I do not know the story of this sad house, stripped of its balcony (right, 2012) and all the people who lived there and decorated it in 1956 (left). Homes can stand vacant in Biedenkopf when no surviving family members live in the town anymore.  If the home falls into disrepair and reaches the point where no one could live there even if they and the owners could arrange it,  then the town faces a problem that is almost insoluble.  At least one historic structure in the Altstadt is caught in such a dilemma.

Break's over, march the border, check the boundary markers!
We are climbing out of the Thälchens Triesch meadow in 1956, the last year (I think) that it was used for the first day's Frühstücksplatz.
The well-cared-for woods has several meadows, each big enough to hold the entire town for a picnic.
After 1956, the town used the Sackpfeife (bagpipes) meadow, further along this "Day One"  part of the border . . .
and bigger too, because attendance is now around 20,000 people (2012),
far more than you'll count if you click for the full image here. 

In 1956, it was still possible to have cool, rainy days in mid-August (Germany's "west coast marine" type of climate).  People in these photos are wearing jackets, overcoats, a white sweater.

Julius Caesar fingered the Germanic tribes as a future threat to The Empire, but, in 51BC, the behavior of these provincials was tribal.  Clans marched around the woods in circles a lot,  checking their borders.  The Roman Empire came and went, the Middle Ages came and went, but in Biedenkopf, they're still checking the border.  The banner says "the woods is ours" -- everybody's -- and everybody is there, at six in the morning, on the Marktplatz, on the trails, in one meadow after another, each one big enough to hold the entire town and anyone who once lived there. 

Insects never seen before move to lands grown warmer; populations explode when no freeze checks overwintering adults, eggs or spores; drought-stressed trees weaken, storms no one ever experienced topple them.  Biedenkopf's families have drawn a border around a commons treasured for centuries, a commons that finally, after hundreds of years of vigilance, will be taken from them.  The commons will be taken by others who never held anything close to heart but their own private wealth and manifest power to push others around -- people clearly superior to provincials with nothing better to do than march around the woods in circles. 




This is Page 3: Old Photos - The 1956 Grenzgang in Biedenkopf, Germany
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Liebe Leute! Bitte an jerry-va at speakeasy dot net Korrektur u. Verbesserungen schreiben.
Kann jemand irgend welche Teil übersetzen?  Ich könnte es vollziehen, hätte ich von anderen den Anstoß.  Beihilfe kann nur an bessere, ausgebreitete Redewendung, Ausdrücke, Wortschatz hinführen.
Danke.

Rev 13Aug2016, 27Nov2016,