burg salzburg (11. 485)

Running some errands in town, we paused to take a stroll around the dry moat and Ringwall of the fortified castle complex Salzburg, with a commanding view of Bad Neustadt an der Saale from a plateau above—the historic city founded by Charlemagne when he created the palatinate of East Francia, legendarily as a token of love for his wife Fastrada of Ingelheim owing to the city walls when looking down are vaguely in the shape of heart, though the modern symbol is pretty anachronistic. Important already since the time of the Carolingians and predating the settlement, it was probably built chiefly by the ordained Henneberg son Bishop Gebhard in the tenth century to, among other strategic matters stop the expansion efforts of his fractious family (the Burgmänner—castellan—oppidanus or castrensus, the class of knights obligated to guard the castle recruited from various factions and had to work together), and secure the route between Mellrichstadt and Meiningen and Würzburg. Partially occupied by the descents of the Guttenberg barony that came into ownership in the nineteenth century after the preceding lines died out without heirs and who oversaw its restoration and transformation into a tourist attraction, hoping to lure spa-goers to the nearby thermal baths—see previously—Burg Salzburg was a major bulwark of resistance during the Nazi regime. We’d walked here quite often before and visited the interior keep and ensemble of towers and chapels but realise that we should more fully limn the history of places we had sort taken for granted by dent of familiarity and proximity.