hohenwartetalsperre iii (12.497)

Early in the day, we took a trip to the larger town of Ranis to stock up on provisions and revisited the fortified castle, with its Ilsenhöse passage leading from the bailey to the old market recently confirmed to have some of the oldest prehistoric evidence for the settlement of Homo sapiens in the region—more than forty-five thousand years ago, particularly rare for an urbanised area.

The eleventh-century castle on a promontory overlooking the town has been in the ownership of the Germany Red Cross since 1994, the dynasty of von Breitenbuch selling the historic site for a nominal fee. Back at the campgrounds, we followed a trail along the water’s edge to a forest path littered with slate—a common architectural element for the region that afforded us some commanding views of the artistic bends in the watercourse.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a US supreme court justice flies provocative flags (with synchronoptica), a WWII battle for an Aleutian island, the anatomy of a limerick plus Trump found guilty of falsifying business records 

seven years ago: all about Ostheim

nine year ago: a wearable, in-ear translator plus giving Tumblr a try

ten years ago: Swiss cheese goes blind plus Alf’s hip-hop album

eleven years ago: mourning a ruined laptop, semi-conducting cement plus getting ready to travel to Lake Como

taubertal: rundweg (12. 428)

 

Taking a slightly different route through the Tauber valley along the river rather than straight up the wooded promontory where Rothenburg is perched, we passed a collection of small settlements that grew around the many mills including the Topplerschlösschen built by prominent city mayor, Heinrich Toppler (whom orchestrated an alliance with Ulm and two other cities along the Romantikstrasse Nördlingen and Dinkelsbühl and was ultimately executed during a palace intrigue), during the fourteenth century as a summer retreat and to monitor milling enterprises.

The towers and steeples of the city were visible on the horizon during the walk and grew as we approached the double stone bridge. The skyline, the most developed and articulated one which is breathtaking and must have been nothing sort of transfixing for medieval people seeing it for the first time, had earned Rothenburg the title of the “Franconian Jerusalem” since the age of the Crusades. Back in the city, we visited the spacious Burggarten and walked along the medieval walls back down to the Tauber valley, with a view of Detwang in the middle distance.

 synchronoptica 

one year ago: foreign movie titles in Norway (with synchronoptica), an AI beauty contest from 1964, steaming footage from the International Space Station, wistful nostalgia for a a time and place one has never known plus a banger from Robert Palmer

seven years ago: transit fare-strikes plus the Swiss cheese cartel

eight years ago: an executive order to protect bigotry, crossing paracosms plus the unacknowledged privilege of not having to sit to pee

nine years ago: US-EU trade accords plus bursts of activity

twelve years ago: the European Space Agency explores Jupiter’s moons

taubertal: rothenburg ob der tauber (12. 427)

 

Well preserved and one of only four cities in Germany with intact medieval defensive walls, and recognised as a free and immediate Reichstadt—Heinrich V appointed a nephew of the Hohenstaufen branch after the original dynasty died out in the twelfth century as a successor to the counts’ property—Rothenburg ob der Tauber was threatened with destruction during the Thirty Years’ War, the Catholic League field marshal Johann t’Sercalaes, County of Tilly, fresh from a string of victories, wanting to quarter forty-thousand troops there, much to the the resistance of the populace, prepared for a siege rather than takeover in pitched battle. The popular though certainly apocryphal legend of the Meistertrunk gives the account that Tilly would spare the city and its governing council if any one of them could drink a flagon (roughly a gallon, three and a half litres) of wine in a single sitting. Burgermeister Georg Nusch was up to the task—which is heroic enough but does not seem like an impossible ask and the fact that there was no contemporaneous chronicle suggests rather the city lost its strategical importance due to a bout of plague which led to the preservation of its seventeenth century state. Nonetheless the feat is commemorated hourly with a clockwork recreation from the Ratstrinkstube near city hall. Romanced by landscape painters from the nineteenth century onwards, Rothenburg gained special significance in ideological terms as representative of Heimat with many field trips there organised through the Kraft durch Freude programme.

 

The city was destroyed by one-third, sparing the oldest parts, during an Allied bombardment campaign but rebuilt true to form—see also—the cityscape was also used in the film Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang and the inspiration for fictional hometown of the animated feature Pinocchio, with the Plönlein, the small square at the intersection of two streets at a fountain, being one of the more photogenic spots. On the way back out, through the former Jewish quarter and back over the hill, we learnt that the future pontiff Francis had stayed here for several months in 1986 whilst learning German at the local Goethe Institute chapter.

*     *     *     *     *

synchronoptica

one year ago: the beautifully dissociative nature of the Japanese language (with synchronoptica), Saturation 70 plus the US National Day Reason

seven years ago: commemorating the Berlin Airlift, humorist Grant Snider plus animated sketching lessons

eight years ago: the origins of the .mp3 format, disaster capitalism, the matte paintings of Star Wars plus the geographic centre of the EU shifts

nine years ago: an animated filmography plus food colouring’s unqualified reputation

ten years ago: an avatar-making app, Fearbook! plus divided America/divided Germany

taubertal: detwang (12. 426)

For the long Labour Day weekend (see also), H and I returned to the Tauber valley and stayed at a campground just outside of the Kirchdorf Detwang, just a leisurely twenty minute walk along the river from Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

After setting up camp, we discovered the little village on the crossroads of the Franconian Marienweg and the Jakobsweg (the pilgrimage trail of el Camino de Santiago de Compostela) to be quite a historic jewel itself. From the Old High German for someone’s field (=Det’s Wang), it was first mentioned in a lease contract in 1335 when the local chapter of the Teutonic Knights, bought later in the same century by the imperial city of Rothenburg. The Gothic parish church of Sts Peter and Paul was founded in the tenth century and features an altar retable hewn from wood by Tilman Riemenschneider (see previously).

 

The small neighbouring castle is from the end of the 1200s and was built for the hereditary office of Reichsküchenmeister (magister coquinae, Master of the Kitchen) held by the ennobled lords von Nordenberg, kept in the family through the end of the Holy Roman Empire. There was an ensemble of historic houses and mills, formerly the site of a working cloister.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Carl Linnaeus’ binomial nomenclature (with synchronoptica), the BASIC programming language (1964) plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: ancient debt-forgiveness, a roasting in the press, more links to enjoy plus Witchcraft through the Ages

eight years ago: no lapse in appropriations, five decades of IKEA catalogues, more Brexit omnishambles, an animated version of the Rex Factor plus Trump’s Diet Coke buzzer

nine years ago: film set crossovers, strategic cheese stockpiles, a weasel sabotages CERN, WiFi rustico, letter-carriers lend a helping hand in Finland plus a history of trademark applications

ten years ago: comment is free, a stationary bike for washing up plus universal

hubertusburg (12. 400)

For Easter Sunday, we returned to Wermsdorf and the Rococo palace built at the behest of elector and Polish king Augustus the Strong, the hunting lodge (see previously here and here), known as the Saxon Versailles whose expansive grounds are also reminiscent of Schwetzingen in the Neckartal. 

After the war, the palace was used as a hospital and in 2006, refurbished as specialist clinic with a psychotherapy, neurology and paediatric department and also contains the state archives and a museum hosting revolving exhibits, currently for local son and inmate Karl Hans Joachim Janke, prodigious modeller and illustrator of fantastic aerospace concepts which blur the line between engineering and art brut (see previously).  

Diagnosed with schizophrenia after being discharged from the military, Janke was afforded a meagre pension to operate a workshop crafting toy airplanes but due to wartime rationing for cardboard and other supplies had to discontinue his hobby, remanded to psychiatric care at Hubertusberg after a less than patriotic outburst for the lack of resources for even the smallest of distractions for children. At hospital, Janke never lacked for material and his designs and correspondence were rediscovered in an attic of the castle in 2000, including over three-thousand drawings for innovation aircraft, concepts for harnessing nuclear energy and the Earth’s magnetic field for propulsion.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Nutella introduced (with synchronoptica), the new flag of South Africa (1994) plus Japanese boomerang words

seven years ago: unprepared for the GDPR, assorted links to revisit, a walking tour of Tbilisi plus a suit filed over campaign interference

eight years ago: an abandoned Soviet base in East Germany, Eastern European animation, French political terms, manhole accessories plus Türkiye dedicates a museum victims of a supposed coup

nine years ago: the site of the first nuclear reactor plus a startup generator

eleven years ago: 420 friendly plus Kurt Vonnegut’s commencement speech

finite jest (12. 398)

Via Strange Company, we are treated to a studied, insider’s look into the profession of a medieval court jester, whose roles were not limited and limned by buffoonery, classified with the broadest of distinctions as “natural” and “licensed” fools—the former being kept creatures by dint of deformity, physical prodigy or mental frankness and the latter being given a wide latitude for critique and commentary. Those enjoying royal office were not only engaged at the pleasure of the monarch for their honed wits and skills but also were frequently charged with discharging household duties and other administrative tasks as well, during times of conflict, were elevated to expendable ombudsmen, though these second-class emissaries were often not received well, giving rise to the phrase, “Don’t shoot the messenger.” We further learn that it was customary for a jester to have in their quiver not only a recognised costume and signature schickt but also a trademark wooden sceptre, a marotte, carved with their trademark visage (see previously, see also). More from Just History Posts and Strange Company at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting (with synchronoptica) plus redacted Ewoks

seven years ago: RIP Carl Kasell, Banksy’s Bethlehem hotel, crypto markets, artist Yuge Zhou plus the meaning of Japanese emoji

eight years ago: meals-ready-to-eat from militaries around the world plus more adult beverages of France mapped

nine years ago: campaigning against female circumcision plus a board game exploring race and privilege

twevle years ago: coded instructions for a deadly toxin plus Germany’s Energiewende

ley de aguas (12. 371)

Arising from necessity over a thousand years ago and held every Thursday up to the present day, the Tribunal of the Waters of Valencia among farmers and public works (nine by tradition called the Comunitat de Regnant) seeking access to the irrigation system of the extensive network of canals diverting water from the Túria sourced from the Iberian Montes Universales watershed to the plain for agricultural and domestic use, it is the oldest customary court in the world also counting as the most venerable democratic institution in Europe. Proceedings are held orally, called by the bailiff to hear out disputes and the council to pass judgment, and no written records are kept, and begun during the age of the Caliphate to manage water resources, the tribunal originally held in the city’s central mosque, the venue replaced by a cathedral during the Reconquista are held out-of-doors and open to the public to ensure all plaintiffs have access to a fair hearing with decisions being final and not up for appeal outside the unique justice system.

klein-venedig (12. 341)

Established on this day in 1528 as an outcome of the Treaty of Barcelona in which Holy Roman Emperor Karl V—also king of Spain—seeking relief from debts incurred and privately financed, granted to the Welser family of Augsburg and Nuremberg, a banking firm who claimed ancestry with the famed Byzantine general Belisarius, who reclaimed much of the land of the vestiges of the Western Roman Empire from the Vandals under Justinian I, a charter to rule, explore and colonise the territory known as Little Venice, later Weslerland (the exonym originally from Amerigo Vespucci after the Spanish equivalent), and seek out the legendary El Dorado and seven cities of gold. Governed from abroad, the colony was the German’s most significant stronghold in the Americas and though not lasting two decades before given to Spanish rule over mismanagement and the death of many German settlers and enslaved people dispatched to develop the land, the Welsers’ privilege was propagandised in later years to promote German imperial expansion in the 1880s and 1890s.