{"id":5316,"date":"2026-04-06T10:16:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T15:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/?p=5316"},"modified":"2026-04-26T12:24:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T17:24:00","slug":"5316","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/2026\/04\/5316\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronomy in Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, I visited Germany for a conference on medieval Islamic astrolabes. Unfortunately, that was not particularly suitable for a video on my channel (as it was too deep in the weeds). But, if I was already heading across an ocean, I decided to take some additional time to visit some of Germany&#8217;s other astronomical locations.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GuzDOH4M_tk?si=TiZEFCksa8ga6pWO\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->One of the things that struck me as I was doing the research for this video is how often WWII came up.<\/p>\n<p>The Mayan codex was damaged when the basement it was stored in to protect it from bombings flooded. One of the astronomical clocks was destroyed leaving only a reconstruction in its place today.<\/p>\n<p>And although it wasn&#8217;t mentioned in this video, Weil der Stadt was specifically exempted from bombing due to it being Kepler&#8217;s birthplace.<\/p>\n<p>In my video on the $16^{th}$ Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop, I discussed a talk on a $16^{th}$ Century instrument in Dresden that was heavily damaged leading to it having to be reconstructed digitally.<\/p>\n<p>War has taken a heavy toll on Germany&#8217;s history and we are all poorer for it.<\/p>\n<p>This is not me saying that Germany should have been given a free pass in WWII. However, I write this at a time where the United States has chosen to engage in a war of choice in a country with a deep astronomical history that is often overlooked.<\/p>\n<p>I worry about what treasures there will be lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, I visited Germany for a conference on medieval Islamic astrolabes. Unfortunately, that was not particularly suitable for a video on my channel (as it was too deep in the weeds). But, if I was already heading across an ocean, I decided to take some additional time to visit some of Germany&#8217;s other astronomical &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/2026\/04\/5316\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Astronomy in Germany&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy-before-the-telescope"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s9ZpvC-5316","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5316"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5333,"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5316\/revisions\/5333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonvoisey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}