Fontiers
These days a lot of people speak about frontiers and cross fences. A few have build one (like Israel), or intend to build one (like Donald Trump on the Mexican border). We are very lucky because the last great frontier in Germany wall was taken down in 1989 and the rest of this wall and some other parts of the inner German frontier just remain as parts of museums instead of being actual demonstrations of power separation.
Limes – Roman frontier in Northern Europe
But there were walls and border installations way before 1961 and the start of the Berlin Wall, actually way before this time period, the Roman border named Limes. I don’t want to give a history lesson, but a short introduction to this topic is necessary nevertheless. The Limes was the frontier between the Roman Empire and the so called Barbaricum. The Barbaricum was an area populated by free German tribes who from time to time attacked the Roman frontier. The Limes is part of the Unesco list for World Cultural Heritage since 2005.
Roman Fort Saalburg
But am I writing about borders of recent or not recent history? Watched to much tv documentaries on the history channel? No, this is actually just some insight to this historical aspects because last Sunday (08-01-2017) I visited the Roman Fort Saalburg, which was my first photo-trip in 2017. This fort is situated in a German region named Taunus. More specifically the fort is to be found near the city of Bad Homburg.
The fort was abandoned after the reign of the Roman Empire declined more and more. Centuries later from 1897 to 1907 the fort has been rebuild as a museum and research facility. The initiative and financial support for this project came from the German Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Fujifilm X-Pro2
For these shots I used my trusted Fujifilm X-Pro-2. And to avoid to chance lenses to often I used the Fujinon 16-55 mm zoom lens. This combo worked great in this cold and snowy environment. It snowed before and after our visit there. The wether-sealing of both the camera and the lens worked really well.
I plan to write a little bit more about the X-Pro-2 as well about the lenses I use in future. Let me know if you’re interested in certain topics and I’ll try to cover this as well.