Baumholder, Germany

An earlier post here regarding Neubrücke, Germany, where Monique first saw the light, has turned out to be surprisingly popular on Ghulf Genes despite that little town’s absolute obscurity. But the reason for that heavy traffic becomes clear once we know that nearby Baumholder is, and has for many years also been, the largest U.S. military installation outside of the United States. Many, many thousands of people going all the way back to the times when I served there as a soldier know the place. In my day, the late 1950s, Neubrücke was the nearest major army hospital. Now it is part of the vast Baumholder complex and houses its own barracks. Brigitte and I met in Baumholder, so this day may be appropriate to do something I’ve meant to do for a long time: present some pictures of the place.

This, the most lovely photograph of the place, is on Flicker, the work of Susana Alba-McCormick, reproduced here with permission. It shows part of the dependent quarters in moonlight, among them the building where we first made our home in a very spacious apartment; that’s where we brought Monique from Neubrücke as a baby; it is one of the buildings to the right, on Pear Street.

This one, panoramic enough to include the town, shows some of the same buildings from another perspective, some of the barracks, and more, much more, if you imagine moving on to the left of this image. This and the next two images I have courtesy of Bruce Richards (his site is here).

Baumholder is a most curious place. It is home to some 12,000 Americans, of whom 4,400 are military, 6,550 are military family members, 600 are American civil servants, 360 are their family members, and 100 individuals are retired American military people. The post also employs 500 Germans—and Brigitte was one of them in my day. The town itself—you can see one of its church steeples and housing to the right—has 4,600 inhabitants. And since this photograph was taken, massive additional American Military facilities, not least a major hospital, have been built in the town itself.

Here is an old, old picture, taken from the other side across the little lake that serves the town as a recreational facility, showing also the second church—but there are three others yet.

Now two more panoramic shots of which this one shows the size of this facility more clearly, including strings of barracks—one of which I lived in before Brigitte and I became a couple. 

I owe this nice modern shot to a German industrial site which is installing energy-conservation structures in all of the buildings reaching from horizon to horizon, called Pumpen Intelligenz (link).

Not shown is a vastly—and I do mean vastly—greater area, the Baumholder firing range itself. Baumholder is one of two (and the biggest) artillery training regions in Germany, serving now the German and the U.S. Armies—and in my day, in addition, the French military. The insert shows the size of the range. The dot shown on the upper right is the Baumholder airport.

Baumholder had its origins in 1937 when the German military chose to create the facility. The government appropriated 22,000 acres for the purpose and moved 842 families from 14 small villages to create a zone where destruction could be practiced without actually harming anyone. Strange, strange. Here two war-displaced people met. Brigitte had migrated from Poland, by way of what was East Germany, to this place. And I had come from Hungary, but by way first of Germany and then America to be here. We were both secretaries at the time; she was secretary to Baumholder’s Post Commander. I was secretary to the highest ranking officer, the general who commanded the 8th Infantry Division Artillery (DivArty, we called it). Brigitte and I were both engaged in arranging all kinds of contacts with the German communities all around, and naturally had lots of contacts. Nothing propinqs like propinquity—even in  the midst of that other human perennial: destruction.

Libraries

The smallest public library I ever used was also, curiously, the best. It was located on perhaps the largest U.S. military base in Germany then (late 1950s) and now. Baumholder is and was one of two gigantic artillery and armored firing ranges. The post housed (still does) 10,000 troops and about a thousand dependents, so-called, the spouses and children of officers and non-coms. The library had about 5,000 titles but these of the highest quality. I’ve often wondered since how that had come about. I could and did sample the best of literature, history, philosophy, and science there. It was astonishing. A mere handful of us used the place—honestly, really. The place had the strange aura of a branch office, but of Mount Olympus, descended to the great wastes of organized destruction. Compact yet complete; empty like an Anglican church; staffed by diffident and lonely DOD civil servants starved for bookish conversation which, despite or because of the emptiness, we held in hushed and reverent tones. Yes, yes. Baumholder library. It surprised me to discover that it’s still there—but updated. It has its own website now; it still welcomes the nostalgic browser with its on-line catalogue; and in that catalogue I could still find the old mile-stones of my personal development—in the old editions yet.

The military has a culture of its own; it extends beyond the merely martial; the military knows much about values and is impervious to markets. Back in those days, with a universal draft drawing all males, it served as a kind of national educational system in which the teaching of values was not only permitted but expected. And the odd corollary of that culture were tiny libraries dense in cultural and intellectual riches.

We lived in many places and drew on the holdings of vast public urban libraries. I’ve used academic libraries going to school as well—and midsized facilities in historic places like Fairfax, Va. Fairfax had a rich Civil War collection; not surprising. The big publics were good libraries, but there is something about a library you can actually get to know intimately. Here in Grosse Pointe the library ought to be rich, dense, and satisfying: this is a very upscale area. It isn’t. The wealth of inhabitants has gone into display. Our poor library struggles, means well, tries very hard. But it cannot be compared to that strange chapel of culture in Baumholder.

The library in Overland Park, Kansas, was (probably still is) the other shining beacon in our own limited exposure. It was much bigger, to be sure, way out there on the edges of the suburbs (these days enfolded by suburbs that stretch into the dim distance beyond it, shopping center after shopping center—until at last the grain elevators take over). Loved the Overland Park Library. A stellar achievement—probably of one energetic and yet enlightened personality, no doubt well known in his or her own circle, not much beyond, one of those people little seen, never feted in the media, who uphold the real culture here in America as also everywhere.

These thoughts to mark the occasion that school has ended—and in consequence of it, our library hours are changing. Nota bene: you’ve got to get in there before 5 p.m. on Fridays or Katie will have barred the door.