We've not found any information on the significance of the statue in Vienna.
When in Vienna we were pleased (and a bit surprised) to see a large statue of Gutenberg in the center of a square:
We've not found any information on the significance of the statue in Vienna.
But, Mainz is "Gutenberg City Number One" (Strasbourg, of course is Number Two), and, as Mark has expressed it before… "when you're Jewish the whole world is Jewish" we went to see the Gutenberg Museum with Jewish eyes.
It is thrilling to look at Gutenberg's first major publication: the Bible, and to see printing presses from all periods and places. The Museum has rooms where it displays and explains Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Islamic writing and (in the case of Japanese and Korean) printing techniques. These were quite interesting. However, the museum omits any reference to the writing systems of the Indian subcontinent (Devanāgarī), the Mesoamerican, and Jewish (Hebrew, Yiddish, etc.) writing and printing. We found this quite odd due to the early adoption and spread of printing by Jews.
The Gutenberg Museum had a special exhibit of games and toys while we were there. These included some very politically incorrect items (which Mark photographed… we don't know if that was prohibited or not). The labels make no attempt to interpret, explain or disclaim the toys presented:
If we didn't know better, we might have imagined that contemporary Mainz is glad there are no Jews there any longer.
We finally found an official tourist office and Mark got his map. In the process he asked about Jewish sites in Mainz. The young men at the counter could think of nothing that might fit that description. This was a great contrast to our experience in Speyer and Worms where the tourist info centers provided literature about the Jewish sites which those cities own and maintain. We found it odd that there no public current recognition of an earlier Jewish community.
From the Wikipedia article about Mainz:
The Mainz master builder [Eduard Kreyßig, after 1865] constructed a number of state-of-the-art public buildings, including the Mainz town hall — which was the largest one of its kind in Germany at that time — as well a synagogue [emphasis ours], the Rhine harbor, and a number of public baths and school buildings.
Later, when we looked closely at the map we noticed however, that the two Jewish cemeteries, the old and the new were marked. The older, though closed, we visited later,
is of significant historic interest.
You don't need to know much German to be able to recognize how old the cemetery is.
There may be hope for a more meaningful Jewish future as this upcoming journey and award suggest.
We don't know the answer to the question, but it goes back at least to the time when he had "Print Shop" class at Audubon Jr. High School (now called Middle School). So, we were pleased to see across the way from the Museum Der Druckladen (sorry the English Web page does not seem to work correctly) with workshops on paper making and printing.
Those who have carefully followed our adventure will recall that we were unable to see the Chagall ceiling at the Paris Opera because of the scheduled rehearsals, nor the Chagall Museum in Nice because it was closed for restoration. So, while taking a lunch break at the local Schiller Cafe which features free WiFi along with good food, we learned that the St. Stephen's Church has windows by Chagall and was only 50 meters away. They are beautiful windows, with a lot of blue, making the Church look dull by contrast. You can, of course, purchase postcards of the windows, and a few Web sites have photos as well, but we think (modestly enough) that Mark's show the color better:
And, of course, always alert for popular transformations… across the square from the church we found another café:
It's also nice to know that Haifa (Israel), has been a sister city of Mainz since 1981.