Sunday, October 27, 2013

Sunday history lessons

I would say that I am quite a nut about history. I love learning about history and have since I was young. Do I regret not studying it - no, because I have a job: yes, because I would love love love to work in a museum.

Today, instead of going to church I decided to take a little trip to the Schlossmuseum. I also find it quite saddening to think of how long I have lived here and haven't gone. I am quite embarrassed with how little I know about Darmstadtian history. When I think of Darmstadt I just think of farmland, and rural life because outside of Germany, now one knows about it. Before I came here, what I did I know of this place...??? nothing. But some real stuff happened here, and it really is not an insignificant little corner. Although there wasn't a King here, there was a earl and then later a duke who was in charge of this area. I did know that there was a connection to two daughters being ladies in waiting for Marie Antoinette at Schönbrun in Vienna.

The Schlossmuseum was quite nice and it was super interesting to hear things about the city that you are living in and help you appreciate things and find out why they were there.

One of the hospitals, that is still very active was actually a gift to an old Princess (Elisabeth).

But the biggest history-gasm of the day was finding out that the daughter of Queen Victoria (the Queen Victoria) married a minor prince of Hessen, which was the lineage for the Tsarina Alexandra of Russia who passed along haemophilia to her son Alexei stirring up the whole Rasputin thing in Russia prior to the first world war.

Also, Alexandra's brother Ernst Ludwig who is super important in Darmstadt (was a duke) who was very influential in the Jugendstil movement is the Godfather of Prince Charles

Minde blown!!

I am certainly going to need to learn many more things, because these discoveries really get my blood pumping with excitement.

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