itineris mosellæ or pilgrims in an unholy land

With trade and occupation lasting the duration of the late Empire, Roman culture left its imprint on the region including excavations of ancient wineries, the foundations of workshops and the remnants of defensive and civil engineering, a network of roads still trod to this day and the occasional tomb, like this pair of Römergräber perched above the vineyards of the village of Nehren (Villa Nogeria, a stylised version of the reconstructed graves are community’s coat of arms).
Prior to know- ing what the struc- tures were, the “heathen mounds” (see also here and here) were used as shelter from the elements for growers tending the grapes and memorials such as were often erected along trafficked areas so the departed would be remembered and carried with the living.
Afterwards, we returned to the city of Mayen and took in the spectacle of Schloss Bürresheim—another one of the few intact structures of this area and if it seems familiar, due to its well-preserved status it has made several cameo appearances in film, including the exterior, establishing shots of the fictional Schloss Brunwald where Doctor Jones and son are held captive in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Also a house divided and on the border between different land holdings, Bürresheim, taking its present appearance in the fifteenth century, was probably again preserved by dint of its joint ownership

mittelmosel

Again passing through the Calmont, we got a chance to inspect one of the monorail cars that climb the steep hillside so pickers can collect grapes and tend the vines on some of the sheerest arable cliffs in the world—I couldn’t say I’d enjoy the ride, seeing the track tapering off vertically in the distance.
Taking a slow, meandering drive along the many curves and turns, we stopped at the village of Lösnich (Losuniacum), a typical wine-growing town with this beautiful 1906 Jungendstil (Art Deco) Winzervilla by representative architect Bruno Möhring, who also designed many of the outstanding buildings of Traben-Trarbach.
Next we proceeded to the main town of the Central Moselle, Bernkastel-Kues.
There H and I explored the market square—with an ensemble of medieval Fachwerk (half-timbered) buildings including the Spitzhäuschen and the abutting vineyards partially enclosed by the old town walls and learned about the local wine’s reported restorative properties (see also) that gained the town prominence enough to get trade privileges and a defensive castle—the partially ruined Burg Landshut dominating the town from above, the stronghold overseeing trade in the region traded between France and Prussia over the course of several skirmishes before finally sustaining damage due to a fire that could not be brought under control during a plague outbreak in 1692.

architecture sacred and profane

We started driving along the upper Moselle valley passing through the wine-producing region and first took a detour for a short hike outside of the town of Alf—connected to a village called Bullay on the opposite shore by a rather striking double-decker bridge with a carriage for automobiles below and trains above—up to Burg Arras, a twelfth century Höhenburg (a hill castle) built from the foundations of an earlier Roman horse stables.
Next we drove on to the Marienburg perched on the nearby foothills at one of the many bends of the river, the former Augustine cloister, now used as retreat and education centre, having a commanding view of both sides.
Particularly striking was the ribbon of masonry arches for the train tracks that crossed the valley below.
Afterwards, we explored the city of Traben-Trarbach, an Art Deco (Jugendstil) jewel nestled in the so called Valley of the Dawn whose wine trade is only second to Bordeaux—with quite a few representative works to marvel at.




The surrounding territory once known as Rhenish Franconia, it was fought over between France and the Holy Roman Empire, trading hands several times and includes the remains of a Vauban (see above and also here, here and here) fort outside the city in a development known as Port Royal.  Not much was left and the fortification was only recently rediscovered but one might imagine how imposing it was. 

Unable to visit any restaurants in the city, we stopped in an outdoor café in Riel and sampled some wine before heading back through Bremm at the bend in the river where Calmont hill rises steeply over the valley and the vineyards here—producing some of the finest wines in the world are tended at an impossible angle of up to 65º of obliquity. It took some consulting of a map but we figured out how to cross to visit the ruined shell of Stuben convent in the fields of the opposite bank.
A local noble in 1137 donated his property on the promontory across from Bremm to an abbot in exchange for building the monastery in that area at the request of his daughter. The archbishop of Trier made good on this arrangement and limited membership to one hundred women who ran the cloister and performed charitable works. The convent was the chief landholder of the community up until 1802 and the suppression of the monasteries (deutsche Mediatisierung), a major territorial restructuring and secularisation of estates, pressed for reform and redistribution by Napoleon and revolutionary France.

burgen und bunker

Having decamped early, H and I packed and headed along the Moselle first to the well-preserved village of Beilstein, whose untouched charm is sometimes compared with Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and is dominated by the ruin of Castle Metternich, one of the holdings of the noble house of prince-electors and also the namesakes of the sparkling white wine (Sekt) Fürst von Metternich.
Later on, we continued to the town of Cochem, settled since ancient times by the Celts and Romans and with its first documented mention in 886.

Towered over by an imperial castle (Reichsburg Cochem) whose immediacy was already confirmed by the mid-twelfth century, the residence was sacked by French forces during the War of the Palatine Succession (der Plälzischer Erbfolgekrieg) in 1688. The compound lay in centuries in a state of disrepair until purchased by a Berlin businessman in the late 1860s and rehabilitated in the Gothic Revival style of the day, though true to the original form.
Not a day to spend in an underground bunker even if tours had been available, but maybe something to see next time—there lies in an unassuming neighbourhood a formerly secret safe—der Bundesbankbunker, disguised by two houses above it that contained a reserve of fifteen billion mark banknotes that the West German government could put into circulation in case of economic disruption from the Eastern bloc. The money never needed to be used.

entlang die mosel

Underway for a local excursion for a few days, we headed to our first overnight destination, secure but still cautious that the camping set and those who run campgrounds are among the most conscientious about hygiene, shared spaces and consideration for one’s neighbour—and indeed everyone was adhering to the rules set forth and all activity was chiefly in wide open spaces with ample distance apart, other than this manky swan that was keen on showing off his ballet moves, and managers, as ever, were studious about taking the information of the guests in case of the need to do contact tracing.
En route, we stopped at Burg Thurant overlooking the village of Alken on what’s referred to as the Terrassenmosel (the terraced Moselle).
The double castle of slate and stone dates from the thirteenth century and was a condominium with lands claimed by the archbishoprics of both Trier and Köln—with a line running through the structure to designate each side, and to this day is still a private joint residence of two families.
After getting encamped on an island in the river outside of the town of Hatzenport, which looked at first to be more crowded than it turned out to be with the outward facing shore lined with trailers and awnings set up for longer term occupants but were still vacant—these Potemkin villages were common at all the sites who were seeing as expected a lot less business—we visited the ancient town of Münstermaifeld, dominated by a massive minster (from the corresponding Latin for monastery), the Franks having arrived in the area centuries after the Romans vacated and built the church around the ruin of a Roman fort.
Our last site for the day was a hike to see Burg Eltz (previously) from a distance and marvel at the well conserved castle, one of the few on the left bank of the parallel Rhein river and still owned and lived in by members of the same family—the thirty-third generation since its construction in the 1100s, with some of the wings (there are several branches that own the castle jointly, an arrangement called a Ganerbenburg where no single line is responsible for the upkeep alone, and also a tactic by an overlord to prevent vassals from becoming too powerful ) open to the public with treasure and art on display.

burgruine henneberg

Taking advantage of the nice weather, H and I ventured to the nearby village of Henneberg, named for the castle ruins above and in turn the ancestral seat of the eponymous royal house (see previously here and here).

The late eleventh century compound was within the next generations built up to its height by Count Poppo (see also here) with palace, belfry (Bergfried), residential suite with cabinet (Kemenate), defensive walls and cisterns and was abandoned as official residence in the late eighteenth century, the last of the male line having died off without heirs roughly a century beforehand.
One bit of rather gruesome legend associated with Henneberg involves the Countess Margarete and her three-hundred and sixty-five children—a Dutch noble woman, daughter of Florens IV of Holland and Zealand and Mathilde of Brabant whom entered into a political union in 1249 with Count Hermann (Poppo’s son), in hopes of securing his elevation to Holy Roman emperor of the Germans, a ploy which despite the landed connections ultimately failed. Margarete died in childbirth—which was not an uncommon occurrence—but reportedly was cursed to bear as many children as there are days in the year after insulting the mother of twins with words of incredulity and accusing her of adultery out of envy of her own childless condition. Returned to her parents in Loosduinen, a district of the Hague—not anywhere near here (though the caretakers of the ruin and club of local medieval enthusiasts and reenactors call themselves that)—Margarete gave birth to this impossible brood, varying described as mice or crabs, before all dying.
Neglected and falling into disrepair by the 1830s, the ducal court of Saxe-Meiningen wanted to raise the foundations and build a pleasure palace but those plans were overcome by other events. From the end of World War II to 1989, the castle was part of the inter-German border’s restricted zone (Sperrgebiet) until 1989 due to its commanding view of the surrounding region and into West Germany.

burg stolpen or under the rainbow

H and I decided we would let our vacation be at the mercy of the weather and it started raining without pause from midnight Monday onward, so after decamping, soggy, we started on our way back, making a detour to see Burg Stolpen, the town and a thirteenth century castle at the foot of a mountain of the same name and hewn out of basalt columns.
The mineral was first classified and described at this particularly rich quarry by local natural philosopher Georgius Agricola in a 1556 treatise.
The pictures are of the residence and prison of lady-in-waiting and mistress of Augustus II the Strong (der Starke) Anna Constantian von Brockdorff—eventually styled Countess of Cosel (Reichsgräfin von Cosel, *1680 - †1765)—who eventually earned the displeasure of her lover, imperial elector and king of Poland by her advocacy for the rights of Polish subjects.
Anna was banished from court and placed under house arrest in the tower for just under fifty years.
Adaptations of her biography in the 1980s rehabilitated her image and revived interest in the life and times of this defiant and inconvenient woman.
We couldn’t find any historic marker in the town but Stolpen was also the birthplace, we learned, of an arguably more famous—at least in contemporary terms in the West—quartet of siblings: the Doll family.
Born with the surname Schneider at the turn of the century up to the outbreak of World War I and first adopting and performing under the name Earle—after their manager and agent that brought them to America, Gracie, Harry, Daisy and Tiny were a formidable force as a sideshow and then as a screen act—always working together and insisting that they all have roles.
Terrors of Tiny Town and Tod Browning’s Freaks, all four were also Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz, with Harry (*1902 – †1985) performing as a representative of the Lollipop Guild.
Commercial fortunate allowed them to retire comfortably and purchase an estate in Sarasota, Florida—including a compound called the Doll House were all lived together, complete with custom furniture build to their scale.  Something strikes me in common about their stories—one a very vocal inmate of the town and others sent away without regard because of their difference.  What do you think?

post-dated post script: sirmione

Having learned rather late that Manerba did indeed have a port sufficiently deep enough to permit ferries to dock and connect it to the other towns and villages along Lake Garda, we crossed towards Dusano and boarded the ferry to take another look at the ancient town and strategic port fortifications at the head of the promontory that divides the southern part of the lake.
Helpfully there was a chart of Lidl di Garda in the passenger ferry that we had mostly to ourselves to aid with orientation. A popular retreat from Verona and Venice for Roman administrators for millennia, one of the early house-proud famous residents of the resort town was the poet Catullus—versifier of love, invectives and works of condolence (opera singer Maria Callas was a later one), whom also lent his name to a grotto containing one the best-preserved examples of a private home of the first century and one of the town’s chief sites.
The other landmark of Sirmione is the bastion in the harbour, the Scaliger (nobles of Verona) castle compound built in the late eleventh century.
Surrounded by a system of moats and drawbridges that are navigable by nimbler boats still to this day afforded a protected place for the fleet—becoming an outpost of the thalassocracy of Venice and later part of the Austro-Hungarian holdings—to be launched and serviced in safety and shielded from enemy scouts trying to assess their opponents’ strength.

burg sonnenberg

H and I are in Wiesbaden (the main boulevard that runs past the storied State Opera, wellness spa and casino usually is lined with international flags but the banners have been replaced for this month with pride flags) this weekend while he chairs a few seminars and I had the chance to take a long hike through the city via the Kurpark and Garten (previously).
Walking along a short segment of the Höhenrhein trail following the Rambach valley to the district of Sonnenberg, I was rather deep in a an urban woodland until arriving at the foothills of the Taunus and dominated by the ruins of Burg Sonnenberg hewn into a mountainous spur.
Although much of the thirteenth fortification has crumbed and was cannibalised as a quarry when the settlement below was devastated by a fire during the Thirty Years War one can still see the intact tower of the Bergfried and extensive defensive walls and imagine the castle protecting the Count of Nassau’s domain from raids of the Dukes of Eppstein.
The two neighbouring and competing houses  never settled a border dispute amongst themselves owing to overlapping jurisdictions that arose out of Wiesbaden’s imperial immediacy, a distinction that the city fought to keep for over a thousand years since the time of Charlemagne. Now the area is a venue for a series of open-air events and quite the staging arena especially in the summertime.