Traffic jam, as usual at the roundabout at the entrance to Ahrweiler.

But at least no more brown dust over the river valley as it was in July.

The mud that the Ahr, which had become a torrential river, had left in the whole valley in the meter-high flooded streets and houses within a few hours - disappeared.

The heavy dump trucks that rolled into the narrow valley and tormented their way out again with rubble and rubbish - gone.

The young and old who met with shovels and rubber boots at the gas station in the roundabout and took the helper bus to those in need - no longer there either.

All that remains is the traffic jam from Ahrweiler.

Daniel Deckers

in the political editorial department responsible for “The Present”.

  • Follow I follow

But the appearance of normality does not last long. On a side street, rows of houses gaze at the viewer from dark window caves. Where are all the children who went to the kindergarten of the Catholic parish of St. Pius in the morning and who populated the streets in the afternoon? Where are their parents or grandparents if they couldn't get into the attic of their house? It was only in October that the body of a 60-year-old woman who had been unable to get to safety was identified - in Rotterdam. There is hardly anyone on the Ahr who does not know the name of one of the 134 people who did not survive the disaster. Marc Adeneuer knows who the lady was: the sister-in-law of a friend. The memory of the night of July 16 catches up with him, like everyone else who stayed."There are a lot of people here who need help," says the winemaker from Ahrweiler. Some have changed psychologically beyond recognition. And yet life must go on.

Eight families live from and with his winery. Life by and with wine on the Ahr is anything but romantic. His ancestors already knew it. The steep and terraced slopes, a fascinating ensemble of vines and stone for tourists at any time of the year, have always demanded backbreaking work from the winegrowers. In extreme cases, this means climbing the narrowest terraces again and again, working each vine by hand, always in the hope that a good autumn will reward the effort. The good vintages in particular shape the collective memory. Even if the vintners live in the villages and towns in the valley, their fate for better or for worse is not linked to the river, but to what they wrest from the rock formations made of slate and greywacke year after year.

This task demands everything from them to this day. There is no other explanation for the fact that the Ahr valley was hit several times in the 19th century not by floods but by waves of emigration. The widely scattered parcels, which are becoming ever smaller due to real division, simply did not yield enough to support a family. At the end of the 19th century crisis piled up after crisis. Here the migration from the narrow valley to the Rhenish industrial regions, there the real and the downy mildew, two plant pests introduced from North America, which the noble grapevine, which is native to Europe, has nothing to counteract to this day. While there may have been winegrowers' cooperatives on the Ahr since the middle of the 19th century, they too could not achieve anything in the many years when there were enough winegrowers but hardly any wine.