Wandering a bit through the neighbouring market town of Ostheim vor der Rhön and learned our area had a connection—and a celebrated one at that—with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, marking his visits to the town in 1780, accompanying Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar, whom ennobled the writer and polymath, in his role as privy councillor and highway commissioner.
Taking advantage of a brief period of sunshine, H and I took the dog on a hike up to the summit of the Hohe Schule—previously, the tallest plateau in the eastern foothills of the Rhön mountain range, to inspect more of the recently restored Wanderweg.
Formerly known as the Aalhauck—“eel hill,” now called “high school” for unknown reasons—German toponymy can be deceiving, as with Schweinfurt, not where the pigs can ford the river.
The flat top hosts the ruins of a fortification from the Hallstatt period, presumably built to monitor trade through the Ellenbach valley and reoccupied in the Middle Ages with a newer rampart and collapsed walls, hardly recognisable and reclaimed by the forest but fenced in as several Bronze Age artefacts were discovered there during an emergency survey conducted in the 1980s, including prehistoric millstones, primitive glass vials and a brooch, but further excavations are still pending and archeologists want to preserve the site, and affords some spectacular views on the valley and village below and mountain peaks beyond.
Incorporated as part of the town of Mellrichstadt since secularisation, the parish village falling previously under the authority of the monastic community of Kloster Wechterswinkel, we took a little walk around the namesake lake, a bit more than a hectare and the largest natural body of water in Lower Franconia—this flooded funnel shaped crater (a sinkhole from a collapsed cave with no tributaries or outflows) and not originally a mine shaft like many of the ponds in the area.
Though no White Christmas down in the valley, we took the dog for a frolic through the snow up on the highlands near of the Schwarzes Moor along the Lange Rhön (previously), an extensive basalt plateau about eight hundred metres in elevation.
We visited the small village in the southern district of Schmalkalden-Meiningen just over the border, formerly an independent municipality under the imperial knighthood of the Hennebergs until from the late tenth century1836 under the cadet matrilineal line that split jurisdiction between Römhild and Schleusingen and the Bishopric of Würzburg giving the tiny community three mayors for most of its existence.
Taking advantage of the cooler weather, H and I went to the next village over (see previously here and here) of Hermannsfeld to see a classic car show held on the grounds of the Jagdschloss Fasanerie—a pheasant-hunting lodge built for Duke Georg I of Sachsen-Meiningen from an existing menagerie at the end of the eighteenth century and by turns a nature reserve, a refugee encampment, accommodations for the border police, a teacher training facility and then back to a park and place for excursions.
For a quick overnight camping trip, we travelled to the collective municipality (Gemeinde) of Sandberg in Lower Franconia in the valley on the opposite side of the Kreuzberg, cleared and settled from heavily wooded land in 1691 to alleviate overpopulation in neighbouring villages, which though remote had too many people to sustain their subsistence farming and forestry due also by dint of their isolation had been spared waves of the plague. 
A remnant of their survival remains in the singular dialect of the villages that make up community that are verging on the unintelligible from one settlement to the next. In the Kirchdorf of Waldberg where the campsite was that was supposedly the case as well. The above increasing numbers of residents through the nineteenth century put stress on the fields and pastures due to their sandy soil (hence the name) and from the 1830s through the next century saw a mass immigration to America, many families from this area settling in Cleveland, Ohio. 
The main building of the campgrounds was an old mill (dating from before an incident during Holy Week pilgrimages to the Kreuzberg when bakers from Waldberg tried to sell their wares but the main town of Bischofsheim asserted their monopoly over baked goods and saw its operations shut down—those who remained resorting to seasonal work, fruit-pressing and collecting berries and beechnuts to survive, relying on remittances from family abroad) on a watercourse coming down from the mountain.
synchronoptica
one year ago: US Republican primary debates (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth revisiting
five years ago: the company Kalashnikov is making an electric car, a typical White House press briefing, drought reveals ominous hunger stones plus one French community’s fight to keep McDonald’s out
eight years ago: a word for St Bartholemew’s Day
nine years ago: more Venus Flytrap weirdness
eleven years ago: Six Degrees of Wikipedia plus Staffordshire pottery
During the mid to late summer, fields can filled with these tall flowering perennials that had always called thistles (Disteln, a much shorter cousin it turns out) but are properly classified under Linnean taxonomy Dipsacus fullonum (teasel or by the title common name in German) from the Greek δισᴨα for thirst for the cup-like catchments that form where the leaves merge with the stem that collects water. These little obstacles may have evolved to prevent bugs from climbing up to the inflorescence (blooming like a pineapple, where they differ from thistles) of pink to purple flowers. With a wide range from Africa to Eurasia, the dried heads are an important over-wintering food resource for birds and the plant formerly played a role in the textile industry (see also) as a natural comb for teasing, raising the nap on fabrics, particularly wool—a process called fulling.
Traveling a bit further on towards Suhl, we came to a crossroads of many trails through the Thüringer Wald but with an an embarrassment of choices but finite time could only pursue hiking a segment instead of the proper loop that was nearly thirty kilometers to see all the highlights and returning to the campsite, we picked a peak in the Rennsteig and walked to Adlersberg through the protected landscape, sensibly managed since 1937 after exploitation dating from the Middle Ages.
one year ago: assorted links worth revisiting
two years ago: more links to enjoy
three years ago: your daily demon: Leraje, Johnny Mnemonic, the murder of George Floyd one year on, an educational short, more links to revisit plus a precursor to NFTs
four years ago: Dracula (1897) plus a cursed alignment chart
five years ago: Sweden traffic switches orientation, the EU votes plus a trip to Saxony’s Elbsandsteingebirge
First performed on this day in 1951 in community hall of the Hirschbach (presently the Hotel Zum goldenen Hirsch) of Suhl by local musicians Herbert Roth and Waltraut Schulz, the hymn extolling the joy of wandering in nature (see previously here and here—see also) has become an auxiliary state anthem and better known than the official, Thüringen, holdes Land (Fair Country). The refrain goes: “I often walk this path to the Höhn (apparently a picturesque high hill with the ruins of Fischberg castle on top that we will make it a priority to see) , the little song birds singing / If I am far away, Thuringer Forest, I only long for you!”
synchronoptica
one year ago: Samuel Johnson’s dictionary (1755), General Dynamics’ playing cards plus assorted links to revisit
two years ago: more links to enjoy, the Universal Day of Culture plus AI Easter eggs
three years ago: your daily demon: Valefor, more Star Fleet uniforms plus Canada’s Olympics closing ceremony costumes
four years ago: a North Korean holiday plus a prescient comic from 1990
five years ago: more on the cannibalisation of the Old Web plus the art collective messy modernism
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.
Travelling a few villages over towards the former border, driving past some abandoned settlements, vacated owing to they’re being a liability too close to the boundary, we took another nice hike with the dog up to the ruins of Hutsburg on the summit of the Hutsberg, which also was a victim of its formerly strategic location and shifting allegiances.
Before the weather turned, we took the dog on a hike up above Stockheim for a panoramic view of the village below. The diversion in the trail up the Tanzberg was a bequest from a local landowner stipulated in his will after an unfortunate farming accident. A bit further along the main path, we encountered a Blitzstein, a memorial for an anonymous resident and likely not the above donor struck and killed by lightning though now an unlikely occurrence given tree height in the vicinity though yet memorable and cautionary.
