Heidelberg - ein Wiedersehen Natasha Walker proposed to Darrell Barnes (and it wasn’t a leap year!) that they might collaborate, both of them holding each other’s poetic skills in high esteem. It was apparent from the start that, apart from Oxford and the Cotswolds, there were not many places that both of them knew in common - apart from Heidelberg, where Natasha currently lives and where Darrell had spent part of two long vacations in an attempt to understand the German language better. Darrell’s experience was not altogether a happy one: he had a boring - and poorly paid - job guiding visitors around the manufacturing plant of Original Heidelberger Druckmaschinen at Wiesloch, some distance outside Heidelberg itself, whither he and other tour guide staff were driven at a furious rate down the autobahn each morning and whence all returned in the evening as if the hounds of hell were snapping at their heels. One abiding memory is of a tablet affixed to a wall in the Schloss commanding a magnificent view of the river Neckar, which bore a poem written by Marianne von Willemer in 1815 commemorating her last meeting with Goethe in the autumn of that year. Natasha set out to reframe Darrell’s views of the city from perspectives which may have eluded his younger self: from the famous Philosophenweg, from the viewpoint of Liselotte von der Pfalz, born in Heidelberg’s castle and who became the unfortunate Madame and sister in law to Louis XIV, at whose orders Heidelberg and the surrounding area was destroyed. Dear Darrell, you knew Heidelberg a while ago. Now drenched in snow, I’d like to know what thrilled you. What concurred to make you smile? Up on the hill, the Neckar’s mists below? Ros’ und Lilie morgenthaulich Blüht im Garten meiner Nähe;1 Natasha Walker 1
Dew-drenched rose and lily / bloom in the garden near to me 160
