The inhabitants of Ulm an der Donau, Ulm on the Danube, the charming German city that straddles the border of Bavaria and Baden-W¨urttemberg, have always been very proud of their minster, which was 500 years in the building: by 1890 they could boast that the minster’s spire was the highest in the world. It so happens that there are steps inside that spire, and I have climbed all 768 of them. Twice.
In 1980 I thought the whole business was simply a testing climb; nearly 25 years later I soon began to wonder what happens to people who collapse during the ascent. While panting up the wind-tossed tower, I realised that I did not know the German word for help, and wondered whether a cry of au secours might do. But a minute later, such considerations became purely academic, because by then I could not have got a phrase or word in any language out: speech was a secondary consideration. While gargoyles leered from various levels and the town unrolled below me, all I knew was the rhythmic thumping of my heart.
Somehow I made it to the top, and then not unnaturally wondered how I was going to get down again. While resting and gaping at the view, and doubtless suffering simultaneously from altitude sickness and oxygen deprivation, I found myself pondering the complicated matter of language, for it is not difficult to see the building itself in terms of the speech of symbolism and architecture. It seems reasonable enough to assume that when the foundations of the minster were laid in 1377, ordinary people translated, almost unconsciously, the words and symbols church and spire into the phrase desire for Heaven. With the eternal longing that humans have always had for understanding, these people of the 14th century tried to make sense of this world by concentrating on the concept of another, using the language of architecture to the greater glory of God.
My ignorance of German did not stop me from going on to think about this city’s more literal associations with languages of many sorts. Breathing deeply and peering out through intricate stonework, I told myself that I just might be viewing the distant scene of the Austrian Army’s 1805 defeat by Corsican/French Napoleon. The luckless Austrian general forced to surrender eventually found a place in Tolstoy’s War and Peace as ‘the unfortunate General Mack’, whose unexpected arrival