Wolfram's Eschenbach and Abenberg

By Richard

Back on the second weekend in August I went with some friends on a day-trip to the little towns south-west of Nuremberg.  We visited several beautiful little towns with their medieval walls still intact and lots of half-timbered houses. A couple of the towns have connections to my favorite medieval troubadour, Wolfram von Eschenbach, who wrote the Arthurian romance "Parzival" sometime between the year 1200 and 1210. One town, called Abenberg, has a statue of him that I had to have a picture of.


 That's me with Wolfram, who is playing his lute while reciting the 25,000 rhyming couplets that make up "Parzival". The story is of a
boy, Parzival, who is secluded in a forest dwelling by his mother in order to prevent him from learning the ways of knighthood and to keep him entirely ignorant of chivalry and the ways of men. His seclusion is shattered by three knights passing who tell him of King Arthur's court at Camelot. His inner nature drives him to go join Arthur's court. His mother is heartbroken at the news of his decision but allows him to depart, dressing him in fool's garments in the hopes that the knights will refuse to take him in. Soon after his departure she dies, utterly heart-broken.
At court, Parzival fights and kills Ither, the Red Knight. Putting on the knight's red armor, he rides away from the court and meets Gurnemanz, who teaches him the duties of  knighthood, especially self-control and moderation and to avoid asking unnecessary questions.
Parzival rides out to seek adventure, and he eventually arrives at the castle of the Holy Grail. His host, Anfortas, the Fisher King, is terribly wounded, but Parzival remembers Gurnemanz's training and does not ask about the mysterious wound. His failure to show compassion results in his failure to obtain the Grail and relieve the Fisher King's misery. The Grail and the Fisher King and everyone in the castle disappear.  The rest of the story is about Parzival's struggle to find the castle again so that he can ask the important question.


We went to the town of Wolframs-Eschenbach. There is no direct evidence that this is the birthplace of Wolfram, because there are no historical documents which mention him. But his works provide evidence for the town's claim, such as the dialect of his works (which is East Franconian) and a number of geographical references.

We came into town through the western city gate, and were met by the view in the photo. A lot of the half-timbered buildings are almost as old as Wolfram, but only a few date back to Wolfram's day. Still, the layout of the town and the atmosphere must be close to what Wolfram knew.  There is a nice little museum at the very center of town, across from the central fountain. The museum has information on Wolfram's poetry, especially the symbols in Parzival and his other Arthurian romances such as Titurel and Willehalm, and on aspects of the Medieval Ages such as the roles of men and women and the life of knights.







After we left Wolframs-Eschenbach, we visited a couple more little towns. The last town that we visited was Abenberg. The town is mentioned in the Parzival story in connection with a jousting tournament. The tournament field is still there just outside of the walls of Abenberg Castle, and a bit of it can be seen in the extreme lower-right corner of the photo. Inside the castle is the House of Frankish History, which has a permanent collection called "Travel through Time in Frankonia" which describes life in a medieval castle, explains why Frankonia territories were split up the way they are, and how the Reformation, the Farmer's War, and the 30-Year War affected Frankonia and its people.

Also in the castle is the School of Bobbin Lace. (Here is a picture from Wikipedia of bobbin lace being made) When we were in Brugge, Belgium, we visited the school there, and we saw some beautiful lace. Afterwards I wondered where you could learn the craft in Germany. I never guessed it would be so close.  But then again, I never guessed that the hometown of my favorite medieval poet would be so close either.

Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe

Just outside of Kassel is the Bergpark (mountain park) Wilhelmshöhe. The main attractions are the huge statue of Hercules at the very top of the mountain and the waterworks down the side of the mountain. It was started in 1689, which I find incredible because this was only 41 years after the end of the 30-years war (a European war that devastated Germany even more than the world wars).

Hercules: According to the UNESCO World Heritage organization, the Hercules statue "is both technically and artistically the most sophisticated and colossal statue of the Early Modern era."  It was inspired by a large (3.17-meters or 10.4-feet tall) Roman statue from the third century A.D. called the Farnese Hercules, which was recovered in 1546 and is now in Naples. The lions pelt draped over a club and the three apples held in his right hand behind his back are the tell-tale signs of Hercules. (Slaying the Nemean lion and stealing the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides were two of the 12 Labors of Hercules).
The giant statue in Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe was made from copper by Johann Jacob Anthoni, a goldsmith from Augsburg, and was completed in 1717. The Hercules statue is 8.25 meters (27.1 ft) tall, and stands on a Pyramid that is 29.6 metres (97 ft) high, which is on an Octagon that is 32.65 meters (107.1 ft) high (so the entire monument has a total height of 70.5 meters or 231 ft). The entire monument is also called "the Herkules" by the Germans. We were able to visit the inside of the Octagon and Pyramid in spite of the renovations in progress.  The view from the top of the Pyramid is beautiful.

The Kaskaden (Cascades) at the base of the Herkules were first operated in 1714, a couple of years before the Herkules was complete.  The top of the cascades is called the "Artischokenbecken" (artichoke bowl). The water flows to a fountain that shoots water 12-meter (39-feet) high (you can barely make it out as a white column in this photo).  The fountain is called the Riesenkopfbecken (giant's-head pool), which has statues of a Centaur and a Faun to the right and left of it.  The statues play loud and annoying horns powered by the water pressure.
The cascades themselves are 210-meter (689-feet) long and 12-meter (39-feet) wide. At the bottom of the 535 steps along the sides of the cascades is the Neptunbassin (Neptune's basin). 

We followed the water down the hill as it reached the various drops of the cascades. In some places it sprayed over the sides. It was a cloudy day with rain threatening, so we were prepared with our raincoats. Then we had to walk further along the path to the next attraction.



The Steinhöfer Wasserfall (Steinhöfer Waterfall) is along a path that leads from the Neptunbassin down the mountain. It is named after Karl Steinhöfer, who designed it. It was completed in 1793, and it portrays a quarry that has been taken back by nature.

Most often we reached the attractions before the water started to flow, so the first impression was an unimpressive trickle over the rocks. When the total flow of the water reached the rocks, however, it was impressive and made us "ooh" and "aah" over the beautiful display of a natural force.

 



Downstream of the Steinhöfer Wasserfall the water flows through some beautiful rapids.

















Heinrich Christoph Jussow built the Teufelsbrücke (Devil's Bridge) in 1793.  The water flows under the bridge and falls 10 meters (33 feet) into the Höllenteich (hell's pond).  They are so-called due to the nearby Plutogrotte (gotto of Pluto, who was the Roman god of the underworld).  Don't ask me where the grotto got its name.

Kathy thinks that the devil's bridge got its name from the jagged "teeth" under the bridge. This one also started as barely a trickle among the rocks and impressed us as the full flow started.













The Aquädukt (Aqueduct) is just downstream of the Teufelsbrücke, but it was built by Jussow before he built the Teufelsbrücke. The Aquädukt is a reproduction of Roman aqueduct that has broken apart downstream of the 14th arch. The water falls 30 meters (98 feet) into the debris of the roman ruin. This depiction of a roman ruin was a modern idea at the time. It was usual for the time to associate an ancient aqueduct with the advanced technology of the Roman Empire. Once again, Jussow has shown the passage of time and the effects of nature.

The water thundered down from the height into the pool below, creating a roar. It was beautiful to see the water falling into the pool that was surrounded by green grass and wild flowers.









The Fontänenteich (Fountain Pond) is the basin for the last of the waterworks. Water flows in two streams around a temple into the Fontänenteich.

This is a very picturesque area, with the trees behind the temple carefully chosen for their variety of color and foliage. It looks very bucolic. However, it all changed when the fountain described below shot up to a great height.






In the Fontänenteich is the große Fontäne (great Fountain), which shoots water like a geyser 52-meters high. In order to produce the desired effect, the water is supplied from a reservoir 80 meters uphill.  This water is the same water that started at Kaskaden at the top of the mountain, and 750 m³ (about 200,000 gallons) of water was used. 

The fountain sprayed so high that the breeze drove the droplets across to us where we were standing on the other side of the pond! People retreated before the "rain".

From the Fontänenteich there is a beautiful view back up the mountain to the Herkules.







Schloss Wilhelmshöhe is a little farther downhill from the Fontänenteich. Construction was started by Landgraf (Earl) Wilhelm IX in 1786, and construction continued in stages.  The middle part was completely destroyed in WW II, and was reconstructed from 1968 until 1974. Today, it houses the museums of the Antikensammlung (Antique Collection), die Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Picture Gallery of Old Masters), die Graphische Sammlung (the Graphics Collection) and a Bibliothek (Library). The Picture Gallery has a large collection of paintings by Rembrandt and Rubens.

We admired the graceful proportions of the ancient Greek vases and Roman copies of Greek sculptures. There was also a very unique statue of an Etruscan maiden, made of terra cotta. The figure itself was very lean and tall. Although she was wearing a Greek-style garment, her proportions were not the standard Greek ideal. Her fine head rested on a thin neck and her hair was drawn into a top knot just above her forehead. We've never seen anything similar.






The Großes Gewächshaus (Great Greenhouse) is next to the Schloss, and it has some beautiful plants in front. They were normal hanging plants (fuchsia, for example) that had been trained into a "standard" or tree form. This is a very hard thing to do! The one you see in the left of the picture had flowers like marigolds. They gave off a sweet fragrance.




A friend insisted that we had to see this display of the cascades, so we made sure to visit it after our September trip to the States and before it closed for the year. We're glad we saw it. Having watched the water for the first cascade originate from the top near the Hercules monument, Kathy thinks that the next time we see it, she wants to watch the cascades from the bottom.