought by a Palestinian businessman who spent $800,000 restoring the Nawras Theatre and cultural centre, only to have the building destroyed by an Israeli rocket. But although the piano was not damaged by the explosion, the damage wrought by time and lack of care had left it unplayable. Daniel Barenboim paid for a French piano restorer, Claire Bertrand, to restore the Yamaha to concert standards. Claire and two Palestinian assistants worked for ten days. A concert celebrated the piano’s restoration to health in 2015.

 

Since Hamas’ bloody and unconscionable October attacks, the conservatory has continued to pay its teachers and has raised funds for humanitarian aid for artists displaced to the Rafah area on the border between Gaza and Egypt. There are also plans “to provide uplifting musical activities to children.”

 

Teaching continues in Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Ramallah, although the closure of main roads makes it difficult for teachers and students to reach the classes.

 

In Gaza, music education has been threatened not only by Israeli attacks, but also by the ideological hostility of the Hamas regime. With extraordinary resilience, teachers and students have continued to learn and perform. I sincerely hope that the conservatory will rise again from the ashes of destruction and bigotry.

 

The piano has survived indiscriminate bombing, but, alas, Lubna Ayalam, a young violinist has not: she died in Gaza on 21 November 2023.

 

For an account of the piano’s 2015 restoration see: https://vimeo.com/226484221?mc_cid=32c61cb70d&mc_eid=3223227e40

 

For a Christmas performance by the children’s choir in Bethlehem see: https://www.facebook.com/esncm/videos/1451856695394158/

 

I defy you to watch the children in Bethlehem and not to weep as I did. To donate to PalMusic go to: https://www.palmusic.org.uk/donate-to-palmusic-uk/

The Cardinal, the Russian Prince, the Cartoonist, and the Football Managers

 

A visitor who strolls around the centre of Ipswich, and takes a brief diversion to the football stadium, comes across statues that commemorate five notable men (sorry no women) in the history of my home town. To a teenage boy Ipswich in the 1960s and 1970s seemed a dull, un-cosmopolitan place. When my university studies took me to exciting places such as Peru and Mexico, this young man dreamed of the world beyond Ipswich. I used to joke to people who asked me where I came from that Ipswich had only two important people in its history: Cardinal Wolsey and Alf Ramsey, a football manager. Looking back, clearly, I was wrong.

 

Wolsey is indeed commemorated with a statue that depicts him in his cardinal’s robes, seated in a grand chair, from beneath which peeks a cat. The statue is located at the junction of Silent Street and St Peter’s Street, close to Wolsey’s presumed birthplace. Around the base of the statue runs the following inscription: “Cardinal, archbishop, Lord Chancellor and teacher who believed that pleasure should mingle with study so that the child may think learning an amusement rather than a toil.” My first response to this statement was that it should be read to the ambitious politicians turned Secretaries of State for Education who have turned our national education system into an arena of cramming knowledge deemed useful (i.e. of direct economic value) rather than helping students to develop an enquiring, intelligent and discriminating mind. The emphasis on education is, presumably, a reference to Wolsey’s never-to-be-realized plan to endow a school (The King’s School) in Ipswich from which students could progress to university studies. All that remains is Wolsey’s Gate close to the waterfront: a rather sad remnant of Tudor brick, a wooden gate, and a coat of arms in stone much eroded by the emissions of traffic that passes within a few feet. For some reason, Ipswich fails to commemorate another great Medieval figure, Geoffrey Chaucer, who was born in London, but whose parents owned a wine store in Tavern Street (the booze center of the Medieval town). Several generations of Chaucers were vintners and merchants in Ipswich.

The statue of Cardinal Wolsey.

 

Wolsey's Gate.

 

The next monument is in Cromwell Square (Thomas Cromwell assisted Wolsey in the dissolution of monasteries to raise fund for his Ipswich school and another in Oxford). The sculpture commemorates an exiled Russian, Prince Alexander Obolensky, who played rugby for Oxford University, Leicester and England. The prince died when his Hurricane fighter plane crashed on Martlesham Heath near Ipswich during a training flight. In short, the prince's connection to Ipswich is sketchy at best. Nevertheless, the memorial was unveiled in 2009 by Obolensky’s niece, Princess Alexandra Obolensky. Unfortunately, one of the main sponsors of the work was Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch then owner of Chelsea football club, now the subject of sanctions as a facilitator of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The memorial to Prince Obolensky.

 

 

Close to the town hall stands an altogether different monument, which features some of the famous characters created by the cartoonist Carl Giles: Grandma, twins Lawrence and Ralph and Rush the dog. Grandma looks up to the studio window of a nearby building where Giles worked. Giles lived about four miles from his memorial in Tuddenham, where he owned a farm and converted a barn into a light-filled studio (now a bed and breakfast), and frequented the Fountain pub.

 

The Giles memorial (photo by John Peacock).

Alf Ramsey's statue at Portman Road football ground

The statues of two mangers of Ipswich Town Football Club stand, naturally enough by the club’s stadium. Alf Ramsey was manager from 1955-1963, and took the team into the First Division, of which they became champions in their first season. He was also the manager of the England team that won the World Cup in London in 1966. The other manager, Bobby Robson (1969-1982), whose team won the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup, and was for several years one of the best in England. I once met Robson when he was signing copies of a memoir (not the best book of its sort) in the boardroom of Macmillan Publishers. After I had introduced myself as an Ipswich boy from the glory days, he spoke with boyish enthusiasm about those times and gave me a signed copy of the book.

 

The Bobby Robson statue

Ipswich’s glory days in terms of its economy lay further in the past than its sporting glories. It claims to be the oldest continuously occupied English town (since about 600AD), and received its borough charter from King John in 1200. Medieval Ipswich was one of the most important ports in England, a rival even to London. The town had two strategic advantages. It lay on a navigable river, the Orwell, which opens into a wide estuary where its waters join the Stour and the North Sea, providing access to the markets of the Low Countries and northern Germany. That trade was fuelled by woollen cloth, since Suffolk was an important sheep-rearing region. Ipswich merchants even sought wealth in the far-off Americas, including Mexico (this blog is after called Mexico and Other Matters). From 1586-1588 the merchant Thomas Eldred, and another Ipswich man Thomas Fuller (an apt name for a native of a town famous for its cloth), was on board the small fleet of Thomas Cavendish, of Trimley St Martin, some 12 miles from Ipswich, which circumnavigated the globe, halting off Baja California to raid the Spanish galleon the Santa Ana, which was en route from Manila to Acapulco.

 

A 19th-century drawing of Thomas Eldred's house in Fore Street. A pub once elsewhere in Ipswich bore Eldred's name, until the name was changed in 2012.

The layout of the town centre of contemporary Ipswich, generally reflects the Medieval town plan. It takes no more than 15-20 minutes to walk across the former Medieval centre from north to south or east to west, yet such was the borough’s wealth that in this narrow space there were 15 churches (12 survive, but many now deconsecrated and used for something other than worship), a chapel and four priories (Augustinian, Franciscan, Carmelite and Dominican). There were also four leper hospitals: Medieval England’s public health was generally poor, and ports helped to transmit disease.

 

John Speed's map of Ipswich, 1610

Nothing remains of the priories or the hospitals, but a walking tour of the remaining churches gives an impression of what power the church must once have exercised. For example, a stroll up St Stephen’s Lane takes you past St Stephen’s church (previously a tourist information centre, now closed). One hundred metres away stands St Lawrence on Dial Lane, and about the same distance on Tower Street is St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich’s civic church. About 500 metres from St Lawrence is St Mary at the Elms, a not particularly notable little church, were it not for its role as the shrine of Our Lady of Grace, once visited by Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, Sir Thomas More and. of course, Wolsey. On 20 September 1538 the shrine was destroyed and the statue of Our Lady taken to Chelsea to be burned. However, the good people of Nettuno, south of Rome, add an unexpected twist to the story. Their church displays an ancient wooden statue known locally as Our Lady of the Graces, or less formally as The English Lady. It seems that Our Lady escaped the flames of Chelsea and ended up in Italy, or at least that’s how they see it in Nettuno. A replacement statue, set in a modest niche in the wall, is now venerated in the Ipswich church.

 

The modest shrine of Our Lady of Grace at St Mary at the Elms

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St Margaret's, Ipswich (© Simon Knott, http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/ipsmarg.html).

The most glorious of Ipswich’s ancient churches is St Margaret's, built in the late 14^th and early 15^thcenturies, and dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch. While she was being tortured on the orders of a Roman governor, whom she refused to marry because she had dedicated her virginity to God, Margaret survived numerous dangerous episodes such as being swallowed by a dragon (Satan in disguise), and only gave up her mortal coil when she was beheaded. Ipswich’s Medieval churches underwent changes over the years, especially in the Victorian era when the town was a flourishing manufacturing centre, and St Margaret’s is no exception. The exterior was restored and the height of the tower increased. However, the Victorians fortunately left alone the church’s great glory, its double hammerbeam wooden roof, installed in the 1480s and 1490s. In 1644, a visiting iconoclast had the saints set in niches below the roof decapitated, but otherwise did no damage. The roof was sumptuously painted in the 1690s as a tribute to William and Mary’s triumph in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Ipswich was resolutely Protestant , non-conformist of various flavours, and even Puritan (a local historian opines that we Ipswichians still are a puritanical lot).

 

The double hammer-beam roof of St Margaret's.

Works of two of Ipswich’s adopted sons are displayed in Christchurch Mansion a minute or two’s walk from St Margaret's. Thomas Gainsborough (baptised 1727-1788), born in Sudbury, 10 miles west of Ipswich, moved to the town in 1752 where he painted portraits of many of the worthies of the town, until he moved to Bath in 1759. John Constable (1776-1837) also painted portraits, but he excelled as a painter of the Suffolk landscape. Some fine examples are in the mansion, which houses the largest collection of his work outside London.

 

Christchurch Mansion (built by the wealthy merchant Edmund Withypoll, 1548-1550, given to Ipswich corporation by Felix Cobbold in 1894). Withypoll is buried in the churchyard of Saint Margaret's.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), Mrs Mary Cobbold and Miss Cobbold with a lamb, c.1752.

Cover of the commemorative book published by Cobbold to mark two centuries of brewing at Cliff Quay, Ipswich.

The back cover of the commemorative book featured Cardinal Wolsey and his gate.

One of Gainsborough’s patrons was the wealthy Cobbold family, who moved their brewery from Harwich to Ipswich where the water in Holywells Park made better beer, and where the Cobbolds owned a large house. Gainsborough painted Mrs Mary Cobbold and Miss Cobbold with a lamb about 1752. In 1923 Cobbold & Co. marked the bicentenary of the Cliff Brewery with a fete at Hollywell Park and the publication of a book to celebrate the firm’s illustrious history. The book records the importance of the Cobbold family in Ipswich’s civic life. John C Cobbold was member of parliament five times between 1847 and 1865, and John P, Thomas C and Felix T Cobbold all represented Ipswich in Parliament. Five Cobbolds were mayors of the town between 1841 and 1914 and John Chevalier Cobbold was High Steward from 1875-1882. A selection of Cobbold’s ancient and historical Inns includes the Bull Inn, Ipswich, which “dates from the sixteenth century and in this early period was one of the most important maritime Inns of the town”; Ye Olde Neptune Inn was another 16^th-century inn originally the home of a wealthy merchant who had it decorated (probably by Flemish workmen) with rich oak panelling and carving; the Swan Inn pays £2 per annum to St Mary-le-Tower, a perpetual fine for a murder committed there; The Angel in Woodbridge pays 20 shillings a year for the needy poor of Hasketon, an obligation imposed by Alice Osborn in 1678; The King’s Head in Needham Market had a Tudor staircase; The Greyhound in Pettistree (much favoured by the current Jacobs family and reputed to be the oldest pub in Suffolk) had been occupied as tenants by the Smith family since 1821; the Ostrich Inn at Wherstead probably does not record the presence of large birds on the Orwell, but is more likely a corruption of Oyster Reach. When Bobby Robson was manager of the football club a Cobbold was the chairman, and one of the stands at the football stadium is named after the family. Robson said that if the team won Mr Cobbold would share with Bobby a bottle of champagne to celebrate; if the team lost two bottles were consumed.

 

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), Holywells Park, 1748-1750. The waters were used to brew Cobbold's beer.

Tenants and employees of  Cobbold's brewery celebrating the marriage of John Murray Cobbold and Lady Blanche Cavendish, daughter of the 9th Duke of Devonshire, at Holywells in 1919. From the commemorative book of 1923.

The Greyhound in Pettistree, restored 1922, as depicted in the commemorative book of 1923.

While wool made Medieval Ipswich’s fortune, iron was the material that dominated the 19^th century, and the men (no women once again) behind it were Quakers. The story begins in Ipswich’s rival town, Norfolk in 1785, when Robert Ransome, son of a Quaker schoolmaster, took out a patent for a new cast-iron plough share. Ipswich had a big advantage over Norwich. It was an important port, so in 1789 Ransome moved to Ipswich and set up a foundry opposite St Mary-at-the-Key church, close to the harbour. He soon moved to a former maltings in a street now aptly known as Old Foundry Road. By 1807 Ransome had installed a steam engine to work the machinery. Innovation did not stop with plough shares and steam power. In the early 19^th century, the firm expanded into bridgebuilding and millwrighting. While this was going on, in 1802 a rival, Jacob Garrett, who already had a foundry in Leiston (where my great uncle George Lucas went to work in 1901), set up shop in Ipswich. Ransome’s responded by setting up a foundry in Leiston. Competition did not cramp Ransome’s style. In 1832 (two years after Robert’s death) the firm bought a licence to manufacture Budding’s Patent Grass Cutting Machine, in other words a lawnmower – Ransomes were still important lawn mower manufacturers when I was growing up in Ipswich in the 1960s and 1970s (my uncle Dennis Hussey was a director of the firm, then named Ransome, Sims and Jeffries).

By 1841 the firm was making steam engines to power farm machinery. Expansion was made possible by financing from Ipswich’s Quaker bankers, and the arrival of fresh (Quaker) engineering talent. Ipswich capitalists (including John Chevalier Cobbold of the brewing dynasty), had meanwhile been investing in railways, so naturally Ransomes turned to making railway lines, and signalling and switching gear. The firm (by then known as Ransomes and Rapier) made the large iron buffers at Waterloo station, as well as at several other London rail and underground stations. This was an international business: Ransomes made the first railway engine for the Shanghai and Woosung Railway, and also manufactured the sluice gates for the Aswan dam and other water control schemes. While engineering boomed, other Ipswich industrialists invested in other enterprises. Around 1849 Edward Packard established the first fertiliser factory, close to the all-important docks (as the aptly-named Coprolite Street reminds modern visitors). Packard soon found a rival in Joseph Fison, whose last name survived as a PlC until 1995. The Pretty family (one of whom, Edith Pretty would sponsor the excavations of the Viking ship burial at Sutton Hoo, not far from Ipswich) became one of the largest corset manufacturers in the country, with works at Tower Ramparts, in 1882. The Pretty family were also partners in a department store, Footman, Pretty & Co. And by 1880 George Whight & Co. was producing the New Excelsior sewing machine in the Buttermarket in central Ipswich.

 

Ipswich waterfront, 30 November 2023. The building to the extreme right is the 18th-century Customs House.

The Ipswich manufacturing boom touched my mother’s family (last name Lucas) by offering employment opportunities in new industries. My aunts, Florrie and May Lucas were both employed in an Ipswich clothing factory, perhaps for the Pretty family. The ancient port also provided opportunities. My grandfather Harry Lucas was the captain of the Raybel sailing barge, recently restored and once again carrying cargo under sail. Harry’s son Arthur sailed on the Thalatta for R & W Paul Ltd of Ipswich, carrying malt and barley. The Thalatta too has been restored and is now an educational vessel.

 

The Raybel unloading barley at Woodbridge in the 1920s.

So, the monuments chosen by Ipswich to commemorate famous figures from its past do not give a very representative account of the town's history. But the young student, dazzled by the exotic wonders of the Andes and the Sierra Madre, was equally wrong about his home town, as I realised when I researched a visit with my friend John Peacock in late November 2023. Our goal was to visit some Medieval churches and other surviving ancient buildings, and to see the Gainsboroughs and Constables. Also, to take in a football match: Ipswich 3-Millwall 1, I am glad to say. Unfortunately, the only bar we could find open afterwards could not serve us a bottle of champagne, so we could not celebrate in Cobbold style.

Ipswich (right) vs. Millwall, Portman Road, Ipswich, 29 November 2023.

 A special thank you: my Indianapolis friend Jack Cooney found the book that commemorates 200 years of Cobbold brewing in a used bookstore in Alamogordo, New Mexico (population 31,384 in 2020). Quite how the history of Ipswich brewing travelled all the way to the Chiuhuan we will never know, but it conjures up the Suffolk of my grandparents.

The Roses of Alahuiztlán

 

In December 1603 the Marquis of Montesclaros, viceroy of New Spain agreed to a request from the Indigenous people of Alahuiztlán (now Alahuixtlán in the west of the modern state of Guerrero). The Marquis had ordered that the entire population be moved from their existing homes to a location more convenient for officials to collect taxes and for priests to preach. Moreover, the houses that the people of Alahuiztlán had built for themselves were to be demolished to ensure that nobody lingered behind. Such forced locations were common in late 16^th-century and early 17^th-century Mexico. The native population, devastated by epidemics, had been reduced to such a level that the administrative convenience of Spanish officialdom trumped the attachment to ancestral villages.

 

The people of Alahuiztlán promptly petitioned the viceroy. In the midst of epidemics and death they had carefully tended a rose bush whose flowers were used to decorate their church. If the bush was not cared for it would die. Montesclaros ruled that one house should be spared from demolition so that two or three villagers could remain behind to tend to the rose.

 

The church of Alahuixtlán

In about 1521 three elders of the village of Noxtepec in northern Guerrero, travelled to Tenochtitlan, the defeated capital of the Aztec empire, to introduce themselves to their new overlord. The village leaders met Hernán Cortés himself, who told them that one of his lieutenants, Juan de Cabra would be their new lord. The Spaniards offered the elders Spanish food, but so disgusting was the European cooking that they could not eat it. They took it home and offered it to the men of Noxtepec, but none of them fancied it either. They also returned home with an instruction from Cabra to build a church to replace their prehispanic temple. The elders asked for time to do so and eventually finished the work in 1533. The church of St James the Apostle of Noxtepec stands there to this day.

 

The 16th-century church of Noxtepec

 

These two anecdotes are just two of many tales from the history of Guerrero recounted in my forthcoming book. The following is the University of New Mexico Press catalogue entry:

 

Indigenous Culture and Change in Guerrero,

Mexico, 7000 BCE to 1600 CE

Ian Jacobs

Until recently, Guerrero’s past has suffered from relative neglect by archaeologists and

historians. While a number of excellent studies have expanded our knowledge of certain

aspects of the region’s history or of particular areas or topics, the absence of a thorough

scholarly overview has left Guerrero’s significant contributions to the history of Mesoamericaand colonial Mexico greatly underestimated.

 

With Indigenous Culture and Change in Guerrero, Mexico, 7000 BCE to 1600 CE Ian Jacobs

at last puts Guerrero’s history firmly on the map of Mexican archaeology and history. The

book brings together a vast amount of cross-disciplinary information to understand the

deep roots of the Indigenous cultures of a complex region of Mexico and the forces that

shaped the foundations of colonial Mexico in the sixteenth century and beyond. This book

is particularly significant for its exploration of archaeological, Indigenous, and historical

sources.

April 1

384 pp.; 6 x 9; 33 halftones,

2 maps, 35 tables

$85.00 cloth

ISBN 978-0-8263-6586-6

$106.00 CAD

$85.00 webPDF

E-ISBN 978-0-8263-6587-3

 

 

And as immodest self-promotion, these comments will be on the back cover:

 

"A remarkable book, combining unusual ambition, meticulous research, and lucid analysis; in its pages, Guerrero morphs from a marginal hinterland of 'wild Mexico' into a dynamic entity, whose territory, peoples, trade, production and culture are vividly recreated."

--Alan Knight, author of Mexico: from the Beginning to the Spanish Conquest

 

“This is an ambitious, superbly researched, and significant reassessment of the history of Guerrero. Based on meticulous research, Ian Jacobs has written a deep history that foregrounds the formation of indigenous cultures and economies in Mesoamerican Guerrero over millennia, and their transformation during the first century after the Spanish invasion. This is an absorbing narrative that exposes searing destruction and displacement of indigenous peoples of the region under Spanish colonial rule, but also adaptation and resilience. It is a remarkable work and a major contribution to the field.”--Susan Deans-Smith, author of Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers - the Making of the Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico.

Acapulco and Gaza

 

When my son Chris drives to Puerto Vallarta from San Vicente, Nayarit, where he lives and works, he crosses to the Ameca river that flows down a wide valley to the Bahía de Banderas (Bay of Flags). As you approach the river from the Nayarit side you can’t miss a huge sign “Vidanta World” and the pods of a cable car crossing high over the highway. Vidanta’s corporate website describes its business as “luxury hotels, golf courses, real estate investments, tourism infrastructure, and entertainment experiences.” Look to your right and you see a vast, grey castellated set of buildings that, to my eyes at least, resemble a pastiche of a megalomaniac’s Stalinist monument. On the other side of the highway where the cable car deposits guests, the company has channelled water from the river to create an artificial lake. In short, Vidanta has occupied a vast area of land along the river and on the beach, and has reengineered the ecosystems to provide the experiences it sells to its clients. So huge is Vidanta world that when Chris went there to collect two visitors to his charity, Pasitos de Luz, he drove for two kilometres on Vidanta property.

 

Developments like Vidanta World that are proliferating around the bay monopolize the land, once the home of crocodiles, crabs, iguanas, tlacuaches (a large rodent), many kinds of birds, and other animals, and where turtles laid their eggs. Fortunately, “ACs” (Asociaciones Cívicas – registered charities) do their best to protect the turtles and other species, and to preserve access to the beach for local residents, from the corporate landgrabbers.

 

Chris was a speaker recently at the finishing line of a mega-marathon from Mascota, set in a valley inland high above the bay, to Puerto Vallarta. The runners cover various distances, starting at 20km to a maximum of 100km. Various charities had been given display space near the finish and were granted speaking slots to address the audience. However, the previous day the charities had been allocated the hottest time of the day and spoke to a crowd of only three hardy people. The following day, the time slot was changed at short notice to the evening. Since the charity workers had been waiting since early morning, only Chris stayed on to speak.

 

Earlier in the day, Chris had watched as important figures from the city administration were presented to the crowd. One plump young man was talking on his mobile as he was announced and during his time on the stage busily sent messages and paid no attention to the event in which he was participating. When the Spanish interviewer asked Chris why ACs matter, the image of this man, quite possibly the nephew or some other relative of a senior elected official, came to his mind. He felt moved to say that the ecology of the bay and its fauna could not be entrusted to the likes of Vidanta nor to local officials. Those who were making a real difference to local residents were the ACs that protect turtles, or charities like Pasitos that provides free nutrition, therapy and education to disabled children.

 

Chris told us this story during our weekly Zoom call in response to our asking how people in his part of Mexico had reacted to the war in Gaza. He responded that there was much more concern about the appalling devastation wrought by Hurricane Otis in Acapulco, a much larger city than Puerto Vallarta. Judging by the photos I have seen, the damage caused overnight by winds and rain resembles uncannily the devastation in Gaza that we witness daily on our TV screens. In Acapulco too, people whose homes were destroyed are without water, food and electricity. The low-income working-class residents have lost their homes, their jobs and their incomes and are completely without resources to survive. As in Gaza, desperate people have looted sources of vital supplies.

 

The government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) promptly evacuated foreign tourists on free buses to Mexico City. While the wealthier Mexicans who lived in Acapulco could afford to pay for private transport inland, the government’s offer to the poor is a free bus ride to Chilpancingo, the state capital. Now, the population of Acapulco exceeds 900,000, while 283,000 people live in Chilpancingo. The capital could not possibly accommodate large numbers of displaced people, who in any case lack the money to sustain away from their destroyed homes.

 

AMLO has declared that the armed forces will deliver all humanitarian aid so that ACs and local government “wouldn’t try to profit from people’s necessity.” This choice reflects AMLO’s preference for involving the army (which he holds to be incorruptible against evidence to the contrary) in projects such as delivering medicines, managing Mexico City’s two airports, building a new railway and numerous other enterprises. An initial delivery of 20,000 food rations and 200,000 litres of water for a population the size of Acapulco’s seems a rather meagre first response. Furthermore, one suspects that local charities and government officials would understand where the needs are and how best to reach communities in complicated terrain. This was certainly the case of Pasitos de Luz during the pandemic: Chris and his colleagues delivered food parcels to the families of the children they care for when the charity had to shut its operations. One hopes that local charities have ignored AMLO’s discouragement and are doing what they can to help fellow citizens.

 

Chris told us that in his area local people have donated supplies to be sent to the people of Acapulco. One friend who comes from a coastal community near Acapulco loaded her car with donations and drove nearly 1,000km. to deliver them to those in need. She reported much damage and many streets in the city still blocked and impassable. This brought home to me that, awful as the deaths (at least 100 people) and the damage to people’s homes and livelihoods are in Acapulco, they pale in comparison to Gaza. The night of the hurricane must have been terrifying, but it was one night not a month or more of continuous bombardment, and the scale of killing vastly greater. And no kind souls can load their car to take supplies and comfort to homeless terrified and grieving people.

 

Note: I was moved to write this simply because the photographs of buildings damaged by the terrifying power of nature somehow parallels the still more awful power of human-made tragedies. A few weeks before Hurricane Otis we had experienced Hurricane Lidia which landed just 20km south of Puerto Vallarta. Even a less powerful hurricane brought huge rocks, tress and land crashing down onto the coastal highway, and swollen rivers washed away anything in their path. Our area experienced nothing worse than a few days without electricity or water, but the damage we saw further south showed us something of the power of Lidia. Nothing I have written here is intended to ignore nor minimize the suffering of innocents murdered in Israel or those held hostage by Hamas. I am disheartened by the one side or the other rhetoric. We should perhaps remember that those killed, those held hostage, and indeed the rescuer of some young Israeli Jews from the music festival, include Bedouin Muslims who have long suffered unjust treatment under Israeli rule. We have a collective responsibility for the deaths, oppression and injustice in Israel and Palestine. We have been content for our political leaders to ignore the moral imperative to work honestly and unceasingly for a settlement that enables the Palestinian people to live free of occupation and oppression that creates a rergion in which all, Muslim, Christian, secular, Jew can coexist in at least a tolerable degree of security and justice. Whatever the most recent wrongs there is no answer but freedom and justice.