The Castles of the Rhine: Recreating the Middle Ages in Modern Germany

Above Bad Godesberg, Godesburg, about 1840: The ruin of Godesburg, near Bonn (presented here by J.L. Goetz), was the first to greet early nineteenth-century tourists bound up the Rhine. Drachenfels (middle right) loomed further in the distance. By this date, improvements in engraving and publishing methods had familiarized non-traveling Europeans, too, with the Rhine ruins. The remarkable castle-rebuilding movement was already underway. (Compare this view with Fig. 41.) Courtesy of Verlag Th. Schafer, Hannover.

W$t Castle* of tfje &fnne Recreating the Middle Ages in Modern Germany

Robert R. Taylor

Wilfrid Laurier University Press

This book has been published with the help of a grant in aid of publication from the Canada Council. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Taylor, Robert R., 1939The castles of the Rhine : recreating the Middle Ages in modern Germany Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-88920-268-0 (bound) 1. Castles - Germany - Conservation and restoration. 2. Gothic revival (Architecture) - Rhine River Valley. 3. Gothic revival (Architecture) — Germany. 4. Architecture, Modern - 19th century - Germany. 5. Architecture, Modern - 20th century - Germany. I. Title.

NA7740.T3 1998

728.8T09434

C97-932432-7

Copyright © 1998 WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5 Cover design: Leslie Macredie Cover illustration: Above Kapellen near Koblenz, Burg Stolzenfels about 1630 (courtesy of Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz)

Printed in Canada

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means— graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or reproducing in information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 214 King Street West, Suite 312, Toronto, Ontario M5H 3S6.

For Robert John Taylor

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CONTENTS List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Preface

xiii

Introduction

1

PART ONE FOUNDATIONS 1. Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine 2. Romanticism and Nationalism on the Middle Rhine 3. Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine

24 51 69

PART Two VINDICATING THE OLD REGIME 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

The Holy Alliance in Stone Hohenzollern Dreams King of the Rhineland The Hohenzollerns at the Hunt The "Cartridge Prince" and His Consort

98 112 127 149 165

PART THREE BUTTRESSING THE STATUS Quo 9. A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege 10. The Fulfilment of Bourgeois Ambition

vii

170 189

viii I Castles of the Rhine

PART FOUR DEFENDING THE REICH 11. Symbols of German Unity 12. Monument to German Glory

218 229

PART FIVE SECURING THE PAST FOR THE FUTURE 13. To Entertain, Enlighten, and Exploit the Traveller 14. To Study the German Past 15. To Teach the Young and the Ignorant

250 264 282

PART Six CONCLUSION 16. "Can Stones Speak?"

304

APPENDICES 1. Glossary of Architectural Terms Used 2. Medieval Fantasies 3. Hohenzollern Castle Projects Outside the Rhineland

316 319 324

Notes

333

Select Bibliography

377

Index

383

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

Above Bad Godesberg, Godesburg, about 1840 Braubach and vicinity about 1605 The Rhineland in 1700 The Rhineland occupied by France 1813 Prussia's Rhine province Germany 1871-1918 The Hohenzollerns in the nineteenth century Chronological tables Castles of the Middle Rhine (northern section) Castles of the Middle Rhine (southern section) Burg Ehrenbreitstein in 1636 From Koblenz, Burg Ehrenbreitstein in 1991 Koblenz, Fort Alexander in 1980 Near Trechtingshausen, Voigtsburg (later Burg Rheinstein) about 1636 Voigtsburg rebuilt as Burg Rheinstein about 1840 Above Kapellen near Koblenz, Burg Stolzenfels about 1630 Schloss Stolzenfels about 1840 At Stolzenfels in 1980 Near Niederheimbach, Burg Sooneck about 1840 Burg Sooneck in 1980 Near Assmannshausen, 5«rg Ehrenfels in 1980 Above Oberlahnstein, 5«rg Lahneck in 1675 Burg Lahneck in 1980 Schloss Sayn and vicinity about 1850 At Bad Honningen, Schloss Arenfels in 1991 Above Trechtingshausen, 5«rg Reichenstein in 1980

ix

frontispiece 3 26 27 28 29 30 31 70 71 100 101 108 116 117 130 131 144 152 153 162 172 174 180 183 186

x I Castles of the Rhine 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

Near Niederbreisig, Schloss Rheineck about 1840 Above Niederheimbach, Heimburg in 1980 AtSchonburg in 1980 At Rudesheim, Boosenburg in 1991 Burg Gutenfels in 1980 Above Konigswinter, Schloss Drachenburg about 1890 At Drachenburg in 1991 At Drachenburg in 1980 "Roland's Arch" in 1840 Above Rhens, the "Royal Throne" in 1991 Braubach and Marksburg about 1630 From Braubach, Marksburg in 1980 Cover of the Cologne-Diisseldorf Steamship Schedule, 1897 Drachenfels in the 1990s Burg Rheinfels in 1991 Godesburg, about 1896 Above St. Goarshausen, Burg Katzenelnbogen about 1630 #«rgKatzin 1980 Oberlahnstein, Martinsburg in 1980 From above Kaub, the Pfalz in 1980 Above Nassau, 5«rg Nassau about 1990 Bacharach and 5wrgStahleck about 1672 Burg Stahleck in 1980 Eltville, castle of the archbishop of Mainz in 1991 £«rgKloppin 1991 Above St. Goar, Burg Rheinfels in 1980 Koblenz, the "Old Castle" (Alte Burg) in 1991 Above Oberlahnstein, 5«rg Lahneck in 1980 The German States, France, and Luxemburg in 1815

192 195 197 201 203 207 211 213 220 226 230 231 251 257 259 262 266 267 273 275 278 284 286 290 292 296 301 306 326

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS F

or their friendly assistance I am indebted to Dr. Walter Avenarius and the staff of the library and archives of the German Castle Asso-

ciation (Deutsche Burgenvereinigung e. V. far Burgenkunde und Denkmalpflege} at Marksburg, Braubach am Rhein. In addition, the employees of the city archive in the Old Castle (Alte Burg), Koblenz, and of the local history collection of the public library in the Dreikonigen-Haus, also at Koblenz, were very helpful on my several research visits. Elsewhere, I have been ably advised by the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, the New-York Historical Society, the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, the Newcomen Society, Mrs. Gabriele Berneck of London, U.K., Prince Alexander zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn of Bendorf-Sayn, Baron Rudolf von Preuschen of Burg Lahneck, the Bundesvermogensamt of Koblenz, the Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege of Rheinland-Pfalz (Mainz), and the Rheinischer Verein fur Denkmalpflege und Landschaftsschutz (Cologne). The University Library of Hannover and the Prussian State Library of Berlin each offered a special service. Particularly helpful were Annie Relic, Edie Williams, the late Sylvia Osterbind, and the Interlibrary Loan staff in the Reference Library at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded my research in Germany while the Canada Council supported publication of the book. Brock University provided funds for map-making and illustrations, and course relief time for writing the manuscript. Dr. Roberta M. Styran generously provided invaluable editorial criticism when the work was in the manuscript stage. Every effort has been made to trace the ownership of all copyright material reprinted in the text. The author and publisher regret any errors, and will be pleased to make necessary corrections in subsequent editions.

xi

xii I Castles of the Rhine

I am also indebted to Sandra Woolfrey and her staff at Wilfrid Laurier University Press for their various efforts in seeing the work through to publication. Naturally, any errors or misconceptions in the book are my own responsibility. January 1998

R.R.T.

PREFACE The castles, looking more like the sets for a production of "Tannhauser" than any stage designer would dare to provide, were perched high on scraps of crag that would have given the very eagles vertigo.1 ernard Levin's enthusiastic recollections of his first encounter with

B the castles of the Middle Rhine are similar to my own. Television, cinema, and advertising campaigns had prepared me (and many of my North American contemporaries) to be enraptured by the romantic sight of "medieval" castles dominating the vineyard-covered cliffs above the great river. The knowledge that most of these legendary castles were nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reconstructions, some less than forty years old, produced surprise, even moral outrage. "We might well be stirred by the sudden prospect of ruins," wrote Kenneth Clark, "but once we knew them to be artificial our pleasure would evaporate."2 And so the Rhine castles, rebuilt ruins, began to seem "theatrical" in the worst sense of the word. As a young scholar, therefore, I rejected the Rhine castles as unworthy of study for historical or contemporary purposes. Later in my career, however, when I began to examine the phenomenon of architecture as propaganda, I returned to the rebuilt castles. I had developed this theme in two books, The Word in Stone: The Role of Architecture in the National Socialist Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), and Hohenzollern Berlin: Construction and Reconstruction (Port Credit, ON: PD. Meany Publishers, 1985). In both these studies I was concerned with the political uses of architecture. The propaganda machine of the National Notes to the Preface are on p. 334. xiii

xiv I Castles of the Rhine

Socialist government and its supporters proclaimed that certain building styles were quintessentially "German" and others were to be avoided because they were "un-German," even "oriental" or "Bolshevik." The fascists claimed to believe that buildings were not only powerful symbols of the German government and Germany itself but also expressions of the very soul of the Volk [the German people].3 The Nazis also practised a traditional and universal "strategy of awe"4 which was prefigured in Germany by Prussia, whose Hohenzollern rulers sought, through imposing palaces and churches, to communicate a sense of their omnipotence. Although they never claimed that their architecture reflected the eternal values of the German people, their purpose was just as political as Hitler's. Studying Hohenzollern Berlin, I learned of King Frederick William IV's fascination with the Rhine and its castles and was especially interested in his reconstruction of the ruined Burg Stolzenfels. I also read about Emperor William IFs interest in Marksburg, which ultimately became the most famous of the Rhine castles. Soon I began to consider these buildings as a reflection of the political will of the Hohenzollern monarchs. This approach, however, proved inadequate as an explanation of the German castle-mania on the Rhine in the nineteenth century. The phenomenon of building imitation castles began to seem significant for other reasons. At the time I wrote on Nazi architecture it was fashionable to decry the "imitation" styles of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since the 1970s, however, both the general public and scholars have developed a greater appreciation of "Victorian" or "Wilhelminian" styles and have become more critical of the excesses of "modern" architecture. The emergence of "postmodernism," in fact, has led to both a return to traditional styles and a conservation of structures as diverse as Queen Anne villas and early railway stations in both Europe and North America. Thus the motives of the castle-rebuilders now seem less bizarre, and some of their reconstructions and efforts at architectural conservation appear as pioneering landmarks of a heritage movement which has now swept the Western world. Today, I would rewrite parts of the The Word in Stone. Justifiable as it may be to condemn the Nazis' political motives, it has begun to seem less valid to reject the motives of certain Germans who supported Adolf Hitler in his denunciation of the International Style. Now it is possible both to sympathize with German interest in historic architecture and to understand this interest as part of a wider phenomenon which I have called "recreating the middle ages." Many

Preface / xv

nineteenth-century Germans idealized medieval social and political attitudes, of which castles were symbols. In rebuilding ruined castles, they hoped to revive dying values. But there was more. Some Germans, motivated similarly, built new castle-like mansions where no medieval structure ever stood. Finally (and more constructively), historians and archeologists began to preserve the remains of medieval castles for scholarly study. Thus the reconstructed Rhenish castles can be considered reflections of a political will. They—and the pseudo-castles—also document nineteenth-century taste. As well, the reconstructed or preserved castle ruins are examples of early architectural conservation. Whatever shape the castle-mania on the Rhine took, these structures are documents of the turbulent history of nineteenth-century Germany—that very turbulence being the root of a desire to restore, preserve, conserve or study the past and its relics.

Other Studies of the Rhenish Castles This book is by no means the first study of medieval European fortresses. Many books have been written for armchair tourists and castle buffs, the earliest of which emerged in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The phenomenon has not ceased and actually may have intensified during the past quarter-century, when a plethora of titles has appeared on European castles.5 There are also many popular books on the charms of the Rhine, its landscapes and its wines. Germans have long been concerned with the history and lore of the Rhine castles. Popular books on the "Magic of the Middle Rhine," in particular, are legion. Magnus Backes, Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling, Heinz Biehn, Walter Hotz, and others whose names appear frequently in the following pages have been concerned to describe and chronicle the castles of certain areas and times. Recently, moreover, German historians have begun to study the phenomenon of nineteenth-century reconstructions. There are, however, no books in English or German on the overall significance of the reconstruction, restoration or preservation of the Rhenish castles in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nevertheless I have found the approaches taken by my German counterparts useful and should acknowledge them here. Particularly interesting is the work of the late Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling,6 who demonstrates how interest in medieval ruins was stimulated around 1800 by romantic painters with a "glorification of ruins,"7 and shortly thereafter by poets and other writers who were expressing their fascination

xvi I Castles of the Rhine

with decrepit castles and other medieval ruins. Following the rebuilding of Rheinstein in the 1820s, ruins as such seemed less interesting and there was a trend to rebuild them using the old foundations and other interesting elements. Bornheim describes how architects began to produce historically inaccurate, but romantic, "restorations"—usually in an imperfectly understood "Gothic" style. He notes the start of a new phase in the 1860s, when historians and archeologists began to study carefully the history and architecture of medieval castles, and when architects tried to build more accurate reconstructions, although disputes raged over the finer points. The sequence that Bornheim sees, therefore, is this: painters (about 1800), poets (about 1820), architects (about 1830), and scholars (about 1860), as Germans moved from dreamy admiration of wrecked castles to reconstruction of them with greater or lesser historical and architectural accuracy. Bornheim thus places the castle rebuilding phenomenon in the context of intellectual history. Concentrating on poetry and painting, Heinz Biehn has suggested a slightly different pattern of castle rebuilding which stresses its literary and artistic inspiration.8 The first period of castle fascination, he writes, is one of "sentimental romanticism" in which artificial ruins were built. Beginning in the late eighteenth century these owed their origins to novels (especially the Gothic novel) and to the English landscape garden. On the Rhine, aristocrats attempted this with Rossel, above Assmannshausen, and Mosburg, near Wiesbaden. These efforts, of course, were modest "follies," not like the ambitious products of the later drive to recreate medieval castles on the sites of earlier ones and actually to live in them— as was attempted at Rheinstein or Stolzenfels. (The latter phenomenon occurred in Biehn's second or "elegant" phase.) From about 1800 to about 1825 English inspiration again was evident, as "restored" castles went up in the neo-Gothic style popular in the British Isles at that time. In the third phase, evident by the 1870s, inspiration was more purely German, recalling the ostensible glories of the Germany of the Holy Roman Empire. In this "pathetic-romantic" stage9 the rebuilt castles often had the quality of museums or monuments. Good examples are Katz and Schonburg, where somewhat clumsy efforts were made to create a "genuine" castle-like ambience. Biehn's three phases do not parallel my approach as closely as do Bornheim's, but they help to suggest a number of the themes which I develop. In German-speaking Europe the nineteenth-century castle rebuilding phenomenon has inspired other studies. A symposium in 1973 at Schloss (Palace) Grafenegg, near Krems in Austria, brought together interested

Preface I xuii

scholars whose papers were later published by Renate Wagner-Rieger and Walter Krause.10 In North America an exhibition of 1982 at Hammond Castle Museum in Massachusetts also led to a publication, appropriately titled Castles: An Enduring Fantasy.11 Both these works analyze the modern symbolism of castles and their links with broader economic and political, as well as cultural and intellectual, trends. No historians, however, have made as detailed a study of the Rhine castles as has Ursula Rathke, who has published a remarkable book on Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, and Sooneck, examining the documentary record left by the Prussian princes who inspired their reconstruction and by their architects, engineers, and bureaucrats. If mine is a study in breadth, hers is a study in depth, which does not, however, neglect her subjects' links with wider trends.12 I am beholden to these scholars for inspiring my approach. The German castle rebuilding phenomenon is not simply a valid concern for historians alone, but in addition may have practical significance for the North American conservation movement. In the past quarter century Canadians and Americans have become more aware of the importance of conserving and restoring the "built environment," a term which includes a wide range of structures deemed significant, historically and/or esthetically, or vital to a communal sense of identity. Such thinking began in Germany over a century and a half ago. In fact, the fears and ambitions of nineteenth-century Germans who were concerned with their architectural heritage often seemed to prefigure those of twentieth-century North Americans. Because the "heritage movement" here often needs a sense of perspective and direction, lessons from the German experience might be learned, therefore, which could be applied to the work of conservationists on this side of the Atlantic in the twenty-first century. Before we can review this phenomenon, however, several other diverse factors must be clarified, factors which include the geographical setting of nineteenth-century German castle rebuilding (the scenic background to Lewin's Wagnerian set designs), the historical reality of medieval castles, heritage movements here and in Germany, and some technical terminology.

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INTRODUCTION Rhine, wrote a German scholar, is "the most poetic and the most T hepolitical river of Europe,"1 an apt description, for when studying the great German river, one can escape neither poetry nor politics. The need to assert and defend political power created the original Rhenish castles, designed, as they were, to defend the territories of the many feudalities along the river's banks. Its crossings and its communities were the subjects of both civil wars and foreign aggression. Its castles were often the sites of battles and sieges, and figure frequently in political histories of medieval Germany. For this reason alone, the castles deserve the studies which have been made of them. Much later, however, when these fortresses had fallen into ruin and lost all apparent political or military value, nineteenth-century poets were enraptured by the landscape and mythology of both the Rhine and its wrecked citadels. By 1930, so overladen with legends, myths, and other associations was the river landscape that Kurt Tucholsky denigrated it as "the kitschumrauschte" Rhine, an almost untranslatable play on words meaning (approximately) "drunk with cultural garbage."2 Without being unfair to this perceptive critic, we should nevertheless note that the valley of the Middle Rhine (between Mainz and Bonn) was—and is—a remarkable stretch of European geography.

The Landscape of the Middle Rhine Nineteenth-century poets, artists, and later the first tourists revelled in the river's twists through a narrow gorge with steep wooded or vinecovered slopes, the beautiful views which appeared as one's ship rounded Notes to the Introduction are on pp. 334-36.

1

2 / Castles of the Rhine

each bend, and the castle ruins which crowned many of the craggy heights, rising above the water out of "dark druidic forests."3 Truly nature had created an impressive topography here. When the Rhine leaves the Alps it meanders north and is, in effect, blocked by a mountain range running east-west across its path. The river cuts its way through this obstacle, creating cliffs some of which are over 300 metres (about 1,000 feet) high. On the west bank are the Hunsriick hills, bordered at their northern limit by the Mosel River which flows into the Rhine at Koblenz. North of the Mosel, still on the west bank, is the volcanic Eiffel range. A similar pattern is seen on the east bank where the Taunus Mountains rise, their northern edge defined by the Lahn River, north of which run the Westerwald hills. It is as if two gorges—that of the Rhine and that of the Mosel-Lahn— intersect with each other at Koblenz.4 On the Middle Rhine, as elsewhere, the earth itself has influenced the look of man's creations. In 1820 Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) noted, with only slight exaggeration, that the town of St. Goar on the west bank had purple slate roofs.5 The shiny blue-black tiles are fashioned out of the exposed cliffs' quartzite rock which had also been used for parts of the castles. Their shimmering dark tones struck the romantic poets and artists as appropriately melancholy in a ruin. To others this purple-black hue made the castles' ruined walls seem to rise organically out of the rock on which they are based. Still others have found violent drama in the shiny hue. "As after a recent fire," writes one observer, "the ruins of Fiirstenburg looked as if they had just been burned down."6 North of the Mosel-Rhine junction black basalt is more common, and here too the impression is dramatic. "The basalt is black," wrote Victor Hugo (1802-85) in 1842; "everywhere the dust of mica and quartz; everywhere purple crags."7 Hugo and Wordsworth were only a few of the thousands of their contemporaries who made trips up or down the river in the nineteenth century. The Rhine journey, in fact, became a staple in the cultural enlightenment of both Europeans and North Americans. Tourists marvelled at the dramatic and uplifting legends of knightly heroes pitted against doomed villains in lofty-spired fortresses. Yet the actual history of the Rhine castles was less attractive and life in a medieval castle was far from inspiring.

Introduction / 3

Fig. 1. Braubach and vicinity about 1605: The artist Wilhelm Dilich has exaggerated the height of the castles and hilltops as well as their proximity to each other, but has correctly reflected his patron's sensible concern to record the fortresses and towns of his principality. On the right bank, Braubach and Philippsburg with Marksburg above; beyond is Burg Lahneck above Oberlahnstein with Martinsburg. On the left bank, Rhens (site of the "Royal Throne") and Burg Stolzenfels above Kapellen. Courtesy of Bachem Verlag, Cologne.

4 I Castles of the Rhine

The Castles in Their Prime It is strange—very strange! How opinions will change! How antiquity blazons and hallows Both the man and the crime That a less lapse of time Would commend to the hulks or the gallows.8

So observed Thomas Hood (1799-1845), referring to the Rhenish robber barons in his account of an 1840 Rhine tour. The reading public of his time enjoyed an image of the Rhenish castles based on romantic and nationalistic fantasy, not historical reality. The German rebuilders of the 1800s thought of the castles as national cultural monuments, redolent with romantic associations—as subjects for paintings, melancholy poems, or patriotic hymns. Even in the mid-twentieth century, writers have found the Rhenish castles "picturesque and mellow" or "integral parts of the landscape." The original builders, however, constructed them for strictly utilitarian reasons. Purpose-built military structures, the castles were often destroyed in war, only to be rebuilt for other entirely practical ends. When social, political, and military conditions led to the abandonment of most castles, Germans had no plans to make them stone witnesses of medieval, knightly, or national glory for German posterity.9 When castles were demolished, no tears were shed over the loss of national cultural monuments. Nineteenth-century reconstruction came as an epilogue to the long violent chronicle of the castles' history. After about 55 B.C. the Romans built fortified towns and outposts on the Middle Rhine, their northeastern frontier. Although several medieval castles such as Burg Klopp were built on the ruined foundations of Roman fortresses, none of the latter survived as notable ruins into the nineteenth century. Nor was it possible to find many traces of Charlemagne's palaces at Aachen and Ingelheim (built around 800) which had virtually disappeared by 1800. Nationalists were more attracted to the Holy Roman Empire of the later Middle Ages, which seemed to have been an ideal society and polity, and of which there were many visible traces. The vast expanse of this Reich from Luxemburg and Alsace to Hungary and Brandenburg had seen the construction of more castles than anywhere else in medieval Europe.10 The invasions of the Hungarians, Slavs, and Normans caused emperors such as Henry the Fowler (ruled 919-36) to build many new castles, mostly wooden, and later emperors continued the effort. The eleventh-century Investiture Conflict between the imperial

Introduction I 5

supporters and the papal side saw the construction of more mighty castles. The golden age of German castle building, however, occurred under the Hohenstaufen dynasty (1138-1254), particularly during the reign of Frederick Barbarossa (1152-90), who made Swabia (south of the Middle Rhine) the heart of his empire which he tried to centralize and strengthen. Later, Frederick II (1220-50) over-reached himself with his Italian concerns and the Holy Roman Empire went into its long decline. With turmoil in Germany and with Frederick often away in Italy, the lower and middle ranks of the feudal nobility lived in a state of continual crisis which prompted some of them to construct their own powerful strongholds. Rhenish castles such as Sterrenberg were often commanded by castellans who themselves became powerful, their fortresses occasionally as imposing as those of the emperor. Common people, seeking protection, turned to any high-ranking and strong landlord who could provide it. Thus the legendary "robber barons" established themselves in their own fortresses, such as Rheinfels. In an effort to reestablish the imperial power Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg (ruled 1273-91) ordered the demolition in 1287 of at least ninety of these strongholds in Thuringia alone. In the Rhineland, however, after the thirteenth century the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne prevailed over the secular princes and housed themselves and their retainers in mighty stone fortresses. Only a small number of Rhenish secular rulers occasionally rivalled the prince-bishops, notably the Lords of Katzenelnbogen and the House of Hesse. German towns and cities were drawn into these conflicts. Castles were occasionally built by feudal lords within the walls of towns under their control, or else above the towns and linked to them by extended walls, such as those between Burg Stahleck and Bacharach. The Rhineland in particular was plagued with hostilities between cities and aristocrats, particularly after the League of Rhenish Cities was founded by Mainz and Worms in 1254. As military strongholds for powerful nobles the Rhenish castles were designed to defend the aristocrat, his family, and retainers and as bases for offensive excursions. They might also provide a haven for the owner's tenants or serfs in times of war or natural disaster. From the castle the lord administered his estates and dispensed justice. Part of the castle might serve as prison for local miscreants. The noble could also levy tolls on merchants' ships passing below on the Rhine. Towers served as lookouts to detect approaching enemies and as landmarks, alerting the traveller that he was entering a certain landlord's domain. A castle, therefore,

6 I Castles of the Rhine

served a purpose something like that of a twentieth-century aircraft carrier. Although (unlike a castle) these expensive vessels have little direct economic or adminstrative function, they are built for the sake of defence and are expendable in battle. So too were the castles of the Middle Rhine, which were frequently destroyed in the many wars which ravaged the valley, and later rebuilt when new hostilities developed. Aspects of their appearance changed, reflecting developing concepts of warfare and, to a lesser degree, fashions in architectural style. Only in the nineteenth century, however, did the loss of castles begin to seem like a cultural catastrophe or a national outrage. The rebuilding of fortified structures at strategic locations had a long history. As early as the tenth century the invading Hungarians had destroyed many of the early, often wooden, fortresses of the Middle Rhine which were later replaced by the stone structures with which most readers are familiar. For example the original Burg Hammerstein fell to the Hungarians and gradually disintegrated until Emperor Henry IV rebuilt it in the late eleventh century. In the thirteenth century Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg destroyed Sooneck and Reichenstein as nests of robber barons. Both were rebuilt soon after this, only to fall into ruin again. Most of the castles reconstructed in the nineteenth century resembled the originals only in a few details. By 1900, controversy raged over the correct way to rebuild ruined castles. We must therefore briefly describe here the main architectural features of the original Middle Rhine Burgen.n The appearance of the earliest castles of about 900 is still a subject for debate, but scholars know much more about the look of the castles of the high Middle Ages, thanks to Wilhelm Dilich (1571-1650), a military engineer, architect, and cartographer, whose pictures of Hessian castles tell us much about their appearance. We are also in debt to Matthaeus Merian (1593-1650), a Swiss engraver whose Topographia Germaniae, in several volumes, includes views and plans of Rhenish towns and castles. Many different castle types prevailed in Germany, some of them with distinctly non-German features. At their most powerful, the German emperors had Mediterranean and Eastern European contacts, not to mention French and English connections, and Crusaders had returned impressed by the fortresses of Spain and the Near East. To later nationalists the Rhenish castles became symbols of German culture. Nevertheless, although at least four types of Middle Rhine castles can be said to have existed, scholars have found it difficult to delineate a "typical German castie."

Introduction I 7

Although the exact appearance of the earliest medieval castles is debatable, we know that their wooden palisades gave way near the end of the eleventh century to the more familiar stone walls. Furthermore, the layout of the castles changed over time. Up to the mid-twelfth century, the ground plans were mostly round or oval. Then the octagonal, rectangular, or square plan developed. In the high Middle Ages, the rectangular plan was favoured.12 Most of the nineteenth-century restorations adhered to the ground plan as revealed by the ruin, although some added new sidebuildings and most drastically altered the layout of the upper floors. All the castles had strong walls. The high main wall with its wallwalks and arrow slits was known as the "ring-wall" which encompassed the entire complex. In front of this was the Zwinger wall beyond which were ditches or ramparts. An important part of the ring-wall was the strong "shield-wall" (Schildmauer) facing the side from which attack was expected. Most of the walls were crenellated and had arrow loops from which the defenders could fire on the enemy. The main entrance through the ring-wall, often at the base of a tower, usually had a drawbridge and portcullis. At their core most castles had two main structural features, usually distinct entities: the Bergfried (tower or keep) and the Palas (main living quarters and great hall). The German castles were therefore different from most English castles, which developed a more unified plan, often with a large tower standing alone in a courtyard. Only to this extent did the Rhenish castles have a more distinctly "German" style. Sometimes built into the ring-wall, the keep was the castle's tallest and strongest feature and stood usually on the highest point of land. Usually four-cornered, it could be round or even five-cornered as at Stolzenfels. On the Rhine this watchtower, the castle's most important defensive structure, was often built with a corner facing the hillside, from which direction attack might be expected and where the foundations were strongest. Including dungeons and guardrooms, the Bergfried was the last refuge of the defenders if overwhelmed. Whether the castle's owner was a knight, robber baron, archbishop or Emperor, the keep was a symbol of his power. Occasionally the keep was comfortably appointed and became living quarters, as at Eltville. Although in the fourteenth century (under French influence) the Bergfried and the Palas were sometimes combined, the Palas was usually distinguishable from the keep. Often rectangular in plan and two storeys high, it was constructed over a cellar. On the upper level was a large room, or great hall, used for festivities and meetings and often elaborately decorated, but rarely inhabited. Sleeping quarters were often adja-

8 I Castles of the Rhine cent to or above the great hall. Near at hand were the cistern or well and the kitchens. Most castles had chapels, sometimes outside the walls, occasionally over a gateway, as at Godesburg, or in an important tower, as in Marksburg. Some were free-standing; some were built into the Palas. In the courtyard were barns, stables, and sometimes another well. In the rebuilt nineteenth century castles, the owners of which preferred to emphasize social hierarchy, maintenance buildings and servants quarters usually stood outside the walls. Whereas in a genuine castle a small garden supplied fruit, vegetables, or herbs, such a feature when found in a nineteenth-century castle was mainly decorative. Local forests provided construction material and firewood, but they could also conceal danger. As Dilich and Merian show, the woods around the castles were cut down to give better visibility from the towers. Thus the romantic nineteenth-century picture of castles surrounded with lush greenery—as indeed the ruins were by 1800—does not accord with their original appearance. From the perspective of a medieval river traveller the Burgen stood out starkly against the sky. The walls linking the castles to the towns at their feet were clearly visible, as was the case with Marksburg and Braubach, or Schonburg and Oberwesel. The nineteenth century developed a fanciful image of the medieval castle, looming dark grey or black out of a thick, wild forest, high above the glittering river. This romantic image had little to do with the appearance of the almost starkly bright castles when originally built.13 Medieval castle builders tried to render their strongholds brightly visible in the distance by plastering the walls and painting them with colours as vivid as the age could create. On his Rhine journey, the fifteenth-century humanist Piccolomini reported that "so many buildings and castles tower above the cliffs there, that they seem to cover whole hills and peaks like snow fallen from heaven."14 Castles' outer walls were often cream, white, or yellow with the timbering a bolder reddish brown as at Rheinfels. Few wall sections were left as bare stone but were covered with plaster. (Parts of such original covering may still be seen at Lahneck.) The tourist today may be confused to see that Stolzenfels boasts a bright yellow plaster while Sooneck and Rheinstein not far away and rebuilt almost at the same time as Stolzenfels are of plain unplastered stone. As a matter of fact, Stolzenfels' yellow plaster is more historically accurate than the bare walls of Rheinstein or Sooneck, which when first built were also probably plastered and painted.

Introduction I 9

Life in a Medieval Castle Until about 1850 few Europeans had an accurate picture of medieval castle life. Whereas most nineteenth-century castle owners on the Middle Rhine purchased them for cash and owned them outright, the original medieval castles existed in a complex system of ownership. A lesser lord could hold a castle in feudal tenure from a more powerful one. If a noble family became impoverished, they could mortgage their castle to a more prosperous one. Other castles might have a lien upon them to another lord or prince. Some, known as Ganerbenburgen (coparcenary or "jointheir" castles) could house several related aristocratic families. The law of primogeniture which prevailed in France and England did not pertain to Germany. Although the estate with its castle went to the eldest son, each noble's son inherited his father's title and rank. Thus younger sons, too, were obliged to maintain the clan's prestige. They could not pursue bourgeois trades, so if they did not enter the church, they had to live by military service which involved building a stronghold. Of castle life, Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523), German humanist and imperial knight, wrote that We are suffocatingly cramped inside, penned in together with cattle and horses, and the dark rooms are stuffed full of heavy guns, pitch, sulphur, and other weapons and war material. The gunpowder stinks everywhere and the scent of the dogs and their dirt is scarcely very charming either, in my opinion.

If there was a bad harvest, he continued, "there is dreadful misery and poverty. Then there is nothing but worry, confusion, fear, friction, and irritation hour after hour."15 Such castles were not without interior embellishments. Marksburg's great hall, for example, was embellished with mural paintings and the interior of the small chapel was brilliantly painted. However, the well-to-do princely, aristocratic, and bourgeois rebuilders of the 1800s could not tolerate the life of medieval nobles who had often endured a standard of living not much higher than that of their peasants. The dark and uncomfortable rooms of an original Palas had small, narrow windows covered with thin plates of horn and/or closed with wooden shutters. (The stained glass windows at Stolzenfels are a nineteenth-century luxury.) Oil lamps and pine torches provided dim lighting and gave off smoke while the hearths, too, produced smoke, but little heat. Furnishings were spare and the small dim rooms were often heaped with armaments and weapons. Given the dreariness of Palas life, the owners often preferred to spend

10 I Castles of the Rhine

their waking hours outdoors; hence the popularity of hunts and tournaments. Indoors the presence of scores, even hundreds, of retainers made all human activities public events. These conditions would, of course, be repugnant to the more sensitive mores of the nineteenth-century elite. In theory, the knight had many obligations to the people living within sight of his keep, not to mention those he owed to his superior, even the Emperor. Serving another prince, however, was dangerous, no matter how just that ruler was, for the latter's enemies could attack one at any time. Hence one had to maintain a large armed force, which partly explains the Burg's crowded living conditions. Ideally the knight himself was brave, loyal, and noble of spirit, ritterlich, having virtues which the German word for "knightly" or "chivalric" still connotes. Yet the peasant or merchant had no guarantee that any particular heir to a castle would have these qualities, and the annals are full of tales of landlords who oppressed their serfs, rebelled against all authority, or oppressed townsmen. Nevertheless, many of the later poets and artists, as well as the rebuilders and their supporters, preferred to gloss over the harsher aspects of medieval castle life, and to dwell upon those elements which suited their romantic view of the German nobility of the Holy Roman Empire. The new owners of the rebuilt Burgen and pseudo-castles had grown accustomed to cleaner, quieter, more private lives. Even before the introduction of electricity and modern plumbing later in the nineteenth century, they expected much more comfort in their living quarters. Thus, in their new castles they recreated the comforts they knew in their city palaces and mansions. Rarely did they attempt to make their new-old properties into profitable estates with cattle or cultivated fields. Moreover, whereas the medieval castles were bustling communities where sometimes as many as 2,000 people lived and worked, the restored ones were often designed as retreats from formal social intercourse and as havens from responsibility. Only rarely were they economic or administrative centres of estates. With the exception of Ehrenbreitstein, neither did they have a military function.

The Decline of Castles By 1815 all but two of the Middle Rhine castles were in ruins, many with only stunted walls rising out of piles of stones overgrown with moss and bushes. Why did once-powerful fortresses become heaps of useless stone? As technology changed the towering, moated, ring-walled keeps lost their military function, while their owners, faced with financial problems or

Introduction I 11

greater social and political opportunity elsewhere, began to abandon their increasingly indefensible Burgen. The territorial princes concentrated power in their hands to the detriment of local noble authorities and even to that of the emperor. The powerful provincial rulers of Germany (such as the Rhenish archbishops) continued to use castles as official buildings for tax collection and the administration of justice, but they no longer depended on the militarily obsolete and physically uncomfortable Burgen. Those knights who luckily found favour with a prince could eventually afford a city palace or even an unprotected rural manor house. By 1600 the urban Schloss had emerged as a the typical noble dwelling. Here, cultivating a refined lifestyle took precedence over defensibility. The family castle, now old-fashioned, remote, and uncomfortable, was converted into an arsenal, a prison, or a poorhouse. The town of Nassau on the Lahn exemplifies the aristocracy's retreat from the Burg. On a hill on the river's south bank lie the ruins of Burg Stein, owned by the family of that name since at least 1158. Within the town, however, is Schloss Stein, built in 1621 and expanded in 1755. The Stein family's most famous scion was the Prussian statesman, Baron Carl vom und zum Stein (1757-1831), whose policies helped the Hohenzollerns both to defeat Napoleon and to modernize their state. On the Lahn, the Steins abandoned an increasingly useless and uncomfortable castle and took up residence in an imposing and more civilized palace in the town centre, while on the hilltop the old family seat crumbled away. War wrecked many castles. Medieval rulers themselves destroyed each other's fortresses as a matter of military and political policy. Because the control of the Burgen determined the owners' political power, they were often attacked, besieged, and demolished.16 This rule was especially applicable to those of the Rhine which, at various times was a political and military frontier between the Empire and France, or which was crossed or paralleled by frontiers between warring German principalities. The river was also a commercial artery which could be exploited. Although Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg dismantled the castles of unruly knights along the Middle Rhine, often the most active Burg wreckers were the warlike archbishops of the three great church territories which controlled most of the area—Trier, Cologne, and Mainz. The Thirty Years' War (1618-48), Louis XIV's wars (1681-84 and 1688-89), the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-95), and the Napoleonic Wars (1805-15), which all involved French depredations, accounted for further destruction.17 After about 1400, when gunpowder and artillery weapons were introduced, the doom of many castles was certain. The great walls, no matter

12 I Castles of the Rhine

how thick, were no lasting defence against cannonballs and explosives. In a single day in 1523, for example, Count Philip of Hesse bombarded into rubble the castle of Landstuhl in the Palatinate. The French in particular were very adept at the new military technology. Twentieth-century excavations through the two metres (nearly seven feet) of rubble at Burg Stahleck above Bacharach revealed eight sites where blasting materials had been inserted in the castle walls in order to destroy them. The very rock beneath Stahleck appeared to have fissured under the impact of the blasts.18 Of course, great new fortresses, often inspired by the plans of the French expert Vauban, were built, but, with the exception of the new Ehrenbreitstein, these were not on the Middle Rhine. The older castles perched on hilltops were hard to convert successfully to the new military architecture. At first the nobility tried to strengthen their fortresses with new bastions, casements and batteries. Ring-walls became thicker and moats, deeper—to no avail—and finally the castle lost completely its raison d'etre. Meanwhile as infantry and small firearms carried the day, the mounted knights themselves became elegant anachronisms. In the sixteenth century the knights as a class became less important to the princes or the emperor than standing armies or mercenaries. Many clans, therefore, simply were out of work and went into an economic decline. Some, such as the Schonenburg family, who owned Schonburg near Oberwesel until 1719, simply died out. The physical decay of the increasingly unused castles began as early as the sixteenth century, as was the case with Reichenstein, near Trechtingshausen, and Klopp, above Bingen. The wooden roof timbers rotted, while rain, frost, and melting ice undermined the walls' now-unprotected stone-work. Weakened mortar washed away, further destabilizing walls, and growing tree roots invaded and expanded widening cracks. People from nearby villages and farms began to use the collapsed walls as stone quarries for building their houses and barns. In certain cases construction firms in neighbouring towns also found ideal ready-made building blocks in the decaying castles. If walls were still standing, supported by timbers, then piles of wood were heaped inside and fired, destroying the beams and collapsing the walls. Burg Leyen near Linz and Wblkenburg near Konigswinter were notable quarrying victims. Gutenfels near Kaub was threatened by a quarrying enterprise sanctioned by the government of Nassau. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, decay and depredation had eliminated all traces of some castles.

Introduction I 13

The Industrial Revolution "Oh noble towers ...!" lamented Victor Hugo in 1838; "a passing steamboat loaded with merchants and bourgeois types throws its smoke in your face."19 Had he travelled north up to the Ruhr River, a Rhine tributary, he would have seen how in 1818 with unintended symbolism, Friedrich Harkort had set up a factory making steam engines and mechanical looms in the ruined fourteenth-century Burg Wetter.20 The steam engine was indeed invading the very precincts of the castles and embodied a unique threat to their future. Even before 1800 the Industrial Revolution had begun to transform the Rhenish economy and landscape. As early as 1797 a spinning jenny had been installed in a Cologne factory. In 1819 Conrad Sohmann in Krefeld, on the Rhine, north of Diisseldorf, had set up a steam engine in his stocking factory.21 The transformation spread into the heart of the Middle Rhine itself where, by the 1890s, Krupp had iron foundries near Burg Sayn at Neuwied. Such changes increased both the commercial traffic on the river and the pressure for better land transportation.22 In 1818 internal Prussian tariff barriers were abolished. Between 1828 and 1831 Prussia, HesseDarmstadt, and Hesse-Kassel formed a customs union, opening a direct land route for trade between the eastern and western provinces of Prussia. After 1834 when Prussia invited other German states to join the Tariff Union (Zollverein), more and more principalities reduced or abolished their tariffs on imports. A free trade area developed in central Europe which opened the doors to further prosperity for Rhinelanders. As a result of these free trade policies, roads were improved and river traffic increased when (also in 1831) Prussia, Hesse, Nassau, and several southern German states relaxed their controls on Rhine shipping. Already in 1815 commerce on the river had revived. After Prussia's Rhine Traffic Act (1831) abolished the cities' ancient right to compel merchants to offer their goods for sale in places such as Cologne, it began to flourish. The infamous river tolls were gradually lifted until complete freedom of trade on the Rhine prevailed. The treacherous rocks in the river near Bingen which endangered ships were dynamited (1830-32). In neighbouring Nassau, the Lahn River, an important Rhine tributary, was canalized (1837-59). North of the Middle Rhine, the Ruhr area was to become the heart of the German iron production. In 1841 the first iron barge appeared on the river. As noted above, entrepreneurs built flourishing cast iron works, the products of which soon were utilized in the area's architecture. When

14 / Castles of the Rhine

construction of Cologne cathedral resumed in 1842 iron was used in its roof framework. Cast-iron work was featured at the rebuilt castles Lahneck, Rheinstein, and Sayn. Ruhr coal, which aided the iron and the later steel industries, also helped to revolutionize transportation as steamships appeared on the river after 1816 and railways were built. In 1838 the first Rhenish railway was opened between Diisseldorf and Erkrath. In the 1840s, the railway network spread in the industrializing district area around Cologne and in the growing Rhine-Ruhr coal-mining area. Gradually the rails spread south as a line parallelling the river was built from Cologne to Bonn (1844). The first railway to penetrate the gorge itself was built along the west bank of the river 1850-60, connecting the less developed Middle Rhine with the burgeoning economy to the north. By the mid-nineteenth century the towns between Bonn and Bingen were part of the most modern transportation and communication network of the time, linking them to the rest of Germany and the continent. Great bridges were flung across the river, as at Pfaffendorf south of Koblenz (1862-64). Such structures dramatically altered the landscape and symbolized a new threat to the castles and to the potentially valuable architectural fabric of communities. Even before the railway age, the Prussian authorities demolished many of OberwesePs medieval houses for the construction of a new highway (1828-30). Between 1856 and 1859 railway construction destroyed several west bank castle ruins. The same occurred on the east bank when the Nassau State Railway was built (1859-61), breaking up the ruins of Scbloss Friedrichstein near Neuwied. Others castles, if not destroyed, were cut off from the community by the spreading railway lands. Burg Linz was separated from the river by a line which passed through the town of that name on a viaduct almost above the roofs. Today the roar of the trains is audible inside the restaurants and shops on the Burgplatz.23 Later in the century there were fears that Martinsburg at Oberlahnstein would be demolished as the platforms and tracks associated with the station expanded.24 Admittedly, when the railway came, economic life returned to towns such as Andernach in 1858 or St. Goar in 1859. The former grew beyond its medieval walls as modern industries were set up, served by the railroad. Oberlahnstein developed an iron foundry and a machine factory. Elsewhere branch lines spread out from the Rhine; for example, the Westerwald Railway was built in 1882 through the Brex Valley near Sayn. These, too, stimulated the dormant economy—in the latter case, iron industries developed.

Introduction I 15

Nineteenth-century observers were aware of the inappropriateness of giant steel constructions in this otherwise pastoral landscape. "Ugly," said the 1895 Baedeker of the bridge at Oberlahnstein over the Lahn at its Rhine mouth.25 This may be one reason why designers often made the piers on the new bridges look like the towers of nearby castles and tunnel entrances (such as that opposite Oberwesel) were decked out with crenellations and towers. Such decorations may have been in harmony with the nearby castles, but were themselves totally inappropriate to these structures' functions. The Horchheimer railroad bridge near Koblenz, for example, had stolid fortress-like towers, each with four square turrets. The famous bridge at Remagen—the last intact Rhine crossing as the Allied forces invaded Germany in 1945—was built of reinforced concrete faced with stone, yet had huge towers resembling medieval keeps. About 1830, at the beginning of the period of our study, the Rhine gorge was still peaceful. The few protests about the arrival of the first steam engines were fruitless. Awareness of the dichotomy between entrepreneurial profit and preservation of unique environments was still embryonic. Besides, the locomotive and the steamship brought more business to the practical burghers of the sleepy riverside villages. Unfortunately, they also began the deterioration of the special charm of the Middle Rhine. Today at almost any spot on the "romantic Rhine" one is aware of noise: high-speed trains clatter along both river banks; highway traffic roars along the river roads; ships' engines drone over the water itself; fighter jets scream and helicopters rumble overhead.

Heritage Movements Given the practical, often violent, purposes of medieval castles, medieval knights reincarnated around 1870 would have been astonished at the castles' idealized image and at the fact that their wrecked remains were later considered suitable for rebuilding as residences, patriotic shrines, and artifacts for scholarly study. To understand this phenomenon, we must now consider the modern fascination with the past. In this regard Canadians and Americans have lagged behind Europeans, but even in the "New" World the "old" has recently become interesting to the general public. The expression "heritage movement," which has come into general use in the past two decades, refers to the concern for the preservation of objects that are considered important to a culture and its history.26 It can involve the collection and documentation of items as relatively intangible as folk songs or dietary customs, but has come to mean primarily the pro-

16 I Castles of the Rhine

tection of the built environment. In Canada, before the 1970s "conservation" involved mainly the protection of sites of great natural beauty such as Lake Louise or of historic sites such as the Plains of Abraham. Although the Historic Sites and Monuments Board was founded in 1919, and although during the Great Depression of the 1930s sites such as Fort George and Fort Erie in the Niagara Peninsula were reconstructed, concern for the saving or reconstruction of buildings not associated with some great event or significant individual developed only about 1960. Painstaking archeological research and lavish sums of money have been expended by the federal government on the excavation and rebuilding of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. Upper Canada Village was created near Morrisburg, Ontario, out of early and mid-nineteenth-century buildings threatened by the St. Lawrence Seaway development (completed in 1959). Pioneer towns such as Barkerville, in British Columbia, have been restored. For my generation at least, the 1967 Canadian Centennial stimulated a new consideration of the nature of this country, its traditions and its built environment. In the 1970s and 1980s, an interest in both local lore and national history emerged. Historic architecture, even if not connected with a famous pioneer or a significant event, enjoyed a new popularity. Any self-respecting community needed a "pioneer village" of salvaged buildings, and many "Heritage Trusts" or similar private groups were formed. Ordinary individuals began to take an interest in something which previously had concerned only historians, archivists, and archeologists. More and more citizens began to feel that older buildings provided a sense of place and of continuity in a rapidly changing environment.27 Governments also became active. The Canadian Inventory of Historic Buildings, established by Ottawa in 1970, began to document valuable structures. The federal authorities also established the Heritage Canada Foundation in 1973, which in turn inspired provincial governments to pass or to reinforce laws concerned with the built environment, of which Ontario's Heritage Act of 1974 is only one example. Ethnic and nationalistic pride played a certain role in these measures. Certainly the reconstruction of the pre-conquest Place Royale in Quebec City is at least partly an attempt to affirm the presence of francophone culture in North America. The American movement had begun earlier than the Canadian. In the United States the first important example of architectural heritage conservation was probably the founding in 1853 of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association in order to save George Washington's home from speculators.

Introduction I 17

Private enterprise also saved Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, in 1923. The federal government entered the scene in 1935 with the Historic Sites Act, later the National Trust for Historic Preservation (1949) and the National Register of Historic Places (1966). From the beginning, there was a strong pedagogical and patriotic strain to American conservationism, which was true also of both the Canadian and the German movements.28 In Britain, although an interest in the preservation of historic buildings had been noticeable in the 1770s, the equivalent of an architectural heritage conservation movement began only in 1877 with the founding by William Morris (1834-96) of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. The British government was inspired to produce its Ancient Monuments Protection Acts in 1882 and 1900. The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, first founded as a charitable body in 1895, was given more power by the National Trust Act of 1907, and further government legislation has followed at regular intervals (most notably the Royal Commission of Historical Monuments, set up in 1908, and the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act of 1913). Thus the British were ahead of Canada and the United States in heritage legislation, but, as will be seen, behind the Germans. By the 1970s concern for architectural heritage had become worldwide. In 1972 several nations drafted the World Heritage Convention, to which Canada became a signatory in 1976, a development which was applauded by historians and those in related fields. On the other hand the late twentieth-century interest in architectural and other forms of historic preservation has achieved new forms of silliness and hypocrisy. By the 1980s, in English-speaking North America at least, "heritage" had become a popular word much used in the business community to denote anything from profitable tradition, nostalgic charm, and fiscal dependability to moral worth. Politicians, too, found a use for this comfortable word. In 1973 the American government set up the multimillion-dollar Heritage Foundation with a view to buttressing political conservatism. "Heritage USA" was a theme park established in Carolina by a television evangelist. Around 1990 in southern Ontario, a cursory glance at advertisements revealed that the word "heritage" was associated with a wellknown Canadian cream sherry, a slow cooker, an investment service, a restaurant, a clothing store, a Christian book and music store, a business office complex, and many more commercial products and enterprises— not to mention "Heritage Villages." A more disturbing appropriation of the word occurs in the name of the racist "Heritage Front."

18 I Castles of the Rhine

In areas more closely related to history and architecture, a "heritage industry" is booming, not however, without criticism. A "historic town" such as Williamsburg, Virginia (begun 1926) is condemned by some because, as it now appears, it never existed geographically or historically. Other critics argue that societies can take an interest in the past too far, making history function as a refuge from an unpalatable present and refusing to adapt to modern realities.29 The lavish British preservation and partial reconstruction of the early industrial era in the Ironbridge Gorge is said to represent its creators' refusal to adapt to the post-industrial world. This criticism may be valid for many of the German castle rebuilders sought to escape, even to reverse the effects of modernization. Nevertheless I would maintain that much of the twentieth-century heritage conservation movement is a healthy reaction to the ugliness of the modern urban environment. As such it resembles the more constructive aspects of the earlier German castle rebuilding. Several decades before many other European or North American states became involved, the German principalities played an important role in architectural heritage conservation. The Germans lacked a centralized national government until 1871, but various princes took action much earlier. The Grand Duke of Hesse, Prince Frederick Louis of Prussia, and his royal cousins, were active by the 1830s. Private individuals and groups soon followed suit. The Germans were also in the vanguard of modern scholarly historical and archeological studies and the examination of local traditions and customs, a pursuit associated with the concept of Heimat.^ Unfortunately these concerns were often driven by an intense nationalism and a political conservatism which sometimes bordered on a reactionary rejection of all things modern. Nevertheless, the German castle rebuilding movement emerged very early and produced architectural documents which reflect important aspects of the age and the culture. The late twentieth-century heritage movement may find useful lessons here.

Why These Ruins? In The Castles of the Rhine I have asked why, after centuries of neglect, between the 1820s and the 1930s so many of the ruined castles were rebuilt or became the object of almost fanatical care. And why were new or pseudo-castles built on this river's banks? I found answers to these questions in a complex of forces operating in the late eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth centuries and into at least the 1920s. To single out individual trends may be artificial, since any particular castle was

Introduction I 19

rebuilt or preserved for several motives and reasons. Nevertheless, a focus on influences such as romanticism or tourism can provide useful signposts on our turbulent century-long Rhine journey. At its conclusion we may be able better to see in perspective the Western world's contemporary concern for "heritage values," especially in the built environment. Part 1 of this book, "Foundations," attempts to describe briefly these vast changes in political, economic, cultural, intellectual and technological history, which altered the fate of the Rhenish castle ruins in the nineteenth century. This process of "modernization" includes industrialization (the application of machinery to production), the extension of the market mentality, elections (including ever-wider ranks of a politically sophisticated public), and a progressive mentality which assumes that change is desirable.31 Parts 2 and 3 show that the perceived need to buttress the political status quo was a paramount motive, especially between about 1822 and about 1860. Princes, ancient families, and nouveaux riches were trying to buttress their claim to social and political superiority in an age when that ascendancy was being challenged. They were also imbued with the romantic urge to escape from political and professional responsibility, personal tensions, and an increasingly unpleasant urban environment into beautiful natural settings. While not denying the role of other causal factors in the castle rebuilding movement, parts 2 and 3 show the efforts of the ruling elites to create architectural propaganda for their cause. Parts 4 and 5 show how nationalism began to dominate the movement, especially after the creation of a united Germany in 1871. Other influences were still present, of course, and the growth of tourism cannot be described simply as "German nationalism." We shall also witness the birth of the modern heritage conservation movement, which rejected reconstruction or, in some cases, even restoration of older buildings. By the 1880s, moreover, civic authorities, cultural associations, and other private organizations in the Rhine towns evinced a nostalgic concern for local lore and custom. Towards 1910 the castles had also become pedagogical tools. Part 6 considers the contemporary relevance of the German castle rebuilding movement for North Americans concerned with perserving valuable parts of the built environment in a world changing even more rapidly than was the Germans' in the nineteenth century. Throughout the book, I have found it convenient to select several castles as examples of the effect of a certain influence and to describe the reconstruction or restoration. Whether we conceive of these factors as

20 I Castles of the Rhine

motives, influences, or vague moods, it is obvious that they often occurred simultaneously: castle enthusiasts were driven by several of them at the same time. Nevertheless, the general framework of the book is chronological with, I hope, little loss in our awareness of the phenomenon's complexity. In summary, the thesis of this book is that the rebuilding of ruined castles and the construction of ^joc-castles was a response to the sweeping political, cultural, social, and economic changes in the nineteenth century. Far from being detached from current political or economic events, the castle mania reflected most of the general trends and some of the specific events in German national experience of this time. A heritage conservation movement in the modern sense, it was not solely concerned with understanding and appreciating the past but was also rooted in contemporary attitudes and served present needs.

A Note on Terms and Translations Certain German words occasionally present problems. First, the term "heritage movement" was used neither in English nor in German in the nineteenth century. In Germany, only gradually did the term Denkmalpflege begin to be used to denote the care (Pflege) needed for the maintenance of historic monuments (Denkmaler). When I have encountered this word, which means literally "the care of monuments," I have translated it as "heritage conservation." The German words "Instandsetzung" and "Konservierung," which occasionally appear in the literature, are not accurately translated as "conservation," but mean "repair" and "antiquities preservation" respectively. Some readers will justifiably want to know how I use terms such as "restoration" or "conservation." In this book the word "reconstruction" (Wiederaufbau) is used to mean the recreation of a no-longer-standing structure on its original site. Burg Katz, reconstructed after 1898, was a notorious example of this increasingly criticized practice. Recently the rebuilding of Burg Nassau on the Lahn River, a Rhine tributary, is a more successful example. Throughout, I have used the term "rebuilding" as a synonym for "reconstruction." Both terms differ from "reconstitution," which refers to the reassembly of a building on its original site or elsewhere, made necessary by, for example, earthquake or war. This sort of undertaking was rare in the area under study, except for the reconstitution of the main tower at the Marksburg, destroyed during the Second World War.

Introduction I 21

I use the term "Restoration" (Restaurierung or Wiederherstellung ) in a slightly different sense, involving the return of a surviving but damaged structure to its appearance and state during a particular time in the past. This rarely happened to the castles of the Middle Rhine, with the exception of Marksburg, which had suffered little change since the seventeenth century, and which was restored more or less accurately after 1899. Before terminology was refined the word was used to describe Stolzenfels and Rheinstein, which were not at all accurately rebuilt as replicas, but were largely new structures. "Conservation" refers to the attempt to prevent deterioration of a building's condition, or to buttress its stability by, for example, general cleaning, repointing masonry, or repairing foundations. Attempts were made throughout the last century to prevent castle ruins such as Drachenfels from decaying further, but due to inadequate understanding of medieval building techniques, some of these attempts were ill-advised. In the first decades of the twentieth century, conservation (based on improved historical knowledge) began to replace reconstruction as the favoured mode of dealing with ruins. In "preservation" (Erhaltung) the aim is to maintain the building in the same condition as when it was first discovered whether it is ruined or not.32 Ideally nothing is added and nothing is removed. Experts want to be able to study the structure in the future and to better understand its history, its original purpose, or any other phenomenon associated with it. Unfortunately the word is sometimes used as a synonym for "conservation," but it can refer also to a gamut of activities having to do not only with maintenance but also with evaluation, identification, and/or reuse of older buildings. I have tried to use the term in the sense noted above. The focus of this study is the castles on the "Middle Rhine" (Mittelrheiri) an area not always precisely defined even by Germans. I have chosen to apply the word to the stretch of the river between Bonn and Mainz, which includes the picturesque and twisting gorge.33 The Middle Rhine had more castle ruins and received more attention from conservative nationalistic castle-rebuilders than any other comparable area in Europe. It is also the part of Germany most familiar to English-speaking people. To understand how the modern fascination with castles developed, we must now consider the forces which, in the years between about 1770 and 1939, caused new castles to rise on or near the ruined walls of 500-year-old fortresses.

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PART ONE FOUNDATIONS

ONE

POLITICAL AND

ECONOMIC POWER ON THE MIDDLE RHINE n this chapter we consider the castles as evidence of the Rhineland's I violent history history from from feudal feudal times times to to the the age age of nationalism nationalism and and indusindus-

trialism. For centuries before the nineteenth century the Middle Rhine was a politically divided, war-ravaged, and, compared to England or Holland, economically backward place (Fig. 2). Around 1500, for example, merchants sailing south from Cologne to Mainz feared for their physical safety and the secure passage of their goods. Between Bad Godesberg and Bingen, at least twenty castles on the east bank and over seventeen on the west bank glowered down, most of their owners demanding fees. Toll-castles such as Burg Ehrenfels near Assmannshausen were linked by walls to the riverbank and its associated commerce. The wooded hills sheltered bandits and even the aristocratic castle-dwellers occasionally practised robbery to maintain themselves. Shattered skeletons hung on execution wheels or gibbets on the river's banks.1 Feuds existed between river towns. For example, until 1801 Andernach's residents gathered annually in their marketplace to hear a rabble-rousing sermon which encouraged their hatred of the residents of nearby Linz. Nothing in the journey, therefore, was esthetically pleasing or connotative of the eternal truths of Notes to Chapter One are on pp. 336-40. 24

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine / 25

poets and philosophers. The sweet melancholy or the patriotic fervour felt by later generations of Rhine travellers was alien to sixteenth- or seventeenth-century merchants. The historical memories evoked by the hilltop Burgen were largely unpleasant; if told that the river and its castles were quintessentially "German," as nineteenth-century patriots claimed, travellers would laugh in puzzlement.

The Middle Rhine in the Eighteenth Century Nevertheless, the river was still a commercial artery in the 1780s though less prosperous than in the high Middle Ages. Vessels loaded with wine barrels had been common sights on the middle Rhine since Roman times. Cargoes of stone were transported from the many riverside quarries. Booms of logs, supporting shanties, floated down from the Black Forest. Places such as St. Goar bustled with skiffs, ferries, and cargo boats. Women washed clothes in the still relatively unpolluted water. Fishermen put their nets into the river to harvest salmon. Fruit orchards covered the low slopes of the river's northern stretch near Bonn, while farther south vineyards predominated as the hills closed in on both sides. Cows and sheep grazed the river's edge. Wherever the river narrowed, towhorses pulled ships along the banks, but sails could be used on the wider stretches or when travelling downriver. By the eighteenth century legends embellished the history of every Rhine locality. To the British poet Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), the Rhine castles were "famed for dismal tales in early lore."2 For educated Germans these tales and legends became increasingly less "dismal" and were the source of national pride. For example, the hero Siegfried was associated with Burg Drachenfels, and Emperor Henry IV with Burg Hammerstein. Near St. Goarshausen on the east bank, the gorge curves around a great quartzite outcropping. Here sang the Lorelei, luring boatsmen to their deaths in the treacherous current. Only in the nineteenth century were charming melodies composed about this nymph and many poems written about other mythical figures. These legends are important for our study because, when broadcast by writers, they provided an impetus to ruin preservation and castle-rebuilding. In the pre-modern era, the Middle Rhine towns did not seem especially picturesque. Dominated by church spires, they were fortified with walls punctuated by military towers. In 1790 a traveller described Koblenz as a collection of shabby houses with streaky plaster.3 (The locals had not yet begun to spruce up their half-timbered structures to lure tourists.)

26 I Castles of the Rhine

Fig. 2. The Rhineland in 1700. Courtesy of Loris Gasparotto, cartographer, Brock University.

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine I 27

Fig. 3. The Rhineland occupied by France 1813. Courtesy of Loris Gasparotto, cartographer, Brock University.

28 I Castles of the Rhine

Fig. 4. Prussia's Rhine province. Courtesy of Loris Gasparotto, cartographer, Brock University.

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine / 29

Fig. 5. Germany 1871-1918. Courtesy of Loris Gasparotto, cartographer, Brock University.

Fig. 6. The Hohenzollerns in the nineteenth century. Courtesy of Loris Gasparotto, cartographer, Brock University.

Fig. 7. Chronological tables. Courtesy of Loris Gasparotto, cartographer, Brock University.

32 I Castles of the Rhine The lack of potential space for urban growth inhibited the development of larger cities. Towns such as Oberwinter, Unkel, and Niederbreisig huddled at the base of the basaltic cliffs, their defensive walls seeming to rise directly out of the river. When not involved with the grape harvest, the inhabitants survived by servicing the barges and ships and their crews. The shores of the more prosperous towns bristled with cranes. Most were ruled by local nobles, princes, or archbishop-electors, but some (such as Andernach) were imperial free cities, beholden only to the Holy Roman Emperor. German-speaking Europe was divided in to hundreds of virtually independent principalities, paying only lip-service to the emperor. The Middle Rhine, although a relatively short stretch of river, was controlled by several political units, a reflection of this Kleinstaaterei (division into many small states) which afflicted the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation until its 1803 demise. From the top of the Karthause hill above Koblenz, one could see the territory of the states of Trier, Mainz, Cologne, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Wied—so divided were the political loyalties of the Middle Rhine! "The German nation" was only a cultural entity at this time4 and did not inspire the fanatical loyalty which many late nineteenth-century Germans would come to feel. The Kaiser was rarely in full control of the Rhine, for the three great prince-bishoprics of Cologne, Trier, and Mainz, remained powerful (Fig. 2). The archbishop of Cologne owned the west bank from north of the city to just south of Bonn. The archbishop of Trier possessed the Koblenz area on both sides of the Rhine. The archbishop of Mainz governed Bingen and the Rheingau across the river. The great archbishops, however, had to share the Middle Rhine with lesser powers, such as the Duke of Berg, who controlled a small part of the right bank from north of Cologne. These political divisions had economic consequences as most castles were toll stations. As barter declined and a cash economy emerged, access to currency meant access to more luxury and power. Nobles, princes or archbishops living in castles above the river therefore extended chains or ropes across the channel, stopping all traffic and charging a fee for further passage. By the fourteenth century there were sixty-two customs posts on the entire Rhine.5 The Emperor himself claimed a certain amount of the toll harvest. On the other hand each collector had the responsibility of keeping his section of the water highway, including the towpath, in good repair and of providing an escort to protect merchants from bandits. Although much of this toll-collecting was legitimate, some nobles extended the privilege beyond legal bounds and the piracy of these robber barons became a constant threat to traffic. In 1254 the merchants of some

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine I 33 of the towns, who hated the toll castles, formed the League of Rhenish Cities to protect their interests. Despite their inconvenience the last Rhine tolls were removed only in 1869. Thus insofar as the Rhine castles contributed to the economic and political division of Germany, they were symbols of national disunity, not of German national strength, as the nineteenth-century patriots believed. The towns were well fortified either on the initiative of their own burghers, as defence against the nobility, or by conquering princes who used the fortifications as much to control the town dwellers as to ward off other princes' attacks. For example, above St. Goar, Rheinfels (the largest castle on the Middle Rhine) displayed many turrets and towers, its pale plaster and red timbering radiant in the midday sunlight. Here, although they besieged the fortress for nearly twelve months in 1255, the Rhenish cities tried and failed to curb the power of the lords of Katzenelnbogen. Originally the castles served many practical purposes. As we have seen, paramount was the need for defence in a land plagued with internecine wars and foreign invasions. Each of these fortresses was also a base for marauding expeditions against neighbours. The peasants in the surrounding villages, even though they might suffer from an oppressive landlord, had the right to seek refuge in his castle.6 Each castle was an administrative centre and helped to define the boundaries of a territory. From one centrally placed castle a powerful lord could dominate or administer others which he had enfeoffed to his clients. Archbishops, when owners, made them centres of church administration.7 Even after they were no longer militarily useful, castles sometimes continued as administrative offices, including the operation of a justice system, Godesburg, for example, became a prison. "Are the Rhine castles becoming politicized?" asked a German journalist in 1931.8 In fact the castle's symbolism had always been political. The medieval castle spoke for the political power of the noble landowner whether knight, archbishop, or emperor. In the nineteenth century, the reconstructed castles were also intended to reflect the power of the King of Prussia, the status of the nobility and haute bourgeoisie, and the glories of the new German Reich. Although motives other than a desire to assert political supremacy were also involved in reconstruction, the need to symbolize the power of the state and an associated social and political status quo was always evident. Before the nineteenth century the Rhine itself was certainly not seen as a "German" river. Nor was the Rhineland a frontier between the French and the Germans. During the Thirty Years War (1618-48), Catholic Rhinelanders

34 I Castles of the Rhine

saw France as a protector against German and Swedish Protestants. In the French wars of conquest in the later seventeenth and in the eighteenth centuries, some of this trust dissipated. Perhaps because state boundaries within this part of the Empire changed frequently before 1789, the Rhinelanders seemed indifferent to who governed them, their adaptability becoming famous. When the Prussians took over in 1815, this political nonchalance at first seemed potentially treasonous. Despite these peculiarities, politically and economically the Rhineland in the later eighteenth century was far from being totally backward. In the larger territories, the Stdnde (estates) enjoyed the right to be consulted in government decisions. An economic revival was underway, especially in the towns, where a wealthy bourgeoisie was thriving. The seats of the archbishops enjoyed a modest cultural and economic boom.9 And so when the revolutionary French came to "liberate" them, most Rhinelanders were not impressed.

The Middle Rhine and the French Revolution After 1789 Koblenz became the informal headquarters of many French noble emigres, fleeing the turbulence at home. In pursuit of their political ends in France these exiles were permitted to recruit and train Rhenish troops to support a return to their homeland. A small minority of Rhinelanders were inspired by the revolutionary ideals and, when the French invaded in 1792, declared Mainz a republic. However, when the Rhenish princes returned during the short revival of allied power in 1793, they were welcomed by most of their former subjects. In Koblenz, said a contemporary report, "a sustained tumult" greeted the returning archbishop.10 Later, the Peace of Campo Formio (1797) ceded the west bank of the Rhine to France, which proceeded to abolish the small principalities, creating four French departements: the Ruhr (with Aachen as capital), the Rhine and Mosel (with Koblenz as capital), Mont Tonnerre (with Mainz as capital), and the Saar (with Trier as capital) (Fig. 3). The west bank of the Middle Rhine fell into the second and third of these provinces, and remained an integral part of France until 1815. The French republicans, and later Napoleon, made important changes to the Rhineland's social, political, economic, and judicial establishment. For example, the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier lost their political authority when the west bank was annexed to France. In 1803 Napoleon forced the Imperial Diet to abolish the ecclesiastical states throughout the entire Empire, a resolution which led to secularization of

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine / 35

much of their property. These and other changes were not enough to make the Rhenish Germans into Frenchmen, but certain reforms endured and served to make Rhinelanders potentially ill at ease under their Prussian masters after 1815. In turn, Berlin saw its new Rhenish subjects as possibly disloyal because of their apparent tolerance of "French" ways.11 Indifferent as the Rhinelanders may have been to who governed them, they could not ignore the upheaval. Insofar as the Rhine became a boundary (between the annexed territories and the rest of the German Empire), the new border itself was resented. The old principalities had stretched across the river which had played a uniting rather than a divisive role. Now, for example, the iron and textile industries on the east bank of the river were cut off from both the source of their raw materials and their markets on the west bank. Conscription into the French armies and military requisitioning of supplies was also resented. By 1810 unemployment and hunger were spreading. The Rhinelanders' disgruntlement, however, was not that of patriotic Germans languishing under foreign oppression. Indeed, most Germanspeaking Europeans had as yet no strong sense of national identity. Politically and nationally uncommitted, they admired military victors, and the canniest among them knew when to seize opportunities. In both 1804 and 1811 Cologne welcomed Napoleon with festive decorations. In Krefeld work continued on a monument to Napoleon until his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig (1813). In Essen Friedrich Krupp, who had founded his cast steel factory in 1811, collaborated with the French regime, swore allegiance to Napoleon, sold cannon to him, and helped to dig trenches for the French forces. With typical Rhenish adaptability, in 1816 he began selling bayonets to the Prussian army. Even during the Wars of Liberation (1813-15) there was little enthusiasm in the Rhineland for the Prussian or Austrian—the "German"—cause.

The Middle Rhine after 1815 Despite the formal abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in the Napoleonic era, Germans still enjoyed no political unity, but in the postwar period lived in over thirty separate political jurisdictions, organized loosely in the "German Confederation," a situation which prevailed until Prussia forcibly unified Germany in 1871. As we have seen, the European powers permitted the Hohenzollerns to annex the Rhineland in 1815. Few of its residents welcomed the new government with any enthusiasm. The commercial middle class, already strong here, was wary of Prussia's militarist

36 I Castles of the Rhine

autocracy. The Rhinelanders' Roman Catholicism distanced them from Prussian Protestantism. Moreover, the French Revolution had introduced yet another element—a desire for constitutional government—which differentiated the Rhineland from Prussia. Other disquieting facts made the Prussian authorities suspicious of Rhinelanders. In Koblenz's main cemetery as late as 1843 (the twentieth anniversary of Napoleon's death), a memorial to local men killed fighting on the French side was unveiled. The inscription reads, "Erected in memory of the late former soldiers of Napoleon who returned to Koblenz in their Fatherland as peace-loving citizens, loyal to their present rulers." This was one of several Rhenish monuments which honoured either the French or Rhinelanders who fought for them.12 Respect for military courage regardless of its national origins, faith in the inscribed declaration of loyalty, or the expense of demolition deterred the Prussian authorities from removing such memorials. At all events, they knew that the annexation did not elicit enthusiasm for the new system and only time would tell if a French "fifth column" survived in the new province. After Waterloo, stability and order returned to the Rhineland, but the old boundaries and the former rulers would never be restored. At the Congress of Vienna the area was partitioned between several German states nearer to the Rhine than Austria, and hence more able to defend the area. The Middle Rhine went to Prussia, Nassau, and Hesse. Although not eager to acquire any of the Rhineland,13 Prussia got the entire west bank north of Bingen to near the Dutch frontier, as well as the east bank of the river from Niederlahnstein north to near Cleve. At first Berlin created two provinces: Jiilich-Cleve-Berg and Lower Rhine (Fig. 4) but in 1822 they were united with the government seat in Koblenz. After 1830, the area was known simply as the Rhine province. Day-to-day administration was carried on by district governors who were responsible directly to Berlin, not to the local diet. Not until 1887 were the Rhineland cities permitted self-government. The provincial assembly was dominated by the landed nobility, had no legislative powers and could only advise Berlin. Old-regime values and institutions were therefore buttressed and newfangled ideas might be contained. The situation in Rhenish Nassau and Hesse was similar. At the same time, however, the Rhineland retained many of the institutions and practices which the French had imposed. Despite Prussia's reputation for jackbooted autocracy, it did not force all its institutions or laws on the Rhinelanders who continued to enjoy some rights which their fellow Prussians did not. For example, the French judicial system sur-

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine I 37 vived. Nor did the Prussians make reprisals against individuals. Many of the new regime's bureaucrats were those previously appointed by the French. The Rhineland, therefore, continued to be different from the rest of Central Europe because of the modernizing French influence. Rhinelanders also experienced economic modernization before their German cousins. Although unaware of the fact in 1815, Berlin had fallen heir to one of Europe's largest coal and iron concentrations. The Industrial Revolution and the accompanying growth of a liberal middle class, which had been retarded by twenty-five years of war, resumed after 1815. Rhenish businessmen immediately took advantage of the wider market which Prussia offered. As we have seen, local entrepreneurs played a leading role introducing steamships and locomotives into the kingdom. Prussian state policies also encouraged trade and industry. After the defeat of the French, the Prussian government was still influenced by the idealist and humanist principles of the great reformers of the years 1806-13. In that era royal bureaucrats and soldiers such as Stein, Hardenberg, Gneisenau, and Humboldt abolished serfdom, reformed the army, and inaugurated a dynamic educational system. These measures were inspired by a non-political liberalism which valued the talents and potential of the individual citizen. Influenced by these ideals, the Prussian authorities felt responsible for the German culture of the Rhine province, at least until the Europe-wide revolts of 1820-30 made complete freedom of expression suspect. After 1815 the Prussian Minister of the Interior, Schuckmann, corresponded with none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) on the future of Rhenish culture.14 In 1819 the Prussian government provided funds for the revival of the Diisseldorf Academy of Art, which became the local hub of visual arts education, with the Nazarene artist Peter von Cornelius (1783-1867), as director. Teachers and students of the academy made important contributions to the rebuilding of the Middle Rhine castles. The project to complete the Cologne cathedral with the support of Frederick William IV won widespread approval. The Prussian princes, moreover, chose Rhenish architects to rebuild the castles Rheinstein, Sooneck and Stolzenfels. Of course the Prussian authorities hoped Rhinelanders would be grateful for the reconstructions and that Prussian rule would be buttressed by the notion "Destroyed by the French— rebuilt by the Prussian Royal House."15

38 I Castles of the Rhine

Problems Develop Despite these positive developments, in the years 1815-48 tension arose between Berlin and the Rhineland, provoking fears in government circles that the west bank was a hotbed of French agitation. As might be expected, after 1815 many Rhinelanders grumbled about the new administration. Genuine causes of discontent, at first political, then economic, later social and, most dramatically, religious, existed. As the Rhenish commercial and educated middle class found opportunities to prosper, many of them wanted a share in determining how they were governed and so began to press for the reform of Prussia into a constitutional state. Although they frightened the establishment, these liberal businessmen were by no means fire-breathing radicals. Mainly of a commercial background, they wanted simply to have a share in decision making, and thus to expand their profits. Nevertheless their vision of the future would involve major political changes. Even a British-style parliament with a very limited franchise would inhibit the ease with which the absolute monarch and his noble advisors ruled. Moreover these liberals were often German nationalists. Loyal to Prussia, they also wanted a unification of the German states which could entail a limitation of Prussian sovereignty. David Hansemann (1790-1864), a rich Aachen merchant and railway promoter, urged King Frederick William III both to develop a constitution for Prussia and to lead the German principalities to unity. Along with Hansemann, Ludolf Camphausen (1803-90), Gustav von Mevissen (1815-99), and Hermann von Beckerath (1801-70) spoke for liberal opinion in the provincial diet. Mevissen's moderately liberal views were published in the Rhenish News, which also began to print the more radical articles of Karl Marx (1818-83), an association which did not please the authorities. In the years 1815-25, a general economic recession prevailed. When, for example, between 1817 and 1830, English textiles flooded the German market, thirty large Cologne firms, mostly cotton producers, went bankrupt.16 Unemployment grew, while bad weather caused inadequate harvests, resulting in high food prices and grain riots. In 1830, as the mechanization of production developed, machine-breaking riots occurred in Aachen, Cologne, and Krefeld. Social and economic dislocation made political agitation appear all the more dangerous. At first it seemed as if French ideas were still current throughout Europe, including the Rhineland. Prussia participated in the Holy Alliance (1815), inspired by the mystical Tsar Alexander I and supported by Emperor Francis of Austria and his first minister Prince

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine I 39

Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859). The agreement aimed to preserve Christian values from free-thinking reform, and absolute divine-right monarchy from liberal democracy. Almost immediately after the Battle of Waterloo, the three monarchs had cause for concern. Social and economic problems in the Rhineland itself have already been noted. In Germanspeaking Europe, kings seemed to be losing their political grip as constitutions were granted in states such as Bavaria (1818). Although none of these reforms was a serious threat to the established order, conservatives were worried. There were problems elsewhere, too. Because of the aforementioned post-war depression, economically motivated disturbances erupted in France in 1816 and in 1817 an uprising occurred in the Papal States. In response to such rebellions the Holy Alliance chose Aachen in the Rhineland as the site of their first post-war congress, a choice which reflected their view of the sensitivity of the area—so close to and so recently a part of trouble-making France. Reacting to rebellions in Russian-controlled Poland, in Spain, and in Italy 1819-20, the Alliance met again in congresses at Troppau and Verona and authorized Austria to suppress the revolt in Italy. The extent of discontent was evident when, in 1825, in Russia (the heartland of political reaction) the Decembrist mutiny of army officers occurred. In Germanspeaking Europe, these events had disturbing echoes. For example, in the Duchy of Brunswick in 1829, a mob sacked the ducal palace, and in Saxony riots erupted in Leipzig and Dresden in 1830. Rebellions abroad and attempted coups in Central Europe made eternal vigilance seem the price of Prussian control of the Rhineland. Especially shocking was a movement in the German states to unify Germany with a liberal constitution. This trend, if successful, could spell the end of Hohenzollern absolutism and the submergence of Prussia in a larger German state. Disappointed that the Wars of Liberation (1813-15) had not united Germany, restive young German nationalists met at the Wartburg, a medieval Saxon castle associated with Martin Luther.17 Here, in October 1817, 500 university students assembled to commemorate both the 300th anniversary of the start of the Reformation (1517) and the fourth anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig (1813). They gave patriotic speeches, sang national songs, and toasted anti-autocratic causes. Although it did not occur within its boundaries, the Prussian government was disturbed by the Wartburg Festival. (In selecting a castle as the site of their demonstration, the nationalists helped to focus the attention of patriots on castles as symbols of the German heritage.) Two years later, a nationalistic student murdered the reactionary publicist Ernst Kotzebue, provoking the Ger-

40 I Castles of the Rhine

man Diet's Carlsbad Decrees, which instituted inspectors of universities, press censorship, and the abolition of fraternities. For Central European monarchs events abroad continued to cause alarm as the 1830 French Revolution ousted the Bourbons. Trouble seemed to be brewing at home, too. In May 1832 the Hambach Festival saw liberals again campaigning for a free press and national unification. Once again they chose a medieval castle, the ruined eleventh-century Kastenburg or Maxburg in the Rhenish Palatinate,18 for the site of their meeting. Under the slogan "Germany's Rebirth," 20,000 people heard speeches and drank toasts to their country's unity and independence. A worse disturbance occurred in 1833 when students seized the guardhouse in Frankfurt, seat of the German Confederation's Diet. The response of Austria, Russia, and Prussia was the Convention of Miinchengratz, 1833, which further curtailed freedom of the press and assembly. Certain Rhinelanders were especially suspect. After 1814 Joseph Gorres (1776-1848) edited the journal Rhenish Mercury', calling for a revived German Empire with Prussia leading Germans to unity. "Who shall preserve and protect Germany," he asked, "if Prussia does not preserve and protect it?"19 Gorres suggested that the ruined Rhenish castles on both sides of the river be rebuilt as fortresses to defend Germany from France with civilian reserve (Landwehr) units stationed in them. Thus the river would be "encompassed with a mighty impenetrable armour, which, like a dragon with a hundred steel-hard buckles and shields, [would] stand as fire-breathing defender of Germany's borders."20 This was harmless stuff but, eventually disappointed with the Prussians, Gorres attacked Prussia's Rhenish policies, defending the Rhinelanders' right to both popular representation and freedom of religion. In 1816 the Prussian government suppressed his journal. In 1819 Gorres fled to France. Other Rhinelanders were more radical. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) wrote in 1822 that the Rhinelanders possessed "a genuine love of liberty," and that they were laudably free of any hatred of the French.21 His outbursts against Prussia and the local Rhenish establishment made him persona non grata there. If enduring "the bonds of French tyranny" meant that the Rhinelanders learned a love of freedom, then, said Heine, "may the beloved Rhineland long bear these chains...!" 22 By 1835 Heine's works had been banned throughout the German states and he was in exile in France. The authorities were even more distressed by the work of another Rhinelander, Karl Marx, who, with Frederick Engels (1820-95), published the Rhenish News at Cologne. Their Communist Manifesto (1848) had lit-

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine I 41

tie immediate effect on Prussia's small proletariat but, with its encouragement of revolt, alarmed the authorities. Marx, too, fled to France. The greatest dispute, however, between the Rhineland and Berlin was over religion. After 1815 most of the Prussian soldiers and officials working in the Rhineland were Lutheran. According to Prussian law, in marriages between Lutherans and Catholics the children must be raised in their father's faith. The enforcement of this law in the Rhineland impelled Roman Catholic priests to refuse to perform interfaith marriages. Thus began the Kirchenstreit (Church Strife) during which the authorities briefly jailed the archbishop of Cologne. The crisis was reflected in microcosm in the village of Trechtingshausen, on the Rhine's west bank near the rebuilt Burg Rheinstein. Prince Frederick Louis' castle, reconstructed after 1825, did not have a chapel, so he and his wife planned to use a small riverside church which they restored for use by both confessions. The Roman Catholic parishioners would not allow this Protestant desecration of their church and had its main door blocked with stones. The royal couple were forced to build a chapel in the castle.

1848 and After During the revolutionary year of 1848 riots compelled some German kings and princes to grant constitutions and appoint liberal ministries. The Bavarian king and the Austrian emperor abdicated. The Rhineland was relatively quiet because by that year most Rhinelanders were loyal to the crown. Economic and social problems, however, were real. Rhenish bargemen assaulted the steamships which had been taking over their business and Aachen, Diisseldorf, and Elberfeld saw hunger-motivated disturbances. Liberal members of the Rhenish assembly and the Cologne city council petitioned King Frederick William IV for political reform. In Berlin the king felt constrained to appoint a liberal ministry, including Rhenish liberals David Hansemann as minister of Finance and Ludolf Camphausen as prime minister. The ambitions of the conservative artisans and the liberal businessmen, however, were by no means identical politically or economically. Craftsmen looked back to the guild era and hated the new machines. The liberals, on the other hand, sought economic modernization. Disunited, the reformers failed to achieve their ends. So too, on a national level, did the attempt to unify Germany at the short-lived Frankfurt Assembly (1848-49). In the Rhineland, as elsewhere in German-speaking Europe, little was changed by the upheavals of 1848.

42 I Castles of the Rhine Obviously, however, many Rhinelanders were politically sophisticated and for this reason certain Prussians remained suspicious of the new province. Their fear was reflected in debates in the Upper House of the Prussian Parliament in the 1850s, during which the area was still referred to as "the conquered provinces."23 When the popular nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-96) published his History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century (1879-94), he expressed a view that was close to the "official" one, praising the Prussian government for having saved the Rhineland "from its semi-foreign existence," and drawing it "back within the current of national life."24 Even after the spectre of French republicanism declined, Berlin feared the loyalty of Rhinelanders to their church and to the Roman Catholic Centre Party (founded 1869).25 In the 1860s Otto von Bismarck (1815-98), chancellor of Prussia after 1862 and of the German Reich after 1870, teased Emperor Napoleon III with the possibility of Rhineland acquisitions. Through an intermediary he let it be known that he would not object to France having the west bank of the Rhine.26 The chancellor, a Protestant Junker, had no love for Catholics but, given the intensity of German nationalism by the 1860s, his political realism probably made him recognize the impossibility of divesting Prussia of the Rhineland. Moreover, the province was a buffer against French attack. Nevertheless, he would never have tempted the Russian Tsar with parts of East Prussia or Pomerania, the heart of the Prussian kingdom!

A Loyal Rhineland The successful Prussian absorption of the Rhineland was due at least in part to the willingness of leading Rhenish subjects to be Prussians. Businessmen, in particular, tried to placate the Prussian monarch. In 1817 the crown prince (later Frederick William IV) visited Cologne, and was honoured by a festival. Two years later he met with the Krefeld chamber of commerce and stayed with the city's old commercial family, the von der Leyens. The city fathers of Koblenz made a gift of the ruins of Stolzenfels castle to Frederick William in 1823. In 1836 the liberal businessman Ludolf Camphausen was received by the king at a court social function and engaged in a long, amicable conversation with him. (In 1848, as noted above, Camphausen became prime minister.) In 1836 King Frederick William III was treated to a cruise on the Rhine on a steamship piloted by Peter Heinrich Merkens of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and president of the Prussian-Rhenish Steamship Company. Immediately after the

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine I 43 1848 disturbances there were several manifestations of loyalty to the Hohenzollerns in the towns of the Middle Rhine. In Boppard, for example, to celebrate the king's birthday, the local authorities planted a tree and made a viewing platform out of one of the town's medieval gates.27 Ultimately the Rhinelanders found themselves at home in Prussia. August von der Heydt, a liberal Rhenish banker, became Prussian minister of Finance in 1866. In 1870 when the French again declared war on Prussia, the Rhineland offered its share of volunteers to defend Germany from the traditional enemy. The Catholic Centre Party representatives proved loyal and proud subjects of the new German empire created after 1871.28 In 1888 even Bismarck noted that the Prussian army was now a popular instititution in the Rhineland.29 Naturally enough, for many a practical, adaptable Rhinelander mundane realities were more pressing than political or even religious matters. In 1835 when the artist Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) visited Assmannshausen, he asked a young donkey driver if he liked the Prussians. Pondering for a minute, the boy replied, "of course, we love the Prussians, but when they take the donkey ride up to the Niederwald, they tip so little!"30

Nassau and Hesse While the pre-eminent political authority in the Middle Rhine after 1815 was Prussia, we should not forget that until 1866 the Duchies of Nassau and Hesse controlled part of this stretch of the river (Fig. 2). Hesse received the small west bank territory around Mainz, to be known as Rhein-Hesse, while all of the right bank of the Rhine from Wiesbaden north to the Lahn was granted to Nassau.31 Prussian economic, cultural, and political progress, while uneven, was far in advance of what was achieved in these two small principalities. Subjects of the Duke of Nassau were granted some social legislation and civil liberties after 1815, but the duke remained autocratic. He was not as unpopular, however, as the Hessian ruler, who by 1866 had thoroughly alienated public opinion. Many progressive inhabitants of these provinces, therefore, did not totally regret the arrival of a new administration32 when, in 1866, both these principalities fell to Prussia after they had sided with the defeated Austria in the Seven Weeks' War. The annexation of Nassau and Hesse brought into the hands of the Hohenzollern monarchy several castle ruins and what was arguably the most important castle of the Middle Rhine, Marksburg, near Braubach.

44 I Castles of the Rhine

The Hohenzollerns and the Middle Rhine We should next consider the question of how the Prussian state and the Hohenzollerns became involved in castle rebuilding. Given the perceived French threat to the Rhine province, the possible disloyalty of Rhinelanders and the growth of apparently revolutionary movements, castle rebuilding became a part of Prussian domestic and foreign policy. On a personal level, too, several members of the Prussian dynasty showed a romantic desire to immerse themselves in unspoiled nature and in a past imagined to be better than the present. They wanted both to express and to develop their personal cultivation (Bildung). They had a genuine concern to protect monuments deemed valuable to the society and to the political ideology they supported. As well they were encouraged to demonstrate Prussia's "Watch on the Rhine." What follows is a description of these motives and why they operated. The Hohenzollerns' desire to buttress their own safety in perilous times was supported by powerful allies, Austria and Russia. Although in the reforming era (1807-15) the Hohenzollern king had made some concessions to modern political realities, the Romanov monarchy was especially reactionary. Personal ties between the royal families of Prussia and Russia, however, were strong and strengthened Berlin's fear of change. In 1817 Frederick William IV's sister Charlotte (Alexandra) married Tsar Nicholas I (reigned 1825-55) (Fig. 6) who admired things Prussian.33 Prince Carl's wife Marie was a daughter of a Russian archduchess. After the Holy Alliance became defunct, the close royal relations continued, especially when Nicholas' son, Alexander II (reigned 1855-81), married another German princess. The Three Emperors' League, an association less high principled than the earlier Holy Alliance, was born out of a meeting of the three eastern rulers in the autumn of 1872. Thus family ties strengthened the Prussian rulers' already reactionary predelictions. Events did so as well. Princess Marie (wife of Prince Carl) noted that the "horrible" July Revolution of 1830 in France (which unseated the Bourbon Charles X) found the Prussian royal family "very concerned."34 Even closer to the family was the Belgian revolution in the Kingdom of the United Netherlands since Prince Albert was engaged to the Dutch Princess Marianne. The nationalistic revolt in Russian Poland (also in 1830) was disturbing to Berlin because of the many Poles who lived in the adjacent Prussian provinces of Posen and West Prussia. King Frederick William Ill's rebuilding of Ehrenbreitstein at Koblenz manifested similar fears of his new Rhenish subjects and of French ambitions on the Rhine.35

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine / 45

A war scare in 1840 renewed the fear that France still wanted the now Prussian Rhineland. The Prussians' interest in the Rhineland was not solely political or military. They correctly associated it with a rich culture which first developed at a time when Brandenburg-Prussia was still a frontier outpost of the Teutonic Order. Despite their association with a powerful military machine, the Hohenzollerns were not an ignorant or culturally insensitive dynasty. Frederick the Great (reigned 1740-86) had composed music and played the flute, and Frederick William II (reigned 1786-97) had been a patron of Mozart and Beethoven. In 1843 Frederick William IV, who loved architecture, established the post of Conservation Officer (Konservator) in the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Religion. Prince Carl, who was to help rebuild Sooneck on the Rhine, had amassed a large classical art collection, while Prince Frederick Louis made his Rhenish home, Rheinstein, into a museum. The love of the arts, including architecture, was also a motive in the reconstruction of the castles of the Middle Rhine. Rarely permanently inhabited, almost like collected artifacts themselves, they consisted of showrooms for costly relics, valued as mementoes of the owners' ancestors, or for their own sake. Service buildings were erected outside the gates of the each Burg and there was none of the intermingling of functions which characterized genuine medieval fortresses.36 The princes' romanticism also influenced their work. Frederick William, his brother Carl, and their cousin "Fritz Louis" wanted to escape into an idealized medieval world. The Hohenzollerns did not have the benefit of later historical scholarship—and probably would not have wanted it. For them, the past was food for the imagination as much as the future is for science fiction lovers.37 The princes deliberately sought ruined structures (not intact castles such as Marksburg) upon which to create their fantasy castles, reflecting an imagined middle ages. They ignored the fact that the castles were founded for strategic economic or military purposes. They saw only that, in that long-ago society, religious faith and divine-right monarchy were strong.38 They were entranced by the legends of chivalry and crusades, in which members of the aristocracy and royal dynasties performed great deeds. In fact, they played at being jousting knights. In 1829, for example, when the Tsarina Alexandra, Frederick William Ill's daughter, visited Berlin for a visit, a celebration called the "Magic of the White Rose" was held at Potsdam's New Palace. The young Hohenzollern males dressed up as twelfth-century knights and threw lances and spears on horseback in the palace courtyard. The crown

46 / Castles of the Rhine

prince carried the Prussian banner wearing, with his knights, the colours black, white, and gold. Prince William carried the Brandenburg banner, and his knights wore blue, red, and silver. Such festivities, repeated at the rebuilt Rhine castles,39 offered an escape from complicated court ritual and bureaucratic routine. A totally secluded hideaway, however, would not accomplish another purpose of the rebuilding program. While the castle retreat had to be remote from Berlin's pressures on royal time and attention, and to allow an escape from responsibility into leisure, it had also to be prominently situated, visible from the riverside roads and from passing vessels, to impress the prince's subjects. Of course the castle also had to express the romantic charm of the distant in space and time which appealed to the prince's educated subjects, but its towers and banners had also to remind the unsophisticated of the prince's power. Similar motives affected the nobles and the wealthy middle class. But whereas the Prussian royal family had an army and bureaucracy for support in troubled times, the aristocracy and nouveaux riches, also castle rebuilders, felt less secure.

Challenges to the Nobility "They felt that they were sitting on a volcano."40 This description of the English nobility's mood about 1800 is also true of the German aristocracy. Not that threats to their political and social status had never occurred before. The noble families who had originally built the Rhenish castles abandoned them when gunpowder and the appeal of urban life or princely service changed their lifestyles. In the later eighteenth century, another time of great upheaval for aristocratic landowners, traditional feudal bonds with their monarchs were weakening, as rulers turned to advisors expert in the new sciences necessary for running a modern state. In Prussia the violence of the Seven Years' War (1756-63) damaged some noble estates. At the same time high living led to large debts. The decline of grain prices in the years 1817-26 was an added problem, and competition from foreign agricultural imports was a threat until at least 1879 when protective tariffs were raised. In certain cases aristocrats actually lost the family estates to non-noble owners or to extremely wealthy members of the nobility. One third of all noble estates in Prussia changed hands between 1815 and 1848 alone.41 The Enlightenment and the doctrines popularized during the French Revolution criticized the concept of a privileged class. Well-to-do middle-

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine / 47

class men demanded a share in power and, although these bourgeois climbers rarely wished to destroy the aristocracy, the French Revolution's Terror presented a picture—incorrect, in fact—of the rabble rising up and beheading a whole generation of aristocrats. The noble estate was forced to adjust, which involved justification. "The noble ... could no longer simply exist," writes Andreas Ley, "he felt compelled to 'be significant'" (zu bedettten).42 Gradually nobles began to revive declining traditions and beliefs, such as the divine right of certain families or classes to rule, and the preordained nature of both wealth and poverty. To express these views several Prussian nobles in 1848 founded the New Prussian Times (Neue Preussische Zeitung, or popularly, Kreuzzeitung, because it bore the Iron Cross on its masthead). In the same year, others formed the "Association for the Protection of Property and Promotion of the Welfare of all Social Classes" which, despite its name, was dedicated to the protection of aristocratic lands and privileges. Later, in 1893, faced with a worsening agrarian crisis involving lower prices for their produce and hence declining revenues, aggressive Prussian Junkers founded the Agrarian League which successfully defended their interests. And so the Prussian nobility, at least, rallied to fight modernization. By the end of the nineteenth century the Prussian aristocracy had at least survived in this changing world. The East Elbian Junkers increased the area of their estates between 1811 and 1890 by two thirds.43 Of course even where individual noble families were not directly affected by these adversities, none could escape the realization that the status of nobility was being challenged both in theory and practice.44 Restoring or building castles or just preserving their ruins was one way in which they tried to legitimize their social and political raison d'etre. They hoped that their rebuilt castle or medievalized palace would be an effective "symbol of power."45 Relying on atavistic attitudes in the general public, castle rebuilders trusted that the very ownership of a castle might prove the owner's right to political authority.46 The Austrian nobility built most sumptuously when their real political and economic power was on the wane.47 A similar phenomenon occurred farther north where, in eastern Prussia, nobles began to renovate their rural estates in the 1830s and 1840s. The owners of Schloss Kaltwasser in Silesia and Schloss Kurnik in Posen, for example, restored their family seats in the 1830s. Closer to Berlin Schloss Friedersdorf in Brandenburg was restored in 1827 by its owner, the highly reactionary Frederick August Ludwig von der Marwitz (1777-1837). Of course the nobility also shared in their contemporaries' escapist nostalgia for a simpler, more stable

48 I Castles of the Rhine time. As David Lowenthal has asserted, the nineteeenth-century aristocracy in general hoped to "justify their control of the present, to palliate its inequities, and to persuade the public that traditional privileges deserve selfdenying support."48 Seen in this light the role of castle rebuilding as a way of asserting their families' social and political importance is clear. Tombs and paintings could be used as well. Many nobles wanted to believe in a meaningful past in which their own clans played a significant role. This was evident in their great interest in family history, which they expressed in the construction or rebuilding of crypts and portrait galleries with pictures of ancestors. The names and faces of ancestors who were great generals or royal counsellors were both commemorated and used to suggest public roles for contemporary family members. In this way, too, a comfortable sense of continuity between past and future could be established. Some families went to great lengths, even repossessing what was not much more than a pile of stones. In 1893, for example, members of the von Hammerstein family, a very old and well-known clan, reclaimed from the Prussian government their ancestral seat, Burg Hammerstein on the Middle Rhine, although it was almost totally ruined and no proof of their family's original connection with the castle was to be found.49 Not all nobles who made changes to ruined castles in the Rhineland indulged in medieval fantasies. Austrian chancellor Prince Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich—of the Metternich-Winneburg-Beilstein family—had family roots in the area, for a Metternich had been Archbishop of Trier in the early seventeenth century, Metternichs had been castellans at Burg Stahleck in the eighteenth century, and the chancellor himself was born in Koblenz. In 1816 the Austrian emperor enfeoffed his chancellor with the ruined cloister of Johannisberg in the Rheingau which Metternich enlarged as an estate with a Schloss—not in English neo-Gothic—but in a plain Italianate style. Johannisberg was not, strictly speaking, a castle, but Metternich's reconstruction of it shows that wealthy rebuilders of medieval sites had a choice of styles to use. Whereas most chose Gothic, Metternich associated the quasi-medieval with German nationalism, which was antithetical to his conservatism. The Hohenzollern princes chose to associate themselves with a potentially revolutionary architectural style,50 but Metternich, servant of the Habsburgs, regarded pointed windows with original or modern coloured glass as symbols of radicalism purporting the doom of his imperial master and his own class. Nevertheless in 1832 he purchased the ruined Winneburg on the Mosel River and had the family escutcheon installed prominently over the main door.51

Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine I 49

The desire to house one's collection of antiquities in suitable surroundings was, as we have noted, another motive for the aristocratic rebuilding of castles. The art-loving Prince Frederick Louis set a standard by rebuilding Rheinstein partly to support the preservation and conservation of medieval architectural and cultural treasures. Cultivated nobles were often deeply involved in the development of museums and archeological research on the Middle Rhine. For example, an early member of the Association of Friends of Antiquity (Verein von Altertumsfreunden) in the Rhineland (founded 1841) was Baron RE. von Mering. Many aristocrats were prominently involved in the founding of the Association for the Preservation of German Castles (Verein zur Erhaltung deutscher Burgen} in 1899. Duke Ernst Giinther zu Schleswig-Holstein (brother of Empress Augusta Victoria) was an early patron; the Grand Duke Karl Alexander of Saxony-Weimar and Baron and Court Marshal von Buddenbrock participated in the association's first meetings. Privy Counsellor von Bremen, head of the Reich Ministry of Education, Culture, and Religion, was chairman. Other early members were Prince Bernhard von Biilow, imperial chancellor (1900-09), and the Habsburg Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand. Prince Oscar of Prussia, a son of William II, was the Association's patron (1928-58), followed by Prince Frederick of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Several of the Rhenish castles are still privately owned by members of the aristocracy. Today the renamed German Castle Association (Deutsche Burgenvereinigung] has many noble names among its membership.52 The local aristocracy were relatively inactive as castle rebuilders on the Middle Rhine, probably because they were less powerful economically and politically than their counterparts elsewhere and because urban merchants and businessmen had for centuries rivalled them in prominence. The League of Rhenish Cities, it will be recalled, had been strong enough to besiege robber barons. Consequently those aristocrats who followed the example of the Prussian princes in obtaining ruins on the Middle Rhine were often from outside the area.

"An Architecture of Legitimation"53 The Rhenish economy remained stagnant in the decade or two after 1815. When it began to revive, it produced several bourgeois politicians, such as Hansemann and Camphausen, who in the eyes of Berlin were dangerous revolutionaries. As it turned out they were not political firebrands, but neither did they pursue status through the reconstruction of castles on

50 I Castles of the Rhine the Middle Rhine. As was true of the aristocratic castle buffs, the wealthy middle-class ruin-buyers or castle-builders tended to be from outside the Rhineland, even from outside Germany. Of course wealthy businessmen and professionals, as appalled by modern political violence as were the nobles and princes, had no intention of sharing power with the lower orders.54 But why did some of their number, with their liberal and even occasionally revolutionary associations, purchase ruins and rebuild castles? In 1904 a writer in the Castle Association's journal, The Castellan (Der Burgwart) wrote that "the German bourgeoisie, in loyal pious subjection, prefers to cling to its nobility and there dwells most securely and beautifully, like a swallow builds its nest in the gateway of a castle."55 Partly because of such assertions, some historians have believed that the German middle class accepted the social and political predominance of the feudal nobility and were satisfied to be subordinate vassals of the traditional elite.56 Today, certain historians believe that the capitalist bourgeoisie were not totally "feudalized" in the sense of accepting an inferior position both politically and socially.57 They note the remarks of the liberal Hermann Baumgarten who, in 1867, wrote that, instead of criticizing the establishment, the educated and ambitious middle class, should apply themselves "to claiming an honourable position alongside [my italics] the aristocracy."58 If the 1871 German constitution placed political power out of the reach of the wealthy middle class, nevertheless the reality of their social equality with the nobility could be materially displayed. Not being able directly to wield political power, the haute bourgeoisie could claim superior social rank, equivalent to their economic status. The bourgeois castle-builder saw himself as the social equal of the aristocrat, and was trying to legitimize his new position with an architectural monument which might even outdo that of the noble on the neighbouring crag.59 The bourgeois castles, therefore, far from being a sign of middle-class vassalage, were "an almost crude demonstration of power."60 This statement does not imply, of course, that romanticism, escapism, or love of history, and its artifacts were not also important motives in bourgeois castle rebuilding. We have seen how the Prussian princes, many aristocrats, and even some bourgeois became motivated to recreate in the ruined castles "medieval" homes for themselves. But we should not forget that members of the general public, such as impecunious students, supported the phenomenon. To understand fully the foundations of castle rebuilding, therefore, we must also examine nineteenth century cultural history, specifically, romanticism, and nationalism.

Two

ROMANTICISM AND

NATIONALISM ON THE MIDDLE RHINE Lord Byron, in the early nineteenth century, described the T hen Rhine's "chiefless castles breathing stern farewells, / From gray

but leafy walls where Ruin greenly dwells,"1 European perceptions of both the river and its wrecked fortresses had changed. As we have seen the castles of the Middle Rhine played a vital part in the medieval German political and economic power nexus. At the dawn of the modern era, however, their practical significance had dwindled to almost nothing. Nevertheless, they soon began to symbolize certain political values, especially nationalism. Equally important, the castles began to figure prominently in the thinking of intellectuals, and therefore in the attitudes of educated people as well, for all of the individuals or groups who tried to rebuild or preserve castles were influenced by the romantic movement.

Early Idealization of the Castle Even before Byron's time the castles represented something more than well-armed fortresses. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, despite the discomforts of life therein, castles had become cultural centres in which noble life was romanticized by poets and artists. Then began the idealization of aristocratic life which so profoundly affected the early nineteenthcentury view of the castle. Within the fortress walls a courtly literature Notes to Chapter Two are on pp. 340-43.

51

52 / Castles of the Rhine

developed, inspired by the works of the French troubadors. Tales of loyalty, honour, courage, and of course chivalric love were told and sung by Minnesanger who glorified the era of Charlemagne as a golden age. Out of these works emerged the heroic figure of the knight Roland, so evident in the Middle Rhine legends. Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parsifal and Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan were written for German courts and each contains idealized descriptions of castle life. The poems of Walter von der Vogelweide and Hartmann von Aue were recited in the great halls of late medieval castles, which themselves were the settings of many poems. To the literate few, the castle had become a symbol of noble, idealistic pursuits, even occasionally of pleasant idylls; to the illiterate masses, the fortress remained a symbol of the aristocracy's political, economic and military power which could be protective as well as oppressive. Artists documented the symbolic power of the castle as a defensive refuge. Albrecht Durer's famous woodcut, Knight, Death, and the Devil, shows in the background a powerful castle, symbol of earthly civilized might. Martin Luther's hymn, "A mighty fortress is our God, a strong defence and weapon," reflects the same symbolism. This late medieval glorification of the castle prefigured the nineteenth century's rosy picture of medieval life.

Recollection, Regret, and Melancholy Although they were powerful symbols, until about 1750 ruined castles were regarded as useless structures, reflecting poverty or failure, their main function being stone quarries. All this was to change with the advent of romanticism, a trend which began, not in Germany, but in England where the emerging theory of the "picturesque" held that ruins were beautiful for their own sake. The natural disintegration of old walls created a delightful softening of the original structure's angularity. A ruined castle seemed to blend with its natural surroundings, causing pleasantly melancholy thoughts on the transience of human endeavours. This view of the world was concerned with more than just ruins. Romantics also valued powerful feelings and often found inspiration for or reflection of such emotions in the rugged aspects of nature. In particular, as noted, many romantics were impressed with the ephemeral aspects of human efforts, especially when confronted with the powerful influence of superhuman forces. They were also attracted to past heroic events. These two attitudes drew them to ruins, which recalled an age of great deeds and semi-exotic customs, but which also seemed to prove that

Romanticism and Nationalism on the Middle Rhine I 53

weather and gravity would undermine human constructions. Especially in the ruined castles of the Middle Rhine, writers, artists, esthetes, and sensitive travellers saw a reflection of their own belief that human beings themselves, like architecture, eventually dissolve back again into the universe. One German declared, "recollection of times past and a certain regret mixed with melancholy are the general effect of ruins."2 In the later eighteenth century, wealthy Germans, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, began to built fake ruined castles. The esthetic ancestry of these oddities lies in English landscape design, an art which, after a remarkable transformation, eventually produced the Gothic novel, the revival of Gothic architecture, and the fascination with ruins throughout the continent and North America. In the eighteenth century "modern" English landscape garden, the owner or the gardener tried to give the impression of natural growth, rather than of a clipped and orderly creation, which had been the earlier fashion. The focal point of the new-style garden was often an artificial ruin. The 1728 publication of New Principles of Gardening by Batty Langley (1696-1751) probably started the fad. The novelist Horace Walpole (1717-97) also expressed such views in his Essay on Modern Gardening (1785). In the German-speaking world, Christian G.L. Hirschfeld's Theory of Landscape Gardening (1777-82) took up Langley's principles and had a wide influence, especially at royal parks in Potsdam, Weimar, Nymphenburg (near Munich), and Schonbrunn (near Vienna).

The Cult of Ruins Even before Batty Langley introduced the artificial medieval ruin into his ideal garden, Greek or Roman ruins (real or fake) were regarded as objects of melancholy reflection. English writers not associated with the later romantic cult of the medieval ruin, such as Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Joseph Addison (1672-1744), and Alexander Pope (1688-1744), drew moral and political lessons from classical ruins. To them, the wreckage of, for example, the Roman forum was evidence of despotism's inevitable collapse. The later "graveyard poets" made a cult of the melancholy feelings inspired by tombstones and medieval ruins. Thomas Gray (1716-71) wrote his "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" and Richard Payne Knight described how "the conquerer, Time" would ruin the most impressive fortress.3 In Germany, Outpourings from the Heart of an Art-Loving Monk (1797) by Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773-98) exhibited a more moralistic response to ruins which, he believed, should stimulate the

54 I Castles of the Rhine

viewer to ponder the meaning of human history. Constantin Francois Chasseboeuf de Volney (1757-1820) published Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolution of Empire in 1791, pondering the meaning of human history. Translated into German by Georg Forster (1754-97), by 1881 it was into its seventeenth edition! By this time medieval ruins had become not only symbols of great historical events and heroic deeds, both overcome by time's ravages, but also an admonition for Germany's revival.4 This escape into the medieval was probably also an early expression of an uneasiness caused by the social and economic changes of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.5 The castle, an attractive symbol, also had a powerful charisma for sensitive people who felt their world hurtling into a new and unsettling form of civilization.6 In the eighteenth century, English novelists began to introduce ruined medieval castles as settings of their tales. "I doat [sic] on ruins"; says the heroine of a "Gothic" novel, "there is something sublime and awful in the sight of decayed grandeur and large edifices tumbling to pieces."7 This sort of fiction usually featured a decrepit castle, often set, not in Britain, but on the Rhine. The Castle ofOtranto by Horace Walpole and The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) are typical examples of this genre. The more sophisticated novels of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) were deeply influential both in Germany and England. John Keats (1795-1821) set his poem "The Eve of Saint Agnes" in a castle setting. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92), revived the Arthurian legends in his poetry. By this time, too, German poets such as Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857) were describing ruined castles and glorying in medieval legends. Not only novels and poems extolled medieval ruins, but well-illustrated, large-format books on antiquities also became popular, again beginning in England. Between 1778 and 1807, for example, Thomas Hearne (1744-1817) and William Byrne produced Antiquities of Great Britain. Illustrated with views of Monasteries, Castles, and Churches, Now Existing. The well-known painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) started his career illustrating such "Gothic" subjects. In these works the contemplation of ruins in a natural setting thrilled both writers and readers with a sense of mystery and gloom—what the age called "the sublime." Soon minds fired by the artistic potential of ruins turned to the actual building of structures which looked medieval and which, unlike the ruin in the garden, could be inhabited. The "Gothic Revival"—the interest in recreating architecture believed to be Gothic in style—also began in

Romanticism and Nationalism on the Middle Rhine I 55

England. A forerunner of this trend may have been the "castle" of John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) whose home in Greenwich (1717) sported two square towers and one round tower, an unusual style for new buildings of the time. As in landscape design, Batty Langley provided some theory for this movement, in his Gothic Architecture Improved by Rules and Proportions in Many Grand Designs (1742). Nevertheless, credit for building a prototype is usually given to Sanderson Miller (1717-1780), an amateur English architect, for a mansion on his estate (1746). Almost at the same time Horace Walpole acquired "Strawberry Hill" (1747) and developed it as a "Gothic" castle. Soon many English estate owners had to have not merely a charming ruin for viewing from a distance, but also a "real" "Gothic" castle to live in and Sanderson Miller was receiving commissions for ruined castles. At first these buildings, like Strawberry Hill, offered mainly ornamental detail in a vaguely medieval style, but eventually larger structures were built. The most dramatic example was that of William Beckford (1760-1844) who started to build "Fonthill Abbey" in 1796. (In 1825 the tower of this neo-Gothic house, which was supposed to be a ruined monastery, collapsed—appropriately—into ruins.) Well-to-do Germans built ruined castles, too. Neo-Gothic "follies" (small summer palaces embellished with pseudo-Gothic decoration) were commonplace on aristocratic and royal estates. Sometimes the "ruin" was built to be appreciated from a distance; in other instances it could be inhabited. In either case it sported pointed windows and other medieval embellishments. In Prussia, King Frederick William II built a habitable chateau with a ruined roofline on Peacock Island on a lake near Berlin (1794-96). Elsewhere in the German states, for example, a "rococo gothic" summerhouse was built at Worlitz, the park of the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau (1773-1809). In the park of Laxenburg, south of Vienna, the Austrian Emperor Francis II commissioned the Franzensburg (1798-1801, expanded 1822-36). In his park at Wilhelmshohe (1793-98) near Kassel, the Hessian landgrave enjoyed a ruined castle, the Lowenburg (Lion's Castle) (built 1793-98) which was equipped with a drawbridge, moat, ramparts and chapel, and staffed with a seneschal and guard in medieval costume. On the Middle Rhine, Count Frederick Carl von Ostein "built" a ruin in 1776-77. On a high bluff overlooking Assmannshausen, his Burg Rossel was intended delightfully to surprise his guests as they strolled in his English landscape garden (see Appendix Two). Frederick August of Nassau (reigned 1803-16) had Mosburg built in the park of the Baroque palace at Biebrich, near Wiesbaden. Gardens, laid out originally between

56 I Castles of the Rhine

1707 and 1760, were expanded into an English landscape park from 1817 to 1823 (see Appendix Two). Unlike Rossel, Mosburg could be inhabited, although surely not in much comfort, serving as the site of celebrations, such as ducal engagement parties. Mosburg's construction also expressed a conservatism tinged with atavistic nationalism. Although in the case of Duke Frederick, no public propaganda was intended, these motives would influence deeply later nineteenth-century castle rebuilders, some of whose castles were partly designed to assert the validity of the old regime's political status quo. Although trivial, the foregoing structures were a prelude to a genuine appreciation of medieval art and architecture as such. In German-speaking Europe, the role of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was seminal. His On German Architecture (1772) became a major force helping Germans to appreciate medieval Gothic architecture for its own sake. Although only fleetingly interested in castles, he became fascinated with Erwin of Steinbach, the master mason responsible for Strasbourg Cathedral, and helped to influence artistic taste away from classicism toward an interest in spontaneous, even primitive, feeling. Artificial semi-ruined "castles" such as Burg Rossel are as much a response to his work as to that of the English enthusiasts. The castle rebuilding movement was inspired not only by writers, but also by artists. The romantic interest in spontaneity and freshness, simplicity and directness of expression led artists to try to imitate medieval art and to portray themes from folk tales and songs, which seemed to be natural popular effusions out of the distant past. In Germany the most famous of these artists were the "Nazarenes." Rebelling against what they perceived as the inflexibility of classical art instruction, painters such as Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) and Franz Pforr (1788-1812) believed that the art of the late German Middle Ages and early Italian Renaissance possessed a desirable innocence, vividness, and simplicity which they tried to duplicate in their own works. "My disposition," wrote Pforr, "draws me to the Middle Ages, when human dignity was still cultivated."8 Others followed in their footsteps, notably Peter von Cornelius (1763-1867) who worked for the Prussian King Frederick William IV (reigned 1840-58) on frescoes for a royal mausoleum in Berlin and for the renovated Berlin cathedral. He illustrated an edition of the Ring of the Nibelung and in 1819 became the director of the re-opened Diisseldorf Academy of Art. In a similar historical vein was the work of Alfred Rethel (1816-59) who in 1847 began to decorate the Aachen city hall with frescoes showing the life of Charlemagne, whose empire he and others con-

Romanticism and Nationalism on the Middle Rhine I 57

ceived as the forerunner of a future united Germany. This concept alone made the project attractive to many, including Frederick William IV, who was then rebuilding Burg Stolzenfels. Other artists influenced by the Nazarenes and medieval art were Wilhelm von Schadow (1788-1862), a fresco painter, as well as Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872) and his brother Ferdinand (1788-1853), who produced wall paintings and stained glass windows. German artists began to depict derelict structures. Daybreak (1824-27) by Karl Blechen (1798-1849) portrays a castle through an arched ruin. Carl Philipp Fohr (1795-1818) offered a water-colour of The Ruin at Fragenstein. By far the most striking example was the work of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). His Ruins of a Monastery in a Churchyard in the Snow (1819) summarizes the visual vocabulary of romantic despair—a ruined abbey, tombstones, twisted leafless trees, a procession of monks, an open grave. On the Middle Rhine two sites became favoured subjects for romantic painters: the ruined Romanesque apse of the twelfth-century Cistercian abbey of Heisterbach, in the Seven Mountains near Konigswinter, and the skeleton of the Werner Chapel, a thirteenth-century Gothic church above Bacharach.

"Beautiful Lies" from "Gray Olden Times"9 German romantics developed such a Burgenschwarmerei (hyper-enthusiasm for castles) that in 1827 Goethe warned young American poets against the dangers of absorption in "tales of knights, bandits, and ghosts." Americans were fortunate, he wrote: "you've got no ruined castles/ And no black basaltic rock."10 With the humorous, ironic detachment of maturity he recalled his youthful trip down the Lahn River in 1774 when he had been enraptured by the scenery and castles of that river and of the Rhine, "the tree-covered cliffs, the enthroned castles, and the blue ridges of mountains looming out of the distance."11 He had sketched the inner courtyard of Lahneck Castle's ruins and made wash drawings of the Pfalz, the famous castle in the middle of the Rhine, and of Ehrenbreitstein's ruins. When he published his Art and Antiquity on the Rhine in 1816, the romantic enthusiasm for castle ruins was in full flood. Goethe suggested that the Prussian royal family should establish residence in the Rhineland in one of the remaining electoral palaces.12 (Although they did so later—in Koblenz' electoral palace—they were probably more attentive to their political advisors than to the great poet.)

58 I Castles of the Rhine

Goethe was only one of the age's intellectuals who visited the Middle Rhine. Over time, however, the image of the gorge and its ruins changed. When first confronted with the ruined castles most early romantics expressed a sense of the fleeting nature of human glory. In his Views of the Lower Rhine (1790), Georg Forster noted the similarity between the castle ruins and that of the surrounding rocky outcrops: In the narrow valley, surrounded by high mountain ridges and fearfully clinging like a swallow's nest between a pair of rugged peaks hang here so many ruined, abandoned dwellings of the noble robbers, once the terror of the shippers.... Even the position of the villages, which are hemmed in between the vertical walls of the slate hills and the bed of the formidable river ... is melancholy and frightful. 13

He and others saw in the ruins the tragic contrast between man's ambitions and man's fate. "The stone walls collapse, the heroes are gone," wrote one poet in 1820; "Time spares no work of human hands."14 Writertravellers such as the poet Friedrich Leopold von Stolberg (1750-1819), who travelled from Bonn to Mainz 1791-92 and the dramatist Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), who made his Rhine journey in 1801, never suggested that the shattered castles be rebuilt. A later generation of romantics regarded the castle ruins more happily although no less dramatically. Viewing the ruins as nostalgic documents of a great age in the past, many writers idealized medieval society. Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829), literary historian and art critic, was one of the first of these. He described the Rhine between Koblenz and Bingen as rough and wild, "the most beautiful part" of the river. But the most significant elements in the scenery were the "fragments of old castles, boldly projecting from the slopes." "Nothing beautifies and strengthens the impression so much as the evidence of human courage," he wrote, praising "bold castles on wild cliffs" as "monuments to the age of human heroes."15 His Characteristics of Gothic Architecture, written in 1802, was inspired by a Rhine trip which he undertook with the Boisseree brothers (Melchior, 1786-1851, and Sulpiz, 1783-1854) two of Germany's first proponents of architectural conservation. In 1816 the novelist Johanna Schopenhauer (1766-1838), mother of the philosopher, was still impressed by the castles as part of the scenery. Describing the ruins of Sooneck, Gutenfels, Rheinfels and others, she wrote, "it was almost as if I were leafing through a portfolio full of lovely landscapes, so quickly followed each other here the most interesting objects; one truly did not have eyes enough to see everything."16 The poet Achim von Arnim (1781-1831), who after 1802 travelled on the Rhine

Romanticism and Nationalism on the Middle Rhine / 59

many times and was one of the first to collect local legends, described the castles in a positive vein. Arnim's friend Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) with his sister Bettina (1785-1859) published Rhine Legends and Ballads (1811). Here was created the modern version of the fifteenth-century tale of the seductive Lorelei on a cliff near St. Goarshausen. In 1815 Joseph von Eichendorff published poetry about Burg Rolandseck as well as the Lorelei. Karl Simrock (1802-76), who was interested in ancient Teutonic literature, published Picturesque and Romantic Rhineland in 1839, a collection of Rhine legends with engravings. For these poets the sight of ruined castles on hilltops was an uplifting, not a frightening, experience. At this time the recounting of myths associated with ruins began to play their role in motivating reconstruction. In the meantime non-Germans succumbed to the appeal of the Middle Rhine's scenery and castles. Like other early romantics, Aurelio de' Giorgi (1753-98) published his impression of the contrast between the beauty of the landscape and the gloom of the ruins (1795). In a similar vein Ann Radcliffe described her Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 (published 1795) to Holland and Germany. After the conclusion of peace in 1815 and the beginning of steamship and railway transportation, foreign writers were among the flood of tourists who came to the valley. The most famous non-German description of the Rhine was probably Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1816), but Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-73), very popular in Germany, was possibly the high point of sentimental Rhine literature in any language. From France came Victor Hugo, who published The Rhine in 1842 and later wrote a play about the castellans of Burg Nollig, Burg Ockenfels, and Burg Lahneck. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) wrote The Golden Legend (1851) based on his Rhine impressions. The climax of this trend occurred not in poetry, novels, or travel literature, but in the opera libretti of Richard Wagner (1813-83) whose operatic cycle The Ring of the Nibelung (first performance 1876) was set in the Rhineland. The Rhine Maidens, as well as the hero Siegfried, his Rhine journey, and the dragon he slew, all figure in these operas. Wagner was not the only German composer enraptured by the great river, however. Robert Schumann (1810-56), in writing his Rhenish Symphony (#3 in E-flat Major), called to one critic's mind images of "beautiful river journeys between hills green with vines and friendly vintage festivals" and of the windows of old castles.17 Painters and other graphic artists, often inspired by the poets and travel writers, made their own pilgrimages to the Middle Rhine. When

60 I Castles of the Rhine

they presented views of the castle ruins as they saw them on their journeys, their works, too, were coloured—sometimes literally—by a wishful view of historical and even topographic reality. The Middle Rhine's appeal for artists is certainly not hard to imagine. The writhing shapes of volcanic rock seem to have been twisted by some gigantic hand. The valley looks different at changing times of the day and year and in different weather. Mist transforms both hillsides and castles into strangely forbidding presences; sunshine gives the variegated landscape endless interest, as light and shadow fall on rock, forest, river and castle walls. In 1840 the English traveller Thomas Hood (1799-1845) felt overwhelmed by the ubiquitous images of the Rhine castles created by artists such as Clarkson William Stanfield (1793-1867). "Could I but write scenery as Stanfield paints it, what a rare dioramic sketch you should have of the thick-coming beauties of the abounding river—the Romantic Rolandseck—the Religious Nonnenwerth—the Picturesque Drachenfels!"18 Artists shared in the more positive vision of the medieval past which had emerged by 1815. Typically, the artist Christian Ludwig Stieglitz wrote in 1805: "not only does the eye linger happily on the works of Gothic architecture and art, but also the imagination is stimulated by them, insofar as they transfer us into the Middle Ages, in those days, shining with the deeds of heroes and knights."19 Thanks to technological improvements in printing, it was now possible to mass-produce books with many illustrations. By the 1830s, these relatively inexpensive publications were commonplace in middle-class homes. For example, the work of the poet Karl Simrock, Picturesque and Romantic Rhineland, 1836-41, was furnished with steel engravings, many showing the castles of the Middle Rhine. The popular series of coloured lithographs by Alexander Duncker, Palaces and Castles of the Rhineland appeared after 1858. In fact the market was so glutted with picturesque scenes that Thomas Hood apologized for not describing the Rhenish scenery because it had all been done, he said, "in pen and ink ten times over."20 The concern for Rhenish ruins as such and their esthetic connotations is first seen in the work of Christian George Schiitz the Elder (1718-91) and his eponymous nephew (1758-1823). Ruins such as those of Burg Maus, above Wellmich, appear in their landscapes as wild, dark, threatening monuments, documents of the "sublime." Also received well by the public were the castle views of Lorenz Janscha (1749-1812), Francis Joseph Manskirsch (1768-1830), and Johann Christian Reinhart (1761-1847). A remarkable series of castle and Rhine views was done by

Romanticism and Nationalism on the Middle Rhine I 61 Johann Caspar Scheuren (1810-87), who presented figures in seventeenthcentury costume in the rooms of Stolzenfels. The romantic interest in the past among artists, as well as writers, was Europe-wide. The great British painter, Turner, journeyed up the river in 1817 and 1834, producing over fifty water-colours including views of Rheinfels and Drachenfels. William Tombleson travelled the Rhine and in 1832 began to publish monthly his Views of the Rhine, which were very popular in both Germany and England. The Rhine landscapes of William Henry Bartlett (1809-54) appeared in 1841. Stanfield's Rhine journey resulted in the publication of the aforementioned set of lithographs, Travelling Sketches on the Rhine, 1833. French artists such as Jan Nicolas Ponsart (1788-1870) and Gustav Dore (1832-83) were also drawn to the banks of the river. As they looked at the ruined castles, the artists' eyes saw what the romantic writers had written. Their brushes described walls that were twice as high as in reality and twice as far above the level of the river. They rendered the landscape either more congenial than it really was—or more rugged. The typical mood of many of these paintings is seen in Stanfield's painting of the new Prussian fortress Ehrenbreitstein at Koblenz. Viewed through the arch of a medieval bridge, the city and the fort are bathed in a warm late-afternoon light. Although the fortress was armed to the hilt as a western bastion of Prussian power, it seems to dream invitingly above the river's smooth green surface. In this case the artist has softened the associations, rendered gentle the lines, and invited the viewer to ponder the charm of the remote. Other artists offered images of the castles which stressed the wildness of nature, the dismal gloom of the castle walls, or the violence of storms. Given the relatively mild climate of the middle Rhine and the time of year when most painters travelled, these views were projections of their imagination. The artists' reinvention of the Middle Ages was paralleled in the nationalists' and conservatives' reinvention of the castle as a symbol of medieval greatness. Renderings of the Middle Rhine castles in oil, water-colour, pencil, ink, and other media are still being produced today, but the heyday of romantic painting ended in the second half of the nineteenth century, when a more sober realism became evident in the work of artists drawn to the castles. Such men were often motivated by antiquarian or historical interests. Johann Adolf Lasinsky (1808-71) drew crisp ink sketches of many of the Burgen as they appeared in his lifetime. So, too, Koblenz' city archivist, Leopold Eltester (1822-79), and Major Theodor Scheppe (1820-1906) both produced a series of accurate sketches of the castles in

62 I Castles of the Rhine

1847-84 and 1864-87 respectively. The new historical and archeological scholarship is evident in their works.21 This rediscovery of the Middle Ages had further ramifications which ultimately impinged on the Rhenish ruins. In the nineteenth century many sensitive minds believed that "one had lost. . . one's past, both one's personal past and the historical past"; one had "been set down between an ominous future and a vanished idealized past."22 The sense of continuity between past and present had been broken. Some Europeans developed a passion for trying actually to relive the past, to actually feel as they imagined medieval people might have felt or to recreate the past in the present. This is particularly evident in Germany where many people rejected the urbanization and industrialization of the modern age. Paul de Lagarde (1827-91) and Julius Langbehn (1851-1907) were two widely read critics of modernization. For such alienated romantics the Middle Ages seemed to be a more orderly, simpler age with none of the turbulence of their own age of political and industrial revolution. As late as 1914 the architect Bodo Ebhardt described the ideal location for a rural mansion as "in a park, remote from the dust thrown up by the automobile on the country road or from the noise of the railroad. .. ,"23 Ebhardt and others idealized the political and social status quo of the past, wherein a wealthy and ostensibly wise aristocracy ruled over a respectful, grateful and, of course, submissive peasantry. This could lead to a falsification of past reality and to a politicizing of the past for the sake of present needs. The age, however, saw only the towering gothic Ritterburg (knightly castle) and not the harsh economic and social realities of the time. It glorified the tough-minded leaders of the period, but ignored—or did not yet recognize—what nineteenth-century German liberals would regard as an intolerable suppression of individual rights. However, many of the castle rebuilders had a vested interest in an illiberal political and social status quo. At the same time as political conservatives romanticized the past, artists and writers delighted in medieval customs and values as representing a more "German" way of life. Viewed earlier by "enlightened" minds as barbaric, medieval Europe was now regarded as having qualities making it a better place than modern Europe. In 1809-10 Franz Pforr created a bright, cheerful image of "Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg Entering Basel" which exemplifies this idealized world. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation appeared colourful, even magical. Its emperor, knights, and burghers were believed to be motivated by a national German spirit and emperors such as Frederick Barbarossa were idealized. Places such as

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Aachen (with the tomb of the ostensibly "German" Charlemagne), the Wartburg (where Martin Luther took refuge), and the Rhine itself became symbols of former German greatness. The Middle Ages were, in the words of one poet, "the good olden time."24 The historian Heinrich von Treitschke wrote that the romantics "contemplated German antiquity with the wondering, wide-open eyes of childhood."25 Gradually, however, a more practical note was heard as the Middle Rhine's castle ruins became symbolic of past national greatness which must be achieved again. A ruined castle was a call to unity, action, and defence of the Fatherland, a cult object of the new German nationalistic movement.

Growth of German Nationalism In the sixteenth century, Emperor Charles V believed that the German language was "fit only for speaking to horses,"26 and in the seventeenth century, French was the customary language of cultured Germans. By the early eighteenth century, however, the merits of German were increasingly extolled by, for example, the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), the novelist Christoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813), and the critic Gottfried Ephraim Lessing (1729-81). Their work itself gave wellread Germans cause for pride in their language and culture. The wars of the revolutionary period, involving French occupation and plunder, inspired a wider patriotism among the middle classes in general. After 1815 this feeling remained frustrated by the reactionary political structure of the Restoration period. The "festivals" at Wartburg and Hambach castles were evidence, however, of growing desire for national unity and independence. Eventually nationalism became the most powerful of all the motives which impelled castle-rebuilding or preservation. The first signs of it among the professional bourgeoisie were the formation of private specialized groups such as the Association of German Scientists and Doctors (formed 1810) which looked not only to greater co-operation among medical and scientific men but also to a future German union.27 By the 1840s, as trade and manufacturing prospered, nationalism spread into the commercial middle class as well. The railroad, the telegraph, and the steam engine were also drawing Germans together. Groups as diverse as journalists, architects, and teachers, as well as leisure-time organizations such as those of sharpshooters focused on the Rhine to express their love of the lamentably divided

64 I Castles of the Rhine

Fatherland. Following the failure of the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1849 nationalistic feeling revived in the 1860s. Nevertheless, German unification had to wait until the wars provoked by the Prussian Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. When Prussia defeated Austria in 1866, and France in 1870-71, a form of national unity was achieved. The liberals were delighted with a national parliament and loyally relished Germany's new power. At the same time nationalism, earlier regarded as revolutionary because of its association with liberalism, was increasingly sanctioned and adopted by the traditional elite. In fact, by about 1900 a radical right-wing nationalism which disturbed the imperial government was expressed by the Colonial Society, the Navy League, and the Society for the Eastern Marches. By the end of the century even the working classes were infected by the patriotic virus. In 1914 the German Social Democratic Party, Europe's leading Marxist political organization, jettisoned its universalism to support the nation's war effort.

"Mute Witnesses of the Greatness of Germany"28 Nationalistic Germans required both symbols of the Fatherland and noble patriotic causes through which to express their new nationalism. Castles, assumed to have been once centres of a glorious political culture, itself now ruined, seemed to represent the fate of Germany, once united and powerful, now (c. 1815) divided and weak. In particular those on or near the Rhine became national monuments. In 1818, for example, celebrants wanting to commemorate the end of French rule chose Godesburg, near Bonn, as a venue. (We have already noted the use of Wartburg in Saxony and Hambach in the Palatinate.) The princely castle-reconstruction efforts, most notably at Stolzenfels, revealed this attitude in its backwardlooking form. For some of the middle classes the act of founding a society to rebuild a ruin became a declaration of faith in the future German renaissance. The new forward-looking nationalism of the professional and commercial classes emerged first in the 1840s, in the widespread support for the reconstruction of Roland's Arch and the "Royal Throne." In 1899 patriotic pride was evident in the stated purpose of the Association for the Preservation of German Castles—to preserve castles as "monuments of the Fatherland's history and art."29 National pride was also reflected in changing taste in architectural style and in art history itself. The belief grew that the Gothic style was genuinely "German," had developed first in Germany, and expressed a uniquely German sense of space. One of the first to describe this concept

Romanticism and Nationalism on the Middle Rhine I 65 was August Reichensperger (1808-95). In truth, most of the great churches of the Rhineland, such as those at Mainz, Speyer and Worms, were built largely in the Romanesque style, and the Gothic had originated in the Ile-de-France district of Germany's "hereditary enemy." The latter fact, in particular, was unpalatable to many Germans but was overlooked until the 1860s when scholars proved that the style had indeed risen in France. Such blurring of historical and geographical reality also made the Rhine River the object of a patriotic cult.

The Cult of the Rhine Although until about 1800 the man-made and natural scenery of the gorge seemed to belong to no specific country, now the river itself became a German national monument. As early as 1804, after his Rhine journey, Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) saluted the "free-born" "Father Rhine," "noblest of rivers," an early symptom of the later flourishing Rhine cult. The romantic love of the Rhine as a symbol of Germany was catalyzed mainly by the French occupation of the west bank. "The Rhine flows like blood in our veins," wrote Gorres in 1815, "and I don't feel quite myself where I don't breathe its air."30 In the same period Friedrich von Schlegel called the Song of the Nibelung, with its Rhenish setting, the German national epic. The poet Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860) contributed a pamphlet in 1814, The Rhine, Germany's River, not Germany's Border. Poets, writers and linguists began to maintain that territory where German was spoken should always be ruled over by German-speakers. Thus both banks of the Rhine should be a part of Germany, whatever political shape that entity might take. When the river was controlled by Germans it was somehow "free" and Germany was "free." These effusions had a religious tone, as when Max von Schenkendorf wrote in 1814 that the river was "sacred" to Germany.31 The cult of the river intensified by the mid-nineteenth century. "They shall not have it, our free-born German Rhine," cried Nikolaus Becker (1809-45) when, in 1840, the French seemed to threaten invasion again.32 "The love of the Rhine," wrote the historian Treitschke, "is characteristic of all of German blood."33 "The Watch on the Rhine," an 1840 poem by Max Schneckenburger (1819-49), set to music by Karl Wilhelm in 1854, expressed the sense of militant alertness which many Germans felt. The song was sung by troops heading to battle in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. During the First World War (1914-18), a war-bond poster showing Father Rhine in a river landscape said, "Help protect your

66 I Castles of the Rhine Rhine." The ruined castles were an integral part of this politicized geography.

Role of the "Hereditary Enemy" The Rhine and its ruined castles also became symbols of French viciousness. Germans had good cause to resent France because the Rhenish ruins were often the result of French depredations.34 The policy of Cardinal Richelieu during the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), and especially the policy of Louis XIV during the War of the Grand Alliance (1688-89), aimed to keep the German Holy Roman Empire divided and weak and to control the west Rhine bank. All defensive structures along the river were to be totally demolished. When the Emperor was distracted by Turkish invasion, Louis sent his armies into Alsace-Lorraine and swept through the Rhine valley, destroying both castles and towns. For example, the fiftysix-metre-high "Round Tower" at Andernach, begun in 1440, was not part of the town's fortifications, but was nevertheless the subject of a French attempt to blow it up in 1689 and still bears the scars of that assault. In the same year the town of Stromberg in the Hunsriick southwest of Bingen was also destroyed.35 The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815) added another chapter to the story. In 1792, when the French seized the river's west bank, German property was vandalized and crops ravaged. In Koblenz churches as well as fortifications were destroyed and the electoral palace was damaged. The hilltop chapel of St. Rochus, south of Bingen, was ravaged.36 By now the castles were not militarily defensible, but because their towers were still potential observation posts for the German enemy, the French destroyed them. Although nineteenth-century German nationalism became as ethnocentric as French foreign policy was ruthless, French destructiveness on the Middle Rhine cannot be underestimated. Many are the monuments to the Wars of Liberation (from the French) between 1813 and 1815. Most of these plaques, columns, and buildings use neo-Gothic design. The best example is the "Memorial Tower" (added in 1816-19) by Carl Friedrich vom und zum Stein to his older palace in Nassau on the Lahn. The three-storey Gothic structure is embellished by symbolic figures representing the alliance which defeated Napoleon. Inside, it has the aspect of a religious shrine. The interior decoration reflects contemporary yearning for a heroic lost age of German greatness and unity (Appendix Two).

Romanticism and Nationalism on the Middle Rhine I 67

After 1815 Germans justifiably believed that the French still had designs on the Rhine. In the Near Eastern Crisis (1828) King Charles X studied a plan for a French-Russian alliance which would grant the Rhineland to France. At that time the writer and politician Chateaubriand (1768-1848) wrote, "We want the Rhine frontier from Strassburg [sic] to Cologne. That is our just claim."37 Victor Hugo, upon seeing the monument to General Hoche near Andernach, wrote, "It seemed to me that, out of that pile of stone, I heard a voice which said Trance must get back the Rhine.'"38 The War Scare of 1840 was provoked by several incidents which led to the French foreign minister preparing for war and the French press attacking the settlement of 1815, which had deprived France of the Rhineland.39 An upsurge of German national feeling led patriotic scribes such as Nikolaus Becker to declare, "they shall not have it, the free German Rhine."40 "The Watch on the Rhine" was first published in the Times of Trier on the Mosel in September 1840. The traumatic scars of the past were remembered at every level of German society. In 1848 when much of Europe was convulsed with revolt, the French foreign minister declared that France did not recognize the peace treaties of 1815, causing fear in German chancelleries that France's new republican government would try to seize the Rhineland. Nothing came of this but in March, 1848, there was a "French scare" in the southwestern German countryside as rumours spread that French soldiers had invaded Baden and Wurttemberg. During the French "Second Empire" (1852-70) the reputed intentions of Napoleon III kept suspicion alive. Understanding French ambitions, and wanting to neutralize France, Bismarck in 1865 discussed with the French Emperor the possibility of France being compensated with Rhenish territory if Prussia should expand and unify Germany. The following year, after Prussia had defeated the Austrians and had begun to create the North German Confederation, the French ambassador was authorized to present to Prussia an official demand for all or parts of the Bavarian Palatinate and the possessions of Hesse-Darmstadt west of the Rhine. Bismarck rejected this overture. Not surprisingly, therefore, in the 1860s a Prussian song about General Bliicher's exploits, "The Armies Remain on the Rhine," was still being sung on official occasions. In 1870 Bismarck, manipulating both French and German nationalism, managed to goad the French into declaring war and thus into playing the role that many Germans believed was innate to them. German fears of French aggression erupted again in both 1875 and 1887, but were calmed by diplomatic solutions. During the First World

68 I Castles of the Rhine

War, when Germany seemed surrounded again by a world of enemies, the architect Bodo Ebhardt wrote, recalling the invasions of 1688 and 1792, that the Rhenish ruins should "teach us what our fate would be if the hordes of our enemy were let loose upon our Fatherland, our cities and villages, our women and children, today."41 As a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the "hordes" descended again. The French and their allies imposed heavy reparations, a severe armament limitation, and an occupation of the Rhineland. As Louis XIV had wished, the Rhine became the military frontier of France. Allied garrisons were stationed at Cologne, Koblenz, and Mainz with bridgeheads extending to the east bank for a fifty-kilometre radius. All German military personnel were evacuated. Fortresses such as Ehrenbreitstein were to be razed. French forces were allowed to occupy cities such as Koblenz and Wiesbaden for fifteen years. When the French invaded the Ruhr in 1923 to enforce German reparations payments, many Germans felt that the knife was being turned in the wound. Meanwhile French efforts to stimulate Rhenish separatism (which failed) were also deeply resented.42 Ebhardt, who ten years previously had warned against the French danger, now wrote that the Rhenish castles were " witnesses to our French neighbours' insatiable lust for war and plunder," a view which was widely shared.43 After the revival of Germany under Adolf Hitler, the image of France did not change. In 1940 Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels announced that the celebration of the German victory over France in that year should be considered revenge for the work of Cardinal Richelieu. As late as 1960 a German scholar discovered that Rhenish oral tradition still recalled the French depredations of the 1790s.44 Reactionary conservatism, as we noted in the previous chapter, played a primary role in the changed attitude to ruined castles. This chapter has shown that romanticism and nationalism also coloured perceptions of the Middle Rhine's ruins. Other forces, less powerful and less wide reaching, but equally important, also contributed to the transformation of both their symbolism and their actual ruined walls in the nineteenth century as we shall see in what follows.

THREE

MONUMENTS AND

DOCUMENTS ON THE MIDDLE RHINE

3

n 1925 one German writter declared that Marksburg "belongs, not to

1 any individual, b u t . .writer . to thedeclared whole German people and Fatherland." n 1925 one German that Marksburg "belongs, not to By this date, indeed, Germans from disparate parts of society regarded the Rhenish castles as possessions of the entire nation, not merely of rich and powerful owners. German tourists felt that, ruined or reconstructed, the castles were somehow "German" and had relevance to their national experience. The Heimat movement made them into pilgrimage sites. The German youth movement consecrated them as national shrines. Later, adults concerned about the education of young people used them for nationalistic pedagogical purposes. More objectively, scholars began to see castles as historical documents.

Tourism Ironically, as we have seen, the steam-powered ship and locomotive which brought destructive modernization to the Middle Rhine also helped to spawn the castle preservation movement. Easier, safer travel brought artists, writers, and tourists who revealed the ruins' condition not only to Germans but also to other Europeans. Even in the late eighteenth century, the wealthier classes began to express greater fondness for and found greater ease of travel. The 1700s saw an improvement in European highways Notes to Chapter Three are on p. 343-47. 69

70 I Castles of the Rhine

Fig. 8. Castles of the Middle Rhine (northern section). Courtesy of Loris Gasparotto, cartographer, Brock University.

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine / 71

Fig. 9. Castles of the Middle Rhine (southern section). Courtesy of Loris Gasparotto, cartographer, Brock University.

72 / Castles of the Rhine

and accommodations, and the end of the Seven Years' War (1763) brought greater security for travellers. When peace dawned the Rhine proved to be a favoured route for scholars, writers, artists, and the scions of noble families. Curious intellectuals, eager to expand their knowledge and to make learned contacts, resumed their journeys. Visits to spas again became popular. The hinterland of the Rhine offered fashionable watering places, such as Bad Ems, which had attracted a wealthy clientele. The Grand Tour of the continent (including the Rhine), a staple in the education of well-bred young Englishmen, was revived. A favourite route took the neophyte sophisticate up the Rhine, through Switzerland and thence to Italy. Among Germans the Bildungsreise (journey for self-edification) became popular. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars such travel resumed yet again, and soon the railway age brought more of the ordinary bourgeois to the Middle Rhine, taking back with them to their homes in Germany and farther afield the romantic image of the Rhine and its castles.

The Steamship "We're all aboard," wrote Ernst Moritz Arndt in 1851, "English, American, French, Russian—and we all want to get to the Rhine."2 Even during the 1840s, Treitschke maintains that, "never before had the ruined castles of the Rhine been so much visited and so highly appreciated . . . when the new steamboats were day by day conveying up the river cheerful young fellows, painters from Diisseldorf, students from Bonn, singers from Cologne."3 The first steamship on the Rhine was the British-built Prince of Orange, which departed Rotterdam on June 8, 1816 and reached Cologne on June 12. In 1827 the Prussian Rhine Steamship Company (today the Cologne-Diisseldorf, or "K-D" Line) began to operate a regular passenger and freight service on the river between Cologne and Mainz. In its first year of business the "K-D" line carried 18,624 passengers; in 1828, 33,000.4 By 1839, 450,000 people annually were travelling between Mainz and Cologne.5 In 1867 the first, fast, double-deck steamers devoted solely to the passenger trade were introduced. The steam-propelled ship moved faster up river than any ship under sail or towed laboriously by horses, and was much more comfortable than the post-coach. The ship's deck was a good platform for viewing the hilltop castles, but soon it became possible to stop at a particular village, rent a horse or mule and guide, explore a castle ruin, and then later continue one's journey with the same ticket on the next ship. In 1844 H.M. Malten, the guidebook writer,

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine I 73

began to publish steamer schedules in his descriptions of historic and architectural sights.6

"Everybody Looks at Wigginstein" The English were the first ethnic group to be able to afford the joys of tourism. Even before 1800 the Rhine had been the goal of many of England's intelligentsia who believed that the balance of power in Europe was determined by whoever controlled the waterway; but the young Englishman's aim was also to acquire cultivation through attendance at princely courts. Beginning in the 1770s, the Industrial Revolution created a new class of wealthy fundholders and financial entrepreneurs who started to travel when the international situation was favourable and suitable inexpensive transportation and accommodation became available. In the summers of the 1830s and later, the English were to be found everywhere on the Rhine. Between 1860 and 1890 the annual total of visitors to the Rhine was around one million, of which half were from the British Isles.7 Many had read or heard about "the castled crag of Drachenfels" in Byron's poem and made this ruin—one of the first they would encounter on an upstream voyage—the most visited of all the Rhenish ruins. The ubiquitousness of English-speaking tourists was reflected as late as 1980, when I saw at Burg Katz, above St. Goarshausen, an old weathered sign, printed significantly in English as well as German, which reads, To all visitors! Burg Katz was built in the 14th century, destroyed in 1748 and rebuilt at the end of the 19th century. The architecture and modern interior have no historical importance. The tower of the castle is not climbable. Today the castle is used as a holiday home. Viewing is not possible, and hardly worth the trouble. The view above the castle is exactly the same as from the terrace of the castle.

The slightly irritated tone reflects decades of inquiries from British tourists, their numbers no doubt augmented by English-speaking Americans, Canadians, and Australians.8 If they could not in person take a steamship up the Rhine, they wanted to read about it. For example, Thomas Hood's 1840 comic narrative, Up the Rhine, was sold out after two weeks.9 Bulwer-Lytton's queasily romantic Pilgrims of the Rhine, which included local legends, was popular and also became a sort of guidebook.10 Most tourists arrived with guidebooks. Even before the Napoleonic wars were over, descriptions and guides to the Rhine began to appear. In 1812 Alois Schreiber produced his Guide to Travel on the Rhine and the

74 / Castles of the Rhine

Mosel and to the Spas of the Taunus which was soon translated into French and English. He dedicated a later version to "the estimable administration of the Prussian Rhine Steamship Company of Cologne."11 J.A. Demian's Latest Handbook for Travellers on the Rhine and in the nearby Areas appeared in 1820. In 1828 Johann B.A. Klein (1778-1831) produced^ Rhine Trip from Mainz to Cologne. A Handbook for Tourists.12 After the appearance of steamships and trains the Schreiber guide appeared revised with the apt title, Pocket Book for Steamship and Railway Tourists on the Rhine, in Belgium and Holland (1838). It is probably not accidental that the most famous set of all tourist guidebooks, "Baedeker," was first published in Koblenz at the junction of the Rhine and the Mosel. Karl Baedeker (1801-59) was a bookseller and publisher who, in 1827, founded the publishing house which still is a leading producer of travel guides. Meanwhile, for the travelling Briton, John Murray's Holland, Belgium, and the Rhine, published in 1836, became a bible. Thackeray describes a travelling compatriot as having "a strap full of Murray's Handbooks and Continental guides in his keeping." At a certain picturesque sight, "everybody looks at Wigginstein. You are told in Murray to look at Wigginstein."13

Effects of Tourism Rhinelanders were quick to profit from the influx of travellers. Already in the 1820s amateur tour guides would appear at Rhenish inns to give a commentary on ruins—for a fee, of course.14 Of the previously dormant but picturesque Eltville, a German observer wrote in 1840 that "since the beginning of steamship travel, activity here has uncommonly increased precisely because the ships stop in Eltville, and, during the summer months, drop off many travellers, especially British."15 Even before the German industrial revolution began, the annual influx of tourists gave the villages and towns in the Middle Rhine a new prosperity. Businessmen discovered tourists and castles, and sought to bring the two together. Many towns, such as Boppard, developed "Rhine Promenades" with a variety of hotels and restaurants. Rudesheim, which began to exploit its viticultural traditions, benefited from having a tourable castle close to the train station and steamer wharf. From the back of the town, a chairlift was built up the hillside to Burg Rossel and the Niederwald Monument. At Ehrenbreitstein, another was built to take tourists up to the fortress and the view. Town governments, aware of the value of having a famous ruin looming above their rooftops, set up wharfside signs indicating the Burg-

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine / 75

weg [way to the castle]. Closer to the actual sites entrepreneurs noticed the growing number of hungry and thirsty tourists climbing the paths up to ruins such as Drachenfels or Godesburg. Small outlets selling food and beverages appeared with the permission of the ruins' owners. Soon these grew in size, becoming comfortable "restaurants with a view" (Aussichtsrestaurants). For example, the "Enemy Brothers" (Sterrenberg and Liebenstein) have long sustained an outdoor terrace cafe. Some of these eating places became giant concerns, often part of hotels. Indeed, sometimes whole castles were renovated to include hotels with restaurants. In the twentieth century elaborate "castle-hotels" have developed, sporting considerable snob appeal. The effect of these hotels, restaurants, cafes, and viewpoints on castle ruins was not always beneficial as the centuriesold substance of the castles was occasionally damaged in reconstruction, and the deluge of tourists itself caused damage to the fabric of ruins.

"To Slow Down the Engine of Change"16 While tourism was becoming a mass phenomenon, some Germans were beginning to take a deep interest in the history and culture of their towns and provinces. Some of this development was scholarly and academic but here we are concerned with ordinary Germans' new concern for the Heimat, a word which means roughly "hometown," but which has much wider connotations in German. A recent student of the phenomenon has described it as "a feeling of belonging together" in an "idyll of local communities, close family harmony, and a domesticated, friendly nature."17 //ewztft-feeling involved a search for a common local identity which did not exclude a wider German patriotism. The Heimat movement was a product partly of German nationalism, partly a product of the romantic movement in literature, partly a reaction against the changes brought about by modern technology (especially the railroads) and partly the result of the perceived threat of social atomization presented by urbanization. Although proud of the newly founded German Reich, Germans began to glory in their attachment to their hometowns, local history as well as legend, and regional architecture, cuisine, beverages, costume, folk songs, and genealogy. In their towns and villages they founded historical, forest or mountain societies, museum associations, and castle or ruinpreservation groups. Germans' Heimat-ieeling, already flourishing in the 1870s, continues into the twentieth century, reflecting a "genuine anguish" that much of both their own personal past and the past of their community has been lost.18

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The phenomenon arose independently of the growth of professional historical or archeological knowledge, although no doubt many of Germany's historians or anthropologists were inspired as youths by their local Heimat movement. The more accessible works of intellectuals were savoured by a wide reading public eager to know more about their local roots. Some individuals saw historic architecture as a teaching device. In 1905 the art historian Georg Dehio (1850-1932), who was producing a landmark series of handbooks on German heritage architecture, wrote that young people must have their Heimat-feeling stimulated by a "training in love for heritage architecture" (Denkmalfreundschafi) ,19 This notion had already led to the founding of historical museums and would later lead adults to establish youth hostels near or in historically important sites. Especially after 1919 Germany's castles/ruins became the cultural property of the general public. Democratic governments began to support them with public taxes. Often their individual owners sensed a responsibility to share their premises with the youth of the community. Governments and private institutions turned the castles into youth hostels, museums, and libraries, for the education and training of people of all ages in socially and politically acceptable values. In the "age of the common man," when monarchy ceased to preserve ruins, governments with mass education schemes, and private associations with patriotic ambitions, began to use the castles to indoctrinate the populace.

Museums By the early twentieth century, castle ruins were no longer in such danger as had confronted them 100 years earlier. More accurate historical knowledge and improved archeological methods enabled scholars to understand their construction and use. Clubs and societies of lay people interested in collecting artifacts had sprung up. Nationalism had increased, so that the ruined fortresses had many patriotic associations. Architectural preservation theory was developing. Local governments, private associations, and one major nationwide organization, among others, took a hand in preserving and restoring the ruins. Needless to say, these groups could not have, and did not want, homes in rebuilt castles but wanted to find suitable shelters for their artifacts, books, and documents. The princely and aristocratic owners of the rebuilt fortresses created the first castle-museums. Moreover, when Prince Frederick referred in 1828 to the Rhenish ruins as the "National-Eigentum," he expressed a

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine I 77

very early concern to collect and preserve architectural artifacts of local and national significance. The affluent could always visit the rebuilt castles and their collections of antiquities, if they were the aristocratic or haut bourgeois friends or relatives of the owners. Well-to-do tourists could afford the fee necessary to climb the surviving tower or savour the guided tour of a castle when the owner was absent. The princes and aristocrats had collected suits of armour, paintings and furniture to give their castles a genuine "medieval" atmosphere, and soon these collections transformed their surroundings willy-nilly into museums. The same result occurred when bourgeois owners tried to imitate or outdo the nobility. Soon, as we have seen, the literate and modestly affluent classes developed a nationalistic fascination with medieval castles, which led to preservation and restoration efforts. These castles, too, were provided with genuine or imitation medieval furniture and decor. As an interest in the past (including the cult of the middle ages) grew, historical museums became popular with the general public. Ironically, when the railway builders razed old town walls and shattered the landscape of the Rhine gorge, they also unearthed relics of the past, which local people eagerly collected and often displayed publicly. Many of the first and best of these collections were established by scholars with a view to the scientific analysis of objects insofar as they revealed the truth about problems and periods in the past. Bonn's Rhenish Provincial Museum, for example, which was established in 1874, has its roots even earlier in the Museum of Rhenish-Westphalian Antiquities founded in 1820 at the University of Bonn. The Association of Friends of Rhenish Antiquities, founded in 1841, offered its collection to the new museum. As its possessions grew, a fine modern building for the museum was opened in 1893. Such museums were popular with schoolteachers, needless to say, but the general public and tourists also flocked to them. Soon many a small town had its own historical museum, often located in a room upstairs in the Rathaus or in the local castle. The Heimat enthusiasts focused much of their attention on castles. Civic authorities, themselves newly inspired by pride in their parochial identity, began to regard the ruined castles as sources of more than just building stones or of tourist income. Even quasi-historic structures such as Mosburg at Biebrich became Heimat-museums. In remaining keeps or even dungeons, museums, libraries, and youth hostels were accommodated in impressive surroundings with traditional and historic connotations. Here, citizens young and old could learn the values and virtues of their estimable forebears.

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On the Middle Rhine, unfortunately, most of the best sites had already been appropriated by the Prussian royal family, aristocrats, and other wealthy castle rebuilders. Some of those left were either in too advanced a state of ruin, or were unsuitable for museums because of their location, remote from town centres, or otherwise not easily accessible to the public. Nevertheless, certain well-preserved ruins existed which could serve the purpose. Often these sites had experienced the effects of several of the influential factors which since the 1820s had preserved or transformed castles. Their final transformation would see them used as pedagogical tools. The desire to provide a good education to young people had been traditional in the German states since at least the eighteenth century, with governments playing a major role in the endeavour. Prussia, for example, had led the way in mass, compulsory, primary education. A more informal sort of education was provided by the Royal Museum in Berlin, opened in 1830, dedicated to classical art and one of the first such European institutions to be open free to the masses. King Maximilian II of Bavaria (reigned 1848-64) encouraged the teaching and study of history in order to improve his subjects' sense of community and as a counterrevolutionary tool. With or without obvious political aims, the result of German pedagogues' efforts was that by the early twentieth century, the German educational system, including ancillary facilities such as public libraries, museums, art galleries, and youth hostels, was the envy of the Western world. The urge to assist the young to know the necessary facts about their local and national communities, and to have the correct patriotic values, ranged beyond the walls of the classroom or the church to the ruined walls of medieval castles. The German schools' use of castles is apparent to anyone who today visits a Rhenish castle. After tourists climb up the steep road to Burg Rheinfels above St. Goar, for example, they may refresh themselves at the castle's restaurant, explore its broken walls, admire its magnificent views, and then visit a museum in the bowels of the ruin. School classes will explore the tunnels and towers, gaze off over the landscape, and most certainly are taken, more or less supervised, into the castle's museum. By the early twentieth century, castles, if they had reasonably intact rooms, were increasingly put to use as repositories of documents and artifacts of local history. Occasionally libraries were housed in castles. Ruins were "recycled" as youth hostels, which were regarded as a suitable place to inculcate in boys and girls a respect for German tradition and history.

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine I 79

The Youth Movement Early in the nineteenth century, German students gathered for political demonstrations in the shadow of Wartburg and Hambach castles. At the turn of the century, patriotic, romantic young people singled out Germany's castle ruins as the goal of hiking expeditions, or as sites for camps or meetings. The modern German youth movement began in 1901 in Steglitz, a middle-class suburb of Berlin, with the formation of the "Committee for Schoolboy Excursions."20 These young people wanted to find places of natural beauty in which to free themselves from adult tutelage. Repelled by the esthetically ugly aspects of modern urban life, they left the cities on weekends to hike and camp in the countryside, singing German folk songs and affecting a peculiar form of dress. As these Wandervogel (birds of passage, or ramblers) attracted more and more disaffected bourgeois youth, meeting places were built, some of them primitive. At the same time, castle ruins all over Germany became meccas for the youth movement. Seeking escape from social conventions, but deeply nationalistic and often very conservative politically, they developed a real, if vague, feeling for the ruined castles and for medieval castle life. Indeed, the German middle ages became the ideal historical period for many. Anti-democratic, they hankered vaguely for a sort of small-scale feudal organization with themselves as lords and vassals. As much as they rebelled against contemporary bourgeois German society, they had already absorbed one of its favourite beliefs insofar as they were deeply affected by the German castles as symbols both of a great national past and of the iniquities of Germany's enemies. The climax of the pre-First World War youth movement came at a patriotic meeting at the Hohe Meissner, a mountain near Kassel, Hesse, in 1913, where over 3,000 youths and adults celebrated the centenary of the Battle of the Nations, part of the War of Liberation. Eventually a loose national federation of groups, the Free German Youth, was founded with its official centre at—significantly—a castle, Burg Ludwigstein, near Eisenach in Thuringia. By the 1920s the Wandervogel had taken over several castles near, although not on, the Rhine.

Hostels The discontent evident among bourgeois youth bothered their elders to the extent that the German government considered setting up a social welfare system for young people, and the German army indicated that paramilitary training for boys might be the answer. Other grownups

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thought in terms of overnight accommodation supervised by adults, possibly in castles, which could also serve the political and physical education of their young guests. Oskar Doering, for example, described the rebuilt fortress Hohkonigsburg as an instrument for the education of German youth.21 The adult-led movement to build youth hostels began with Richard Schirrmann, a schoolteacher, working in Gelsenkirchen, a Westphalian coal-mining town. About 1901 he conceived the idea of taking his pupils, who lived in polluted industrial slums, into the nearby countryside both for their physical health and for their scientific and historical education. In 1903 he began to take his charges to Burg Altena in the forested Sauerland, between the Ruhr and Weser rivers, northeast of the Rhineland, an area marked by deep and narrow valleys. Here he would teach, in his biographer's words, a "love of Heimat and Fatherland."22 By 1912 Schirrmann had the support of the Sauerland Mountain Association—a Heimat organization—which eventually formed what became the Central Committee for German Youth Hostels. The organizational genius of the movement was Wilhelm Miinker, a local businessman and Mountain Association member. In 1914 the conservative "Young Germany League" (Jungdeutschlandbund) of Field Marshal Baron Colmar von der Goltz became another supporter. The league was an umbrella organization, founded in 1911 with federal government assistance, in order to further the nationalistic moral and physical education of young people, in particular to woo them away from socialism and from the Wandervogel themselves. Burg Altena itself became the "mother house of youth hostels"23 and a model for all other later ones. It had been rebuilt between 1906 and 1916 by a local official, Fritz Thomee, who allowed Schirrmann to use certain rooms in it as overnight accommodation for his pupils, provided they did not alter its historic character. Soon the castle was an "education centre, cultural focus, and meeting place for . . . youth."24 The German network of youth hostels grew rapidly. By 1911 there were seventeen in the Rhineland and Westphalia alone and by 1914 they had spread to the rest of Germany. Despite economic problems in the 1920s, by 1932 there were 2124 throughout the Reich.25 Ideally each hostel was within one day's easy hike of its closest neighbour. After 1933 the Nazi Hitler Youth expanded the system. Young people are not instinctively drawn to older buildings. No evidence suggests that they are happier living in ancient structures, nor that they can absorb a lifelong love of history or of their native land by staying in dimly lit, badly heated, partially ruined buildings. But especially after the First World War, German adults took up Schirrman and Munker's

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine I 81

ideas and, trying to tame the Wandervogel impulse, restored castle ruins for their children to stay in overnight. These older buildings were supposed to help young people to rediscover the traditional virtue of physical toughness, and if the place had historical and national associations, a deepened love of the Fatherland. Nationalistic adults converted several Middle Rhine castles, notably Stahleck, for the indoctrination of German youth. In some cultures on this planet, ruined buildings remaining from earlier stages of those societies' history have been allowed to decay and disappear, having no relevance to later generations. We have seen how, on the other hand, Germans transformed wrecked fortresses into habitable monuments, sites for meditation, symbols of a wider community, venues for crassly profitable undertakings, and pedagogical instruments. It is now appropriate to consider the role played by these derelict structures in academic and intellectual life, and how changes in the latter impinged on the fate of the castles of the Rhine.

Studying the Castles of the Middle Rhine "The still extant monuments of architecture belong to the most important and most interesting documents of history," decreed the grand duke of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1818, "because they reveal the earlier customs, mentalities and daily life of the people... ,"26 By 1900, an increased scholarly knowledge of the medieval period caused academics to want to use the ruins as historical documents for study of the past. To this end they would preserve decaying ruins as priceless artifacts, and objected to building new "castles" on wrecked foundations. Belatedly, the rationale of the grand duke's decree now found many supporters.

Pioneering Historical Research The nineteenth century invented the modern study of history, and, with only some exaggeration, one can say that Germany invented the professional historian. At the University of Berlin from 1834 to 1871, Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) was probably the first to try to practise detached objectivity in the study of the past, seeking to enter sympathetically the minds and hearts of men and women long dead. He inspired an objective treatment of original documents in order to determine "what actually happened" (wie es eigentlich gewesen). Contemporary with this new scientific history was a greater concern for developing documentary archives.

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For example, working in his Nassau palace tower (Appendix Two), Baron vom und zum Stein compiled the Monumenta Historica Germaniae, a collection of historical documents, which included medieval sources. Ranke's ideal of objectivity was not always achieved, for the German past was often used to develop patriotism and to justify the political status quo. Not surprisingly, in the hands of men like Heinrich von Treitschke, history became a popular course in high schools and universities, for it often seemed to justify the German empire's increasing predominance on the European scene. We have already noted how castles, as museums and youth hostels, became didactic instruments, too. All this is not to denigrate the remarkable work of German scholars who led the way in the study of the past. First Roman, then Greek, history was explored, as with the pioneering History of Ancient Art (1764) of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768). Eventually Germany produced some of the first and finest archeologists, notably Heinrich Schliemann (1822-90), famous for his work at Troy. Soon the drive for knowledge of the ancient world was directed to domestic sites. In the Rhineland, Roman towns and the Limes, the wall built to keep the Teutons at bay, were excavated.27 Later the writings of Carl August von Cohausen (1812-96), a Prussian officer, encouraged Germans to study medieval sites as well. As we have seen, to house the finds unearthed in local digs, museums of antiquities were founded. If Germans led the way in archeology and in the scholarly approach to history in general, the modern study of architectural history was largely created by English scholars, such as Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52) and John Ruskin (1819-1900), who encouraged a fresh look at Gothic architecture. The English Gothic Revival was partly inspired by their writing, but they were critical of the "restorations" which occurred during their lifetimes28 and inspired an opposition to reconstruction, which had an influence later in Germany. Especially Ruskin favoured preservation (instead of reconstruction or restoration) in part because old buildings were historic documents. In Germany Goethe and Sulpiz Boisseree inspired interest in medieval building styles, particularly the Gothic. The latter, with his brother Melchior, was one of the first to collect medieval German art, and in 1833, assisted by the architect Johann Claudius von Lassaulx, published Monuments of Architecture of the Seventh to the Thirteenth Centuries on the Lower Rhine. In 1823, the same year that Prince Frederick obtained Rheinstein and the crown prince was given Stolzenfels, Friedrich von Schlegel produced a study of Gothic architecture, in which he discussed the ruined

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine / 83

Rhenish castles. The Journal for Architecture (Zeitschrift fur Bauwesen), founded 1851, included articles on medieval and Renaissance building.

Inventories Sensibly, Germans began to make comprehensive lists of old churches and castles. In 1818 the grand duke of Hesse-Darmstadt ordered the compiling of an inventory of the most important architectural monuments in his principality, including drawings of each, with a view to their preservation and repair. In 1837, before the art historian Ferdinand von Quast (1807-77) became Prussian Conservation Officer, he had encouraged the enumeration of "every church, every abbey, every palace, every castle, indeed every ruin"29 in Prussia. A good example had been set by the architect Carl Frederick Schinkel (1781-1841) in 1815 when he presented his commissioned "Report on the Condition of the Palace Church in Wittenberg" to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. To this he appended a set of suggestions for the conservation of Prussia's architectural monuments. He lamented that Prussia had "already lost an immense amount of its most beautiful architectural ornament... and if universal and thoroughgoing laws are not applied to stop this process, so we shall be in a short time uncomfortably naked and bare as a new colony in a previously uninhabited land."30 This report inspired the appointment of "Protection Committees" (Schutzdeputationen), empowered to make indexes of the monuments in several Prussian provinces and cities. The process of inventorization began. In 1832 Georg Landau, librarian and scientist in Kassel, began to publish several volumes describing Hessian castles. The Marburg architect Wilhelm Lotz's two volume Topography of German Art appeared in 1862-63, and he compiled the first systematic index of works of art for the state of Hesse-Kassel in 1870. Perhaps the most comprehensive undertaking was Georg Dehio's series of "Handbooks of German Artistic Monuments," begun 1900. Scholars rarely could afford to purchase, much less protect or rebuild structures, but in a rare case, one did just that. In the 1830s the grand duke of Hesse's employee Gustav Habel, a cofounder of the aforementioned Association for Archeology, tried to preserve Rhenish castles such as Deuernberg (Maus) and Reichenberg by leasing them and then reselling them to sympathetic owners. He purchased Gutenfels for himself. In Prussia in 1852, August Reichensperger, a Rhenish Catholic politician, suggested a statewide inventory to the Prussian House of Commons. At least in Reichensperger's own province, the need was met in

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1857 with the publication of Artistic Monuments of the Christian Middle Ages in the Rhineland, by Ernst aus'm Werth (1829-1909). For Koblenz, Paul Lehfeldt compiled an inventory for the city and district in 1886. In the 1890s a special committee for "Monument Statistics" (DenkmalerStatistik) for the Rhineland included Paul Clemen (1844-47), art history professor in Diisseldorf and Bonn. Clemen, who in 1893 became the Rhineland's first provincial conservation officer (Konservator), inventoried all the province's treasures, travelling widely, pedalling on bicycle from village to village. The first of twenty volumes appeared in 1891; the last, in 1937.31 Inevitably, confusion and debate prevailed over the definition of a "monument." Lacking were fundamental standards and theories needed for useful research. Moreover, it was asked, if a building was not on a list, should Germans assume that it had no value and could be demolished? The number of German buildings possibly deserving inclusion on an inventory was nearly astronomical. Counting castles alone, over 3,500 were found.32 Such questions agitated scholars and laymen alike as the twentieth century began. Nevertheless, the modern architectural conservation movement had begun. Ruined castles would receive special attention from the new generation of architectural conservationists, thanks to changing attitudes and with the help of inventories.

Writing the History of German Castles Although they broadcast the appeal of moss-covered ruins and gloomy castellated battlements, most poets and artists did not encourage a precise study of medieval architecture. Neither, although they could hire talented architects, did the princes or nouveaux riches. Visitors to "restored" castles in the 1840s, although often avid readers, did not differentiate between scientific history and novels.33 To a well-read traveller who climbed up the winding road to Stolzenfels, the rebuilt castle was simply a medieval castle. Soon not only indexes but also histories of Germany's extant or ruined castles were compiled. Christian Ludwig Stieglitz (1756-1836) produced the first history of medieval German architecture in 1820. Sulpiz Boisseree, who published engravings of the Cologne Cathedral in 1823, as well as August Reichensperger and Georg Moller, were part of this movement. Frederick Gottschalck's Knightly Castles and Palaces of Germany (1815-35) drew attention to the castles on the Middle Rhine.

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine / 85 The level of interest rose around mid-century. In 1844, for example, G.H. Krieg von Hochfelden (1798-1860) published his work on the fortifications and chapel of the Saalhof at Frankfurt am Main. The castle of Munzenberg and that of Pfalz Gelnhausen were studied by Georg Moller and Ernst Gladbach in their Monuments of German Architecture (1851). Von Cohausen wrote on the Emperor Charlemagne's palace in Ingelheim (near Bingen) in 1852.34 Major Theodor Scheppe (1820-1906) published works on the castles of several German states including those on the Rhine. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a more sophisticated Europe-wide appreciation of the medieval castle developed. Gradually scholars began to develop a more precise understanding of the appearance, construction and use of castles. Wanting to study ruins' history closely, they resisted "restoration" which might damage the evidence of life and building practices which the ruins' stones might offer. Around 1905, for example, Heinrich von Behr painstakingly made plans of the ruined Burg Rheinfels. Encyclopedic works on castles appeared, notably Castle Lore (Die Burgenkunde) (1895), by Otto Piper, who produced two revised editions later. Bodo Ebhardt's German Castles (1899-1908) and later his Military Architecture of Europe (1939) were also important contributions. Thanks to these individuals, Germans could better appreciate their medieval castles. Inevitably, some began to notice that the Burgenschwarmerei of the early decades of the century produced buildings which did not match the picture created by the scholars. Pseudo-ruins such as Rossel began to seem ridiculous, and, by its very existence, the reconstructed Stolzenfels seemed actually to prevent future research on the original castle on that site. Thus by the 1890s it was necessary to approach ruined or intact castles with much greater care, and castle rebuilders were encouraged simply to desist.

European Architectural Conservation Paralleling the growth of the historical and archeological sciences went a concern to preserve valuable historic buildings, especially if they had some national significance. French revolutionaries had declared "national antiquities" to be public property and had passed laws for the protection of works of art which also led later to the compiling of inventories. In 1830 the French government created the post of Inspector General of Monuments and in 1837 the Commission for Historic Monuments. Also in France, a law was passed in 1887 to protect monuments and works of art having historic and artistic interest. Italy passed a similar law in 1902. At the other end of

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Europe, King Otto of Greece in 1834 produced a thoroughgoing decree on heritage conservation, a law which included detailed, practical regulations.35 By about 1850, therefore, old churches, palaces, castles, and even ruins were increasingly regarded as objects of cultural value by Europeans. Like fine paintings, they were seen as valuable in their own right, to be treasured, cared for, studied, and interpreted. If they had national significance, the impulse to save them from decay was all the greater.

Early German Architectural Conservation Thoughtful Germans shared in this widespread concern. By 1841, disturbed over the decay of the archbishop's castle in Andernach, Alois Schreiber wrote that "it seems part of our duty to preserve the noteworthy remains of antiquity."36 Unfortunately local governments often proved too poor to save endangered buildings. In 1829 the civic authorities in Mainz appealed for assistance in repairing the city's cathedral which had been looted by French troops. While they stressed the need to revere religious and artistic monuments of the fatherland's history, they could not afford the expense involved. The first German laws to preserve historic architecture were those of state governments. The grand duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, whose 1818 ordinance required inventorization of the most important architectural monuments in his principality, made recommendations for preservation and maintenance of historical buildings, all of which he believed to be a "patriotic goal."37 Other German states followed. In Bavaria in 1826 King Ludwig I issued a decree governing the preservation of city walls and individual buildings and installed a General Inspector of Sculptural Monuments. Both the grand duke and the king, of course, saw a didactic purpose in older buildings, respect for which could translate into respect for the political status quo. After the Wars of Liberation Prussia also took steps, some of which ultimately affected its Rhenish province. In 1815 a royal order required an application to the authorities when changes in public buildings and monuments were planned. In 1819, another decree forbade the sale of old palace, abbey, and cloister buildings which had become state property after the secularization. In 1817 the Rhenish government itself created a fund to preserve and repair structures such as St. Castor in Koblenz, and the "Royal Throne" at Rhens. The influence of Schinkel was apparent. By the 1820s the royal family became involved when the nephew of the Prussian king, Prince "Fritz Louis," began to worry about the state of

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Drachenfels. His concern and that of the crown prince inspired in 1830 a royal decree which sought to protect city walls, gates, and towers from demolition. Other decrees between the 1820s and 1850s outlined, for example, the duty of public authorities to preserve old art objects and buildings, to control the sale of art objects to private persons, and to maintain city fortifications and castle ruins which fell into state hands. In 1835 the Ministry of Education, Culture and Religion received a mandate to preserve architectural monuments. In 1794 Prussia had begun the reconstruction of the Marienburg fortress, but this proceeded slowly (Appendix Two). As for the aforementioned preservation regulations, these were not always applied in practice. Despite the influence of the crown prince and Schinkel, King Frederick William III had neither an appreciation of the issue nor the will to acquire it. Funds were often lacking, for in these pre-Industrial Revolution decades Prussia, like the other German states, was still a relatively poor kingdom. Thus heritage conservation here, including the Rhine province, was a piecemeal affair. Nevertheless in 1843, Frederick William IV established the position of "Conservation Officer (Konservator) for Prussian Monuments," filled first by Ferdinand von Quast, an architect and art historian. Quast was a conservative who typically saw architectural restoration as a way to buttress absolute monarchy. Medieval monuments revealed to him the original unity of people and ruler, who must resist the present democratic madness. The new Konservator condemned the "revolutionary hatred," "anarchistic ideas," and "obstinate materialism" which had recently made people "unhappy with the station in which God had placed them" and which made them "trample underfoot everything traditional (alles vorangebende)"™ This attitude mirrored Frederick William IV's own views. Despite their constructive decrees the Hohenzollerns did as much to damage as to preserve castle ruins. The reconstruction of Stolzenfels, Rheinstein and Sooneck did not preserve the medieval substance of the old castles, but concealed or even wrecked it. Furthermore the princes took a casual attitude to precise replication of the original, as at Stolzenfels, where only a vaguely medieval impression was desired, and stylistic elements were used which were rarely found in the Middle Rhine. Modern building technology and materials were used freely and in exposed places. Moreover this Denkmalpflege was motivated as much by political motives as by historical or artistic ones. Towards 1900, when the coffers of state and national governments were full and both scholarly and public interest was high, a plethora of

88 I Castles of the Rhine German legislation protecting architectural monuments ensued. In Prussia earlier city ordinances were reinforced and expanded. Laws were passed to protect the physical landscape and to prevent the disfigurement of neighbourhoods. After 1891 each of the Prussian provinces was to have a commission (as well as a Conservation Officer) dedicated to research on and preservation of monuments. In 1899 the Rhineland government set aside special funds for heritage conservation. Most were dedicated to the restoration of churches, but some went for castles. Elsewhere in Germany, the Bavarian authorities, for example, expanded their city ordinances in 1901 and 1904 to cover the preservation of streetscapes and the appearance of towns. Hesse-Darmstadt developed a thoroughgoing law to protect historic architecture in 1902, legislation which became a model for other German provinces. Although Prussia had created several regulations and institutions, Germany's largest state did not have a law specifying protective measures.39 Only the catastrophe of war made the Prussian authorities act. Following the 1918 political and military collapse, the dismantling of Koblenz's fortresses and the threat to Ehrenbreitstein, laws were finally passed effectively to protect Prussia's historic buildings, including castles. As well, the Weimar Republic authorities created the Administration of State Palaces and Gardens, which controlled Stolzenfels and Sooneck. Nevertheless, public opinion was now even more alert to insensitive or inappropriate treatment of castle sites. Indeed, some Germans even resisted the notion of reconstruction of any kind.

The New Vigilance Around the middle of the century, two opposing attitudes to the treatment of historic architecture developed. In England John Ruskin maintained that restoration could mean total destruction. "Restoration . . . is a Lie from beginning to end," he wrote in 1849.40 William Morris, English artist and poet, agreed, suggesting that older buildings should never be touched by restoration or "completion" of any kind. In fact, older buildings should be allowed to show their signs of age. Around 1900 these views began to influence Germany. Before this occurred, however, the work of a French architect, Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-79) tended to have the opposite effect. Viollet-le-Duc, who produced a very influential ten-volume work, Dictionnaire raisonne de I'architecture frangais du Xle au XVIe siecle, 1858-68, restored the fortifications of the city of Carcassonne (1852-79).

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To his credit he was probably the first practising architect to enunciate principles for the maintenance of old buildings. Alterations in historic structures over time, he maintained, had been made precisely in order to help them to survive. Many of these changes are themselves of value and may be retained. To this extent he agreed with Morris, believing as well that the traces of damage and weathering on an old church or even a ruin must be respected. Yet Viollet-le-Duc was practical, always wanting to find a use for older buildings and not excluding the application of modern materials, such as iron. What he achieved in practice, however, is problematical. His work at Carcassonne, for example, today elicits mixed reactions since he tried to create an ideal structure which may never have existed at any particular time.41 This unfortunate effort to reconstruct precisely an older building to a semblance of its "original" appearance influenced Ebhardt's work at Marksburg, but, more constructively, so too did his concern for exact knowledge and painstaking procedures. At all events, on the Middle Rhine tension between some scholars and certain architects and patrons developed, especially at Burg Katz. After the intense and varied efforts of the 1820s through the 1860s, active reconstruction or restoration of the Rhenish castles waned in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Germans were overwhelmed by three great events: the industrial revolution which took off in the 1850s, the Prussian unification of the German states (1864-71), and a hectic prosperity until the end of the 1870s. Just as in the era following the Napoleonic wars, the very rapid pace of change itself stimulated a concern for the rapidly evolving human environment—and an interest in heritage conservation. Significantly, the term Denkmalpflege, literally "the care of monuments," came into usage after about 1880. Needless to say, at this time the Rhenish castles, ruined or not, were still endangered. In 1898, expressing the new attitude, Bodo Ebhardt lamented the predominance of "neglect, wilful, shockingly tasteless reconstructions [Ausbattten], disfigurement by the building of taverns of the worst kind, misconceived and aimless preservation efforts, ruthless road construction."42 But by 1900 even Ebhardt's method of treating castles (i.e., restoration or even reconstruction) was now beginning in the eyes of some observers, to seem out of date! In the first two thirds of the century, it had been acceptable not only to clean up older structures, but also to try to "complete" or rebuild them, according to real or putative original plans. Cologne Cathedral was a good example of "completion" (1842-1880) carried out in the spirit of Viollet-le-Duc. In the same spirit

90 I Castles of the Rhine German architects such as Ebhardt were concerned to be scrupulously accurate in their reconstructions; but by the end of the century the anti-"completion" views of Ruskin and Morris were begining to influence German attitudes. Increasingly around 1900 books and articles, such as those of Otto Piper, expressed alarm at inaccurate "restorations" of castles. It is as impossible to restore a medieval building, wrote the Austrian Max Dvorak (1874-1921), as it is to resurrect a medieval man from his grave.43 As these "hands-off" notions took root, more educated people demanded that any alteration to a ruined castle be justified in terms of historical accuracy. Private associations and institutions were formed, often including architecture in their purview. In the Rhineland the Society for Rhenish History was founded in 1881 which, like other groups, began to worry about dangers to Germany's architectural heritage. In 1898 the United League of German Historical and Antiquarian Associations (Gesamtverein der deutschen Geschichts- und Altertumsvereine) established a special commission for heritage conservation, and in 1899 they founded a periodical, Denkmalpflege. This, the most ambitious German journal devoted to heritage conservation, aimed to alert its readers to dangers to monuments of all kinds.44 In 1900, when the United League held its annual conference at Strasbourg, they discussed, among other things, the need to protect older architecture.45 The number of participants at these meetings continually increased from 92 in 1900 to 500 in 1909,46 and the debates were lively. With the Heimat movement fully under way, there were calls now to preserve, not only important buildings, but whole townscapes as well. In the Rhineland, the mayor of Diisseldorf expressed this concern in 1902. Ernst Rudorff founded the League for Protection of the Heimat (Heimatsckutz) in 1904. Its journal, Heimatschutz, began publication in 1905. Paul Schultze-Naumburg's Kttlturarbeiten ("Cultural Projects")47 took special interest in the visual aspects of the built environment. Both Heimatschutz and Schultze-Naumburg's works became increasingly nationalist in tone, but they inspired useful protective measures. In 1922, for example, the whole Seven Mountains district was placed under protection. The most active and influential castle preservation group, the Association for the Preservation of German Castles (Vereinigung zur Erbaltung deutscher Burgeri) was founded by Bodo Ebhardt in Berlin in 1899. Their mission was to publish a journal on castles and to hold public lectures on castle lore. The first annual meeting was held in 1901 at Marksburg. Mem-

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine I 91 bership grew slowly and steadily from a total of 30 in 1899 to 472 in 1902 and 683 in 1905.48 "Castle Field Trips" (Burgfahrten) were—and still are— made annually. In their first years they chose to visit, significantly, the Rhenish and Mosel castles.49 Through donations and publicity they supported the preservation of castles such as Rauenstein in Thuringia and Reichenbach in Hesse, both of these in the first few years of the century.50 Concerned mainly with castles in the German Reich they were also interested in structures with German connections, such as the Italian castles of the medieval Emperor Frederick II (reigned 1220-50).51 Their journal was The Castellan: Journal for Castle Lore and Medieval Fortification Systems, published in Berlin with Ebhardt as its first editor.52 After 1933 the Association's archive was located at Marksburg, where it is still housed. In 1906 the Rhenish Association for Heritage Conservation and Heimat Protection (Verein fitr Denkmalpflege and Heimatschutz) was founded in Cologne. One of their founding members, Paul Clemen, Rhenish Conservation Officer, edited their journal. Their nearly 800 members aimed to educate young people in the necessity of national heritage preservation. To this end, in 1908 the Association purchased Burg Stahleck above Bacharach, which was rebuilt as a youth hostel. In Bacharach they also helped to preserve half-timbered houses and medieval walls. Near this town, they saved the ruins of Stahlberg and those of Virneburg, west of Koblenz. Neither was rebuilt, but preserved as ruins. Reconstruction and restoration (Restauration, or Wiederherstellung) were now both under fire.53 The most famous of the architects dealing with ruined castles, Bodo Ebhardt, received increasing criticism, yet even he condemned the early nineteenth-century restorations such as Stolzenfels. He stressed that great care, study, and preparation was needed before changes were made to castles. But his comment (in 1899) that a romantic ruin covered with moss and ivy should not be preserved as such simply because it was nostalgically beautiful, suggested his tendency to try to recreate an ideal image.54

"Konservieren, nicht restaurieren" As early as 1878, when the German Architectural News (Deutsche Bauzeitung) encouraged the "most careful preservation of traces of age" in older buildings,55 efforts to return structures to an appearance of stylistic purity were already beginning to be considered foolish, as were the inaccurate reconstructions of the romantic age. By the end of the nineteenth century, progressive architects and art historians had begun to

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demand higher standards of architectural preservation. In 1895 Paul Clemen audaciously criticized the various castle reconstruction plans approved by the Emperor William II.56 In 1899 an article in the semiofficial Denkmalpflege regretted that, in the "restoration" of the Maxburg, near Hambach, the old Palas "fell victim" to the new owner's rebuilding.57 The ruthless cleaning out of rubble and installation of gardens in ruins, such as had been done at Burg Nassau, was condemned in 1907 by the historian Ferdinand Luthmer because it destroyed clues about the history and structure of the building.58 On their voyage past the "restored" Heimburg at Niederheimbach in 1909, members of the Castle Association were divided as to the merits of such reconstructions.59 A heated scholarly debate developed over such matters as the Roman origin of certain castles and over methods of dating structures. Rivalries flourished and invective flew, as academics and experts defended their theories with the "fighting spirit of knights."60 Otto Piper argued for the "careful preservation of whatever has survived." The so-called "restoration" movement, he wrote, had led to the "peacetime destruction of numerous castles."61 Piper's landmark research in his Castle Lore (1895) occasioned passionate debates. We do not know enough about the appearance of medieval castles, he wrote, and therefore, not one of the castles "restored" since 1800 at all resembles the original.62 The first edition of this path-breaking but idiosyncratic book called forth both dedicated supporters and ferocious detractors.63 Some experts, like Ebhardt, continued to believe that, if the original appearance of a building was known through written or graphic documents, as in the case of Marksburg, then it could be reconstructed to that model. In practice, however—especially when he worked for powerful patrons—he also favoured reconstructing castles in the spirit of what the original, such as Hohkonigsburg (see Appendix Three), might have looked like. Other experts, such as Georg Dehio, increasingly in the ascendance, believed simply in preserving what remained, leaving even a ruin totally unchanged, save for measures to prevent further decay. He was supported by Paul Clemen and other art historians such as Cornelius Gurlitt and Max Dvorak, and architects such as Hermann Muthesius and Theodor Fischer. For Dehio, whose "Handbooks of German Artistic Monuments" (published 1902-12) were popular guides, what mattered was the unchanged original building or ruin itself. No reconstruction should be applied to the substance of a structure. His views first received attention in a 1901 pamphlet in which he condemned the planned reconstruction of part of the Heidelberg palace.64 Dehio charged that neither

Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine I 93 the surviving architectural substance nor the documentary evidence could justify the plans for rebuilding. Only protective and conserving measures should be applied to the ruin. Under Ruskin's influence he believed that earlier architects, in reconstructing older buildings, had practised the "vandalism of restoration."65 Decisions on the treatment of heritage monuments should be in the hands of art historians, who understood the value of historic structures and had "respect for the past."66 An old building should look old, "with all the traces of its history .. . wrinkles, cracks, and scars."67 In a 1905 address at Strasbourg University, Dehio even went so far as to imply that governments might have to impose limits on the right of owners to alter the appearance of buildings, a notion which is still widely unacceptable in North America today.68 The people, he said, must act to assure the preservation of their heritage through both private associations and through their elected representatives. The public schools must teach children an appreciation of the value of historic architecture.69 If Dehio's slightly statist bent was unusual in an art historian of the period, the outlook of Alois Riegl (1858-1905) was esthetically radical.70 He maintained that older buildings have "the value of age itself" (Alterswert) and that their gradual decay was to be expected and not inhibited. In The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Nature and Origins (1903), Riegl maintained that twentieth-century Europeans sensed the need for these reminders and, although ancient buildings might be valuable for other reasons, too, their Alterswert was of greatest use. Ruined castles are the best example of this because they reveal "the natural process of becoming and decaying, the emergence of the individual out of the universal, and its inevitable gradual dissolution in the universal."71 Viewing the collapse and decay of human creations was a salutary experience, having a calming, possibly redemptive effect on the viewer. Riegl condemned not only restoration work but also conservation and preservation efforts because all were unjustifiable interventions in a natural process of decay. He therefore disagreed with Dehio's insistence on the historical value of a preserved older structure. It did not trouble him that, as he admitted, "the uncontrolled activity of natural forces must lead eventually to the destruction of the monument."72 Although Riegl's theory of Alterswert echoed the views of some early romantics, it has not found widespread acceptance. His great service was to show heritage conservationists that flaws in older buildings or intact unchanged ruins might have a useful, philosophical-religious meaning for modern people. For this study's purposes, Riegl's views reveal how much

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had changed in Germans' approach to their heritage architecture since the Prussian princes began their reconstructions eighty years earlier. Dehio and Riegl's approach to ruins diverged, and both disagreed with Ebhardt. A sensible compromise was urged by the Austrian Max Dvorak who, unlike Riegl, urged that cracks be filled in, leaning walls be buttressed, ceilings about to collapse be bolstered, and vegetation which threatens to undermine walls be removed. Nevertheless he also insisted that "with ruins, care must be taken that absolutely nothing is destroyed upon which the special charm of the ruin rests." This could include preserving ivy, trees, and bushes which contributed to the picturesque appearance of a ruin in a landscape.73 In their differing ways Piper, Dehio, Riegl, and Dvorak were early and representative examples of the new attitude to historic architecture. They also helped to define the approach to heritage conservation in Germany and Europe for the next century. Thanks to them many among the educated public came to believe that only a relatively untouched monument can accurately communicate past reality. These scholars did not usually idealize the Holy Roman Empire. Although not devoid of a concern for the national community, their attempt to recreate the middle ages was less a product of political motives than a reflection of a desire to imaginatively re-enter a bygone age in order to understand it. The new approach to historic architecture engendered its own problems. How can a monument be defined? What can be done about threatened buildings which are in private hands? How can preservation be financed? These are problems which still concern preservationists today but which lie outside the scope of this book. Moreover, almost as soon as these issues were raised, Germans were distracted by wars, civil disorder, social and economic chaos. Several turbulent decades passed—and much destruction of priceless architecture occurred—before they could return to to the task of evaluating and sensibly preserving their medieval castles. Not until after the Second World War, therefore, did the preservationist attitude prevail. Although the restorationist mentality is still occasionally at work, most architects, architectural historians and concerned lay people would agree with a recent writer that "a castle or castle ruin is an historic document and an archeological monument."74 Trying to recreate the way it might or should have looked can destroy its valuable architectural substance and prevent future scholars from gaining insight from it into past realities. In fact, those who would protect castle ruins should "leave some secrets untouched."75

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In these introductory chapters, we have seen how the Rhineland played a crucial role in the political and economic history of Germany in the nineteenth century. At the same time, castle ruins everywhere, but especially on the Middle Rhine, became the objects of a romantic and nationalistic cult. We have explained how the medieval fortresses experienced this strange metamorphosis through decline and ruinous obscurity to an "afterlife" wherein tourism and other political and social developments made them again important elements in the Rhenish landscape and economy. We have also noted the role of scholars in their renewed prominence as ruins or reconstructions. Now it is appropriate to consider specific examples of German Burgenschwdrmerei (castle enthusiasm) on the Middle Rhine.

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PART Two VINDICATING THE OLD REGIME

FOUR

THE HOLY ALLIANCE IN STONE [The Rhine ... ] checked not at the battled pride, Where Ehrenbreitstein walled his side ... The morning came and rosy light Blushed on the bastions and the height, Where traitor never stood.1

G

iven the rebuilt fortress' military purpose, the pink haze with which the young John Ruskin surrounded the rebuilt Burg Ehrenbreitstein

was inappropriate. His clumsy 1833 description, however, exhibited the continuing hold which romanticism had on Europeans. To be fair, he may not have known that the modern Prussian stronghold was built as a response to a potential military threat from France and to possible subversion from within the Hohenzollerns' new Rhenish province. In this chapter, we consider how such matters of state security, combined with conservatism, inspired castle reconstruction. Having annexed the Rhineland and become the western German states' guardian in 1815, Prussia sought to fortify the new province. Thus the ruined Ehrenbreitstein at the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel Rivers was reconstructed. Soon, too, the city of Koblenz, just across the Rhine, was surrounded by several new smaller fortresses. If the history of the original Ehrenbreitstein is similar to that of the other medieval castles of the Middle Rhine, its reconstruction is notably different from other, later, reconstructions, for Prussia rebuilt the fortress as a modern functional citadel at a strategic point in the kingdom's defence system. (Other Notes to Chapter Four are on pp. 347-49. 98

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rebuilt castles had little military function.) Moreover, although Ehrenbreitstein was the first Middle Rhenish ruin to be rebuilt, no Prussian seems to have thought of reconstituting here a medieval castle or of preserving an old ruin. Here a sober Staatsrdson (reason of state) prevailed. Ehrenbreitstein was designed not only to deter French invasion, but also to establish local respect for the new government. In particular the citizens of Koblenz, some of whom had flirted with French democratic ideas, should recognize the futility of dreams of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." General Philipp von Wussow (1793-1870), who helped design Ehrenbreitstein, advised his king that the common people in the Rhineland did not yet acknowledge "the high position of Prussia's king among the European Great Powers"; nor did they exhibit enough "love and respect for the ruling house."2 A study of Ehrenbreitstein is a good introduction to the theme of castle reconstruction since the history of the original Burg summarizes the hard-headed purposes of medieval castle-builders. The sieges of the first Ehrenbreitstein and the role of the French in its demise are typical of the history of many other Rhenish castles, and were the cause of the antiFrench attitude which accompanied the rebuilding program. The new Ehrenbreitstein shows Prussia's military power and, in its fear of French aggression, Prussia's concern to fortify a strategic spot on the Rhine. Building this and nearby fortresses also gave the military engineers the experience which was later put to use in rebuilding the castles Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, and Sooneck.

The First Ehrenbreitstein The history of the original Ehrenbreitstein reveals the strategic importance of the Middle Rhine and is a chronicle of a sprawling multipurpose castle becoming a unified fortress. Its medieval builders were ambitious men of war with no concerns for the beauty of the landscape, the charm of old architecture or the unity and glory of Germany. Their continual rebuilding of this castle shows their insecurity in a political geography of hundreds of tiny competing principalities. The French played a role here, too, attacking, besieging, and ultimately razing the structure. The Romans had probably built an observation tower or similar outpost here to safeguard Koblenz at the rivers' junction. From this vantage point the town could easily be watched over from the rock 118 metres above the water. So too could commercial and military traffic on both rivers. About 1020 Trier's Archbishop built a castle here to guard his

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Fig. 10. Burg Ehrenbreitstein in 1636: During the Thirty Years' War, the sprawling fortress, bristling with occupying French soldiers, shows some signs of war damage. On the river bank is the Archbishop of Trier's palace. Note the bustling river commerce. Courtesy of Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, Chatsworth, Bakewell, Derbyshire.

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Fig 11. From Koblenz, Burg Ehrenbreitstein in 1991: No picturesque spires or romantic towers characterize the modern (1832) fortress. The buildings of the "Lower East Front," at present a youth hostel, and, behind, those of the "Palace Courtyard" are prominent; at the riverside, the Philippsburg. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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lands' eastern border (Fig. 2). A twelfth-century archbishop extended the fortifications with a great five-cornered tower and a small castle, Helfenstein, on a hill south of the main castle. Around 1300 most of the castle became the property of a robber baron who enraged Koblenz's burghers, who then tried him and convicted him of assault. Later, with Trier again in control, the fortifications were improved considerably. Archbishop Richard von Greifenklau (1511-31) added improvements such as a deep moat and higher walls. By this time the castle consisted of many separate buildings, including some manor houses, administration buildings, a prison, barracks, vaults, and cellars, sheltering behind thick square towers and rambling walls. The first Ehrenbreitstein, therefore, was a mighty fortress the strategic position of which was acknowledged by all its owners. As such it was constantly improved until it bristled with fortifications and armament. The cartographer Sebastian Mimster (1489-1552), in his Cosmographia of 1544, shows a complex fortress with a high keep dominating the river and the walled city of Koblenz. An ink drawing by Wenzel Hollar (1607-77) shows even more clearly Ehrenbreitstein's powerful battlements lined with soldiers ready to defend it (Fig. 10). After gunpowder was introduced to Europe in the fourteenth century masonry works, earth ramparts, and the digging of fortifications below ground level became necessary. Outlying walls with deeper ditches had to be built. Towers with bulwarks protruding into the ditch became useful. Ehrenbreitstein's owners built massive ramparts with moats on the castle's northeast perimeter, facing the eastern plateau and valley, from which attack was most likely to come. In this way Ehrenbreitstein became the strongest fortress of the Archbishopric of Trier. Eventually, however, following the practice of the secular nobility who were losing faith in the viability of castles, Archbishop Philipp von Soetern built an imposing residence on the river bank at the foot of the hill: Philippsburg, built between 1626 and 1629, was designed to control the river traffic as well as the fortress' access road and also to reflect the archbishop's power. Despite Ehrenbreitstein's impregnable appearance, the French were able to seize and occupy it in 1632, following which the German Imperial army besieged it until the French surrendered in 1637. The Trier archbishops again took over and damage was repaired. A wall was built around the town of Ehrenbreitstein itself as well as a wide roadway up to the fortress. In 1688 the French again besieged the fortress, but this time without success. Again, the damage was repaired and further improvements made, mainly by Archbishop Franz Georg von Schonborn (1729-56). On the

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riverbank, the great architect Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753) expanded the elector's Philippsburg with an administration building (1739-49) as well as stables, a barn, and a gate house. In his pioneering travel book, Views of the Lower Rhine. . . (1790), Georg Forster described how he had climbed up to Ehrenbreitstein to see the beautiful view but was overwhelmed by the "horrifying impression" made by "the prisoners ... as they rattled their chains and stuck spoons through the smoky bars of their windows, begging charity from the sympathies of the passersby."3 Forster's comment recalls the practical, if unpleasant, uses to which the medieval castle was put during and after its heyday. After 1794 the French Army of the Revolution besieged Ehrenbreitstein until 1799, when the fortress' starving soldiers capitulated for the last time. In 1801 the French blew up the castle, demolishing the Philippsburg as well. After the Peace of Luneville, however, they abandoned the east bank of the Rhine. Later, when the east bank became part of a French puppet state, the Confederation of the Rhine (1806-12), the Emperor Napoleon considered rebuilding the castle, but got only as far as surveying the site. The duke of Nassau took over the ruined site until 1815 when Prussia acquired it and made of it one of the greatest fortresses of contemporary Europe.

Festung Friedrich Wilhelm Construction of the new fortress, known formally as Fort Frederick William (after King Frederick William III of Prussia),4 was directed by Major General Ernst Ludwig von Aster (1778-1855) who faced a daunting assignment. Contemporary accounts such as that of Johanna Schopenhauer in 1818, called the surviving ruin "colossal,"5 and paintings of the time show a massive complex of wrecked walls and towers covering the entire top of the mountain. General Aster needed 4,500 workers and craftsmen to clear the site and to start the project. Construction began in 1817 and ultimately cost twenty-four million gold marks (about 600 million modern Deutschmark). The builders sought to reduce costs by "recycling" parts of the ruined Burg Rheinfels, the merchant owner of which sold to the Prussians pre-cut stone cornices, steps, door and window frames to incorporate into their project. Few people as yet saw this act as a pillaging of the national heritage. The foundations of the new Ehrenbreitstein rose on a plan similar to those of the older fortress. (A remnant of the former chancery, in fact,

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still stands in the main courtyard facing the Rhine.) The basic inspiration was that of a Baroque fortress, adapted to Prussian traditions which involved, for example, constructing brick casemates instead of earth embankments. As with the original castle the batteries of the new fortress face mainly to the northeast. Over 300 heavy cannon were mounted on the walls which consist of a complex system of ditches and bastions. These walls are very thick; the outer ones, up to 3.5 metres (over eleven feet), and those inside the casemates, 1.5 metres (five feet); the ceilings are often one metre thick. To protect the fortress from incendiary fire and to prevent rain seepage, the casemates were covered with a layer of clay on top of which sods were laid. The Rhine side of the fort is open, protected by a high cliff, and consists partly of a large three-sided courtyard. Here the Land and Rhine Bastions have almost palace-like facades. Also on the courtyard, the "Eastern Face" has a projecting, two storeyed pillared portico. Today although a lush carpet of grass and flowers grows incongruously from its quiet rooftops, Ehrenbreitstein is no romantic idyll, for it has no medieval crenellations, towers, or pointed roofs. Its style is not Gothic or Romanesque, but classical, with Roman elements in the pattern of bricks or tiles and about the gateways and doors. A Roman aqueduct could have been the model for the three-storey curtain wall of long rows of arches, which links two bastions on the north side. Ehrenbreitstein is not, however, an elegant structure. Its massive cubic shapes are arranged in simple heavy tiers around the promontory. Horizontal joints stress the ground-hugging nature of the fort. Sturdy roof cornices and broad protruding pilaster-strips define most of the buildings. Yet despite the heavy, potentially threatening nature of the structure, the contrast between the rubble stone, red sandstone, bricks, and plastered surfaces is pleasing. The carefully crafted ashlar blocks at corners catch the eye and the bright ochre plaster enlivens gates and door frames. In some lights its stones are a natural orange, almost pink in colour. Although Ehrenbreitstein was rebuilt for purely military purposes, and embodied the values of the Holy Alliance and the Metternichian system of repression of liberal and national sentiments, it reflects the culture of the Prussian ruling classes just as much as did the later, more romantic, reconstruction of Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, and Sooneck. Generals von Aster and Johann Georg Gustav von Rauch (1774-1841), who decided on the fortress' appearance, and military architects such as Karl Schnitzler (1789-1864), belonged to an educated class who had imbibed the idealistic concepts of the Wars of Liberation. In the years 1813-15 many of this

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class, as officers or as volunteers who flocked to support Prussia, saw themselves as leading a national uprising against the tyrannical French. They felt called upon to defend German freedoms and traditions including intellectual and cultural self-development or Bildung, which entailed a knowledge of the arts.6 Thus the appearance of Ehrenbreitstein itself reflects German classicist architecture of the period 1770-1830. An appearance of simplicity, strength, sobriety, and dignity was highly valued, but that did not exclude adding decorative touches of rusticated stone around portals. The result was what a recent German study of Ehrenbreitstein calls "a symbiosis of art and science."7 Nevertheless a large plaque on a fountain near the parapet overlooking the Rhine recalls the purpose of the fortress. It reads, "Built by Archbishop Hilinius around MCLX [1160], destroyed by the enemy in MDCCCI [1801], Ehrenbreitstein was rebuilt stronger than before by Frederick William III during the years of MDCCCXVII [1817] and MDCCCXXVIII [1828]." Symbols elsewhere also remind us of the fortress' function. A black Prussian eagle in cast iron with crown, orb, and sceptre can be seen surmounting gates, such as the main entrance through the curtain wall at the main courtyard. The fortress continued to be associated with Prusso-German power, and became a national military monument when a memorial to soldiers of the Koblenz regiments killed in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 was set up below the Pfaffendorf heights to the south near the associated Fort Asterstein.

Romantics Encounter the Fortress Other than the fine view from its site, Ehrenbreitstein was not especially interesting to eighteenth-century minds such as Georg Forster's. In 1790 William Beckford thought that the fortress "seems to be remarkable for nothing but its situation."8 Soon, however, the fortress became a popular landmark. Its location, if not its appearance, attracted many artists and later hordes of tourists. From its ramparts, the view encompasses the Neuwied basin of the Rhine, and the river valley from Stolzenfels in the south to Andernach in the north, with the volcanic hills of the Eiffel as a background; the entire city of Koblenz, moreover, lies below, while the Mosel River curves away to the west. The fortress itself, however, lacked the romantic ambience which the nineteenth century preferred. When the artist Carus visited it in 1835, everything looked "spanking new. ... How sharply a battalion of Prussian grenadiers were drilling, how painfully per-

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feet the officers' inspection of uniforms—it was the sharpest contrast to the free romantic life with which two days before I had been blessed!"9 English tourists, drawn to the Rhine for its romantic vistas of shattered walls and ruined towers, visited Ehrenbreitstein, but most were not impressed by the new businesslike fortress which was not yet overgrown with greenery and had no landmark tower. "Ehrenbreitstein utterly disappointed me ..." wrote the English socialist Charles Kingsley in 1851; "the lying painters paint it just three times as high as it is, and I was quite shocked to find it so small."10 Nevertheless many, like Dorothy Wordsworth, "ascended to the highest part of the fortifications," to admire the "magnificent view"11 of the two rivers, the city and the hills in the distance. From across the river in Koblenz, the stunning sight of Ehrenbreitstein drew many artists whose renderings "lied." Despite its lack of a medieval cachet, the conjunction of rivers, the city, and the picturesque floating bridge linking it with Pfaffendorf near the foot of the castle's hill, made Ehrenbreitstein the most painted and sketched castle on the Middle Rhine. The Western world was flooded with oils, watercolours, engravings, and woodcuts of the fortress. Typically, however—as Kingsley noted—the height of the cliffs on which it stood was usually exaggerated and the harsh military reality of the fortress was often veiled in a romantic mist. In the confrontation between dreamy and inaccurate romanticism and military realism, soldierly truth lost. For example, James Webb (1825-95) showed the new fortress in a romantic golden haze; George Clarkson Stanfield distorted the height of the hill but presented realistically the cool yellow green of its spring vegetation and the pale cream of the castle's walls. Nevertheless, whatever their accuracy, such images drew the attention of Germans to "their" Rhine and its increasingly symbolic castles.

The Koblenz Fortresses Because the completed Ehrenbreitstein alone was not considered strong enough to withstand another French onslaught, the entire junction of the Rhine and the Mosel was thoroughly fortified. A simple list of the fortified structures around Koblenz is an indication of the Prussian government's determination to stay on the Rhine and to dominate the Rhineland. The Pfaffendorf Heights to the south were "fortified with as much care and expense," said the popular tour guide Murray, "as the citadel itself."12 Here were built Fort Asterstein (a two-storey, threequarter-round redoubt) and Fort Rheinhell, the latter enlarged between

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1864 and 1868, as well as two other redoubts, Arzheim and Bienhorn, and the Glockenberg works. Later the approaches to the railway bridge at Horchheim, and prominences on the north side of the fortress, the Nollenkopf (Fort Rheineck) and the Pleitenberg were fortified as well. The city of Koblenz itself became a fortress with a large permanent garrison. General von Aster supervised the construction of massive gates in its huge new walls. The Mainz Gate, for example, consisted of great round-arched passages in a vaguely Roman style, flanked by two round bastions. The passage was decorated with diamond-faceted stones. A defensive wall and embankment were built along the Rhine, including a battery at the "German Corner."13 Frederick William III decreed that Koblenz was to be flanked and surveyed by other new fortresses, with extensive outworks and, with the Holy Alliance in mind, named after members of the Russian and Austrian dynasties. Fort Alexander (built 1818-22, named for the Tsar) was a quadrangle with sides 500 metres long, facing west up the valley of the Mosel, the traditional approach of the French armies. Behind a moat the main entrance was marked by the "Lion Gate," flanked by two griffons in relief (originally gilded) and the words "Built under King Frederick William III in the years 1817 to 1822" (Fig. 12). Above is a half-rounded arch with diamond-faceted squared stones, over which are corbelstones supporting a blind arcade on stuccoed walls. After Ehrenbreitstein, Fort Alexander was the largest citadel of its type in Germany at that time. A Carthusian monastery was demolished to make way for one of Alexander's outworks, Fort Constantine (built 1822-32, named for the Tsar's brother). Technically a forepost of Alexander, it stood on a hill directly overlooking the city. Fort Constantine was connected with Fort Alexander by a fifty-five-metre-long tunnel. The Alexander Redoubt, the Mosel Battery, the Hiibeling Battery, and Fort Bliicher (also called the Moselweiss Redoubt, surveying the Mosel) were all part of this complex. In addition, on the north shore of the Mosel on a hill in the suburb of Koblenz-Liitzel was the smaller Fort Francis, completed in 1823, and named after the Austrian Emperor. It was supported by the Riibenach Redoubt, the Bubenheimer Redan, the Mosel Redan, the Metternich Redoubt, the Neuendorf Redan, and the Rhine Redoubt. Thus Rhinelanders, and especially residents of Koblenz, saw constant remainders of the conservative alliance of Eastern Europe's monarchies on the skyline. Ironically, changes in military technology, especially rifled breechloaders made of cast steel, developed in the 1860s, soon rendered Ehrenbreitstein and its network of forts obsolete.

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Fig. 12. Koblenz, Fort Alexander in 1980: The once-gilded "Griffin [or Lion] Gate" surmounted by the words "Erected under King Frederick William III in the years 1817 to 1822," designed by Jakob Nebel (1782-1860) in 1819, and executed in cast iron. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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Koblenz and Ehrenbreitstein after 1900 In the long run, the new Ehrenbreitstein provided more work for artists and poets than for soldiers since it never had to hold off attacks from the French or any other enemy; nor did it ever have to subdue unruly Rhinelanders. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century the reconstructed Ehrenbreitstein nearly suffered the fate of its predecessors throughout the Middle Rhine. Its companion forts were disarmed and partially dismantled by the same French who had repeatedly ravaged the Rhineland. According to the Treaty of Versailles (1919) following the First World War, the Rhineland was to be occupied by the French, British, and Belgians for fifteen years. From 1919 to 1923 American forces were there as well, in an occupation zone which included Koblenz and the fortresses. After 1923, when the U.S. forces left, the French took over until 1930 when, thanks to the German government's successful diplomacy, all foreign troops left. There were, however, still to be no German soldiers in the Rhineland. To both victors and vanquished, the fortress was an important symbol of the German defeat by the Allies. Even the relatively unvindictive Americans were so proud of the huge Stars and Stripes which flew above Ehrenbreitstein during their occupation that they raised the same flag over the fortress in April 1945.14 Article 180/42 of the Treaty of Versailles stated that all forts to the west of a line drawn fifty kilometre east of the Rhine were to be dismantled. This would have included Ehrenbreitstein, its outworks and 120 large and 600 smaller military structures. In Koblenz in 1920 a special disarmament office was set up,15 and prolonged negotiations ensued, especially with the vengeful French. The local German military leaders shrewdly negotiated with the French and maintained good relations with the Commander-in-Chief of the American Army of Occupation, General Henry T. Allen, and the British representative at Cologne, Colonel P.B. O'Connor, and were therefore able to save the east bank fortress. The provincial Department of Heritage Conservation (Amtfiir Denkmalpflege) as well as social organizations and religious groups seeking accommodations for their work, spoke up in defence of the fortress. The International Military Control Commission, which was supposed to oversee Germany's disarmament, and Allen himself, were impressed with the historic character of the site and the architectural quality of the structure itself. For many years afterwards Rhinelanders referred to Allen as the man who "saved" Ehrenbreitstein from destruction by the French.16 But it was not "heritage" motives which preserved the fortress. Ehrenbreitstein and its flanking forts formed an inner line of defence for the bridgehead at Koblenz,

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which might have been useful to the Allies in the future. Furthermore, after the Dawes Plan came into effect in 1924, they would have had to help pay for its demolition.17 At all events, in February 1922 the commission decided not to demolish Ehrenbreitstein. Of course, eventually it was realized that all these fortresses were probably obsolete, but the French were allowed to make their point by destroying most of the smaller outworks. After the demolitions were completed in 1922, Ehrenbreitstein never saw important military activity again. German soldiers were banned from serving there. In 1928 the Reichstag decided to erect a monument to the fallen in the First World War and chose Ehrenbreitstein as the site. President Paul von Hindenburg, however, who took personal credit for the German victory in 1914 at Tannenberg in East Prussia, vetoed the Reichstag's choice and the memorial was constructed near the battle site. (In 1972 the West German Memorial to the dead was erected in Ehrenbreitstein's north ravelin.) During the Second World War a tunnel on the south side of the fortress provided shelter for thousands of people during air raids. After this second major conflict, the Americans and the French again invested Ehrenbreitstein.18 As for the forts and batteries surrounding Ehrenbreitstein, the Germans themselves had already abandoned or demolished many of them before the First World War. As the city of Koblenz grew the fortress islands were swamped in an urban sea. The city authorities petitioned the military to accommodate the growing street railway network which found the city walls an obstruction and finally between 1890 and 1899 they were demolished. Fort Alexander was given up by the army in 1903 and the Neuendorfer Redan was torn down to make room for barracks after 1910. The Mosel and Bubenheimer Redans (of Fort Francis), the Rhine Redoubt, and the Riibenacher Redoubt were abandoned in 1890, and in the following decade the Mosel Battery and the Moselweiss Redoubt (Fort Bliicher) were torn down. Although Ehrenbreitstein was spared, the Treaty of Versailles was applied vigorously to all the other forts. All concrete structures, powder and munitions magazines at Forts Rheineck (the Nollenkopf Works), Rheinhell, and Asterstein were destroyed. The Arzheimer Redoubt and the Pleitenberg Works were demolished, while on the west bank, Fortress Alexander and Fort Constantine above Koblenz, were rendered virtually useless.19 "For weeks and months on end, a dull rumbling resounded over the city," wrote a local journalist, "and dark clouds of dust revealed where the explosives were throwing the walls of the old casemates and barracks

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into wild chaos."20 Supervised by French officers, local demolition firms were employed. Nearby homes and buildings suffered broken windows and cracked plaster. For some bitter Rhinelanders, this destruction seemed nothing new. "Just as they [the French] 150 years ago and more left behind them heaps of rubble and ruins as a symbol of their power . . ." wrote that journalist, "so they have made sure now that in decades to come local people, faced with this destruction, will still say: 'Here the French wrought havoc'!"21 In 1925, Bodo Ebhardt agreed, reminding his readers that the tradition of French rapine seemed to endure into the twentieth century.22 The rebuilt Ehrenbreitstein and its related forts are documents of the expansion of Prussian power into the Rhineland in 1815. But the fortresses are more than just symbols of a militarist state for they also reflect the growing sympathy between government and the governed. Even when the Ehrenbreitstein system was being constructed, there was no evidence of any civilian opposition to it,23 perhaps because the project provided employment for hundreds after twenty-five years of economic insecurity. A century later, the threat of Ehrenbreitstein's demolition caused outrage for it had become a symbol of Germany. This development from fortress to ruin to monument is also seen in the history of Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, and Sooneck, a subject to which we must now turn.

FIVE

HOHENZOLLERN DREAMS

A

ccording to the poet Max von Schenkendorf (1783-1817) the new Prussian nilers of the Rhineland had, with their "pious hands," given

new life to "castles, churches, and Fatherland."1 His explicit reference to castles referred to the fact that, by the mid-1840s, several members of the Hohenzollern family had personally acquired castle ruins on the Middle Rhine. King Frederick William IV owned Stolzenfels, south of Koblenz. He also purchased the ruins of Stahleck above Bacharach (1828), and with his brothers Carl, William, and Albert, he shared Sooneck (near Trechtingshausen). He considered buying Lahneck at Oberlahnstein, Hammerstein near Rheinbrohl, and Rheineck near Bad Niederbreisig. Many of Frederick William's other close relatives were also seized with "castle mania." Princess Augusta (Prince William's wife), Princess Marianne (King Frederick William Ill's sister-in-law), Queen Frederike Luise Wilhelmine of Holland (a sister of Frederick William III), all owned or were interested in possessing Rhenish ruins. Encouraged by political advisors, motivated by dynastic pride, uneasy in a modernizing society, and yearning for escape from royal duties, they sought to build and to inhabit a dream world.

Hohenzollern Builders The Hohenzollerns, like most European dynasties, had a tradition of erecting palaces, churches, and statues to their own glory. The capital, Berlin, was embellished by Elector/King Frederick I (1701-13) with a Notes to Chapter Five are on pp. 349-51. 112

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Baroque palace to which King Frederick William IV (1840-61) added a new west facade with a dome and a triumphal arch-like entrance. Frederick the Great (1740-86) built a new palace on Unter den Linden and nearby provided a new Royal Library and the Royal Opera House. His successor, Frederick William II (1786-97), commissioned the famous Brandenburg Gate atop which a winged victory figure holds the laurels of victory in the direction of the Hohenzollern palace. Even the unimaginative Frederick William III (1797-1840) gave the capital the colonnaded Royal Museum and several other fine neo-classical structures designed by Carl Frederick Schinkel.2 As did other European rulers, the Prussian royal family built rural retreats. Frederick's Sans Souci at Potsdam (built between 1745 and 1747) is well known, and we have noted Frederick William II's "ruined" castle on Peacock Island. The latter was part of the neo-Gothic vogue for sham ruins in bucolic landscapes. In the nineteenth century, Prince William built the neo-Gothic Babelsberg and Frederick William IV, as crown prince, planned a retreat in the "monastery" of St. Cecilia. It was partly in this atmosphere that the first Hohenzollern interest in the Middle Rhine ruins was awakened. The royal Prussian castle mania encompassed more than just the Middle Rhine, for the family were also concerned with their architectural heritage elsewhere. Frederick William IV rebuilt his ancestors' castle Hohenzollern, and King/Emperor William II inspired the reconstruction of Hohkonigsburg in Alsace (Appendix Two). Moreover, they continued to build and rebuild almost until the fall of the dynasty in 1918, sharing with other monarchies what Heinz Biehn calls a "last manifestation of princely self-consciousness."3 These manifestations could be blatantly political, as when between 1905 and 1910, Emperor William II built a new Imperial Palace in Posen, on the Warthe River, in the part of Poland annexed to Prussia in 1793. Construction of the palace followed a Germanization program intended to eliminate the Polish language and culture from the area.4 Designed by Franz Schwechten (1841-1924), architect of the Emperor William Memorial Church in Berlin, this massive Romanesque structure (with one dominant tower and two smaller ones) was supposed to affirm the Prussian-German presence in a province which was largely Polish-speaking.5 This use of architecture for Prusso-German political ends was evident in the Middle Rhine reconstructions. The first ruin (between 1825 and 1829) the princes rebuilt was Voigtsburg, on the river's west bank, about four kilometres (about two and a half miles) north of Bingen between the picturesque towns of Bingerbriick and Trechtingshausen. Part of what Biehn calls the "elegant"

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phase of castle rebuilding,6 the interior and exterior decoration of Voigtsburg (renamed Rheinstein by Frederick Louis) reveals the era's idealized view of the middle ages. In addition, the castle's furnishings made it a museum of medieval antiquities, relics of Prussian history and trophies of the recent Wars of Liberation. Of course its imposing new tower was also a political statement. Rheinstein inaugurated the princely rebuilding program, but was not slavishly imitated. Although Prince Frederick Louis showed as much obsession with an idealized middle ages as did his cousin, Crown Prince and later King Frederick William IY Rheinstein has the general appearance, at least, of a true fortress (which Stolzenfels does not) and was less overtly political than Stolzenfels (and certainly less so than the Posen palace). Moreover, unlike Stolzenfels, Rheinstein was frequently inhabited. Nevertheless, Rheinstein, like all the Middle Rhine castles, became a patriotic symbol for later generations of Germans.

Voigtsburg: The Original Rheinstein The site of Voigtsburg (also known as Vautsberg, or Feitzburg ) was given by Emperor Otto III (983-1002) to the archbishops of Mainz (Fig. 13). Later owners used Voigtsburg to extort tribute from the passing merchants. After the League of Rhenish Cities besieged it to little avail in 1254, Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg intervened. Raising the flag of the Holy Roman Empire from Voigtsburg's tower, Rudolf suppressed its robber baron and executed others holding the neighbouring castles Sooneck and Ehrenfels. Thus the castle came to symbolize the security, stability, and order resulting from good government, and with a liberation from arbitrary rulers. Needless to say, this image made it appropriate for Hohenzollern reconstruction. The actual fortress which stood in ruins in 1815 had probably been constructed by the Mainz Archbishops in the second half of the fifteenth century. Later prelates leased it to various noble tenants and then allowed it to decay. Nevertheless, Voigtsburg has the distinction of being one of the few Middle Rhine castles which was not destroyed by the French. In 1632, when the Swedes occupied it, decay had already set in. By 1800 its crumbling walls and surrounding second-growth forest were part of the lands of the Breckheimer family, farmers of the village of Trechtingshausen to the north. They sold it to Prussian Privy Councillor Baron von Eyss who, in 1822, sold it to another Privy Councillor, Baron von Coll, from whose hands it passed to Prince Frederick Louis of Prussia in 1825.

Hohenzollern Dreams I 115 By this time, the ruin was becoming well known to patrons of art and literature (including Prince Frederick Louis) who loved the legend of the "Bride of Rheinstein," a story replete with violence, chivalric love, and supernatural intervention which, like the imperial effort, restored moral order.7 Artists such as Johann Adam Klein (1792-1875) showed its ruined tower and walls rising almost organically out of the twisted basaltic rock. In 1824 John Goodall presented an even more unwelcoming scene of a windswept landscape with the two desolate towers looming dismally over blasted trees and a barren landscape most unlike the Middle Rhine valley. In 1816 Schinkel was drawn to the romantic site on a rugged cliff directly above the river and made several sketches of the ruin on his Rhine trip of that year. After the reconstruction artists continued to record the by now well-known castle. Combining fact and myth, the artist Caspar Johann Nepomuk Scheuren in 1852 showed the reconstructed castle in a composite picture of the suppression of the robber barons by Emperor Rudolf. He included the ruined castle, St. Clemens' Chapel, the restored Burg, and a scene from the story of the bride of Rheinstein. This artist expressed not simply a nostalgic romantic scene, but also a new myth of the Hohenzollerns as order-bringers. The ruins also attracted the attention of writers. In the 1820s the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) thought the stillshattered walls of Voigtsburg "the most beautiful ruin of the Rhine" perched "upon the edge of a rugged precipice, several hundred feet high, overhanging the river. I never saw a more picturesque object, and seldom a more lovely view."8 Dramatic history, poignant legend, and an impressively craggy site above the river—Voigtsburg had the requisite qualities for reconstruction. Soon after the Wars of Liberation, it found its rebuilder.

"Fritz Louis" Prince Frederick William Louis of Prussia (1794-1862) was a son of Frederick Carl Louis, brother of King Frederick William III. Known as "cousin Fritz Louis" to the crown prince, he was a devoted soldier, having served with distinction in the Wars of Liberation. In 1820 he became Commandant of the Prussian Army's Fourteenth Division in Diisseldorf on the Lower Rhine. Like many Hohenzollerns, Frederick was a well-read and cultivated man, who developed common interests with his cousins, sons of his uncle the King. Carl, Albert, William, and Frederick William, the crown prince, had a similar upbringing in an age when Bildung, or

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Fig. 13. Near Trechtingshausen, Voigtsburg (later Burg Rheinstein) about 1636: Long past its heyday as a "nest of robber barons," Voigtsburg looms above its toll house on the river bank, in a contemporary drawing by Wenzel Hollar. Courtesy of Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

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Fig. 14. Voigtsburg rebuilt as Burg Rheinstein about 1840: The artist Thomas Beck showed Fritz Louis' retreat somewhat awkwardly deposited on its hilltop, bearing little resemblance to the castle in Hollar's view, 200 years earlier. The wrought iron stairs are anachronistic but document the Industrial Revolution transforming the Rhineland. The now-useless toll house was not rebuilt. Courtesy of Verlag Th. Schafer, Hannover.

118 I Castles of the Rhine development of an appreciation of all the arts, was cultivated in well-to-do families. Moreover, "Fritz Louis" was not merely closely related to, but was also a good friend of these men, sharing Carl's love of art and of travel, and Frederick William's nostalgia for the Middle Ages. Fritz Louis was also a friend of Karl Immermann (1796-1840) who had volunteered to fight in the Wars of Liberation and later wrote a drama set in medieval Germany, "Emperor Frederick II." After a visit to the Wartburg in Saxony, Fritz Louis wrote that "it must be a fine thing to actually own such a palace."9 When he had Schinkel redesign his Berlin home, he had an "armoury" installed, supplied with medieval art and furnishings, as well as a stained-glass window on the southern side of the building, thereby giving the room a year-round romantic ambience. Needless to say, Frederick was also deeply conservative and had been profoundly impressed by the anti-Napoleonic alliance; he named his two sons George and Alexander after the patron saint of England and the heroic Alexander Nevsky of Russia, respectively. His love of Prussian history inspired him to encourage the reconstruction of the Marienburg in East Prussia (Appendix Two) a project which may have helped to inspire him to reconstruct Voigtsburg. In early maturity Frederick became familiar with the culture of the Rhineland, where he was to spend much of his military career. Developing an interest in Rhenish art, he gave the Diisseldorf Academy of Art his patronage. In 1829 he also became the patron of the League for the Promotion of the Arts of the Rhineland and Westphalia. Although in 1846 he left Dusseldorf to become Luxemburg's military governor, and in 1850 returned to live in Berlin, he always returned to the Rhine. From at least 1823 Frederick regularly "took the waters" at nearby Bad Ems (a Hohenzollern family custom). Frederick was the first member of the royal family to concern himself seriously with Rhenish art and architecture. In January 1828 he wrote to Baron Carl Henry Louis von Ingersleben (1763-1831), Prussian Governor of the area, to express his dismay over the disintegration of Burg Drachenfels, near Konigswinter. He asked von Ingersleben to take measures to protect the ruin in the future, and also expressed concern about the other ruins along the Rhine, asking whether or not their owners cared about the condition of these monuments.10 In 1822 von Ingersleben, who supervised local military and police matters as well as trade, agriculture, and other activities, informed Frederick that one could buy a ruin. The prince replied with interest and Ingersleben responded with a list of ruined castles which might be purchasable. It was this correspondence

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that inspired the city of Koblenz to offer the ruined Stolzenfels to the crown prince. The city fathers wanted to lower the tensions between Prussia's newly acquired western province and Berlin. In fact, for a while Frederick and the crown prince were both interested in Stolzenfels. In the meantime Ingersleben sent the Koblenz architect Lassaulx to examine some castle sites. At Voigtsburg Lassaulx found "only an insignificant two storey building ... with four rooms, which naturally could not be rebuilt as a country home for a prince."11 He found Stolzenfels more suitable for reconstruction. In the end, Frederick acted as mediator between the city of Koblenz and his cousin, to whom the burghers gave Stolzenfels. Despite Lassaulx' opinion, he turned his own attention to Voigtsburg, which he renamed Rheinstein as part of a plan to rebuild several Rhenish castles.

Rheinstein Having purchased Voigtsburg's ruins, Prince Frederick assigned a guard to patrol the site to prevent its further use as a stone quarry. In response to his request for plans "in the style of an old castle,"12 Schinkel made a sketch for the reconstruction in 1823, but so did Lassaulx, whose work Frederick came to prefer. Later Wilhelm Kuhn, also of Koblenz, completed the work under Lassaulx's supervision, 1827-29. The crown prince may also have had an influence on the final design.13 The interior was executed by Anton Schnitzler Junior (1796-1873), who worked on several Prussian Rhenish projects.14 Schinkel's initial plans envisaged leaving the ruins as untouched as possible.15 This project, if achieved, would have been the first example of an important ruin being treated as a valuable historic or archeological document, a notion which did not take root in Germany or elsewhere for at least another fifty years. As it turned out, much of the extant ruin was absorbed into the new castle, but the existing shape of the stunted walls had some effect on the eventual reconstruction.16 Although Burg Rheinstein is only about eighty metres (about 280 feet) above the river, it stands on a sheer promontory which explains its early use as a fortified toll station (Fig. 14). Visitors climbed a steep path up the north side of the hillside, an approach which is little changed today. Frederick's reconstruction involved redirecting a stream to produce picturesque waterfalls and the planting of trees to produce more attractive surroundings, without reducing the wild effect of the natural landscape.

120 I Castles of the Rhine Rheinstein has a classical core decorated with Gothic elements, which actually are alien to the Rhineland, where the round-arched Romanesque style prevailed. Its look could be best described as English neo-Gothic: flat roofs, crenellated roof lines, a sense of symmetry, and, despite its towers, a generally rectilinear appearance.17 Its riverside facade resembles the castle on Peacock Island near Berlin, for both have symmetrically placed windows. The window frames are nearly square and the wall is flanked by towers of almost the same height. The side nearest the hill sports stepgables. On the south, overlooking the Rhine, is a garden, and on the east side, a pergola terrace with a fountain. Wrought iron, a popular (but unmedieval) feature of early nineteenth-century architecture, is common at Rheinstein. Arched iron stairs and walkways soar through the air, connecting towers and walls. Of all the rebuilt castles, Rheinstein achieved the most truly romantic effect, partly because it soon became overgrown with ivy and shrubs, so that its grand outlines were softened. Thus it appealed to the erroneous view of what a castle should look like, a "great beautiful heroic monument!"18 in the words of a Rhenish poet. Although Rheinstein resembles no medieval fortress, architectural historians praise Frederick's hope that the reconstruction would not suggest a nineteenth-century villa, but rather a 400-year-old castle. As it turned out the state of Voigtsburg's ruins dictated much of the reconstruction. The rebuilders often filled out the remains rather than build over them; for example, the door and window openings remain as in the original. The architect William Kuhn even tried to stress the ruined character of the original, leaving broken stone or cracks in the walls, or mottled discoloured stones. Yet this was as much the effect of romanticism as a genuine concern to preserve a medieval ruin for the walls of a genuine medieval Burg would probably have been plastered and painted. Early visitors, however, were impressed with the severe, almost threatening aspect of Rheinstein. One of the first of these was the artist and scientist Carl Gustav Carus, who in 1835 described how a long white Prussian banner waved from the tower, easily visible across the Rhine at Assmannshausen. "Only over narrow drawbridges and under pointed portcullises," he wrote, " did I reach the castle courtyard, half of which is hewn out of the cliff."19 Inside he was confronted by two powerful guard dogs which barked at strangers and by an eagle resident in the main tower. Several early nineteenth-century cannon (probably from the Wars of Liberation) were set up in the outer courtyard where there was also a collection of old weapons, harnesses, helmets, battleaxes, and spiked cudgels.

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Already Rheinstein was becoming both a national shrine and a museum of military history. Once inside, visitors like Carus found a large painting of Prince Fritz Louis leading an attack in the recent war against France. The patriotic mood was presented in a quasi-medieval decor: beautiful old chairs and tables graced a small refreshment room which also boasted magnificent goblets and tankards. The castle steward, Cams' guide, told him, "when the Prince is in residence, we all go back to the middle ages." Nevertheless, the "taste of old knightly castles" was embellished (in Carus' words) with "modern comforts."20 Open to the public when the royal couple were not in residence, Rheinstein quickly became a popular museum and a tourist attraction. By 1844 H.M. Malten's guide to the castle noted that "year in and year out" Rheinstein's rooms were "visited by many thousands of travellers from near and far."21 Visitors still cross the same drawbridge and pass under the same portcullis which thrilled Carus. Over the main gate, in a pointed tympanum, are the arms of the Prussian royal family surmounted by a medieval helmet and flanked by oak leaves, symbols of Germany. Below this arrangement is the slogan "Gott mit Uns." In this one design element are seen interrelated themes which we meet again inside: the divine right of the Prussian monarchy, German traditions, and medieval military practice. Also grouped around the main entrance are aristocratic escutcheons native to the area. There is less to see at Rheinstein today than in its heyday. But one can imagine what Carus saw in 1835: antlers (symbols of the aristocratic hunt), armaments, and weapons arrayed over the entrance portal, and in the entrance hall a stained-glass window shedding a warm "medieval" light.22 Here one signed a guest book and admired a display of lithographs of the castle. The fees charged for a guided tour were donated to charities. A guide in fifteenth-century costume led the visitor up a large spiral staircase to the Knights' Hall, where heavy Renaissance furniture, more artifacts found during local excavations, and stained or painted glass windows were supposed to impart the character of a genuine hunting castle. A chandelier of stag's antlers with a Prussian eagle added to the theme of the royal hunt. In the Knights' Hall, said one printed guide, the walls and ceiling were painted in a "gothic" fashion by Eduard Wilhelm Pose (1812-78), a Diisseldorf landscape painter. They include various representations of the Prussian coat of arms. Sixteenth-century stained-glass windows, an antique stove from Cologne, and more pikes, halberds, and armament were to be seen. Prince Frederick himself had purchased the windows at

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auctions in Cologne when he was Diisseldorf's commandant. From the battlefield of Chalons sur Marne (1814), he had carried off French weapons which he proudly displayed here as trophies. A patriotic aristocratic lady had donated the banners of a Royal Reserve Regiment from the War of Liberation, which hung over one of the doors. Thus the reverence for medieval ways was combined with a shrine to the recent war against the French, a juxtaposition recurring in many other Rhine reconstructions. Other trophies were on view: for example, a helmet of Franz von Sickingen (1481-1523), an Imperial Knight whose castle of Ebernburg was near the west bank of the Rhine and who fought for Emperors Maximilian I and Charles V, as well as a sword and glove of Gotz von Berlichingen (1480-1562), another Imperial Knight in the service of Charles V Also on display were the arms of Albert the Bear, Margrave of Brandenburg (1100-70), who had conquered the Wends and begun the German settlement of Brandenburg and so had special significance for the Hohenzollerns.23 In the Prince's dining room, where he kept his collection of china and golden artifacts, was a flute used by his ancestor Frederick the Great. There was little space at Rheinstein for the sort of portrait gallery of ancestors which became essential in later sham castles, but paintings of the prince and princess (often in medieval dress) were to be seen here and there. On the second storey the arms of Prussia decorated the window of the "red" anteroom adjoining the princess' chambers. Here also were neoGothic sacred pictures as well as musical instruments. In the princess' "green" bedroom were works of the Diisseldorf School which her husband supported. The Blue Room, the princess' drawing room, contained furniture decorated with the arms of noble families. The rugged martial atmosphere of the rest of the castle was absent in the princess' rooms, but none of them were large and she must have felt very cramped. On the upper storey were the even less commodious rooms of the prince and his sons. In the prince's bedroom were seven oil paintings based on designs for windows at Marienburg. A painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1471-1553) hung here, and there was more of the hunting equipment, costumes, and gear used in the family's tournaments and festivals, such as those from the Potsdam "Festival of the White Rose." Similar tournaments, including the favourite tilting at rings, were held on a plateau just to the south of Rheinstein. The castle precincts, albeit confined, reveal the owner's antiquarian passion. For the construction of a fountain in the "lower" or Burgundy

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garden, Frederick had his builders employ unusable bits of stone discarded from the work on Cologne Cathedral. At Rheinstein Frederick was one of the first to revive the aristocratic tradition of the family chapel. Medieval castles had always had chapels or small churches adjoining or within their walls, although not usually on the scale introduced at Rheinstein, or later at Stolzenfels. When the prince's plan to restore St. Clemens Chapel at the riverside failed, a beautiful, freestanding chapel was built on a rock outcropping below Rheinstein's south ring wall. Schinkel's plans proved too expensive, so Frederick turned to Philipp Hoffmann (1806-89), a Nassau government architect who had already rebuilt the Boosenburg in Rudesheim for the Sturm family. Rheinstein's elegant neo-Gothic chapel has pointed windows and a small spire and belfry. Finished in 1844 it has the requisite crypt, where solid decorated sarcophagi may be seen through an open window filled with a wrought iron grill including the Prussian iron cross. In 1839 Frederick wrote to the crown prince that the crypt was for the "poor builder and restorer of the castle, who in death too would like to rest where he lived so happily."24 Appropriately, he was buried here in 1863; so too were his wife and eldest son, Prince George.25 At Rheinstein, for the first time a wealthy owner constructed on the site of a ruin, not simply a pretty ruined castle in a park, but a castle to inhabit. Fritz had a more elegant and comfortable palace in Diisseldorf, but he and his guests spent much time at this bucolic retreat above Trechtingshausen, especially in the summer or hunting season. The castle saw its share of court protocol and pageantry: when the prince was in residence the royal banner flew from the topmost tower, and passing ships fired a salute. When high-ranking visitors such as the crown prince, the English queen, or the tsarina arrived, guns saluted them and there were illuminations and torchlight parades. Nevertheless, even such visitors had to endure the same rigours of the castle's location. In the early 1840s at least, guests of all sorts had to arrive on horseback, the path up the hill being too narrow for carriages. Housing these important visitors was a problem too. As we have seen, even the prince's wife and sons had little space. Thus during the hunting season, the smaller tower rooms were also used as sleeping quarters and male guests camped in the entrance hall! Ironically, the inconvenience of overcrowding helped the prince and his friends to savour the "true" atmosphere of the middle ages.26 Eventually between 1842 and 1844 the Schweizer Haus, a twenty-minute walk above the Castle on the hillside, was built for guests and their servants.

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Rheinstein also embodied the prince's ideology. Its geographical position was not as prominent as that of Ehrenbreitstein or the later Stolzenfels, but it had an explicit message to the passerby or visitor. As we have seen, when the owners were absent curious travellers were welcome to a tour, a practice in keeping with the long-established custom among aristocratic families of allowing inquisitive but respectful visitors to view their homes in their absence. The prince regarded the castle and its contents as deserving of display and explanation for the edification of visitors. Very soon after it was completed, the public were demanding guide books, which were shortly available. In 1832 an early visitor, J.K. Dahl, published one of the first guides to the Rhenish castles, Die Burgen Reichenstein und Rheinstein. The aforementioned Carus also produced a laudatory guide book for genuine or armchair tourists. In these books Rheinstein served as propaganda for the royalist cause. In 1832, for example, Dahl wrote, Gracious peace, Sweet harmony, Abide, abide Cheerfully within this house! Never let the day come, When the robber baron's hordes Rage through this quiet castle.27

Guidebooks and histories described Rudolf of Habsburg's execution of rogue knights at old Voigtsburg not only to strike a pleasurable horror in readers' hearts, but also to suggest that the castle should be associated with good government—that of the Habsburgs in the earlier period—now that of the Hohenzollerns. Dahl, after noting that many of the Rhenish castles had been the "lairs of despicable robbers," wrote that Rheinstein was a "castle of peace" (Friedensburg). He continued, "the white banner. . . which flies from the battlement. . . tells [the traveller] that here peace rules."28 In her study, Ursula Rathke suggests that the restored castle was supposed to teach that the Prussian King and other German princes were to be favourably compared to the Emperor Rudolf and the Rhenish League of Cities. Thus Rheinstein with its white banner was a symbol of freedom and peace won back from oppressors—the robber barons or the French. Nineteenth-century Rhinelanders should take comfort in the security provided by the Prussians, as their ancestors had done under Habsburg protection.29 Along with relics of the Holy Roman Empire, of Frederick the Great, and of the Wars of Liberation, visitors saw portraits of Prince Fritz Louis as a knight fighting for noble causes or with the Princess in their Berlin palace. The Middle Ages were presented

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as the ideal time politically, and the Hohenzollerns as legitimate defenders of old-regime political values. Both Ehrenbreitstein and Rheinstein, completed at about the same time, were designed to convey to local people a sense of protection which should inspire loyalty. Of course, both also could also convey a threat to malcontents. Granted that Rheinstein was militarily indefensible, Fortress Ehrenbreitstein and its garrisons stood not far away. In both structures the ruling family was trying to document and to buttress their position in the new territories. The Hohenzollerns loved Rheinstein. King William stayed there briefly in 1870 as his armies marched to take on the French. He had often visited the castle as a prince and, to express his affection for the place, he had planted a plane tree in the Burgundy Garden. Frederick's sons, Princes Alexander and George, seemed happy to inherit Rheinstein, and even when Frederick's own direct descendants ceased to control it, the royal family maintained an interest in the castle and did not measurably alter its appearance. William II used it as a summer residence and was also careful to preserve its original condition. The last royal owner was Barbara, Princess of Prussia, Duchess of Mecklenburg, who had inherited it from Prince Henry of Prussia (1862-1929), brother of William II.30 Although ten years after Frederick's death in 1863, an observer described its appearance "as the most tasteful expression of the medieval spirit,"31 later generations of scholars have disagreed. In 1895 Otto Piper pointed out the inappropriate shape of Rheinstein's nineteenth-century window frames and the out-of-place miniature crenellations on its flat roofs.32 The original Voigtsburg would not have looked like this, said Piper. Two problems in how to deal with ruins, he said, were ignored; first, when the appearance of the original is not known in detail, how should the castle look; second, a more profound question, should ruins be built upon at all? Rheinstein, he concluded, set a bad example of the treatment of ruins, but one which was followed in many other instances.33 Nevertheless Rheinstein is still of interest to late twentieth-century conservationists because Prince Frederick's fascination with the distant past makes Rheinstein a significant milestone on the path to an appreciation of the past as such. And, clumsy as it was, Rheinstein was the first completed German effort at conservation of the national architectural heritage. Later generations, such as Piper's, would know more about the real medieval domestic environment and military practice and would want to reproduce the era more exactly. It was this acquired knowledge, which Schinkel, Lassaulx, and Kuhn lacked, that prompted criticism of attempts to restore or

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rebuild ruined medieval castles. This, however, is a much later development. At the rebuilt Voigtsburg, Prince Frederick set a standard for all Middle Rhine castle rebuilding for the rest of the century. Equally important, his work at Rheinstein reflected attitudes shared by several Hohenzollern princes and other well-read contemporaries. In its treatment of ruins, furthermore, Rheinstein inspired the reconstruction of Burg Stolzenfels, wherein romanticism, Prussian power, and nationalism, suffused with conservative values, were even more powerful incentives to rebuild a ruin.

Six

KING OF THE RHINELAND that King Frederick William IV "protects us with his arms," N ow wrote the poet Brandenbusch, "our great olden days / Live again in

the Rhineland."1 When Frederick William rebuilt Burg Stolzenfels on the Rhine, he was sincerely playing the role ascribed to him in these lines. Whereas the reconstruction of Rheinstein began mainly for private motives, the rebuilding of Stolzenfels was a romantic reactionary's effort to buttress his political position in a newly acquired province and to reinvent a medieval polity. Stolzenfels reflected Frederick William's nostalgia for the past greatness of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and his desire to associate that glory with Prussia, whose leadership would revive the Empire. After the 1871 German victory in the Franco-Prussian War, when a German Empire was finally revived, modern German nationalists made Stolzenfels a national heritage treasure. Yet ironically the rebuilt castle was not quintessentially German, for its design shows traces of foreign architectural influences. Like Rheinstein, Stolzenfels was not restored to its condition 400 years before, but became a modern palace with an interior filled with nineteenth-century decoration and furniture supplemented with some genuine antiques. Modern building technology was used inside and out. At Stolzenfels, therefore, the same mixture of influences prevails as at Rheinstein: romanticism, raison d'etat, and nationalism, but with a heavier emphasis on Hohenzollern state interest.

Notes to Chapter Six are on pp. 351-54. 727

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The First Stolzenfels 2

The medieval Burg Stolzenfels stood in an impressive geographical position: on the west bank of the Rhine, above the village of Kapellen, lying almost opposite that river's confluence with the River Lahn about six kilometres (nearly four miles) south of Koblenz. Despite the ancient importance of this commanding spot the medieval origins of Stolzenfels were prosaic, unromantic, and had little to do with any glorious events in German national history.3 The original castle was a typical Rhine fortress, a Hangburg (a castle on a slope) built on an outcropping where the hillside drops steeply over ninety metres (about fifty-five feet) to the river's edge. Despite this apparent impregnability, it had been fortified by a moat. The village at the foot of the castle was also surrounded by a wall and two lesser walls rose up the hillside from the village to the castle. A drawing of about 1630 shows a compact, still powerful fortress with many pointed towers and roofs (Fig. 15). The original Burg was the result of one of the many local rivalries between princes of the church. Trier's archbishop, Arnold von Isenburg, who controlled important stretches of both banks of the Rhine and Mosel here, realized that this was a vantage point from which to survey the rivers' trade and military traffic (Fig. 2). However, the Archbishop of Mainz had erected Burg Lahneck around 1240 above Oberlahnstein on the south bank of the Lahn-Rhine junction. From above Kapellen, therefore, Arnold could watch the mouth of the Lahn, the two neighbouring communities, and his rival's citadel. And so between 1242 and 1259 he built the first Stolzenfels, which would also serve as a fortified tollcollecting station. In the fourteenth century a later archbishop made it his favoured residence, building its five-sided keep (which survives) and the four-sided Palas. In the Thirty Years' War Stolzenfels changed hands many times. The Swedes held it in 1632; the French in 1634-36 and 1646-48. Later in the century, it fell prey to Louis XIV, whose forces destroyed it in 1689. Stolzenfels, therefore, was a frequent victim of French destruction, a fact which would later infuriate German nationalists and which helped justify its nineteenth century reconstruction. Nevertheless, Germans also contributed to its decline for, from the eighteenth century on, local builders used its ruins as a stone quarry. In 1801, for example, a rampart connecting the castle to the river was demolished for this purpose. Stolzenfels' image is accompanied by no romantic tales of loyal knights and perishing maidens to inspire poets, but rather is associated with a mundane story of human greed, which more accurately reflects

KingoftheRhineland / 129 medieval realities. The purported alchemical experiments of one archbishop gave rise to the legend that there was a treasure of gold hidden on the spot. In the 1700s and early 1800s treasure-hunters dug among the ruined castle's walls, furthering the decay of the old fortress. Following the secularization of church lands in 1803, the Imperial Diet transferred Stolzenfels to the city of Koblenz. By 1838 the castle was, in the words of Victor Hugo, a "magnificent ruin."4 Because of its commanding position and its proud mien, early tourists, including artists, often visited it. Adolf Lasinsky (1808-71), in a realistic sketch, showed the massive walls on the hilltop, above a mouldering cemetery in the foreground, a typical reflection of the melancholy associations of castle ruins. Christian Bodmer's sketch of about 1835 showed the ruin from the mountainside behind it, with Burg Lahneck in the background, and trees growing out of the top of the keep, suggesting nature reclaiming man's failed handiwork. Other artists showed the ruins with shattered towers exaggeratedly vertical, or emerging from the shadows of the hillside in a turbulent, rainbow-crowned vista. This was the romantic ruin given by Koblenz to the Prussian crown prince (later Frederick William IV) in March 1823, after the city fathers had learned of the prince's interest in owning a Rhenish castle. The king, his father, was annoyed at the burghers because of their earlier petition for a constitution, and because of the nationalistic agitation of the Koblenz native, Gorres. The young prince's interest in ruins gave the town fathers the opportunity to effect a reconciliation or they may also have wished to improve the regional economy by attracting travellers to a royal site.5 Canny politics, economic planning or romantic nationalism—all three motives could have dictated their address to the heir. At all events their message to the young prince was calculated to appeal to his romantic interest in history. The ruined "knightly palace," they said, was associated with "the history of great deeds of the past," and was "one of the best preserved monuments of the glorious history of the middle ages." The city fathers expressly stated their hope that the crown prince would do more than just preserve the ruin, for they implied that he should make it his home "on our Fatherland's river." Having the king in residence at Stolzenfels would give back to the castle the "high calling that it once possessed," as well as being beneficial for the people of the Rhine.6 As the gift showed and contrary to the suspicions of the king himself and his advisors, many Koblenzers were loyal to the Prussian royal house.7 Although the prince gave the city a gift of 1,000 talers for its charitable

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Fig. 15. Above Kapellen near Koblenz, Burg Stolzenfels about 1630: Meisner's copperplate shows the original castle with its many pointed roofs and turrets with the chapel prominently at centre. The Bergfried is the only major part which survived (without its pointed roof) in the reconstruction. Courtesy of Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz.

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Fig. 16. Schloss Stolzenfels about 1840: Unlike the original fortress, the rebuilt Stolzenfels has flat roofs, an abundance of picturesque crenellations, and wide windows. The chapel, with its spiky neo-Gothic towers, is even more prominent than in the original. In this view by J.L. Goetz, the steamboats suggest both the burgeoning tourist trade and the dangerous modern world. Koblenz and Ehrenbreitstein are in the distance and the Lahn River enters the Rhine on the right. Courtesy of Verlag Th. Schafer, Hannover.

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institutions in return for the castle he did not immediately rebuild it, but decided to keep the ruins as they were. Whatever their desire for a less arbitrary rule, the Rhinelanders were willing to flatter their sovereign. On another trip up the Rhine in 1833, his loyal subjects greeted him in Bonn and elsewhere with companies of sharpshooters, school children, choruses, banners, and the ringing of bells. Koblenz' leaders presented the prince with another gift—a silver goblet. Drinking a toast to Koblenz, the young prince announced that "This goblet shall be the first treasure which shall find a place in my Burg Stolzenfels when it is completed. May I be fortunate enough often to drink to the well-being of Koblenz with it!"8 The economic motives of both prince and people are worth a closer look. Royal building activity could stimulate the local economy. The reconstruction of Rheinstein, which had involved the use of local zinc for roof tiles, could have shown the way. (Ultimately, tile produced in Stolberg near Aachen was used for Stolzenfels' roofs.) Rathke suggests that the furnishing of the interior was probably intended by the Prussian government to provide work for native craftsmen, especially cabinetmakers and carpenters.9 Berlin was not unaware of the economic difficulties experienced by guildsmen after the abolition of the traditional corporations in 1810, which had occasioned unemployment or at least a reduced standard of living for many artisans. Production of the new castle's panelled walls and ornate cabinets, for example, meant an income, if not prosperity, for local craftsmen.

King Frederick William IV Who was this prince, later king, whom some Rhinelanders were so eager to impress? The life of King Frederick William IV of Prussia (born 1795, reigned 1840-61) would make a libretto for a tragic romantic opera. Eldest son of Frederick William III and Queen Louise, as a very young crown prince he witnessed the Wars of Liberation (1813-15) in which the Prussian monarchy, allied to other German princes and to the Empires of Russia and Austria, drove Napoleon and the French out of German-speaking Europe. His wife, Princess Elizabeth of Bavaria, a Roman Catholic who converted to Protestantism upon their marriage, may have encouraged him to be more sympathetic to the Catholic Rhineland than was his father. Certainly he was fascinated by art and architecture10 and enthusiastic about German history. He developed a reputation for being politically conciliatory if not actually liberal. Soon after becoming king in 1840 he released from prison the Bishop of Cologne, thus ending the Church

KingoftbeRhineland / 133 Strife. He also proclaimed a political amnesty, ended harassment of liberals and nationalists, and relaxed press censorship. (The poet Arndt, for example, was allowed to return as professor to the University of Bonn.) The founder of patriotic gymnastic societies, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), was given the Iron Cross and General Hermann von Boyen (1771-1848), associated with the Wars of Liberation, was made minister of war in 1841. Frederick William encouraged the summoning of Prussia's provincial estates, which were allowed to establish committees to advise him, and announced plans for a constitution. All this was done, not because he was sympathetic to liberalism or parliamentary government, but rather because he was eager to be loved by his subjects in the manner in which he imagined medieval kings were. So, too, his German nationalism was not the same as that of the bourgeois liberals, but was a product of his desire to restore a strong German Empire supporting the political and social values of the Middle Ages. He had no sympathy with nineteenth-century nationalism and its concern for responsible government. Frederick William wanted to make what he perceived to be medieval values live again in his own time. When ceremonies in medieval costume were held at Stolzenfels, the difference between past and present was to be extinguished; these were not to be frivolous masquerades, but a genuine return to the medieval world.11 With his romantic immersion in rebuilding Rhenish monuments, Frederick William differed even from other nationalistic conservatives, such as Johannes Haller (1768-1854), who refrained from trying to reconstruct the Middle Ages literally. He also caused discomfort among the more modern conservatives such as Metternich and Tsar Nicholas I, who feared Frederick William's apparent tolerance of the liberal bourgeois nationalists. His desire to be loved by his people, an attitude which initially created great support for him among liberal nationalists, was frustrated, because his references to a united Germany misled the progressive forces. As king, he seemed to betray their hopes, while personally he gradually became weak, resigned, and eventually insane. Shocked and overwhelmed by the rebellion of 1848 he suppressed the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1849, even though it had offered him the Imperial Crown of a new united and parliamentary Germany—a "crown from the gutter," as he described it.12 Nevertheless Frederick William made an important contribution to the growth of architectural conservation. As noted earlier, in 1843 he established the office of Conservation Officer of Prussian Monuments.

134 I Castles of the Rhine Moreover, his rebuilding of Stolzenfels and his encouragement of his brothers' and cousin's activities on the Middle Rhine provoked a reconsideration of the already well-known ruins and of their meaning for contemporary Germans. Although the first rebuilt castles displeased later scholarly conservationists, Frederick William must be considered one of the prime movers of the German heritage movement.

The New Stolzenfels In 1844 an admiring contemporary of Frederick William wrote that for many years the ruins above Kapellen lay asking, "When will come the genius to awaken the phoenix of Stolzenfels from its ashes?" The saviour turned out to be "the first born son of the Prussian royal house, the protector of the old and the true, the hero of the new spirit, the crown prince, now Frederick William!"13 This "saviour" had discovered medieval ruins when, during the spring campaign of 1813, the eighteen-year-old had been deeply impressed by the castles of Saxony. About the same time, he read the popular romantic novel, The Magic Ring, by Frederick Baron de la Motte-Fouque (1777-1843), with whom he entered into a long correspondence.14 He was also deeply influenced by his tutor, John Peter Frederick Ancillon (1767-1837), an admirer of absolute monarchy and an opponent of reform. Esthetically sensitive and with a love of history, Frederick William was stunned by his first trip along the Rhine in the summer of 1815: the unfinished cathedral of Cologne moved him; the Rhine gorge overwhelmed him. "I was bowled over," he wrote to Ancillon, "what bliss!" He went on, "this is the most beautiful place in all the German lands!!! It was like a dream.... The view from the hills of this charming Rhine! What a river!!!"15 He spent a whole hour in Schonburg's ruins at Oberwesel, "in a quite exalted state." He saw Ehrenfels and the Pfalz, and "the thousand divine old castles and cliffs and streams.... I was exhausted with ecstasy."16 As a result of this "divine" experience, he hoped to own and inhabit such a castle and resolutely declared that he would never abandon such a plan.17 Several years passed before his castle plan became reality. In the meantime, the prince instituted medieval festivals at Marienburg in 1822. He also planned a summer home for himself and his siblings on an island in the Havel River near Berlin, which would be the seat of the new Knightly Order of St. George of the Lake. Karl von Mecklenburg-Strelitz, organizer of court masquerades, was named Grand Master and the princes became canons and knights. The court ladies were to "serve" in the asso-

KingoftheRbineland I 135 ciated abbey of St. Cecilia under Princess Charlotte's leadership. For the nearby Peacock Island the crown prince also planned a chapel which reflected his passion for the English neo-Gothic—rectilinear lines, flat roofs, and crenellated towers and walls—as seen later in Stolzenfels. Frederick William allowed himself to be the model for a statue of St. George, in medieval German costume, to form part of the monument to the Wars of Liberation set up on the Kreuzberg outside of Berlin. His brothers William and Albert also loved the neo-Gothic and the crown prince produced appropriate plans for them.18 His design for William's Babelsberg was in this style. It was natural that the scion of a European dynasty would wish to secure the power and authority of his house and that he would seek to improve the glamour or "image" of his family. It was much less natural that he would express nationalistic feelings for, as we have seen, at this time nationalism was associated with liberal revolution. His German patriotism sought the revival of an old, not the creation of a modern state. The rebuilt castles of the Middle Rhine would be symbols of the reconstruction of a united Germany on the model of the medieval German empire. He would not object to serving loyally an Emperor from another German dynasty, if that man were the choice of the princes of Germany. Frederick William believed that the past was the only foundation upon which future development could proceed. But the past had to be actually lived, and for this the necessary architectural settings, as well as costume and ceremony, were required. We have already seen this phenomenon at Rheinstein. The crown prince was finally motivated to rebuild Stolzenfels after a visit to his cousin's castle in 1833. But whereas the latter was a private retreat, Stolzenfels would have a much more public function. Romantically repelled by the modern world though he was, the prince could not ignore his own advisors, who encouraged him to rebuild castles in the Rhineland in order to establish a sense of the Prussian presence in that recently annexed territory. Nor could he disregard his own sense that, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the institution of monarchy was threatened. General Philipp von Wussow, who helped design Fortress Ehrenbreitstein and Burg Rheinstein, believed that an imposing royal Prussian palace in the Rhineland could have a constructive influence on the population. Because the Rhinelanders had been a part of France for so long, he wrote to the crown prince in 1836, their political sense was still "confused." Stolzenfels, therefore, should become a place where the crown prince would live in the Rhinelanders' midst. In so doing he could impress them with Prussian glory and Hohenzollern power, stimulate

136 I Castles of the Rhine their awe and loyalty, and flatter their local pride.19 Similar views were held by Prussia's first Conservation Officer, Alexander von Quast, who, as we have seen, believed that restoration of appropriate buildings could buttress absolute monarchy against revolution. Other influential advisors shared this view. Court Chamberlain von Meyerinck wrote to von Wussow in 1836 suggesting that the use of the Hohenzollern coats of arms on the walls of the new Stolzenfels would associate clearly the Prussian royal family with the reconstruction. Thus one could awaken and cultivate the "personal love of and respect for the ruling house."20 Von Wussow and von Meyerinck exchanged letters on this matter several times between 1836 and 1840. They were especially concerned over the Church Strife and von Wussow believed that in 1838 "the fire was still glowing under the ashes."21 When the new king planned a visit to Stolzenfels in July 1840 von Wussow wrote to Frederick William stressing that it should be seen as "a beneficial sojourn" for the provinces and should have an "influence on the adjacent German states as well as on the neighbouring border state [France]." In a year when war with France over the Rhineland again seemed to threaten the province should be seen as unalterably a Prussian possession. At this point the reconstructed Stolzenfels was nearly completed, and von Wussow requested that the king consider restoring the eighteenth-century electoral palace in Koblenz as well.22 The crown prince was also sincerely, if atavistically, nationalistic: his building program in the Rhineland and in Berlin was an attempt to unite in spirit himself and the Prussian people—indeed the whole German people—in a common pride in German achievements. Frederick William's nationalism was stimulated more by literary and historical writing than by the nationalism of his commercial and professional subjects. For example, he was probably influenced by the novel The Keeper of the Crown (1816) by Achim von Arnim (1781-1831), in which a hero is informed by the spirit of Emperor Barbarossa (1123-90) that he and his descendants will derive eternal happiness and prosperity if he reconstructs the Kaiser's palace in Gelnhausen. Carl Frederick Schinkel, the royal architect who drew up the plans for Stolzenfels' reconstruction, had created the title page of the novel's first edition.23 With Clemens von Brentano (1784-1824), Arnim also published The Youth's Magic Horn (1805-08), a collection of German folk poetry which was to inspire Frederick William and generations of German Romantics and nationalists. Arnim and his wife Bettina (von Brentano's sister) were frequently guests of the crown prince.

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Because the construction of what was virtually a large new palace was a great undertaking for a state not yet enjoying the wealth to come from the later industrial revolution, Stolzenfels was built in several stages. After making exact studies of the ruins' existing state, Johann Claudius von Lassaulx drew up plans in 1823, making exact drawings of the ruin's condition and outlining plans for renovation of the Palas. Archeological excavations were undertaken and a cork model of the ruined castle was made. By 1825 a footpath, viewing terrace, and gardens were laid out. In 1833 the crown prince visited the site, was impressed, and in 1834 presented Schinkel with Lassaulx's plans, asking him to adapt them. The former's suggestions involved not only the Palas but also the whole eastern tract of the castle and adhered more closely than did Lassaulx's to the simplicity of the original. Indeed Schinkel's first sketches would have left the ruins partially in their original condition, complete with bushes, trees, and creeping vines, an approach which reveals the age's romanticism, but also foreshadows a twentieth-century respect for the actual substance of ruins, untouched. Ultimately, however, in order to fulfill his commission Schinkel envisaged an elaborate, refined, inhabitable palace. At the end of this first stage the ruins were stabilized and protected, but actual reconstruction had not yet begun. Finally in 1835 with funds from his private income, the crown prince decided to rebuild Stolzenfels. Using Schinkel's redrawn plans, work began in 1836 under the direction of von Wussow, who had overall responsibility for the work, and one Naumann, Captain of Engineers, the site architect. At first only the Rhine side was to be rebuilt, but soon plans involved the whole castle as well as the road down to Kapellen. By 1839 von Wussow and Naumann had finished the south gate tower and the middle dwelling. In 1840 Naumann was replaced by Major of Engineers Karl Schnitzler, who had also worked at Ehrenbreitstein and Rheinstein. The last stage began in 1842 under Schinkel's successor as Royal Architect, Frederick August Stiller (1800-65).24 The palace was not fully completed until 1845, but already in 1843 a large banner bearing the Prussian eagle was unfurled from Stolzenfels' keep for passersby to see. Furnishing and painting went on until the 1850s. Several architects and engineers had a hand in the creation of the new Stolzenfels. Schinkel's plans were not always precisely executed, although the axial layout of the ground plan is his. The occasional asymmetry of the final product, imitating the irregularity of a genuine medieval castle, is Naumann's. The crown prince, too, participated in the planning, drawing up sketches and suggestions. Frederick William stipulated that all the

138 I Castles of the Rhine older parts be preserved but, as it turned out, this would not involve highlighting those original sections, for the new castle should be perceived as the "resurrection of a knightly castle."25 This, he said would make it impossible, he said, "to notice where the old walls stop and the new begin."26 A concern for authenticity did prevail in the use of same kind of stone in the new walls as in the old battlements, but was ignored where some of the outer wall surfaces were not plastered, but kept rough. Schnitzler and Stiiler made a contribution, too; because they preferred the round arch (as over against the pointed Gothic arch), traces of this form, as in the frieze on the keep, are theirs. After Frederick William had participated in the laying of the foundation stone at Cologne's cathedral in 1842, he sailed up the Rhine with his consort. Disembarking at Kapellen he was met by members of local guilds, led by von Wussow. Dressed in traditional medieval caps, sashes, and lace collars, they greeted their king with songs and addresses. Recreating an imagined medieval scene, they accompanied him with a festive torchlight procession into his new castle. In the outer courtyard a choir sang a "Song of Stolzenfels' Builders" and music by Handel was heard. Later a ceremonial banquet was enjoyed in the Knights' Hall. Ehrenbreitstein and the nearby ruins of Lahneck and Marksburg were illuminated and fireworks exploded; the King of the Rhineland had taken possession of his residence in an act wherein he and his people symbolically reentered an age of unquestioned public devotion to the ruler. That 1842 procession followed a winding road up to the castle which the visitor uses today. Planted with shade trees it twists around several hairpin curves and passes a small cemetery with a chapel (designed by Lassaulx) which has a slim spire and a round Romanesque apse. The road continues across a viaduct resting on triumphal arches created by the architect Stiiler. This beautiful bridge, which at midpoint is surmounted by a cross, spans an artificially redirected stream and waterfall.27 The road takes one to the Hermitage (Klause] completed in 1843, which included servants' quarters, stables for a dozen horses, and, in its outer gate tower, the castellan's quarters. Like parts of Stolzenfels itself the Hermitage's unplastered walls and crenellations show the influence of English neoGothic architecture. The arms of Prussia and the inscription "FW IV 1843" appear prominently over a carriageway which runs through the structure. In a genuine, medieval Burg, of course, this structure and associated service buildings would have been within the walls. Stolzenfels itself is an impressive, solid, castellated structure, stretching along a promontory, with its large five-sided keep at the south end,

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and the chapel projecting towards the river (Fig. 16). Whether seen from the river below or from the eastern shore, the bright ochre-yellow paint of its plastered towers dominates the landscape. This colour (used mainly on the tower and living quarters) was chosen by Schinkel and was popular throughout Prussian domains in the 1820s and 1830s—one sees it also in Ehrenbreitstein. In the latter fortress the yellow is offset by red sandstone articulation, whereas in Stolzenfels the contrast is with black basalt and extensive unplastered sections. The little tower inside the courtyard, for example, as well as the balconies on the keep and the gatehouse, are left plain. The outer walls of the original fortress can be seen on the southwest rampart. Crenellated battlements surmount the palace's walls hiding, in the English neo-Gothic fashion, the gently sloping roofs. The approach to the castle gate is from the south, with the Rhine on the right. A drawbridge leads to the outer courtyard with its stunning view of the river valley. Here the king's presence and policies are advertised; over the main door is a relief showing the entwined arms of Prussia and Bavaria, executed by Adolf Lasinsky, recalling Frederick William's marriage to the Wittelsbach princess Elizabeth. The Roman Porta Nigra in Trier and the Cologne cathedral are also represented because they were part of the king's architectural program. The motto "Gott mit uns" appears here as well. Another drawbridge gives access to an interior courtyard. To the left rises the five-sided keep, still almost all of medieval origin, as is the large three-storey living quarters to the right (the Rhine side), built between 1362 and 1388. Although stag's antlers are fixed over a doorway, the palace gives the impression not of a hunting retreat, but of a very elegant summer home. An anachronistic catwalk with wrought iron railings looms above, connecting the keep with the gatehouse. In part, Stolzenfels has always been a museum, both of antiquities and of the Hohenzollern dynasty's glory; until 1918 the ruling emperor continued the aristocratic tradition of showing off the family collection to a presumably appreciative public.28 The decoration of Stolzenfels' twentythree rooms reflects both the original royal patron's special interests and the taste of the age. Some of the furnishings are contemporary Biedermeier; others are much older. For example, in 1841 Frederick William had purchased the antique collection of a Dr. Wilhelm for his castle, furnishings which helped him to reconstruct an imagined heroic age. Images of Siegfried and knightly saints, as well as of the Hohenzollern family, accompany ornamental weaponry on the walls, along with booty and mementoes of the Wars of Liberation. Of particular significance for the creation of the desired "medieval" mood, many windows are totally filled

140 I Castles of the Rhine with stained and/or painted glass, some of which is nineteenth-century, some older. On the valley side the modern window panes were produced by the glass painter Zebger of Berlin, who inserted the black Prussian eagle several times. Here only the edge of the window is executed in coloured glass so that the views of the Rhine or the mountainside are effectively framed. This also accorded with the romantic opinion that, from the main rooms of an ideal house, one should be able to "commune with nature." Of course the oldest medieval castles had no glazing and even in the later Middle Ages expanses of beautiful glass, although technically more possible, were impracticable from the point of view of both defence and comfort and consequently were rarely found. The Smaller Knights' Hall on the river side reveals the king's obsession with medieval dynasties. In 1844 the tour guide writer H.M. Malten wrote that this room was an "ante-chamber... through which one may pass into the romantic time of the middle ages and of knighthood."29 Paintings here express the king's piety, his romantic yearning for the glories of the medieval German Empire, and his commitment to the preservation and promotion of Germany's medieval political, religious and social traditions. For example, between the elaborate wainscotting and the crossvaulted ceiling are six pictures by Hermann Stilke (1803-60) displaying the "Characteristics of German Knighthood." The virtues and strivings of the good knight are each embodied in a historical personality. "Justice," for example, shows Emperor Rudolf judging the robber barons of the Rhine, and "Courage" shows King Johann of Bohemia, the blind hero of the battle of Crecy, for whom Frederick William built a memorial at Mettlach.30 In the spaces between the paintings appear the patron saints of knighthood—George, Gereon, Mauritius, and Reinhold. Even today it is impossible not to get the message that these qualities must have pertained as well to the nineteenth-century Hohenzollerns, the arms of whom (along with those of the Wittelsbachs) appear in the interior here, as they do above the main entrance. Symbolic representations of knighthood appear on the floor of the Hall and on the doors more German heroes are carved in wood. Through the windows one sees both the castle's walls and the forested landscape. To the east lies the Rhine and at the Rhine-Lahn confluence the equally romantic Burg Lahneck. There is a sense of being in a dream world—an ideal world, remote from unpleasant modern realities and, if one were of the king's mentality, a chivalric world, too. Across the hallway from the Smaller Knights' Hall is the Greater Knights' Hall, influenced in its design by Marienburg's great hall in East

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Prussia (Appendix Two). The crown prince himself suggested the room's design: the Prussian eagle surmounts the door, the room's colour scheme is the Hohenzollern black and white. Below the cross-vaulted ceiling the walls are hung with a large ornamental weapon collection, including crossbows and complete suits of armour. On the wall opposite the great fireplace is a window which continues the by-now-familiar themes: a herald of the Hohenzollern dynasty with the black and white banner in one hand and the plan of the rebuilt Stolzenfels in the other; a kneeling servant with the escutcheon of the royal house; the Prussian eagle, and the arms of other distinguished ancestors. This room served as the banqueting hall. On the floor above the Lesser Knights' Hall are the royal dwelling quarters, more intimate and less military in atmosphere, and more sumptuous than those at Rheinstein. These rooms, however, characterized by a mixture of authentic medieval works of art, copies of classic works of art, and valuable early nineteenth-century items, also reflect the tastes and values of Frederick William himself. Imitation medieval paintings coexist with originals, medieval windows with contemporary imitations. Some of the furniture and outfitting is of German inspiration, old or new; other items are influenced by foreign models. There is a music room, containing old musical instruments of various periods. The Queen's reception room has fine wooden panelling in the neo-Gothic style; a window dated 1589 is from Switzerland. If these rooms have the quality of a museum, they are nevertheless warm and unthreatening, with little of the fortress ambience. Beautifully panelled, the Queen's living room has views of the Rhine to the east and the north, and a lightly coffered ceiling. The original fabrics here were French. There is a painting by Peter von Cornelius of Dusseldorf hanging over the Queen's desk and a copy of Stefan Lochner's view of Cologne cathedral.31 In the corner oriel window stands an octagonal table produced in 1842 by Franz Xaver Fortner of Munich, with richly inlaid scenes from The Youth's Magic Horn and a statuette of King Johann of Bohemia. Adjacent is a reception room and the formal guest room. The royal couple's bedroom, lying over the arcade hall and linking the two sections of the palace, has water-colours by Caspar Scheuren. Passing from this room into the king's chambers (which include an audience chamber and a living room), one enters an ordered series of rooms reminiscent of eighteenth-century palaces, certainly not typical of medieval fortresses. The king's own rooms, including an office and a guest room, are part of an almost totally new building.32 Originally the palace had a "Hall of Antiquities" containing objects found in the vicinity, particularly Roman artifacts, supporting the popular

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view that all Rhenish castles arose on Roman sites. This display lent further glamour to the rebuilt Stolzenfels and contributed to the palace's museum-like ambience. At the north end of the castle the Pergola Garden, not part of the original castle, is divided by arcades from the inner courtyard. Although it rests on fourteenth-century flanking walls and includes an "Adjutant's Tower," it is a new creation, befitting a summer retreat for a king. Designed by Peter Joseph Lenne (1789-1866), Director of the Royal Gardens, this lovely enclave recalls neither Prussian nor German traditions. Its wooden rose-bedecked trellis surrounds a splashing fountain, set among low clipped hedges, flower beds, and a gravel path. Although the fountain is made of modern cast iron, the whole effect is of an Italian Renaissance or even a Spanish Moorish retreat.33 This very un-German element did not prevent Stolzenfels from later becoming a German national monument! In the Pergola Garden stood another reminder of the German heroes so much on the king's mind. For the garden, Reinhold Begas (1831-1911) created a statue of Siegfried holding his self-forged sword (no longer in situ). Adding to the theatrical atmosphere, the arcade widens dramatically in a flight of steps to the courtyard above. In 1845 Caspar Scheuren produced a characteristic water-colour with the inner palace courtyard viewed from the garden showing a guard sleeping in the arcade. Another of Scheuren's water-colours is a view of the Pergola Garden showing three courtiers in colourful late medieval costume, wearing great plumed hats, doublets, hose, long hair, and strolling with two peacocks. This is how the king wanted to spend his time here—as no courtiers or monarchs ever did in the medieval lifetime of the original Stolzenfels! The Rhine terrace is reached through an attractive Summer or Garden Hall opening off the cellar. This space, too, is a nineteenth-century creation, enhancing the summer palace atmosphere. It, too, contains a mixture of antique and modern. The sixteenth-century fireplace is from the Lower Rhine. A nineteenth-century representation of the arms of Cologne is found above one of the arched entrances to the terrace. The "knightly virtues" theme is continued here, too: a statue of Albert the Bear (reigned about 1100-70), one of the founders of Brandenburg in which Berlin was to rise, for example. The blue and white tiles of the floor and walls recall the Bavarian origins of the Queen. In accord with Frederick William's dreams Scheuren painted a water-colour of the Summer Hall in which the bright light of a summer morning pours through its Gothic

KingoftheRhineland I 143 arches onto a table around which are seated nobles in sixteenth-century dress enjoying a light breakfast. On the outer wall of the Garden Hall, above the Rhine Terrace, Adolf Lasinsky painted a fresco showing what was considered the most important event in the history of the area: the Archbishop of Trier at nearby Rhens in 1400 greeting the recently crowned Emperor Rupert of the (Bavarian) Palatinate, the latter's nephew, the Count of Hohenzollern and his fiancee (Fig. 17). For Frederick William IV this was significant both politically and personally. Not only was the count his ancestor, a fact which helped to justify his ownership, but Frederick William was given Stolzenfels in the same year that the Bavarian Elisabeth became his fiancee. At the centre of the terrace stands another fountain out of which rises a squat column surmounted by a gilded Prussian eagle of cast iron, with outstretched wings, the work of the sculptor Christian Rauch (1777-1857). Frederick William IY who believed that he ruled by divine right, stimulated a spate of church-building as well as castle-reconstruction. Appropriately, at Stolzenfels a large, free-standing chapel, much bigger than that of the original, was completed in 1845. On the eastern (Rhine) side of the castle, reached by a bridge from the Smaller Knight's Hall, this neo-Gothic chapel, designed by Schnitzler, was inspired by the Apollinaris Church in Remagen.34 Over the doors are the mottoes "Fur Gott und Vaterland" and "Gott Mit Uns." Built on a cross-shaped plan, it has two high-pointed towers on each side of a polygonal apse,35 with eight small spires flanking the nave. Its smooth finished stones, accented with dark basalt, are unplastered. Inside, frescoes showing events of the Old and New Testaments were executed in 1853 by Ernest Deger (1809-85) in the style of the school of Peter von Cornelius, Frederick Overbeck (1789-1869), and the Nazarenes of Dusseldorf. If the chapel imitates older forms, it also has modern elements, such as the winding staircase of cast iron linking the nave to the choir loft. Von Wussow's original intention would have provided Stolzenfels with a genuine medieval church. In 1843 he suggested dismantling the chapel of the House of the Teutonic Order in Koblenz in order to transfer it to Stolzenfels.36 Fortunately, the king did not approve von Wussow's plan, which later generations of Germans would have considered cultural vandalism. Because Queen Elizabeth had been raised as a Catholic, Stolzenfels' chapel was furnished so that Roman Catholic as well as Protestant services could be held there. The king, tolerant of his wife's original faith, had great respect for the memory of the Catholic Holy Roman Empire.

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Fig. 17. At Stolzenfels in 1980: An attempt to justify the Prussian dynasty's role in the Rhineland, Lasinsky's mural shows the Archbishop of Trier (owner of Stolzenfels) greeting the Holy Roman Emperor, the Count of Hohenzollern, and the latter's betrothed at Rhens (just south of Koblenz) in 1400. The gilded eagle continues the Prussian symbolism. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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Perhaps he also sought to embody in his private chapel his hoped-for national union of all Germans in which sectarian differences were forgotten. Ironically, although the king loved his new palace, he and his court were seldom at Stolzenfels. He stopped there when inspecting his Koblenz garrison in 1845, 1846, 1847, and 1851, but during these short stays court life never thrived. Stolzenfels was too small to accommodate a modern monarch's retinue; hence the former electoral palace at Koblenz, more comfortable and commodious, was restored as von Wussow suggested, becoming the local venue for formal royal occasions. The highlight of the castle's history was the 1845 visit of Queen Victoria. After her royal yacht landed at Kapellen, the king accompanied her up to the castle, where she was lodged in the most beautiful of the living chambers, and enjoyed a festive banquet in her honour in the Knights' Hall. Present were Archduke Frederick of Austria, Prince Metternich, the King and Queen of Belgium, and the King of Holland. Fireworks were staged, with illuminations of the nearby castles. The following day, Jenny Lind and Franz Liszt gave a concert in the Knights' Hall.37

More than a Summer Retreat Stolzenfels is the most impressive of the reconstructed castles of the Middle Rhine, but whether it could have served as a vehicle by which to reintroduce medieval social, religious and political values remains debatable. It probably convinced only the already converted king and his family. In an age when the political consciousness of the middle class was still developing, however, it may have persuaded some of the bourgeoisie of the validity of the Prussian status quo. Still, even at mid-century few Germans would have agreed with Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810-76) who in 1846 wrote a poem wherein a steamship stoker laughingly says of Stolzenfels, "that's how they provide ruins for the future."38 By the end of the century such cynical indifference to rebuilt castles was rare. The new Stolzenfels became a political icon because of its associations, well cultivated by loyal propagandists. The first stage of this development involved the growth of railway and steamship transportation, which made the Schloss a tourist mecca. Here, as at other popular sites, visitors mounted donkeys at the riverside and rode up the winding path to the castle. One of the earliest of all guidebooks was devoted solely to Stolzenfels: H. Beyer's Burg Stolzenfels. A Souvenir for Rhine Travellers (1842). Malten's guide has already been noted. Robert Dohme published

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the first edition of his Description of the Castle Stolzenfels in 1850. As the desire for a united Germany grew, support developed in the 1860s for the Lesser German (Kleindeutsch] solution to the national problem; increasingly, Prussia was seen as the natural leader and unifier of the German states. After Prussia's forcible unification of most of the German principalities in 1871, Stolzenfels began its career as a national monument. Liberal nationalists forgot its association with the Metternichian reaction. In fact Stolzenfels became part of a series of national monuments to the German revival, the best example of which is the huge Germania near Rudesheim, built between 1877 and 1883.39 In 1873 Alexander Duncker (1813-97), a publisher, wrote that on Stolzenfels' site "Celts and Teutons once sacrificed in sacred groves, until the foreigners (Welschen) came, conquered the German way of life and brought slavery." Under Louis XIV "the French hordes went up and down the river devastating with fire and sword." After this "incredible barbarism," however, arose "a resurrected Imperial palace" (Kaiserpfalz)—Stolzenfels!40 The castle/palace had thus come to symbolize the reborn German Empire and indirectly to vindicate old-regime political values. Only in its associations, certainly not in its appearance, was the rebuilt palace "German." Its style was alien to the Rhineland—a product of the Prussian neo-Gothic movement. Stolzenfels' garden was Italian, perhaps Moorish, in inspiration. Southern European influences can also be seen in the waterfall, viaduct, grotto, hermitage, and hillside chapel. The roofs and windows of the palace were inspired by late medieval English models. The park was in the popular English landscape style. Stolzenfels has no steeply sloping roofs, but flat ones, hidden behind battlements, more English in inspiration than Rhenish. English practice was also followed in the use of sheet-zinc roofing. The symmetry of Schinkel's ground plans reveals the influence of the architecture of the eighteenth century or even of the Napoleonic Empire.41 So great was the pride of Germans in their newly unified Reich, however, that they could ignore these facts. In fairness, we should note that Schinkel had looked to the Rhenish castles Katz, Gutenfels, Rheinfels, and Ehrenfels for inspiration. Moreover the wide decorative frieze on the keep was modelled on the Old Crane at Andernach. The Greater Knights' Hall was influenced by the recently restored Marienburg. Rhenish examples for the colour, height, and proportion of the room were determined by studying other such spaces at, for example, Oberwesel. Schinkel and his colleagues, writes Rathke, were not so much concerned to reflect German traditions, but to

KingoftheRhineland I 147 provide for "the Reprasentation [dignified symbolism] of the monarch in a distant province."42 Stolzenfels, then, arose as a product of an age newly fascinated by the past, but not yet obsessed with the ethnic roots of style. After visiting Stolzenfels in the mid-1950s, an Irish poet concluded that "even at a distance, its antiquity seems dubious."43 Like Rheinstein, Stolzenfels was not supposed to be a reconstructed fortress. Indeed, Frederick William's Rhenish retreat is referred to as much as a Schloss (Palace) as a Burg (castle or fortress). Relatively little of the original castle survived in either. Although the walls of the original Stolzenfels were probably plastered, the yellow painted plaster on parts of Frederick William's castle reflect a style popular in contemporary Prussia. Schinkel's plan is axially ordered, quite different from the medieval castle's asymmetrical plan. It has little of the rough efficiency of a medieval fortress and its iron steps and railings are a charming but anachronistic element.44 Unlike in a medieval castle, most of Stolzenfels' maintenance buildings were located outside its walls. Defence of the area was left to Ehrenbreitstein and the Koblenz fortresses. Nevertheless, artists were immediately attracted to the new palace. Despite its crisp, cheerful rectilinear look, many preferred to show Stolzenfels with exaggerated verticality, brooding in a storm-tossed landscape as did Rohmer and Foltz in an engraving, or veiled in romantic mist, as did Bartlett and Lacey, about 1841. Both of the latter added several metres to the height of its towers. If artists were pleased with Stolzenfels, later scholars were not. When standards of architectural conservation became more stringent at the end of the century, Stolzenfels occasioned criticism. For example, Otto Piper believed that Stolzenfels was "a magnificent royal palace," not a Burg, for it had "only suggestions of a medieval castle."45 Others were critical of Schinkel for not using more of the available seventeenth-century drawings as guides. On the other hand, viewed in the context of its own time, Frederick William's accomplishment at Stolzenfels should not be underestimated. As part of a neo-Gothic princely summer home, the medieval ruins were, although obscured, at least preserved. The work contracts offered during the building and outfitting of the castle provided employment, while the whole site would, when finished, attract travellers and visitors who would supplement the revenue of the area. By 1850 twelve printed guides to the castle existed and the palace was open for viewing by the public when the royal family was not in residence. This opening of the royal milieu for the admiration and education of the Rhinelander and the traveller from farther afield had been part of the original purpose of reconstruction.46 And

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while the paintings and objects on view were reminders of the importance of the Hohenzollerns, they also supported the work of contemporary artists and designers. Despite Frederick William's long absences, Stolzenfels remained a favoured possession of the Hohenzollern family. Upon his death in 1861, it became the property of King, later Emperor, William I. Frederick William TV's widow Elizabeth lived here from time to time until her death in 1872. Then her sister-in-law, the Empress Augusta, wife of Frederick William's brother, King-Emperor William I, occasionally spent time here until she died in 1890. Around 1900 the panelling of the living rooms was painted over in the dark colours then popular. William II had less interest in Stolzenfels and in 1913 removed the most valuable furniture and artifacts to Berlin's Charlottenburg Palace. After William abdicated in 1918, the family lost Stolzenfels, as it became public property, controlled by the Prussian Administration of State Palaces and Gardens. In 1930 Georg Poensgen, Director of that department, reconstituted the Schloss' furnishings and decor, using the 1844 description by Robert Dohme.47 Begun as a private retreat and a dynastic political statement, Stolzenfels became a symbol of national revival. In its latter role it prefigured the symbolism of Drachenfels and Marksburg. More immediately, Stolzenfels became the model for other reconstructed castles, such as Lahneck, Rheineck, Gutenfels, Maus, and Reichenstein, rebuilt by aristocrats and nouveaux riches throughout the rest of the century. But there is one other contemporary Hohenzollern reconstruction which we must now consider. Burg Sooneck has fascinating similarities to and remarkable differences from both Rheinstein and Stolzenfels. Studying it and the several other lesser Hohenzollern projects in the Rhineland will also allow us to consider the growing rapprochement between local Germans and the Prussian dynasty.

SEVEN THE

HOHENZOLLERNS

AT THE HUNT m T

he fourth major Prussian project on the Middle Rhine, an undertaking which differed from those at Ehrenbreitstein, Rheinstein, and

Stolzenfels, concerned Burg Sooneck. This ruin became neither a modern fortress nor a nineteenth-century Schloss, but a rugged replica of what the age believed to be a genuine medieval castle. It would also serve as a rustic lodge where the Hohenzollern princes could practise the traditional aristocratic pastime of hunting.1 The earlier three buildings had typified the various purposes of the Rhineland's new masters. The Koblenz fortresses had been rebuilt as a political and military statement of Prussia's presence on the Rhine. The pseudo-medieval palaces were also a statement of the permanent presence of the Hohenzollerns among the Rhinelanders, not all of whom seemed welcoming. The rebuilt Sooneck, which perches on a crag over 100 metres above the Rhine, southeast of Bacharach, north of Trechtingshausen, is a less overtly political symbol, but emphasized the Prussian presence in its own way. For our purposes, it also documents the ambitions of the Hohenzollerns as private individuals.

Notes to Chapter Seven are on pp. 354-56. 149

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The First Sooneck Like Stolzenfels, a Hangburg, the first castle here was built about 1015, possibly by another of Mainz's clerical potentates. After 1241, it fell into the hands of the same robber barons who controlled Voigtsburg (Rheinstein). During his campaign to be elected German emperor, King Richard of Cornwall (1209-72) briefly owned it about 1250. In 1254 the League of Rhenish Cities, representing local commercial interests, besieged Sooneck and its neighbours, Voigtsburg and Reichenstein, but to little avail. Rudolf of Habsburg executed Sooneck's outlaw knights, as we have seen, demolished the castle in 1282, and forbade its reconstruction. By 1344 the Archbishop of Mainz owned the site again and, after 1346, granted it to a loyal vassal who, when the reconstruction ban was lifted, rebuilt it. In the next few centuries many noble families lived at Sooneck, both in succession and concurrently, for it became a Ganerbenburg or coparcenary castle, wherein several families could dwell at the same time. The castle's fortifications were strengthened about 1600, but in 1689 the French blew it up. After 1774 the Archbishop transferred the ruin and its associated land to four Trechtingshausen residents who planted vineyards both inside and outside its decaying walls. By 1800 the village itself had acquired the ruin. Typically, the mouldering walls proved to be a useful stone quarry for local builders. In the 1830s the debt-ridden village was ready to sell what seemed only a burdensome pile of stones. Others, however, increasingly found the site attractive. In the remarkably beautiful landscape of the Middle Rhine, Sooneck's location was outstanding for its combination of wilderness and lush cultivation. In 1818 Johanna Schopenhauer called it "one of the most beautiful ruins" on the Rhine.2 In 1842 Prince Carl (1801-83), brother of King Frederick William IV, described the special appeal of Sooneck and the area in a letter to his children. His comments reflect the northern Prussian's fascination with both the German southwest and the past of fact and legend. The road from Koblenz to Mainz, he wrote, was begun by Charlemagne. He revelled in the fact that Ebernburg, the castle of the heroic Franz von Sickingen, was not far away to the west and that, across the river and into the Taunus hills, lay the ancestral seat of the counts of the Rheingau, Rheingrafenstein, which legend said was built in the eleventh century by the devil himself. This charming region [wrote Carl], actually a part of southern Germany, has been treasured for ages because of its mild climate, in which real chestnuts and sweet almonds flourish and is rich in historical memories. Charlemagne ... practised viticulture in the Rheingau which lies opposite,

The Hohenzollerns at the Hunt I 151 at his palace where he noticed that the snow melted earlier than anywhere else. He imported grapes from Orleans, which at that time produced the most celebrated wine. The view... is extraordinarily imposing! To the left [of Sooneck] one can see into the gradually narrowing wild romantic Rhine valley; a quarter of an hour away appears Fritz Louis' Burg Rheinstein about 200 feet lower on our left bank of the river... . Far below, is the so-called Binger Loch in the middle of the river, celebrated as venerable, gigantic, green-golden by Freiligrath and other poets, where the river, with the greatest possible speed, hurls itself past the cliffs with a roar like the spreading ocean surf; somewhat further to the right one sees the Prussian flag flying from the famous ancient Mouse Tower.3

Such enthusiasm encapsulates three important themes of castle-rebuilding: the quasi-legendary association of the Middle Rhine with the earliest "German" emperor (Charles the Great), impressive scenery described by romantic poets, and Prussian pride. Before he ever saw Sooneck, therefore, the prince and his brothers knew the area from the works of artists, poets, travellers' accounts and popular legends. Paintings and drawings, such as those by Ludwig Lange (1808-68), architect and painter, stress the well-preserved ruins' affinity with the rocky promontory on which they stand (Fig. 18). Needless to say, the rebuilt castle also became a favourite with artists. Satan's wiles and righteous vengeance figure in the myths of Sooneck.4 Even the historical reality of Emperor Rudolf destroying the original Sooneck became a tale of justice imposed on godless greed by a German emperor-hero. The new Sooneck was built after the war scare of 1840 when the French again seemed to threaten the Rhineland. This threat may not have motivated the rebuilders but the new Sooneck came to symbolize the protective power of the Rhineland's virtuous rulers.

The New Sooneck Prince Frederick, Rheinstein's rebuilder, was the first Hohenzollern to show an interest in Sooneck. In 1822 his inquiries about its ownership were met with the response that the woods, abandoned vineyards, the hillside, and the ruins belonged to the nearby town. In 1823 the Sooneck ruin was examined by Lassaulx, who reported that it was too small to justify a reconstruction. On the other hand, like the residents of Koblenz, the people of Trechtingshausen were enthusiastic about having a prince live nearby—probably with a view to employment and commercial opportunities. The town's mayor wrote that the "inhabitants of this locality [would

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Fig. 18. Near Niederheimbach, Burg Sooneck about 1840: A relatively intact castle, viewed from the south by the artist L. Lange. The steamboat on the river presages the Industrial Revolution. Heimburg's tower, above Niederheimbach, is in the distance. Courtesy of Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz/Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlosser.

The Hohenzollems at the Hunt / 153

Fig. 19. Burg Sooneck in 1980: Sooneck was rebuilt with some attention to rugged military necessity but, as this view of the Palas and the Bergfried from the courtyard shows, lilac and roses grow in profusion along the courtyard's inner walls. From here, too, a magnificent view of the Rhine to the south and west unfolds. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

154 I Castles of the Rhine

be] especially happy to be able to see ... in our neighbourhood a prince of His Most Gracious Majesty, our King."5 Frederick tried to interest his cousin Prince William in the ruins and finally, in 1834, the latter's brother, Crown Prince Frederick William, purchased the site. It may be that, having not yet realized his youthful dream of a family retreat on Lake Havel, the heir to the throne hoped to accomplish it on the Rhine at Sooneck,6 which he planned to share with his brothers Carl, William, and Albert.7 Many of the same engineers, architects, and artists who worked on Ehrenbreitstein, Rheinstein, and Stolzenfels were called in to work here, too. For example, Karl Schnitzler surveyed the ruin in 1835, and drew up a plan of its site. As noted, the crown prince drew his brothers into the undertaking. Ironically it was on the modern steamship, Princess of Prussia, September 14, 1842, that they came to an agreement to rebuild the medieval Burg Sooneck. Each would contribute to the work 300 taler annually for seven years. They were inspired by several events: the laying of the cornerstone for the completion of Cologne's cathedral ten days before, the fact that Stolzenfels had just been ceremoniously inhabited, and the fact that "cousin Fritz Louis" was continuing work on Rheinstein by building a chapel there. The brothers commissioned Schnitzler to create a plan for the ruin as a hunting lodge. Here, dispensing with courtly pomp and comforts, the royal brothers could come to hunt in the Soon Forest, which was reputed to be rich in wild life. Thus they continued a medieval aristocratic and royal sporting ritual, which no longer had an economic purpose. The princes probably wanted to assert their status of having not only the skill to hunt, but also the means to do so. This was part of a wider phenomenon towards 1800 among the wealthy castle-owners who supported a "back to the land" movement. Shooting and hunting now seemed more interesting than they had been to their grandparents, who had sought an elegant life remote from vulgar country matters. The hunt now took on an aura of both virtue and prestige.8 Hence the presence of antler trophies on walls could be as much a sign of honesty and reliability as of prowess with a rifle. Such trophies are to be seen at all the royal castles, as well as at the aristocratic Burg Reichenstein nearby. Of course it was also fashionable, in an increasingly romantic age, to try to "commune with nature." The princes probably also truly enjoyed the thrill of hunting. The original plans for Sooneck had, in Rathke's words, a "spartan, masculine, sporting character."9 The rugged hunting lodge had space for the four brothers, but little room for their wives, a situation which did not at first trouble the Hohenzollern males. After all, Sooneck was to be a

The Hohenzollerns at the Hunt / 155

masculine refuge from responsibilities. Nevertheless the royal ladies, probably wanting to avoid the cramped conditions which prevailed at Rheinstein, may have influenced the final plans of Sooneck;10 certainly, after the visit of Prince William and Princess Augusta in the summer of 1854, three of the apartments were enlarged. Because Albert had withdrawn from the project after 1850 there was now space for the princesses and their ladies-in-waiting. Hence Sooneck also became a reasonably comfortable place for the royal ladies' summer vacations. If Princess Augusta and her sisters-in-law did not want another Rheinstein in the family, the princes themselves did not want another Stolzenfels, where the original ruins were disguised and even built over. In their 1842 agreement they declared that they strove for Sooneck's "preservation and partial reconstruction,"11 which should follow the castle's original plan wherever possible. For their part both Schnitzler and von Wussow (who supervised the reconstruction) seem to have sensed that the ruin was a monument to be respected. As little as possible of the original was to be changed and the asymmetrical layout was to be preserved. Where broken-down walls were to be completed or when the Rhineside was rebuilt, the original was to be reconstructed as far as possible and the roof tiles were to be produced by traditional methods. The stairs and terraces, on the other hand, did not follow the original for here some degree of convenience had to prevail. Although trained in military building practices, Karl Schnitzler was also concerned with the esthetic appearance of structures. A harmonious whole being his aim, he tried to complete the structure, to build on what remained rather than to transform the ruin into something totally new. Rathke's claim that this "purism" was a "change . . . in the general attitude to Rhenish castles"12 seems, at first glance, an overstatement. But Sooneck is, as she states, the first castle reconstruction which deliberately included the preservation of as much as possible of the original. On the other hand, Sooneck had little influence on later Middle Rhine castle reconstructions, which continued to ignore historical accuracy. Another half century was to pass before precision in restoration was desirable (which aim then in turn began to seem of dubious value). At all events, despite considerable fidelity to the original, the latest mid-nineteenth-century plumbing was installed at Sooneck, as at the other two princes' castles, and the interior decor was resolutely Biedermeier. Nevertheless, in interesting ways, Sooneck is different from Rheinstein and Stolzenfels, as we shall see below.

156 I Castles of the Rhine Although it belonged to all four of the royal brothers, Prince Carl was ultimately the most involved with Sooneck. This third son of King Frederick William III and Queen Louise was the family art collector, less dreamily romantic than his older brother the crown prince but, like all his brothers, fascinated by the medieval past. Having long wanted a medieval castle for himself and his family, in 1843 he purchased a small castle near Bingen and had Ludwig Persius (1803-45) draw up plans for "a large and beautiful castle completely in the ancient style."13 With eclectic tastes, however, he was also interested in the Italian Renaissance, having in 1822 made a trip to Italy. In 1824 he purchased Glienecke Park, to the southwest of Berlin not far from Potsdam. Here 100 hectares (250 acres) of rural, partly forested land were to be a summer retreat for himself and his wife Marie. In 1825 he began to transform the site and its house and pavilions into an Italianate villa, where he could store and display his collections. Nevertheless, his interest in the German Middle Ages dominated his outlook and led him in 1820 to buy both the "Cross of Emperor Henry II," an eleventh-century reliquary, which he would display at Sooneck, and the bronze Imperial Throne from the ruined cathedral at Goslar, about which in 1835 he wrote an essay. After the Revolutions of 1848 the possibility of the royal family having to take refuge in a fortress seemed more likely. With this in mind King Frederick William reconstructed Burg Hohenzollern in Swabia after 1851 (Appendix Two). But whereas Sooneck was provided with some of the practical accoutrements of a genuine fortress, there is no evidence that, before the Revolutions of 1848 at least, the princes wanted Sooneck to serve as a bunker in civil war. Nevertheless, the main difference between Sooneck and the other two princely Rhine castles is that the walls, bastions, ramps, and terraces are linked by a complicated network of passageways unnecessary in a hunting lodge or summer retreat. With its two ring walls Sooneck looks much more impregnable than either Rheinstein or Stolzenfels; the Palas and keep are set back by steep stairways, and the unplastered walls look forbidding. One must not exaggerate this fortress-like mood, for Sooneck was also a product of the romantic view of ruined castles. The stonework shows carefully preserved cracks and breaks. Climbing plants were encouraged to grow up the walls. The main purpose of the castle was escape from modern realities. When reconstruction got underway in 1843 all the princes were involved, although von Wussow, supervisor of reconstruction, reported to Prince William, by then installed as Koblenz's Military Governor. The

The Hohenzollerns at the Hunt I 157 Prussian engineers again played an important role in the masonry work. As contemporary paintings and drawings show, much of Sooneck was intact (Fig. 18). Still standing were the two main gates, parts of two towers in the ring-wall (itself still partially intact), and a gateway on the inside of the castle. Its great hall was roofless but identifiable, and the battlements, turrets, and keep were in good condition. Despite this, however, reconstruction took over eighteen years. Work began sensibly and carefully. A water supply was installed as well as an access path. Rubble was removed and dangerous parts of the ruin strengthened and by 1847 basic repairs had been completed. Unfortunately the political turbulence of 1848 stopped construction until 1852. Prince William, who had acquired the nickname "cartridge prince," because of his obstinate refusal to concede anything to the dissidents, had fled to England. Frederick William himself even considered abdication, but after 1850 both his interest in Sooneck and his determination to rule were renewed. When Albert divorced his wife, Princess Marianne, (to the brothers' disapproval) Frederick William took over Albert's share of contributions and called von Wussow to Berlin in 1853 to report on the state of the castle. After he returned to Prussia, Prince William also re-assumed his interest. When building resumed weather damage done during the four years of inactivity had first to be repaired. The exteriors of the Palas and the keep were finished before financial limitations and the king's increasing mental instability caused construction to stop again in 1856. The modern world, so inimical politically to these reactionary romantics, produced economic complications as well. The west bank railway was being constructed along the river, and as the wages of the navvies rose, labourers were drawn away from the castle reconstruction site. The king, in poor health, gradually lost touch again with the reconstruction. When Prince William became Regent (after 1858), he assumed full responsibility for Sooneck, but construction did not begin again until 1860 and was finished finally in the winter of 1861. The rebuilt Sooneck was supposed to be a hunting castle (Jagdburg), which would resemble a fortress (Wehrburg). Accordingly it looks quite different from Rheinstein and Stolzenfels (Fig. 19). Whereas Stolzenfels' walls enclosed a vine-covered pergola garden, Sooneck's rough stones supported at first only wild roses. Stolzenfels was more of a unified complex, an elegant palace while Sooneck had unplastered walls, plain windows, and a militant look. The sprawling ring-walls are clearly defined and, as noted, there are batteries, ramps, and protected staircases. The basic dwelling house and prominent keep which together form a massive

158 I Castles of the Rhine

block are similar to Rheinfels'. The walls were left in their natural Grauwacke, a stone native to the Rhineland, which in bright light looks a rich brown. Although the style is Romanesque, also appropriate to the Rhine, the battlements are crenellated in the English neo-Gothic manner. The roofs appear flat, for no attempt was made to reproduce the medieval pointed style. Leading up the south side of the castle is a romantically winding path, as at Stolzenfels. Today, however, the castle is entered from a drawbridge and gate on the north side. Over the gateway an escutcheon in stone shows the Prussian eagle with crown, orb, and sceptre. Narrow embrasures are cut into the wall above the slightly arched gate opening. To the right the keep looms heavily, but any suggestion of gloominess is dispelled by the well-kept terraces of gardens which Prince Carl planted. The profuse roses and lilacs which bloom here now make this the most attractive of the royal reconstructions. Furthermore, the courtyard is not cramped as in a genuine medieval castle (such as Marksburg) but opens out giving a view to the south. The castle seems to rise not simply out of the rocky prominence but out of the surrounding woods themselves. "Everything is very pretty there," wrote Princess Marie in 1869; "the leafy trees" were "charming!"14 This blending of nature and man's work was considered ideal for a hunting lodge and romantic retreat. The riverside balcony (the site of the medieval sally-port) is another romantic invention for the purpose of enjoying the magnificent view. The castellan's house to the left of the entrance was constructed on the medieval ruins, as were the main ring-wall and the main gate. The dwelling has a symmetrical arrangement of windows, as found in Rheinstein and Stolzenfels, replacing the small randomly arranged medieval openings. Beyond a pointed-arch gateway on the right (found intact in the ruin) is a small inner courtyard out of which rises a long flight of outdoor steps to the door to the Palas, basically a four-square structure on foundations of 1346. Both the dwelling house and the keep (which rises out of the dwelling house) have corner towers, crenellations, and corbelling. Today the interior is not as Carl and his relatives enjoyed it. The present furnishings were added after 1945, but they are in the simple taste of the Biedermeier era. As well, there are the sort of medieval artifacts used at Rheinstein and Stolzenfels. (The furniture of the Knights' Hall was actually brought from the collection at Stolzenfels.) The original (1850s) architectural fabric can still be appreciated, especially in the vaulting of the tower rooms, in the fireplaces (as in the Knights' Hall) and in the narrow

The Hohenzollerns at the Hunt / 159

winding staircase. The effect of the simple furnishings and the equally plain woodwork is pleasing to the late twentieth-century eye, but totally unmedieval. Modest comfort is the rule, as in the Dining Room which has gray-green wainscotting and white walls with an off-white ceiling. The ceiling has exposed rafters painted like the wainscotting. The design and the furniture mix medieval and neo-Gothic with Empire and Beidermeier. Whereas a medieval castle would have had straw-covered stone-flagged floors, Sooneck has elegant parquet. This quietly elegant decor suggests more of a villa than a masculine hideaway. In fact, despite the intentions of the princes, Sooneck was never used as a hunting castle. Rheinstein saw hunting parties, for the woods were still full of deer, boar, and other game, but the royal brothers did not meet at Sooneck as intended; indeed, Frederick William died the year the castle was finished. Albert, as noted, was in some disgrace, so only Carl and William were still committed to the project. Nevertheless Prince Carl celebrated his birthday here annually from 1861 until his death in 1872. Indeed, when it was eventually completed, Carl found peace here in the "seclusion" of his castle.15 Prince William, who became king and later German emperor, also remained a frequent visitor, stopping here in 1863 and later in 1875. After his death in 1888, although the castle remained a royal possession, the castellan's family lived here for a long time, furnishing it to their own taste.16 In 1851 Charles Kingsley found Sooneck "worth [as a beau ideal of the robber's nest] all the other castles put together."17 But the reconstruction was not supposed to recall simply heroic violence and dismal deeds. A product of romanticism, and to a degree of Prussian Staatsrdson, Sooneck reflects a growing interest in the past as such. It was more of a genuine restoration than an inaccurate reconstruction, because a real effort was made to represent a defensible medieval fortress, not only a romantic retreat (as Rheinstein) or a representative palace (as Stolzenfels). The architects and engineers, and their patrons, tried to use the ruin itself and the indigenous Romanesque style as a guide. On the other hand the new Sooneck was not based on archeological or historical studies and is not totally accurate. The fourteenth-century Sooneck, for example, would probably have had high pointed roofs.18 Far from blending into the surrounding landscape, it would have dominated the scene. The colourful flower gardens alone are inappropriate. These anomalies gradually became apparent as historians and archeologists turned their attention to Germany's castles. Paul Clemen, Rhenish Conservation Officer after 1893,

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lamented the crenellations and corbelling which rendered Sooneck an inaccurate reconstruction.19 But such criticism anticipates later chapters.

Royal Burgenschwarmerei Elsewhere We should now place Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, and Sooneck in the context of the remarkable fascination for Rhenish castles which affected so many of the Hohenzollerns. In particular Frederick William, both as crown prince and as king, was associated with several other ruins and supported the preservation of other endangered structures in the Rhine province. For example, he was attracted to two other Rhenish castle ruins because of their political associations: Hammerstein and Ehrenfels. These he preserved, but did not rebuild.

Hammerstein Southeast of Linz, on a crag above the Rhine, are the remains of Burg Hammerstein, the perfect ruin of a romantic's dream. According to one legend, Charles Martel ("The Hammer"), King of the Franks (reigned 688-741), who repelled the Moors and helped to Christianize Germanic Europe, built a castle here.20 The ruin's association with this particular emperor, who was believed to have defended the integrity of the Empire against foreign ambitions, was important to nationalists. The first castle here was probably built in the tenth century. In 1020 it became an Imperial castle, then in 1071 Emperor Henry rebuilt it and used it as a toll station. In 1274 it passed into the hands of Trier's archbishop. In 1654, after the Thirty Years' War (when both Swedish and Spanish forces occupied it), it was demolished by the Archbishop's troops—not, let it be noted, by French forces. By the early nineteenth century there remained only the overgrown stump of a keep and part of the main wall, on a remote hilltop site. The poet Ernst Moritz Arndt called the remains "one of the most beautiful ruins on the Rhine."21 In 1832 Bulwer-Lytton revelled in the castle's "green and livid ruins sleeping in the melancholy moonlight."22 The Duchy of Berg controlled it until 1815, when it passed into the hands of Prussia, which sold it in 1823 to the Count of Haxthausen. In 1843 King Frederick William, now involved with the completion of Cologne Cathedral and the reconstruction of Stolzenfels, purchased the ruins. He ordered a study of the site and some stabilizing measures, but nothing else was done to the ruin, still overgrown with trees and bushes, until 1893 when aristocratic ambition again came into play. The descend-

The Hohenzollerns at the Hunt / 161

ants of the Hammersteins, eager to repossess the family castle, were able to purchase the ruin from the state. Thus Hohenzollern interest, aided by the aristocratic aspirations, saved Burg Hammerstein from further decay. Luckily (by modern preservationist standards), the royal and aristocratic passion to rebuild was restrained here.

Ehrenfels In 1866 Prussia defeated Austria in the Seven Weeks' War and annexed the Duchy of Nassau, thus acquiring the defeated state's palaces, castles, and ruins. Two prominent examples of the latter were situated on the Middle Rhine: Burg Ehrenfels and the Archbishop's castle at Eltville. In neither case was the Prussian king—now William I—interested in rebuilding or restoration, but state ownership helped to save the ruins from plunder as quarries and from further decay. The tall impressive ruins of Burg Ehrenfels stand above the Rhine fairly low on the east bank, just west of Riidesheim (Fig. 20). The castle was built in the thirteenth century by a magistrate of Mainz as a toll station connected to the river by several buildings and a smaller fortress on the riverside. From here chains were strung out across the water to the Mouse Tower on a rock in the middle of the river. Ehrenfels changed hands several times: for a while it belonged to Emperor Henry VII, which gave it political significance for nationalists; then in 1356 it was enlarged by Mainz's archbishop; during the Thirty Years' War it was besieged many times and occupied by the Swedes. A 1630 copperplate shows a compact, powerful castle with spiky towers and a formidable shield wall. Its decline began when Mainz partially dismantled it in 1636. By 1675 Merian's copperplate shows most of the roofs gone and the connecting buildings to the riverside toll station in ruins. Finally in 1689, the French destroyed it. A century and a half later the building of the Rhine railway obliterated the toll station and storehouse on the riverside. The ruins, still flanked by two powerful towers, remained impressive. Rising sheerly out of vineyards on the Riidesheimer Berg, their position, starkly perched above the Rhine, as well as a romantic legend, were probably what attracted Frederick William to the ruin.23 Ehrenfels was not altered by King William, probably because it was too exposed, too close to the increasingly busy river traffic and, by the 1860s, to the railway. It was not graced with a hunting forest, as were Stolzenfels, Sooneck, or Rheinstein. At all events William had much to distract him in his long reign (1861-88). By 1862 he was embroiled in a constitutional crisis with his liberal Landtag (House of Representatives).

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Fig. 20. Near Assmannshausen, Burg Ehrenfels in 1980: Like Hammerstein, still not of easy access, and never reconstructed despite Hohenzollern interest, Ehrenfels overlooks Bingerbriick's bustling railway yards and the quaint Mauseturm (Mouse Tower), "restored" by the royal brothers. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

The Hohenzollerns at the Hunt I 163 His appointment of Otto von Bismarck as chancellor saved him from having to give in to parliament (even, he feared, from being guillotined), but ultimately launched him and Prussia on a course which, after three wars, ended in 1871 with William, now an old man, becoming emperor of a new German Reich. After an 1830 visit to Frederick's Rheinstein he had purchased the ruins of Rheinfels. Near Berlin he had built the pseudomedieval Babelsberg, a summer home for himself and his wife.24 Nevertheless, although fond of the Rhineland, William had less of his late brother's romantic inclination to rebuild castles and little of his relatives' interest in the arts.25 Thus Ehrenfels has remained a ruin to this day.

The Mouse Tower As we have seen with the massive Ehrenfels, not every ruin was suitable for reconstruction but Princes Carl and Frederick did reconstruct the small Mouse Tower, that extension of Ehrenfels' toll system on a river island (Fig. 20). Built in the thirteenth century, it was the site of the most famous Rhine legend, in which much hated Archbishop Hatto of nearby Mainz sought refuge in the tower only to be devoured by an army of mice. The poet August Kopisch (1799-1853) portrayed the archbishop's tormented ghost appearing at midnight pursued around the tower's battlements "in a hellish light" by hordes of "glowing little mice."26 This story gave the neglected, isolated tower just the sort of cachet which romantics loved. Thus in 1818 Johanna Schopenhauer thought that, close up, the "wonderful" tower appeared "even more horrible" than from a distance.27 In 1844 Carl and Frederick made plans to reconstruct it with funds provided by the king. In the same year Malten reported that the princes would "restore" (wiederherstellen) the tower "in its original form."28 The princes gave it an inaccurate neo-Gothic appearance with pointed windows, a gently sloping roof and crenellations. By 1855 it had been put to work as a signal tower for the river traffic, a function it served until 1974. In this role it was incongruously rigged out with at least five semaphores and signal poles. Typically, however, by 1907, when scholarly research was more influential, Ferdinand Luthmer found the Wiederherstellung "very questionable."29 But the tower's original shape was of little concern to the royal brothers who were interested in a picturesque building which would suggest their fantasy Middle Ages; millions of latter-day tourists probably agree that the Hohenzollern Mouse Tower, now shorn of its signal equipment, serves that purpose well. The aforementioned examples do not exhaust the number of ruins which were purchased by or in some way preserved by the Prussian royal

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family.30 Further instances will be noted in later chapters, where other factors ultimately played a role in saving the ruins from obliteration. Meanwhile, despite the tensions of the Church Strife, the activities of the Hohenzollern princes and princesses were partially responsible for the Rhinelanders' growing satisfaction with Prussian rule. Gradually the new Prussian regime proved to be very tolerable, in part because of the very presence of Hohenzollern princes in their new palace/castles. When they reconstructed castles, they brought more employment, business, and travellers to the Rhine towns. By the 1880s, therefore, a lasting rapprochement had developed so that Rhinelanders were loyal Prussians and patriotic Germans. Ironically, it was the least colourful of the princes who may have had the greatest influence in the growing rapprochement.

EIGHT

THE "CARTRIDGE PRINCE" ANDHis CONSORT a hilltop above Bad Ems, still an attractive spa on the Lahn River, O nnear where it enters the Rhine, stands a rather shabby stone tower

on the precincts of an outdoor restaurant. Here in 1874 patriotic Ems residents rebuilt a stone watchtower of the Limes and provided it with a Latin inscription in the Roman imperial style, honouring the Prusso-German Emperor William I as "greatest conqueror of France and restorer of the German Empire."1 In the reconstruction of medieval castles this theme of hatred of France and loyalty to the Hohenzollerns was frequently repeated. The glory of ancient Rome was manipulated to glorify the Prussian dynasty, but here significantly with public support. (The tower-rebuilders ignored the fact that the Limes had been built by the Romans to deter the "barbaric" Germans.) By this time residents of the annexed territories were proud to be Prussians. In the public mind Koblenz had become "the Rhenish Potsdam." For their part, the Hohenzollerns had come to love not only Koblenz, but also the Rhine gorge and the spa of Bad Ems (in the Duchy of Hesse). Ems drew them, including King-Emperor William, as it drew numerous monarchs, aristocrats, and other wealthy patrons, for "the waters." Further evidence, on the west bank of the river, especially at Koblenz, shows how by the 1870s the Hohenzollerns had become respected, even loved, by their new subjects. Monuments, often of an Notes to Chapter Eight are on p. 357. 165

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architectural grandiosity, were constructed by local authorities and groups in a movement complementary to the castle-building phenomenon. Rhinelanders probably never became good Prussians, in the sense of supporting militarism and authoritarianism. To what degree the Hohenzollern building program made good Germans out of the residents of the annexed states is difficult to gauge. However, as we have already seen, certain Rhinelanders were, from the beginning, eager to placate the new government, and eventually a rapprochement did occur. In 1815 few Rhinelanders thought of themselves as loyal Prussians much less as potential subjects of a Prusso-German Empire. If they were not much distressed by the takeover of 1815, neither were they favourably impressed. Eventually many were irritated by the "Lithuanian" regime, as the Church Strife showed. Ehrenbreitstein may have intimidated them but, although it provided employment temporarily, it could not inspire love for Prussia. On the other hand, when the Prussian princes sought to realize their romantic dreams on the Rhine, both Prussian and German unity may have ultimately benefited and a consciousness of this benefit must have developed. In the first place, Hohenzollern building projects drew the approving attention of German nationalists to the Rhineland as a vital part of the greater Fatherland, which in turn brought in valuable tourist revenue for the local people. Secondly, they helped to create economic ties "at the grass roots" between Rhinelanders and their new Prussian masters. Finally, the renewed wave of nationalism which swept over all of Germany in the 1860s cemented the union. The rapprochement was frequently symbolized in architecture and monuments. The catalytic force, as we have seen, was Frederick William IV, active at Stolzenfels and in other projects. His piety, romantic nationalism, and medieval passion also led him to inaugurate the completion of Cologne Cathedral as a Roman Catholic place of worship and as a national monument. The project, begun by the king in 1842, was not finished until 1880, long after his death. Although peripheral to our study, we nevertheless must note that the medieval cathedral's unfinished spires seemed to express the incomplete nature of German national development and likewise to cry out for completion. It is also the first architectural example of German nationalistic longing for a national monument, a building which would symbolize the pride and unity for which patriots yearned.2 The cathedral project also was the first major effort at architectural conservation and preservation in the Rhine province. Thus heritage conservation and patriotism were linked here in a monument which seemed to contain the promise of a new Empire of the German Nation. As Rhinelanders

The "Cartridge Prince" and His Consort / 167

became modern nationalists, they could not fail to be affected by this project. The Hohenzollern castles and, to a lesser extent, all the other rebuilt castles ruins of the Middle Rhine reflect these two influences.

William and Augusta Frederick William IV's mystical view of his role as a ruler by divine right predisposed him to build, rebuild, and restore churches as well as castles, a policy which probably helped to endear the dynasty to many Rhinelanders. William, his brother and successor, and Augusta, William's consort, continued this rapprochement in a more mundane way and in one specific city. The nineteenth-century history of Koblenz reflects the Hohenzollerns' perception of the Middle Rhine as a German cultural landscape with national-political implications. Despite its associations with foreign French laws and customs, or with the "revolutionary" Gorres, Koblenz became a city which the Hohenzollerns enjoyed visiting. The burghers of Koblenz ultimately returned this compliment. As Prince of Prussia and General of the Eighth Regiment, the dour William became Military Governor of the Rhineland and Westphalia in 1849. Very much a soldier and a supporter of the Holy Alliance, he had already won the Iron Cross and been awarded the Imperial Russian Order of St. George (Fourth Class). His was just the personality to tolerate no liberal nonsense from the Rhinelanders. After all, he had acquired the reputation of "cartridge prince" for his reaction to the 1848 disturbances. On the other hand, his consort, Augusta of Saxony-Weimar (1811-90), with whom he resided for nine years in the renovated electoral palace in Koblenz, was less unapproachable. Although William was respected here, Augusta was loved, in large part due to her involvement in Roman Catholic charity work. The couple's importance for this study is not so much for their modest participation in the family Burgenschwdrmerei, but for the way in which they helped to establish Rhenish loyalty to the new Germany and, by their own love of the Rhineland, helped to direct the attention of nationalists to the area, a process which in turn inspired further castle rebuilding. For example, Empress Augusta saw to it that the park-like Rhine Embankments at Koblenz were completed, leaving in her will a large sum for this purpose. After German unification required her to live in Berlin, she continued to spend some of her leisure time at nearby Stolzenfels. In her memory, the citizens of Koblenz erected a white marble monument which still stands in what has become known as the

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Empress Augusta Embankment. Nearby a large stone bears the carving "July 14, 1870. Here stayed William and Augusta on the memorable day before the declaration of war [against France], deeply moved by the enthusiasm of their loyal subjects." Ironically, on the Embankment there is also a monument to Gorres, once persona non grata to the Prussian authorities.3 The proximity of these monuments, among the trees and gardens of the Embankment, shows how old tensions were gradually resolved in patriotism. After Emperor William I's death, the Rhenish Provincial Government built a colossal monument to its king-emperor on the so-called "German Corner" triangle of land where the Mosel flows into the Rhine. The massive statue showed the older William on horseback accompanied by a winged figure carrying the imperial crown on a wreathed cushion. These figures were supported by a colossal granite pedestal which stood on a wide square plinth. A colonnade-like structure with the arms of the German states half-surrounds the monument.4 Aside from reflecting Rhinelanders' loyalty to the new Reich, the bombast of the "German Corner" was a symptom of the insecurity of German nationalists and is less dramatically reflected in the symbolism of the rebuilt castles. As for Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, and Sooneck, they continued to delight those Germans who felt ill at ease in the modern world. In 1881 a visitor wrote of the rebuilt Rheinstein, In these rooms, one feels transported to a time long ago. A steamboat chugging past now and then or, at the foot of the mountain a locomotive puffing by destroys the deception and underlines the chasm which divides the inception of the old castle from the present.5

This chasm was widening, for the steamships and the railways became relentless reminders that even the Hohenzollerns could not prevent the march of technology, bringing social and political changes which they feared. They had secured the Rhineland as a Prussian-German province. They were aided by the growing cult of the Rhine and its castles as a sacred national landscape. They could not, however, stop time. Nevertheless, their reconstruction program inspired other classes, groups, and individuals in the same enterprise. As we move on with our study of the castle reconstruction movement, we shall notice how the conservative political motive continued, still suffused with romanticism.

PART THREE BUTTRESSING THE STATUS Quo

NINE

A JUSTIFICATION OF ARISTOCRATIC PRIVILEGE ypically, it was a poet who first made Burg Lahneck famous. The T young Goethe, travelling down the Lahn to the Rhine in June 1774,

recorded his romantic impression of the ruin: "in the high old tower," he mused, "rests the noble spirit of heroes... .'Jl As we know, the spirits of villains were just as likely to haunt such castles as those of heroes. However, Lahneck will serve as a good example of the entry of the nobility into the nineteenth century castle-rebuilding movement. Noble political and economic power was increasingly threatened in the nineteenth century. At the same time, the "monument fever" of many aristocrats could not be assuaged by a mere fake ruin in a park. Inspired by Prince Fritz Louis and his relatives, nobles begin to acquire real ruins, usually with the intention of making them habitable. Some (such as the aforementioned Hammersteins) tried to repossess their original, longabandoned, family seats. The new aristocratic owners provided the rebuilt castles with galleries of portraits of illustrious ancestors, and with museums, often of armaments, associating the owners with military prowess, or of antiquities, suggesting both the family's deep roots in the past and their education and culture. The purpose of the whole exercise was to justify their traditional position in a changing world.

Notes to Chapter Nine are on pp. 357-60.

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A justification of Aristocratic Privilege I 171

The First Lahneck A ridge-castle, Lahneck was rebuilt in the spirit of Sooneck; that is, with respect for a largely intact Palas or other buildings, reflecting the growing interest in historical accuracy, but with some inaccurate, romantic additions. On an outcropping near Oberlahnstein, at the northernmost boundary of the Archbishop of Mainz's territory, it was built about 1240 to protect the Lahn valley silver mines. Later prelates added a larger chapel and a new shield-wall. Although Lahneck was badly damaged in 1633 and 1662, Merian's copperplate of 1675 (Fig. 21) shows its walls and battlements still basically intact on its hilltop, its tower with a pointed roof dominating the walled town below it. Typically, it met its fate in 1688 at the hands of the French. By about 1800 the ruins included the shield-wall with two round towers, and a five-sided keep, with vineyards growing within its precincts. After passing through the still impressive ruined gateway, one crossed an inner moat, and thence through another fortified portal into the small courtyard out of which loomed the largely intact keep. Plaster still partially covered some of the walls. The wall connecting the castle to the valley town also survived. Lahneck's legends involve doomed love and soldierly heroism, both appealing to contemporary romantic readers including the nobility.2 Fifty years after the aforementioned visit of Goethe, the artist Carus passed by Lahneck, recalling Goethe's lines "a hundred times."3 Lahneck was one of the first sites to be included by artists and poets from the German states and abroad in their pilgrimages up and down the Rhine. For example, John Gardner (1729-1808), an English landscape painter, presented a view of the ruin with its verticality as well as that of the hill, immensely exaggerated. In a letter of 1838 Victor Hugo described the "sombre ruins of Lahneck, full of enigmas for the historian and obscurity for the antiquarian."4 Given that it lay not far south of Koblenz and Ehrenbreitstein and directly across the Rhine from Stolzenfels, the hilltop ruin had become a popular tourist attraction by the 1840s. Mrs. Radcliffe's gothic horror novel, Mysteries of Udolpho, contains a scene which British travellers could easily re-enact at Lahneck: The gateway before her, leading into the courts, was of gigantic size and defended by two round towers, crowned by overhanging turrets, embattled, where, instead of banners, now waved long grass and wild plants, that had taken root among the mouldering stones and which seemed to sigh, as the breeze rolled past, over the desolation around them.5

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Fig. 21. Above Oberlahnstein, Burg Lahneck in 1675: Overlooking the Lahn-Rhine confluence, Oberlahnstein in the distance, and Unterlahnstein in the foreground, Lahneck's spiky profile (in this copperplate by Matthaeus Merian) bears little resemblance to its "restored" boxy outlines. Courtesy of Bachem Verlag, Cologne.

A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege / 173

Lahneck's fate in the nineteenth century reveals several of the themes we are studying. Apart from the predominant role of the nobility, we see the increasing role of the German industrial middle class in castle restoration, the growing concern for accurate recording of Germany's architectural heritage, and—less commonly—the role of the British, not only as tourists, but as technicians of the industrial era.

The New Lahneck The ruined Lahneck was owned by Nassau until 1803, then by the architect Lassaulx's stepbrother, Peter Ernst von Lassaulx, and his son and then by Nassau again. In 1852 the ruin was acquired by one Morarty, an engineer, Director of the Railway of the Right Rhine Bank.6 This Englishman—or Irishman—was one of many of his countrymen who, as merchants, engineers, or labourers, were attracted to the Rhineland by local entrepreneurs' need for capital, modern technical skills, and human energy in the early years of industrialization. Morarty began to rebuild the Palas, creating a not very sensitive reconstruction. In the late 1860s one Gustav Goede bought it from Morarty and, continuing reconstruction with no more respect for the building's substance, demolished and rebuilt the Palas in an English neo-Gothic style, with symmetrically arranged windows, analogous to those at Stolzenfels (Fig. 22). Flat roofs were decorated with function-less crenellations. The shape of the main gate was altered and the inner portal was given a portcullis. An arcade, a balcony, and a cast iron railing on the staircase were added to the Palas, and the chapel was rebuilt. Of the original, only the exterior of the keep, the outer shield-wall, and the fifteenth-century additions remained. As historical knowledge improved, it was not long before this work was criticized: in 1880 the historian Lotz opined that the chapel was "rebuilt tastelessly."7 Nevertheless Lahneck met the needs of a series of aristocratic and bourgeois owners. In 1880 Count Ewald von Kleist-Tychow, Prussian Court Chamberlain and Master of Royal Ceremonies, purchased this apparently perfect setting for an aristocratic life style. During his ownership, Lahneck came into its own, enjoying the favour of a number of famous people including, for example, Tsar Alexander II, who visited it and signed the guest book. After 1893 a Magdeburg factory owner named Hauswald owned it and opened it to the public on occasion. In 1909 Admiral Robert Mischke von Preuschen bought it and continued the restoration, using Merian's drawing as a guide. Work on the Palas contin-

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Fig. 22. Burg Lahneck in 1980: The inner courtyard of the restored Lahneck shows some of the symmetry of design inspired by Stolzenfels, but none of the latter's cheerfulness. The keep is to the right. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege / 175 ued, incorporating much of its original material. In 1937 the architect Caesar added the high saddle-roofs to the Palas and the chapel, true to the original appearance of the castle. The crenellations on these two structures were removed, but remain on the keep. With a view to the profitable tourist trade, a restaurant was added in 1932.8 But if Lahneck is the best example of noble castle rebuilding, it is nevertheless only one of many such endeavours.

Other von Preuschen Restorations Since 1946 the von Preuschen family has been active in the reconstruction or preservation of Rhenish castles. In particular they have been involved with a castle complex which is, for tourists, one of the most "popular" of the Middle Rhine: the "Enemy Brothers," Castles Sterrenberg and Liebenstein, north-west of St. Goarshausen on the east Rhine bank. Legend says that two brothers are condemned to have ghostly battles there forever.9 Perhaps originally part of the outworks of its partner Sterrenberg,10 Liebenstein consists mainly of a square keep with a partially preserved seven-storey Palas. It was built between 1284 and 1290 by Count Albrecht von Lowenstein, and never fell out of aristocratic hands. In the early eighteenth century the Counts von Preuschen, descendants of the Lowensteins, still owned the complex and by 1841 they lived in part of the then ivy-covered ruin. Today the castle is owned by the family of Baron Ludwig von Preuschen of Lahneck who, in 1993, was awarded the Romberg Foundation award for its sensitive preservation. The von Preuschens were active elsewhere, too. Schloss Liebeneck above Osterspai, south of Braubach on the east bank, was originally a seventeenth-century summer residence and hunting lodge of the von Liebenstein family. In 1793, after it passed into the hands of the von Preuschens, they remodelled it in a neo-Gothic fashion with a beautiful park, giving it the necessary romantic ambience. In the twentieth century Liebeneck has been owned by the von Preuschens and the Barons von Freytag-Loringhoven. In the town of Osterspai itself, the tower of a small fortified Burghaus of the thirteenth century was restored with the addition of a neo-Gothic Palas in 1910. Built originally by the von Liebenstein family, it passed first to the Counts Waldenburg genannt Schenkern and in 1793 to the von Preuschen family who carried out the modern renovations.

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Reichenberg The impressive Burg Reichenberg is another example of a castle which reverted to noble ownership in the nineteenth century. It lies several kilometres inland from the river at St. Goarshausen on the east Rhine bank. Its three-storey dwelling quarters and slender twin towers loom above a hilltop in the Taunus Mountains. Begun in 1319 by Count William von Katzenelnbogen, a vassal of Trier, it was finished around 1380. Construction was continued, however, by the rulers of Hesse, who completed the east wall around 1500. The Thirty Years' War brought severe damage which was repaired about 1650. Reichenberg began to fall down, however, when in 1748 part of its wall gave way and in 1813 the south tower collapsed. In 1816 it was acquired by Nassau which in 1821 sold it as a quarry and source of woodwork. What followed is an instance of the role of early historical research in castle preservation, for Reichenberg was saved from complete dissolution by the Hessian archivist Frederick Ludwig Gustav Habel, who purchased it and made the most necessary repairs. He was not seeking to refurbish a family castle but expressed a pioneering concern with castle ruins as historic documents, a motivation which would become increasingly important later in the century. Unfortunately, his scholarly influence did not outlive him at Reichenberg. After his death Habel's family sold it to Countess Charlotte von Melin, who henceforth styled herself "Lady of Reichenberg." Her nephew sold it in 1880 to Privy Councillor Professor Wolfgang von Oettingen of Diisseldorf, who built a fine home just below the ruin on the west side. Typically, he restored part of the interior as a museum, furnished it with old weapons and armour and opened it to public viewing. In 1882 the interior of the Great Hall fell in, but the von Oettingens owned it until 1956. Since 1912 it has been frequently repaired with the assistance of public funds. Several other ruins survived in the hands of the nobility. Their original medieval substance was less altered in restoration, sometimes because of simple lack of money or interest, occasionally because of a sensitive concern for authenticity.

Bromserburg Riidesheim's Bromserburg, or Niederburg, is a Romanesque twelfth-century water castle, belonging to the Archbishop of Mainz, who had built it near the riverbank as a toll station. Partly destroyed in 1640 by the French, its name derived from the family of Bromser of Riidesheim who

A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege I 177

inhabited it from the thirteenth century until 1678. Members of the von Metternich family lived here and, after 1812, the von Ingelheims. Early in the romantic era the easily accessible ruin attracted poets. Arnim and Brentano visited it in 1802, and Simrock wrote a poem, "Gisela," on a legend associated with the castle (a variation of the tale of the young woman who leapt from Ehrenfels' tower into the Rhine). Later, Goethe also visited the renovated ruin. Georg Moller, Hessian court architect, restored the upper part of the south wing as a dwelling for the von Ingelheims. He put in new floors and inner walls, larger windows with round-arched lintels in bright sandstone, and massive balconies. A bridge linking the south and east wings was made of cast iron as were the frames of some glass doors. There was much half-timbering throughout and the roof was given several turrets. In 1818 Johanna Schopenhauer was given a tour by "finely dressed lackeys" who showed her the old chapel with its gallery of family portraits, and the armament collection, accoutrements which were already deemed necessary in a restored aristocratic family seat.11 In the late 1830s Adelheid von Stolterfoth was led through a courtyard with a fountain and a large hound which, from behind an iron fence, barked fiercely. She ascended a narrow staircase to where the iron bridge led to the Knights' Hall which, she believed was "still exactly preserved as it might have been in the olden days." This room, facing the Rhine, was distinguished by a round stone table, "upon which a magic light falls from the brightly coloured glass of a large arched window."12 Already Bromserburg had the aspect of a museum, for in one room Roman urns and other vessels were displayed. When it became a wine museum later in the twentieth century, many of Moller's structures were removed. Today traces of the nineteenth-century aristocratic "restoration" are still visible in windows of the "Winkel Saal."

How to Build Castle-Like Mansions Elsewhere a more complete reconstruction by the nobility was attempted. Some aristocratic families were able to build substantially new castles on the sites of former ones, or more or less to restore an older one which was not too far decayed, incorporating the older parts into the modern structure. Essentially palaces or mansions (Schlosser), these were imitations of Fritz Louis' Rheinstein. Their builders attempted a medieval ambience, and a reflection of their social status, but with much more luxury than in, for example, Lahneck, and little accuracy in detail.

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These castle-like mansions had a number of qualities in common. Wanting to demonstrate the luxurious lifestyle to which their power and wealth entitled them, their owners insisted on large rooms for glittering receptions and colourful festivities. Towers added picturesque notes which also suggested authority and power. Many Schlosser have the aforementioned Hall of (presumed glorious) Ancestors revealing the historic roots of the noble family's social and economic position, and collections of art or artifacts which vindicated their present role as supporters of "culture." A family crypt or chapel satisfied the need for a sense of permanence and stability in the future. In constructing these palaces, the owners wished to express a "belief in an earthly paradise" characteristic of an age which, in its faith in technological progress, assumed optimistically that humankind would transform nature and society into an ideal form, but without political or social revolution.13 This movement was long underway before it achieved its most articulate statement in the writing of Bodo Ebhardt, Emperor William IPs favourite architect,14 who may have been influenced by the views of Prussia's first Conservation Officer, the deeply conservative Ferdinand von Quast. In 1837, the latter had encouraged the "restoration of the most magnificent aristocratic dwellings" in this age of "anarchistic ideas."15 Ebhardt believed that the aristocracy were society's natural leaders and sought to prove this by showing that the castles and palaces of the past were "serviceable examples for all modern palace-building."16 In The Building of Palaces (Der Schlosshau) (1914), he planned a "modern ideal palace," a summation of historic palace construction.17 The growing influence of democracy, said Ebhardt, prevented the "joyful" construction of "the proud residence of a great lord or a multi-millionaire."18 Perhaps the tyranny of fashion was to blame but Ebhardt believed that it was "the sheer terror of the threatening advance of envious revolutionaries, which causes palatial houses, which cost hundreds of thousands, to be built far back from the street, designed in a deliberate plainness, resembling almshouses or hospitals more than the dwellings of rich men."19 Ebhardt believed there would always be wealthy and powerful men who would need advice in building their new palaces and castles. Choosing medieval castles as useful examples, Ebhardt showed German plutocrats how to do it. He noted with approval the work of Viollet-le-Duc in rebuilding the chateau Pierrefond. In particular he stressed that no "false sentimentality" or "hypocritical simplicity" should weaken the visual effect of the modern mansion.20 Moreover, the whims of wealthy palace builders should be indulged. Aviaries might be necessary in the new palace

A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege / 179

not only for practical purposes (poultry and eggs) but also to breed elegant birds such as peacocks, "for purely decorative ends, for the sake of their picturesque colours and forms." The modern palace should also have a golf course, tennis court, playing field, rifle range, swimming pool and, for more elevated purposes, a church and a mausoleum. An ancillary benefit of all this would be a revival of German craftsmanship.21 One of Ebhardt's most successful Schlosser was Hakeburg in KleinMachnow near Berlin (1907). Surrounded by pine woods this large home sports a square keep, pointed roofs, a crenellated tower over the main door, and Romanesque windows. The architect's admiring biographer wrote of Hakeburg, "this is how twelfth-century people (had they not had to consider defence) would have envisioned a princely seat."22 Ebhardt's ideas were presaged by the building of pseudo-castles on the Rhine. We shall consider some of the lesser examples first. Ariendorf near Bad Honningen, southeast of Bonn, is late medieval in origin, having belonged to the Abbey Nivelles in Brabant. Ernest Frederick Zwirner, architect of the completed Cologne Cathedral, expanded Ariendorf towards the Rhine between 1840 and 1850. This neo-Gothic wing was commissioned by the new owner, Ludwig Lerche von Lorck, a Prussian officer from a Prusso-Swedish family, originally from Lorch on the Rhine. A two-storey neo-Gothic Burghaus with step-gables and corner towers arose with a crenellated keep. Since 1909 the Schloss has been owned by the Counts Westerholt-Gysenberg who have made additions.

Sayn The best example of a noble family seeking to reconnect with its genuine ancestral roots and justify its present role in society is found in Schloss Sayn, which stands on a hill overlooking the town of Sayn, two kilometres inland from the town of Bendorf on the east Rhine bank, north of Koblenz (Fig. 23). Here the Sayn and Brexbach Rivers meet and the valley of the Wied River widens before it meets the Rhine. There were actually three ruins at Sayn. The wreck of the "Old Castle," the hereditary Sayn family seat atop the hill, stemmed from the twelfth century and consisted mainly of a five-cornered keep ruined as early as the sixteenth century. Immediately below was the "New Castle," or Burg Sayn, built before 1200 by the von Reiffenbergs and destroyed by the Swedes in 1633. In addition, several "castle houses" (Burghauser) for branches of the Sayn family were built on the sides of the mountain. At the foot of the "castle hill," in the town of Bendorf, one of these was rebuilt in 1757 as a baroque

180 I Castles of the Rhine

Fig. 23. Schloss Sayn and vicinity about 1850: The artist G. Zick showed Sayn rebuilt as a palatial villa, with a crenellated roofline and a rectilinear appearance. Both features were unmedieval but not inconsistent with the local iron works (to the left) which provided much of the modern building materials for its construction. Courtesy of Alexander Fiirst zu SaynWittgenstein-Sayn.

A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege I 181

mansion by its then owner Count Joseph Boos von Waldeck. Another, intact, was owned by the famous von Steins until 1802. In 1848 King Frederick William iy who had acquired the complex of ruins, gave them to Prince Ludwig von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. In the next three years the prince established the requisite English landscape garden and a viewing platform to satisfy the contemporary love of vistas, and proceeded to rebuild the mansion at the foot of the hill as a magnificent neo-Gothic palace with a step-gabled facade. This new palace of Sayn was the work of the Parisian architect Alphonse Francois Girard (1806-72), who had contributed improvements to the Paris Louvre. Girard created a new arrangement of rooms and a stunning main staircase at the mansion's heart. The walls of the staircase were covered with neoGothic stucco-work which framed family portraits, an example of the popular gallery of illustrious ancestors. On the main landing a cast-iron fountain stood beneath a huge coloured glass window. The palace was furnished, said a contemporary, "with the greatest taste and comfort and the greatest splendour," including forced air heating and running water provided by a steam-powered pump.23 Use of the latest technology was possible because of the owner's wealth and because of the existence of nearby foundries which provided the cast iron (also used in most of the window frames). As well there was a plan for a winter garden with a glass cupola and 115 cast-iron columns, designed by Karl Ludwig Althans (1788-1864), which was never built. In 1862 a neo-Gothic chapel, surmounted by a small steeple, with a family crypt (as at Rheineck and Rheinstein) was completed. Hermann Nebel (1816-93), the chapel's architect, modelled it on the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. (The later nationalistic obsession with a "German" style was as yet unknown.) Moritz von Schwind planned coloured glass windows, all but one of which have been lost. Sayn itself was inspired in part by Stolzenfels. As for Frederick William IY he visited Sayn in 1851 and wrote in the guestbook: "completely amazed, dazzled, in wonder at the fairyland of Sayn."24 Prince Ludwig, however, was not a dreamy romantic but had a practical sense of how to provide for his family's security in difficult times. The land about Sayn was also important to him as a source of income for himself and his descendants. In 1861, therefore, he secured the right of Fideikommiss for one of his younger sons which meant that the estate of Sayn could never again be alienated from the family.25 As propaganda for the noble lifestyle, the palace was open to the public on Thursdays when the family was absent.

182 I Castles of the Rhine

Arenfels Contemporary with Sayn was Arenfels, another largely new castle, situated north of Bad Honningen on the east bank of the Rhine (Fig. 24). The original Arenfels had been built on this steep hill about 1258, then rebuilt in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a late Renaissance palace. The new Arenfels is an example of how the desire to "medievalize" or "gothicize" aristocratic homes could lead to disputes over taste. In 1849 it was almost completely ruined, with only one room still enjoying a complete roof.26 Nevertheless it attracted the attention of the Westphalian Count Frederick Ludolf von Westerholt-Gysenberg who purchased it and commissioned Ernest Frederick Zwirner to renovate it extensively between 1852 and 1858 in the neo-Gothic style of Stolzenfels. The foundation of an early Gothic keep is still part of Arenfels as the base of a large round tower with elaborate neo-Gothic spire and crenellations. Although it boasts two narrow pointed towers as well, which add to its medieval look, Arenfels is essentially a modern three-and-a-halfstoreyed Schloss. Facing the Rhine, its three step-gabled wings are covered with yellow stucco. Inside the largest cast-iron staircase of its kind in Germany connects the storeys. Zwirner also designed a vaulted Knights' Hall which ran up through two storeys. The rooms were originally laid out to give good views of the river landscape. From the start of reconstruction in 1852, tension developed between the architect and the owner. Originally the count wanted to rebuild only the southeast wing, but after it was completed Zwirner encouraged him to rebuild the whole structure, reminding him of the possible disgrace to his family name if an unfinished family mansion were handed down to posterity.27 In general the architect prevailed. For example, he replaced the Renaissance gable with high step-gables. The round towers received the aforementioned pointed roofs. An English neo-Gothic perpendicularity dominates and the windows are symmetrically arranged. Nevertheless the complex has a "picturesque" asymmetry, with the keep off-centre and the other towers of different heights. It stands on a stone platform, surrounded by lawns in the midst of vineyards. Today the industrial world has almost overrun Arenfels as it overlooks a highway, a railroad, a busy modern community, and—somewhere in the distance—the Rhine. In 1844 the poet Ernst Moritz Arndt thought the ruin was "pretty,"28 but the reconstructed Arenfels looked ungainly, even ugly, to others. Paul Clemen lamented its "rigid unitary construction style."29 Bodo Ebhardt, despite his approval of new aristocratic palaces, wrote that "the dishonesty of this mask, which he [Zwirner] attached to the palace, shocks the

A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege I 183

Fig. 24. At Bad Honningen, Schloss Arenfels in 1991: The round tower (without the steeple) is original, but the rebuilt Arenfels' step-gabled and many-windowed facade marks it as an aristocratic mansion rather than a medieval Burg, with Stolzenfels probably its inspiration. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

184 I Castles of the Rhine connoisseur." Nevertheless Ebhardt conceded that the situation of the palace in the surrounding landscape revealed the magnificence of the Count's intentions.30 Despite its failure esthetically, Arenfels has remained a possession of the Rhenish nobility. Following aristocratic tradition it was opened in the 1890s for viewing by the public on Wednesdays. In the 1940s it was still a museum with valuable pieces of sculpture, furniture, armour, musical instruments, and paintings. In the 1980s Baroness Wilhelmine von Geyr, a descendant of Count Frederick Ludolf, still owned and inhabited the palace, part of which, however, was operated as a restaurant.

Ramersdorf Sayn and Arenfels were models for later construction of substantially new castles such as Ramersdorf. Near Bonn, at Oberkassel, stood the ruins of a thirteenth-century castle of the Teutonic Order, in an "extraordinarily romantic" location:31 on a hill, near forests, with a view of the Seven Mountains, Rolandseck, and the Rhine itself. When the order was abolished in 1806, the castle fell into the hands of Count Joseph of the longestablished von Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck family. The Burghaus burned in 1842 after which the count rebuilt much of the castle, incorporating the late Romanesque gate. After 1884 the architect Wilhelm Hoffmann, who later designed the opulent Drachenburg, created the new Ramersdorf as a country house for the Cologne financier, Baron Albert von Oppenheim. Four wings, drily neo-Gothic, support two bold towers. Influenced (as were Sayn and Arenfels) by the Hohenzollern restorations, Ramersdorf became, in Rathke's words, a many-spired "family monument" or a "private Valhalla."32 While under construction Ramersdorf also became controversial because between 1846 and 1850 Count Joseph dismantled the Gothic chapel (about 1225) and did not use it in his new castle. This disturbed both experts and nationalists who were beginning to develop a new appreciation of medieval architecture as such.33 The architect Lassaulx encouraged King Frederick William IV, the Count, and the city of Bonn to provide the means for preserving the chapel. Eventually it was reconstructed in Bonn's old cemetery, where it still stands. In the process, an early fourteenth-century ceiling painting was lost, a sobering but instructive lesson for later conservationists who began to insist on the maintenance of structures on their original sites.

A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege / 185

Reichenstein The most extensive, largely new castle rebuilt for aristocrats on the site of a medieval ruin was Reichenstein (originally Falkenburg), a ridge-castle near Trechtingshausen, about six kilometres northwest of Bingen (Fig. 25). Originally founded in the eleventh century to protect the possessions of the Abbey of Kornelismiinster, its history is evidence of the endemic civil war which plagued the medieval German Empire, and of the parasitical character of some of the Rhenish nobility. Its robber-knight owner blackmailed the merchants of the League of Rhenish Cities until Rudolf of Habsburg, in his campaign against aristocratic rebels, destroyed the castle in 1282. Never a centre of peace and order, Reichenstein passed into the hands of the Counts of the Palatinate and the Dukes of Bavaria who resisted the imperial power. In 1344 the rebuilt castle was returned by the emperor to the Archbishop of Mainz. Its final destruction occurred in the French wars of 1689. By the eighteenth century the local prince-bishops had lost interest in the fortress and granted it to four vinegrowing families of Trechtingshausen in hereditary tenure. Lying on a ridge between the Rhine and the valley of the Morgenbach 150 metres above the river, its extensive mass was distinguished on its western side by a massive shield-wall, eight metres thick and sixteen metres high. Not surprisingly Reichenstein attracted artists and poets. In 1832, in a view from the river road, William Tombleson presented the ruin behind storm-tossed trees against a windy sky. In that year, if Tombleson is accurate, one tower was still intact; the other walls, although massive, were crumbling. The interior had long been gutted. In 1840 Victor Hugo found the "melancholy" Falkenburg "hiding in the crease of these mountains."34 Perhaps inevitably this mighty ruin attracted the interest of aristocrats. In 1834 the Prussian General Franz Wilhelm von Barfuss, a descendant of both the patrician Cologne family Parvus and a Brandenburg noble family, purchased the ruin and began to rebuild it. (He already owned the nearby Hoheneck or Heimburg.) Naming Reichenstein "Falkenburg" because of the birds which roosted in its towers, he renovated the gate house as a dwelling. As noted above, the Rhine had special personal connotations for Barfuss, the author of a biography of one of his ancestors who, in the Rhenish campaigns against the French in 1689, had captured Bonn. The nobility's desire to associate themselves with an ancient seat is evidenced in the general's applying for and receiving royal permission in 1852 to use the name "von Barfuss-Falkenstein."

186 I Castles of the Rhine

Fig. 25. Above Trechtingshausen, Burg Reichenstein in 1980: Much influenced by the royal reconstruction of Sooneck, "Falkenburg" became an aristocratic hunting chalet-cum-palace in the late nineteenth century. The prominent apse of the requisite chapel is at left. Successive owners have allowed it to develop the equally essential "overgrown and desolate" look. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege / 187

In 1887 one Baron von Rehfuss took possession of Reichenstein, and also provided himself with a residence in the ruin. A later owner, Dr. Nikolaus von Kirsch-Puricelli, member of a Rhenish industrial family, had it substantially rebuilt between 1900 and 1902, by the Regensburg architect Georg Strebel. (The Puricellis owned iron mines near Stromberg in the Hunsriick behind Reichenstein.) Although little of the original castle can be found in Reichenstein today, its owners fitted it out with many suggestions of tradition and antiquity. Its modern drawbridge, portcullis, and cannon are self-consciously arrayed against the castle's still new-looking crenellations and towers. The Kirsch-Puricellis, who lived in the castle until the 1970s, amassed a large collection of weapons and armour. Trophies of the hunt, deer and boar heads, and antlers, are displayed in the main staircase, symbolic of the owners' status insofar as they had the leisure and means to revive the noble pursuit of game. Cast-iron gargoyle drain-spouts give the desired, if anachronistic, "medieval" look. A library was built with richly ornamented bookshelves, parquet floor, and heavy wooden panelled ceiling, and a chapel was provided. An ancestral portrait gallery was set up. An elk's head, gift of Grand Duke Nicholas, an uncle of Tsar Nicholas II, and a friend of Kirsch-Puricelli, was part of the staircase trophy gallery, reminder of the international aristocratic elite for whom Reichenstein was a home. It is now a museum, a hotel, and a restaurant.

Noble Rebuilding Near the Middle Rhine The valleys of the Middle Rhine tributaries also saw aristocratic building activity in the nineteenth century. Some castles in the area, ruined or not, remained continually the property of the same family or of branches of the same family ever since their original construction.35 The ruin of twelfth-century Burg Braunsberg, near Neuwied (east bank), passed into the hands of the counts of Runkel-Wied who still owned it in the twentieth century. In the Sieg River valley, near Siegburg district across the Rhine from Bonn, Schloss Krottorf, built in the sixteenth century for the von Hatzfeldts, was restored by the family in 1927, with a bar, garden pavilion, and art collection. The sixteenth-century Burg Friedewald, also on the Sieg River near Siegburg, was built by the counts of Sayn. Prince Alexander zu Sayn-Wittgenstein restored and expanded the nearly ruined structure in the 1890s. Other castles had long ago lost the protection of descendants of those who built them. Still, their new aristocratic owners attempted

188 I Castles of the Rhine

reconstruction. The Breitbach family rebuilt Burg Biirresheim, near Mayen west of Koblenz, a castle in habitable condition but which by the twentieth century had passed into the hands of the von WesterholdRenesses. The Sauerburg, at Sauerthal near St. Goarshausen (east bank), which was built in 1355 and destroyed 1689, was partly rebuilt in between 1909 and 1912 by the von Loehr family. At Unkel, Trimborn was owned in the sixteenth century by the von Herresdorfs who rebuilt it in 1669 and added wings in the eighteenth century. It passed later to the von Geyr family who rebuilt it in 1838. Schloss Ahrental, at Sinzig near Niederbreisig, is an unpretentious fourteenth-century complex, taken over in the early eighteenth century by the Barons von Meerscheid genannt Hillesheim. In 1785 the Counts von Spec purchased it and owned it until the 1930s. In the 1880s the latter family hired the firm of Tiishaus and Abbema (who also designed Drachenburg) to plan a neo-Renaissance palace. Nobles were active in the reconstruction of other ruins, but the foregoing are some of the best examples of the role of aristocratic ambition in rebuilding or preserving the Middle Rhine castle ruins, as members of the nobility sought to express the old-regime values which they hoped would guarantee their survival as a powerful class. Themes other than the justification of their own social and political role also appear. Occasionally concern for historical accuracy in reconstruction was seen, but romanticism and a love of the arts were more important motives. On the other hand, most of the nobles had not yet taken up modern nationalism which, to them, connoted revolution. Nor do their castles much reflect Frederick William IV's atavistic obsession with the Holy Roman Empire. Because the old-regime noble class was increasingly rivalled in wealth, if not in political power, by the nouveaux riches, we shall now consider how the bourgeoisie tried to satisfy their social ambitions on the sites of ruined castles.

TEN THE FULFILMENT

OF BOURGEOIS AMBITION

O

n a visit to the palatial Berlin home of August Borsig, the locomo-

tive manufacturer, Frederick William IV was moved to exclaim, "I

wish, my dear Borsig, that I could live as you do."1 In the early nineteenth century, more and more upper-middle-class Europeans were achieving an income and a living standard which surpassed that which aristocrats enjoyed. Even before the Industrial Revolution took off in Germany in the 1850s, the homes of the newly rich began to rival those of the old nobility. Given the increase in German domestic and foreign trade and the growth of modern industry, the nouveaux riches were able to invest in rural properties, and wanted to set themselves up as landed gentry.2 Moreover, wealthy industrialists, influential bankers, and prominent civil servants were often ennobled because of service to the state or the commercial community.3 But even without titles, they wished to give their lives an aristocratic colour by imitating the ways of nobility. Hans Ulrich Wehler, in suggesting that the bourgeoisie were "feudalized,"4 may have exaggerated the servility of these bourgeois would-be nobles. As we have seen, these wealthy middle-class men wanted to give proof of their new social equality with the aristocracy. A castle might not give real political power, but it did imply a social rank commensurate with that of nobles. They, too, wanted to live like feudal landlords, but not necessarily as vassals of other landlords—which would Notes to Chapter Ten are on pp. 360-63. 189

190 I Castles of the Rhine

be true "feudalization." In fact, even after rebuilding a castle they usually continued their bourgeois commercial or professional pursuits. As was evident in the furnishing and design of their "fortresses," they were affected by the same romantic nostalgia as the hereditary nobility. Like the aristocrats, the capitalist magnates "used the revitalized architectural symbol of the castle to try to dominate the cultural and physical landscape of their age."5 Unlike most nobles, however, they were nationalistic and deeply proud of the new German Reich. princes would "restore" (wiederherstellen) the tower "in its original German nobility reached the parvenu middle classes only slightly later. The first examples of Rhenish bourgeois castle rebuilding appear in the 1830s, but the wave crests after the 1871 unification. Although some did not have a family background in the Rhineland, wealthy middle-class families began to want roots and an "ancestral seat" on the cliffs above the river. Prosperous professionals or successful civil servants seem to have been the first to be struck by the drive to rebuild and inhabit ruined castles, but wealthy bankers soon experienced the need, too. We have already seen how the Rhine province began to prosper after the Prussian government instituted tariff reforms. With their higher standard of living the wealthy of Cologne, Bonn, or the Ruhr began to build summer homes around Bad Godesberg and the Seven Mountains at the northern end of the Middle Rhine. Those of Mainz and Frankfurt built in Eltville or the Rheingau at the southern end. Although these small mansions were often only new villas, with no claim to being "castles," they sported crenellations and pointed windows. Especially if he was from the professional or educated middle class, a bourgeois' financial resources were sometimes smaller than those of the nobles. Later in the century, however, some bourgeois castle owners enjoyed more wealth than most aristocrats could ever dream of having. The Middle Rhine has its share of their "dreampalaces" (Traumschlosser),7 cousins of the Bavarian king's Neuschwanstein, but more elaborate than many a noble or princely castle. Nearly all the middle-class castle builders were German, but we have already met the British Morarty, who was early and briefly involved with Burg Lahneck, and in this chapter we will encounter the remarkable American Oakley Rhinelander, who refurbished Schonburg. Like the nobles the bourgeois castle builders usually renovated ruined castles to make them liveable. Nevertheless, occasionally they built totally new castles, unassociated with ruins. These, such as Drachenburg, were castle-like mansions which matched in opulence any of the royal or noble pseudo-castles. The style chosen was usually Gothic, which seemed

The Fulfilment of Bourgeois Ambition I 191

to reflect Christian and German values and hence both the virtue and the patriotism of the castle owner. Stained glass windows in a chapel or in other rooms were popular as was a dominating tower, communicating authority and making the castle visible from afar. A Knights' Hall was de rigueur. The growing prosperity of Germany is seen in the larger scale of these castles. Mid-century examples are relatively simple; later examples are grandiose structures designed to engender solemn, lofty, elevated thoughts in the visitor.8 But let us first examine the more modest phase when bourgeois owners simply rebuilt ruins as comfortable homes.

Rheineck Frederick William IV, as crown prince, was interested in purchasing the Rheineck ruin, but the price turned out to be too high.9 It is easy to understand his attraction to this ruined "summit-castle," for it had a suitably romantic site and history (Fig. 26). The first Burg here on a steep cliff overlooking the river, near the mouth of the Vinxtbach, had been built in the eleventh century by the Counts Palatine, but was destroyed in 1151. In 1164 Cologne's archbishop seized the site and rebuilt it, after which, in his turn Rudolf of Habsburg destroyed it in 1282. Rheineck's remains were occupied by the Swedes during the Thirty Years' War and then in 1664 were rebuilt by another archbishop of Cologne. Violence continued to mark its history for in 1689 it fell to the French, who burned it, and in 1692 to the troops of Cologne's archbishop who ravaged the remains. Although it was repaired in 1718, a fire damaged it in 1785. In 1805 one Wenzeslaus Schurp bought the ruin probably with a view to using it as a quarry. By this time others had begun to see Rheineck in a less practical light. For some the very rocks under its foundations spoke of violent upheaval. In 1832 Bulwer-Lytton felt there was "something weird and preternatural about the aspect of this place; its soil betrays signs that in the former ages . . . some volcano here exhausted its fires."10 In 1844 Ernst Moritz Arndt, on his romantic pilgrimage to castle sites, wrote that, "of the original castle, only the four-sided tower, the chapel and the ring-walls remain." However, he wrote, God had granted that Rheineck's walls should rise again to the delight of all who trekked up the hillside "in order to see how the castle almost in the style of its original layout and in the medieval spirit again is awoken and reborn out of the ruins."11 The nineteenth-century Burg Rheineck, frequently called a Schloss, was built for Prussian king's counsellor, Moritz August Bethmann Hollweg

192 I Castles of the Rhine

Fig. 26. Near Niederbreisig, Schloss Rheineck about 1840: Although, like other rebuilt "castles" of the era, very much a palace with many windows and a lively appearance, Rheineck (in this view by J.J. Tanner) nevertheless satisfied a bourgeois civil servant's ambition to live like an aristocrat, literally above the life in surrounding communities with appropriately "commanding" views. Courtesy of Verlag Th. Schafer, Hannover.

The Fulfilment of Bourgeois Ambition I 193 (1795-1877), who had purchased the ruins in 1832.12 A professor at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, he became a member of the "ChristianConservative Society" and a trusted advisor of King Frederick William IV Ennobled in 1840 he was one of the founders (1848) of the new Prussian Conservative Party. Although no liberal, Bethmann had been critical of the archreactionaries surrounding Frederick William. He served William I as Minister of Education, Culture, and Religion (1858-62). When the still untitled Bethmann Hollweg purchased the ruin, he acquired a relatively well-preserved quadratic keep (about twenty metres or seventy feet high), parts of the ring-wall, a gate over the entrance and, over this gate, an eight-cornered Romanesque chapel. He commissioned Joseph Carl von Lassaulx to incorporate most of the ruins into a new castle. The overall plan, the division of the architectural masses, and the relationship of their parts were, therefore, as Arndt noted, dictated by those of the original castle. The style of the reconstruction was Romanesque, appropriate to the Middle Rhine and to the original Rheineck. The new castle consists of two main structures, the rebuilt Palas and the older adjoining tower. The many-sided Palas, resting on the old foundations, has rounded windows and gables of various shapes. Unfortunately Lassaulx found the walls, especially those of the chapel, in a weakened condition and so ordered much to be cleared completely away. The plain keep, to which Lassaulx added crenellations, shows the original stone to about half-way up, where the newer stone appears. The rubble stones of the new outer walls are not stuccoed or plastered. Some stone trim is of the local volcanic rock and antique window panes were installed in the living quarters. His new chapel, which stands on the site of the old, was built as far as possible in the style of the original. Exterior reconstruction began in 1835; by 1840 the interior (begun 1837) was ready. The new Rheineck was designed for the elegant living and regular worship which conservatives at this time valued. For concerts, therefore, a music room was installed above the chapel wherein the ostentatious piety of the owner was to be practised. Here, frescoes were painted in 1839-40 by Eduard von Steinle (1810-86) of the Nazarene school. The floor was decorated with mosaic tile. As we have seen, the chapel was an especially important part of reconstructed castles. Also considered befitting a noble family was a crypt which Lassaulx designed for his patrons on the nearby road to Niederbreisig. Construction started in 1847 and eventually the prominent sculptor Reinhold Begas (1831-1911) provided suitable embellishments.

194 I Castles of the Rhine

Typically, Bethmann Hollweg collected old weapons and instruments. The modern art which he also acquired shows his fascination with the medieval Holy Roman Empire. Rheineck's "Canossa Hall" had a muchadmired oil painting of 1836 by Carl Begas (1794-1854) showing Emperor Henry IV at Canossa where he went to beg for a pardon from the Pope. The Rainald von Dassel Room recalls the castle's twelfth-century builder. Rheineck remained an art museum until at least the 1930s. Its gardens were open to the public and the castle was regarded, in Schreiber's words (1841), as the "jewel of the whole region."13 Rheineck represents the drive of the bourgeoisie to endow themselves with a rural seat and to claim social status equivalent with that of the aristocracy. Like Stolzenfels or Sayn, it was open to public admiration. Even today its geographic position is both remote and impressive, as both the aristocracy and the professional bourgeoisie idealized their social position. It imitates Rheinstein with its crypt and may also have helped to inspire Stolzenfels with its chapel, and Sooneck with its keep's intact rough walls. The similarities are not surprising, given the rebuilder's association with the Hohenzollerns, who were simultaneously reconstructing their own castles.

Heimburg Several ruins appropriated by bourgeois castle lovers suffered less exterior change than did Rheineck as only their interiors were refurbished. A good example is Heimburg or Hohneck, at Niederheimbach, ten kilometres north of Bingen (Fig. 27). Originally another Mainz outpost against the Counts of the Palatinate, it was probably built in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries and refortified in 1340. In 1689 the French destroyed much of it so that by the eighteenth century it was virtually of no military value. Nevertheless, about 1815 the round keep and some of the walls and towers still stood, attracting the attention of castle rebuilders. In 1844 Baron Fritz von Mering noted that "there are perhaps few castle ruins, which would be so easy to restore as Hohneck," the location of which he found to be "remarkably beautiful and romantic."14 Baedeker later published a picture by Lasinsky of the village and the ruin. No single owner, however, could find the time or money to settle down to making it liveable. In 1808 its bourgeois owner, Jakob Mertens of Niederheimbach, sold it to Conrad Korn, whose children sold it to the town of St. Goar, which in turn sold it to the General von Barfuss who eventually rebuilt Reichenstein. The ruin next passed into the hands of a

The Fulfilment of Bourgeois Ambition I 195

Fig. 27. Above Niederheimbach, Heimburg in 1980: Although still inhabited, more than any other renovated castle of the Middle Rhine, Heimburg has achieved the perfection of romantic desolation. The sign warns "Danger of falling stones. Enter at your own risk." Vigilant servants also deter visitors. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

196 I Castles of the Rhine factory owner, one Gerbott of Krefeld. Then a Dr. von Wackerbarth rebuilt the side facing the river. After 1879 its interior was renovated by another bourgeois owner, Eduard Rabeneck, a winery operator. Finally the family of Hugo Stinnes (1870-1924) made it their home. Matthias Stinnes, Hugo's father, had made his fortune in the 1830s, exporting coal. The younger Stinnes founded his own company at the age of twenty-three and eventually controlled the largest German trust. Despite his immense wealth, he refused to buy an available landed estate in Thuringia, although a title of nobility went with it, because the price was too high. Nevertheless he otherwise fits the pattern of the prominent businessman who wanted to legitimize his entrepreneurial authority by adopting the lifestyle of a noble landowner. Never truly "feudalized" (in the sense of preferring life in his castle to the business world), he spent little time at his Heimburg property, but was obsessed, in his son's words, by both a "work mania" and an "irrepressible thirst for. . . power."15 Although an archeology buff, he, like Sarter at Drachenburg, never allowed himself the time to enjoy aristocratic pursuits at Heimburg. Today, looking much as it did when Stinnes finished his renovations about 1910, Heimburg remains the quintessential romantic castle, nestled deep in greenery, its crenellations rising above vine-covered walls broken by pointed windows.

Schonburg A much more impressive ruin and a more striking renovation was that of Schonburg, a ridge-castle above Oberwesel, south of St. Goar, on the west bank of the Rhine. Probably begun in 1149, Schonburg was later an imperial castle and then a possession of Trier. This massive complex boasted two powerful round keeps with adjoining living quarters. Facing the inland advance of potential enemies, its shield wall was probably the most impressive on the Rhine (Fig. 28). The castle's great size was also a result of the fact that it housed simultaneously several (at one time five) noble families of the Schonenberg line. This family owned it until 1719 when the last family member died. After this date the increasingly decrepit castle changed hands often. Typically, Schonburg was badly damaged by the French in 1689. By 1815, however, the castle's walls with their crenellations and corbelling were nearly intact. The two high round keeps survived with a smaller keep and many other lesser buildings. In an appropriately romantic view (1832) Tombleson showed its mighty walls and towers looming menacingly out

The Fulfilment of Bourgeois Ambition I 197

Fig. 28. At Schonburg in 1980: Conservation work is underway on the fourteenth-century shield-wall. Like so many of the Middle Rhine ruins, Schonburg was owned for a while by a Hohenzollern prince, before its purchase in 1885 by a wealthy American who, fascinated by medieval life, made it his summer home. Since 1950, it has been a hotel and a youth hostel. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

198 I Castles of the Rhine of a mist above a pastoral scene. Great gaps rend the walls, the window openings yawn balefully, the interior appears (and was in fact) gutted. The poet Freiligrath thought Schonburg "the most beautiful retreat on the Rhine."16 Karl Simrock, inspired by local legend, wrote a poem "The Seven Sisters" which tells how the ship of seven arrogant ladies went down in the river.17 The picturesque town of Oberwesel was very attractive to tourists, and especially so to English travellers because Frederick von Schomberg, who lived at Schonburg in the seventeenth century, had supported William of Orange, dying at the Battle of the Boyne (1690). As we know, in 1825 Prince Frederick of Prussia commissioned Lassaulx to study some of the most striking Rhenish ruins with a view to rebuilding them. The architect had recommended Schonburg as the most likely candidate, but in 1839 a Prussian general (von Stockhausen) purchased it, making, however, few changes. In 1842 Prince Albert of Prussia, charmed by its picturesque surroundings, bought it and planned to make of it "a beautiful knightly palace" in the "purest Byzantine style."18 Nothing came of his vision either, and by 1866 the ruins were back in non-royal hands again. Hohenzollern and aristocratic ambitions had saved Schonburg from further decay but it remained for a remarkable American to preserve and adapt its ruins from 1885 until 1920. In 1883 Schonburg was purchased by Swiss alpine guide Charles Hess, acting for Major Thomas Jackson Oakley Rhinelander (1858-1946), a New York real estate magnate. Fascinated by things military and historical, the major refurbished the castle, spending over two million gold marks on it. Rhinelander came to live in Schonburg for two months every year. His arrival was celebrated with a public festival; his ship was greeted by cannon as if he were a feudal lord; he was met by the mayor and led ceremoniously up to his castle in the tradition of King Frederick William IV visiting Stolzenfels. When he was in residence his personal standard was hoisted on the castle flag-pole. A plaque with the family coat of arms and a Latin motto proclaimed Rhinelander's ownership. The renovations were executed simply, with relatively little change to the architectural fabric of the castle's remains, but unfortunately with little sense of an over-riding concept. To be sure, the difficult terrain made the task of reconstruction extremely complex. Possibly for this reason, and because Rhinelander sought as much authenticity as possible, few modern comforts were installed in the reconstructed castle. Weeds were removed from the walls which were cleaned and improved, collapsed steps were replaced, improved heavy doors of wood and iron were hung. One set of living quarters, along with the eastern parts of the castle, was among

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the first structures to be rebuilt. The castle chapel was reconstructed and dedicated to Rhinelander's mother, to whom he was very attached and from whom he inherited his interest in history.19 What motivated an American-born millionaire to purchase, refurbish and live in a medieval ruin, far from his native land with its modern efficiency in an era before the ease of jet travel?20 As his name suggests, Rhinelander's ancestors originally came from Dorscheid, across the river from Oberwesel. (They had originally been Huguenots who had fled from France in 1686.) An antiquarian, Rhinelander was a member of the German Castle Association and was interested in many of the other castles of the area. He wrote to the Association, probably in 1932, to express his concern for the state of the ruins of Fiirstenburg, an outgrowth of what he called his "love for all antiquities (particularly castles and armor)."21 His stationery letterhead showed a coat of arms and the words "Schonburg Castle, Oberwesel am Rhein." No doubt this American was also affected by the romantic mood. Unlike most of those who yearned for a castle, however, the bourgeois Rhinelander had the means to buy one and to live in it.22

Maus Obviously the appeal of an aristocratic home was not limited to Europeans. Burg Maus, a Hangburg above Wellmich, northwest of St. Goarshausen, was purchased by a Mexican named Gallopin who lived there from 1923 until the 1940s. The castle was another of Trier's fortresses, constructed between 1353 and 1388. On a crag about 120 metres (about 400 feet) high, Burg Maus was supposed to protect Trier's narrow strip of land on the right bank. According to legend, the Count of Katzenelnbogen was irritated by this new fortress and said that his castle, Katz, would be able to deal quite easily with this mouse: hence the name. (Burg Maus was also known as Thurnberg or Deuernburg.) The French destroyed it in 1689 and in 1806 it was sold by cash-starved Nassau for quarry stone. A quadratic living quarters, a shield-wall, a round keep, and an outbuilding survived into the nineteenth century. In the 1840s it belonged to a Frau Anne von Baring of Boppard. Before the Mexican purchased Maus, it had been reconstructed between 1902 and 1906 as his own dwelling by the Cologne architect Wilhelm Gartner. The exterior is "bolted and barred and drawbridged"23 in the popular exaggerated neo-medieval style. A courtyard had a fountain and a cistern. All the windows were new installations, although in the original size and location. The heavy ornate interiors and their furnish-

200 / Castles of the Rhine ings, writes a German scholar, reflected the age's "theatrical understanding of the middle ages and .. . sentimental view of the chivalric age."24 A new chapel and a Knights' Hall were provided. The latter chamber had Gobelin tapestries, and most of the rooms had wooden panelling and Renaissance furniture. Typically, Burg Maus became the repository of a cannon, a patriotic memento of the Franco-Prussian war. Nevertheless (as was by 1900 the rule in reconstructions) the substance of the ruin was respected in the rebuilding and evidence of the original red plaster can still be seen. In 1924 its Mexican owner added the top of the keep.25 As for Burg Katz, also "restored" by its middle-class owner in the late 1890s, it occasioned a debate due to the growing concern for accurate reconstruction—but Katz and the controversy are part of a later chapter. Maus and Schonburg show the interest of foreigners in Rhine castles, but Maus itself also reveals the growing interest of professional architects in rebuilding and owning castles.

Boosenburg In another example of castle reconstruction by an architect, a largely new villa was built in close association with an impressive ruin. Boosenburg or the Oberburg, in Riidesheim had been built in the twelfth century as a water-castle close to the river (Fig. 29) and passed through the hands of several noble families. To the original moated four-sided keep, dwelling quarters were added in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In 1818 Johanna Schopenhauer was charmed by the "picturesque" and "venerable old castle" which had flowers blooming on the towers and walls.26 An engraving by Henry Winkles of about this time shows Boosenburg's square keep intact. A round-arched portal was reached over a stone bridge. The Palas with its peaked roof was still inhabited, but bushes were growing out of the top wall. Its outer vegetation-covered walls, however, were crumbling, a state of picturesque degeneration which was not to last. In 1830 the Sturm family bought it, using it as the headquarters for their winery. Then between 1836 and 1840 the core of Boosenburg was rebuilt in a pseudo-medieval style for the Sturms by the Wiesbaden architect Philipp Hoffmann, who had built Rheinstein's new chapel. Hoffmann tore everything down except the mighty quadratic keep at the side of which he constructed a three-storey mansion, with a step-gable and a turret (still the headquarters of a winery). At this time, respect for Germany's castle heritage was embryonic. Today the old Bergfried still looms incongruously adjacent to the mansion.

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Fig. 29. At Riidesheim, Boosenburg in 1991: Only the tower remains of the original castle, but the vintner's gate and fence and the villa itself are suitably "medieval." Here bourgeois business enterprise has effectively exploited a ruin, destroying the architectual substance of much of the original. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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Gutenfels Perhaps the best example of a castle rebuilt by an architect for his own use is the Hangburg Gutenfels, above Kaub (Fig. 30). The original Gutenfels was constructed on a site eminently suitable for controlling the river and collecting tolls. The Rhine was dangerously swift and narrow here and in its midst was a rocky island, a good site for a river barricade. Hence not surprisingly about 1200 the castle of Pfalzgrafenstein in the river's midst, the walled town of Kaub on the shore, and Gutenfels on the rocky crag above were built on command by one of the emperor's vassals. Expanded in 1508-9 by the Elector Palatine, Gutenfels was soon besieged twice— both times in vain, although it was damaged by cannon fire on the last occasion. In the Thirty Years' War, after it had changed hands six times and was again damaged, improvements followed, so that Merian's postwar copperplate shows a still apparently solid many-towered fortress dominating Kaub below. The "Spanish graveyard" in the west bastion recalls the castle's long foreign occupation during that war.27 In 1793 Gutenfels, defended only by several companies of Palatine veterans, was surrendered relatively intact to the revolutionary French armies. Unlike many of its counterparts, Gutenfels had not fallen into complete ruin by 1803 when, with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, it passed to the Duchy of Nassau. As late as 1806 two "charming" slate-roofed structures still stood28 housing veterans stationed there. When the soldiers were disbanded the Nassau government planned to establish a workhouse and prison at the castle. The triumphant French again intervened when in 1806 Napoleon ordered the Nassau government to disarm and dismantle it.29 Demolition took place from January 1805 to June 1807. A sober practicality dominated the authorities' approach: no romantic illusions, no concern for preserving historic monuments, no patriotic scruples to interfere with the exploitation of the castle's parts. The French emperor must be obeyed for obvious military and diplomatic reasons, but Nassau's army and government need not suffer unduly in the process. An inventory was taken after which a military commission reserved the useable weapons for itself. Some items ended up at another of Nassau's Rhenish castles, Marksburg. Bullets and lead were sent to Wiesbaden; the chapel's altarpiece and pictures were appraised at thirty Kreuzer. Artifacts from the Knights' Hall, planks from the tower and some weapons were also saved. But the moat was filled in and the walls were sold to quarrying interests in late 1807.

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Fig. 30. Burg Gutenfels in 1980: Despite an architect's partial reconstruction after 1888, Gutenfels retained a romantic air of decay until its recent renovation as a hotel. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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Modern conservationists sympathize with the distress later expressed by Bodo Ebhardt over the Nassau government's act of "imbecilic" (verstdndnislos) vandalism.30 His words express the new early twentiethcentury appreciation of the past and an intense pride in structures regarded as national historic monuments, attitudes still unknown in 1807. On the other hand the authorities saw Gutenfels as an obsolete military structure, much as a multinational corporation today would regard an uncomfortable office tower or outdated factory, hence a disposable liability. It was sensible to abandon it, saving only what was useful. Of course, as noted, there were political reasons for doing so as well. Ironically, almost as soon as it was so coldly dismantled, Gutenfels entered a new chapter of its existence. Partly because of its cheerful setting and partly because of its proximity to the remarkable island-fortress of the Pfalz, Gutenfels was frequently the subject of artists' attention. Scores of drawings, water-colours, and oil paintings of the castle were made, many of which were reproduced as steel engravings, to join the flood of images of Rhenish castles which Europeans loved. Most showed the midriver Pfalz; some related Gutenfels to Schonburg across the Rhine; most used typical romantic exaggeration. In 1860, however, Leopold Eltester produced a careful rendering of the ruin, revealing the growing interest in a scientific approach to medieval architecture. With its partner, the Pfalz, Gutenfels formed a striking example of a medieval defensive and economic complex and so attracted the attention of scholars as well as artists. In 1833 the Hessian state archivist Frederick Habel (who had begun the preservation of Maus, Reichenberg, and other wrecked castles) purchased Gutenfels in order to prevent further demolition. When he died in 1867 his nephew Konrady, a district judge, inherited the ruin. A Dr. Miiller of Koblenz took it over in 1886. Finally it came into possession of the Cologne architect, Gustav Walter, who rebuilt it between 1889 and 1892, and made it his home. His approach to the ruin was different from Hoffmann's at Boosenburg. Shortly after he moved in, Walter wrote proudly of his castle renovation, revealing an awareness of changing views of Burg reconstruction. When he remodelled the third floor of the former living quarters, reconstructed the Knights' Hall, and renewed the wooden galleries of the inner courtyard, Walter respected the substance of the original castle. However, flat roofs, instead of the original hipped roofs, were used, which at least preserved the skyline of the ruin to which everyone was accustomed. Still, although he had sought to reconstruct the "most genuine image of an old Schloss," he avoided becoming "shackled

The Fulfilment of Bourgeois Ambition / 205 to old architectural forms," since he wanted to create a home which should be "beautiful and comfortable."31 Walter revelled in his "genuine antique furniture, tools, weapons, etc."—and his hot and cold running water! The Knights' Hall, a long, narrow room, boasted two large fireplaces, panelled walls and ceiling, with pictures from the history of the castle: Adolf von Nassau laying the foundation stone, for example; and the wedding of Richard of Cornwall to Beatrix von Falkenstein. On its walls were the arms of earlier owners. In the restoration of Gutenfels we find a greater concern for the integrity of the remaining structures than we have found since Schinkel's plans for Rheinstein. This was due to a growing understanding of the past and to a greater concern for scientific accuracy in both research and reconstruction.32 When members of the newly founded German Castle Association made a field trip in June 1902, Walter received them in his ornate Knights' Hall and proudly gave them a guided tour of his castle. We do not know what the castle buffs thought of his pseudo-medieval redoubt but, as we shall see, Association members were later critical of the renovated Heimburg. Certainly there is defensiveness in the architect's published description of his new home, as if there had been doubts about his commitment to preserving as much as possible of the historic substance of Gutenfels. He claimed that he went to considerable lengths to save a large cherry tree (the castle's "most beautiful ornament") in the inner courtyard.33 Insofar as Walter showed concern for preserving as much as possible, he was as up-to-date as one could be at that time. Nevertheless he saw no tension between his quasi-medieval retreat and the nearby heritage-destroying forces of modern life. He wrote that the "sublimely beautiful" view from his living rooms was "always changing through the lively ship traffic on the Rhine and the railway lines on both banks."34

Rosenburg The Middle Rhine also offers examples of ruins modestly rebuilt by representatives of the academic world. A very early example is Rosenburg in Kessenich, south of Bonn, built in 1831 for Professor Georg August Goldfuss, a botanist at the University of Bonn. His walks in search of peaceful views had led him to the ruins of a medieval castle which lay on the path up to the nearby Venusberg. Above and to the south of the older ruin, Goldfuss built a small castle-like villa as a summer retreat, the first of its kind in Germany.35 Built of rubble stone and brick by the architect

206 / Castles of the Rhine Karl Alexander Heideloff, it had a chapel. Climbing roses were trained to grow up its walls. After 1852 Gustav Schlieper purchased, renovated, and expanded it. An 1853 painting shows Rosenburg isolated deep in the woods with Godesburg in the distance and Drachenfels across the Rhine, associations which must have pleased its owner. Its large round-arched portal is flanked by a lofty round tower and a small square one, both with pointed roofs. Behind rises a many-turreted Palas. The commercial bourgeoisie were also affected by Burgenschwarmerei. Often they built almost entirely new "castles"—perhaps because they wanted modern opulence and convenience rather than a rugged retreat. An early example is the neo-Gothic Schloss Sinzig, above Ahrweiler, west of Remagen, standing on the site of a sixteenth-century palace. Built between 1854 and 1858 by Vincenz Statz, an architect of churches, for a Cologne banker, G. Bunge, it houses frescoes by Karl Andreae (1823-1904). Sinzig, however, is still modest. In the later German "Second Empire" period (1871-1918), wealthy non-nobles built larger and more grandiose castles/palaces, usually in a blend of medieval and Renaissance or in an inflated classical style. For example, Haus Ernich, above Remagen, was designed (1906-8) by Ernst von Ihne, court architect to William II, for a member of the Guilleaume family, Cologne businessmen.36 The best example of this effort to recreate the Middle Ages on the Rhine, however, is "Dragon's Castle."

Drachenburg Thou beautiful castle, built on loveliest site Bring good fortune, protect the German spirit! Where plunder ruled and savage feuds raged Let peace blossom.37

This inscription, on Stephan Sarter's pseudo-castle, exemplifies the patriotic association of castles with national stability and unity which had developed earlier and which was peaking in the late nineteenth century. Drachenburg was a Traumschloss built 1879-83 for the bourgeois financier Stephan Sarter (1830-1902) above Konigswinter on the east Rhine bank across from Bad Godesberg38 (Fig. 31). Sarter's castle is a powerful symbol of his sense of status. Moreover, the nationalism expressed in its interior decoration seems like the overcompensation of a German who lived most of his life abroad, a fact which did not prevent his Schloss from becoming a beloved tourist attraction and a German heritage monument. Its interior has some similarities to Stolzenfels, as we shall see, but in

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Fig. 31. Above Konigswinter, Scbloss Drachenburg about 1890: Without the growth of trees which today give it mysterious seclusion, the newly completed "Dragon Castle" was the sort of structure eventually condemned as a "false antiquarian parody" (Max Dvorak, Kathechismus der Denkmalpflege [Vienna, 1916], p. 89). A vast villa with the requisite medieval architectural parts (from right to left, Vorburg, ring-wall, Bergfried, watchtower, Palas), it was rarely inhabited and quickly became a tourist curiosity. Nevertheless, it represents perfectly the bourgeois striving for acceptance by the German social and political establishment. Courtesy of Dr. Angelika Schyma.

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grandiosity it far outdoes the Prussian king's contribution to the castlerebuilding movement. Although it is not a rebuilt medieval Burg, it is the most ambitious of the bourgeois pseudo-castles on the Middle Rhine, reflecting the various factors at work in the upper middle class's effort both to buttress and identify itself with the political status quo. Although he continued to pursue a business career, never seeking an estate-oriented lifestyle, Stephan Sarter is a good example of a wealthy bourgeois who satisfied his social ambition by building himself a "castle" which might affirm his equality with the highest-ranking aristocrat. Born into a Bonn hotel-keeping family, Sarter apprenticed with the Cologne banking house of Salomon Oppenheim and established himself after 1862 as an advisor to Rothschild and as a stockbroker. Active on the Paris stock exchange where he made his millions, he was involved with the Panama Canal enterprise. Evidently he planned, even before his ennoblement, to become a landed property owner for in 1879 he bought a large acreage just below the ruins of Drachenfels. In 1881, after he had begun his castle,39 he was made a baron by Duke George von Saxony-Meiningen after the payment of 40,000 gold marks. Sarter seems to have been torn between his German roots and the source of his wealth. In 1890 he took out French citizenship, yet was buried in Konigswinter below his mansion. Drachenburg's inflated expression of ambition and its almost strident national pride seems overstated and vulgar. Ironically it contains much that is not German in origin. Nevertheless it shows how nationalism, at first radical, later conservative, became paramount among the factors which motivated castle rebuilding in the later nineteenth century. Originally one approached Drachenburg over a stone bridge and through a gateway into a Vorburg, the word suggesting the outworks of a medieval castle but which was in fact a coach-house, stable, and servants' dwelling. Leaving the Vorburg, one proceeded up the curving drive until the massive villa itself loomed up suddenly. The visitor would notice there were three main parts to Drachenburg: (1) the main building with the keep, dwelling and reception rooms, (2) the Hall of Art, which links the main structure to (3) the north tower. Built of two contrasting colours of sandstone, pink and light-brown, Drachenburg stretches along a ramparted platform, defined by a supporting wall with crenellations, buttresses, and watch towers. Parts of the mansion were described with the vocabulary of medieval castle architecture: Burgtor (castle gate), Wohnturm (dwelling tower), and Bergfried (keep). The house itself is silhouetted by its giant four-sided keep with turrets and pointed roof, and the

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crenellated north tower, almost free-standing. The latter has a large portal at its base which confirms the castle-like impression, but which leads only to the basement! The roof is trimmed with ornamental wrought iron grillwork. The pervasive neo-Gothic verticality is accentuated by lesser coneroofed towers, oriels, and gables not to mention the pointed archways, doors, and windows. There is a rose window over the main entrance. From the Rhine Terrace, two staircases lead down to the Garden Terrace. Here are two large bronze stags, suggesting the wealthy banker's ability to pursue the aristocratic pleasures of the hunt and recalling the real trophies at Reichenstein and the princely hunts planned for Sooneck. Through such symbols men like Sarter wanted to associate themselves with upper-class sporting rituals and thus with the aristocratic lifestyle. As was probably intended, Drachenburg found favour with patriotic observers. "Many artists (and of course only Germans) were employed in the preliminary work," said the author of an 1883 article,40 an assertion which did not apply to the ultimate execution of the mansion. The original plans were indeed drawn up by the Rhenish firm of Bernhard Tiishaus and Leo von Abbema and developed by a student of Ernest Frederick Zwirner, Wilhelm Hoffman, who also rebuilt Ramersdorf. The painted glass came from Bavaria. On the other hand, the Paris-based Sarter, familiar with French firms, did not hesitate to hire non-German artisans. The mosaic work was produced by the Paris firm, Jachina; some of the furniture and draperies were supplied by Jouvenan of Paris; the garden statues were the work of the French sculptor Ruillard. The arms of Paris, where Sarter had made his name and his fortune, appear with the arms of his hometown, Bonn, on the balcony of the north tower. To his credit, although Sarter wanted to assert his German patriotism, he did not share the anti-French chauvinism which afflicted many Germans of his time. In fact, Sarter rarely lived in Drachenburg and spent the rest of his life in Paris. Nevertheless, if Sarter was in this way unusual, he was the typical parvenu in seeking to assert his new aristocratic credentials. Although—or perhaps because—he had no noble ancestors or family traditions, he needed a "family seat," near Bonn, his birthplace. He chose the site because of the proximity of Drachenfels, suggesting continuity of tradition and authority. Moreover, an old Burghof had stood on this property, part of the lands of the knights of that castle. Over the main balcony window is a scroll with the motto of his newly achieved coat of arms. The closed helmet above the escutcheon bears the symbolic winged dragon. Sarter thus could be seen as carrying on the tradition of the long vanished

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lords of the ruined Drachenfels. His personal slogan, mounted on the walls of Drachenburg, was "Think carefully, then act boldly" (Wage— Wage). As appropriate to a shrewd stockbroker as to an feudal knight, the motto was borrowed from the Oppenheims.41 Despite the French provenance of a large part of its decoration, and despite its owner's continued absence, Drachenburg reflected the late nineteenth-century obsession with German myth and the German medieval empire. Known as the "Valhalla of the Rhineland," it was a sort of German Hall of Fame. The wall inscription quoted earlier reflects Barter's patriotism which his Schloss embodied in stone, paint, and glass. The facade sculptures represent heroes from medieval myths and legends, as well as German emperors and artists. Four stone figures appear on the crenellations of the north tower: Master Gerhard, the first architect of the Cologne cathedral; Peter Vischer, a Nuremburg sculptor; Wolfram von Eschenbach, the writer of "Parsifal," and Albrecht Durer, the artist. On the south side of the building are two-and-a-half metre high standing figures of Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, and Emperor William I, all empire builders (Fig. 32). Siegfried, the mythical dragon-slayer, guarded the east facade. From the many windows on Drachenburg's Rhine side, one has fine views of the island of Nonnenwerth and Roland's Arch, with their associations with the Carolingian Empire, knightly virtues, and romantic love. The interior continues the glorification of German history and myth, both German successes and Sarter's personal triumphs, while also glamorizing noble life, particularly the hunt. The Munich Academy of Art prepared the interior historical paintings, with themes from German, and especially Rhenish, history and legends. The main staircase bore scenes of folk tales such as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty (Briar Rose), executed in the style of Moritz von Schwind. (They have not survived.) "Read" in the context of other paintings in the staircase, these pictures reflected recent events in German history. Both Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, like the German Empire, awoke after a long sleep. Another painting showed the 923 A.D. meeting of Emperor Henry the Fowler with King Charles the Simple on a ship near Bonn when the disputed Alsace-Lorraine was acknowledged to be part of the German Empire, thus allegedly justifying German annexation of the territory after the Franco-Prussian War. A picture of the Cologne wedding of a patrician's son with an English princess in 1201 contains a portrait of Sarter as a knight of St. George.42 Another shows "Hauling the Cornerstone of the Cologne Cathedral from Drachenfels," with knights wearing dragon helmets. (The

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Fig. 32. At Drachenburg in 1991: On the south facade appear three symbols of successful imperial rule; from left to right—Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, and Emperor William I ("the Great"), associated with the German unification of 1864-71. Peter Fuchs (1829-98) was the sculptor. Note the French fleur-de-lys reflecting the divided national loyalties of the owner. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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Cathedral, as we have seen, was regarded as a German national monument.) "The Meeting of Charlemagne with Pope Leo III in Paderborn" (800) shows the negotiations as a result of which the German emperor received the imperial crown. The role of the Hohenzollerns as heirs to these earlier dynasties (by fiat of success) was justified in "The Baptism of the German Crown Prince," the oldest son of Emperor William I. These messages were echoed by the eight sitting figures of emperors in smaller paintings of the staircase, including Barbarossa, whom legend said would sleep in the Kyffhauser Mountain until the German people needed him, at which time he would—like Briar Rose—awaken and save the Empire. Since the early nineteenth century, the Nibelung myth was increasingly regarded as a German national epic. Drachenburg reflects this view in its "Nibelung Hall" in which wall paintings show ten scenes of the saga, one of which has Queens Briinnhild and Kriemhild at the Worms Cathedral on the Rhine. We have noted the figure of Siegfried on an outside wall. Richard Wagner, whose operatic use of the saga is well known, appears in a portrait in the "Hall of Art" and in a bust in the Music Room. The "Hall of Art" continues the theme of heroic Germans. Its coloured glass (vaguely church-like) windows portray figures such as Albrecht Diirer, Martin Luther, Queen Louise of Prussia, and Otto von Bismarck (Fig. 33). There is also a nearly half life-size statue of Bismarck as the "Iron Chancellor" showing him in general's uniform with sword and helmet, like a secular German warrior saint. As these images suggest, nationalism had now become respectable. The early German nationalism of Stein and Frederick William IV was romantic and backward looking. By the 1840s a more future-oriented liberal nationalism had infused the educated and commercial classes. Originally suspect in the eyes of the establishment, by the 1880s, with its liberal aspect tamed, this outlook had also penetrated the aristocracy and was beginning to motivate the working classes and peasantry as well. Nationalistic sentiments increasingly inspired not only the building of new "castles" but also the use or preservation of castle ruins. Whereas the princely reconstructions revealed an atavistic nationalism, nearly all the castle reconstructions of the last third of the century are coloured by the proud patriotism of a reunified Reich, the elite of which were determined to keep it unified with themselves at the helm. Elsewhere in Drachenburg's interior, the images are less political, but refer to the aristocratic hunting pastime which Sarter admired but never practised on his Rhenish estate. Over the door to the Reception Room, an

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Fig. 33. At Drachenburg in 1980: In the "Hall of Art" the armed and uniformed "Iron Chancellor," Otto von Bismarck, is presented in a stained glass window as a medieval knight guarding the Holy Roman Empire. Painted or stained glass windows were essential "medieval" accessories of reconstructed castles. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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inscription glorifies the daring hunter. The Dining Room had a (now over-painted) series of pictures on "Progress of a Knightly Hunt by the Knight of Drachenfels in the Fourteenth Century." Nearby, the Hunt Room has a wall painting depicting medieval nobles enjoying the pleasures of the chase. The influence of tourism was very evident in the continued use of Drachenburg. After Sarter's death a nephew, no doubt sensing that it would appeal to art-hungry and patriotic tourists, opened the Schloss to the public: the Vorburg became a hotel, guided tours were given, postcards were sold. In 1910 another owner planned an amusement park with a "Nibelung Theater," which the Rhenish Association for Heimat Protection prevented.43 In 1923, after having been closed for several years, Drachenburg was again opened to the public. From 1930 to 1940 it was a Roman Catholic boarding school. In 1942, because of its size, but probably as much because of its historic location and "uplifting" painted imagery, it became an Adolf Hitler School, wherein a future generation of heroic German leaders was to be trained. Almost impossible to use efficiently for any practical purpose, Drachenburg is today again open to the public as a museum of nineteenth-century arts and crafts with a small restaurant in its basement.44

Other Bourgeois Burgensebnsucht There were other less ambitious bourgeois reconstructions which deserve notice. In 1907 a well-to-do writer, Rudolf Herzog (1869-1943), took over the Upper Castle (Obere Burg) at Rheinbreitbach (between Bad Honnef and Unkel on the east bank) and had it renovated by the architect Valentin Martin as a relatively modest dwelling. Burg Brohleck, above Brohl on the west bank, north of Andernach, and Burg Nollig, built about 1300 above Lorch on the east bank, were also refurbished on a smaller scale by non-noble owners. Nollig was taken over in the 1840s by a Wiesbaden teacher named Rossel who began to make it habitable again. Its square keep has remained inhabited since then. Brohleck, Nollig, and the previously discussed castles were not historically accurate reconstructions, but their rebuilders exhibited some sympathy for the architectural substance of the original ruined building. Certain middle-class Rhinelanders also experienced the earlier aristocratic passion for artificial ruins (Kunstruinen). The scale was now much grander than at "Burg" Rossel and the design more elaborate. At Johannisberg in 1874, for example, the Mumm family constructed a fake ruin on

The Fulfilment of Bourgeois Ambition / 215 a slope at the edge of the Niederwald to serve as a summer house. A round tower looms above what one assumes is a one-storey Palas, from which extends a Renaissance style loggia. Pointed windows and doors, as well as crenellations, complete the picture. The view of the Rheingau is magnificent. In this chapter, we have seen how, by rebuilding ruins or building pseudo-castles, a self-aware bourgeois elite tried to place themselves on a social level with the old hereditary nobility, but not to displace them politically nor to abandon all bourgeois values in a wholesale adoption of aristocratic ways. Most of these middle-class castle builders did not retreat to their new-old fortresses to live there permanently and they did not usually exploit the land about their castles. Although he regarded his new property as a source of income, a bourgeois such Ferdinand Berg at Burg Katz near St. Goarshausen functioned as local justice of the peace and did not totally abandon educated middle-class pursuits. Stinnes at Heimburg or Sarter at Drachenburg spent even less time in their "castles." Despite the pseudo-medieval furnishings of their castles, such castle rebuilders did not play at being medieval knights, as did the Hohenzollerns at Rheinstein. The bourgeois owners of these new "castles" were understandably unwilling to sacrifice personal comfort and social ease by living in the drafty rooms and badly lit Knights' Halls of genuine medieval structures. Nevertheless, they shared in the romantic and patriotic sensibility which idealized the German Middle Ages and its architecture. They also sensed that their social and economic security was threatened by the growth of political radicalism. Both groups sought to retreat from and yet also to dominate the perceived crisis of their time. Their fantasy castles were a psychological refuge from a troubling reality and a way of asserting their challenged authority in a world undergoing sweeping social changes. Members of the less affluent general public also sought to put down anchor in this sea of change. Faced with the loss of a sense of historical continuity, they flocked to the Rhenish ruins, visited rebuilt castles, and marvelled at the Traumschlosser, which became shrines in their new pseudo-religion, nationalism.

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PART FOUR DEFENDING THE REICH

ELEVEN SYMBOLS OF GERMAN UNITY n their idealized view of the past many Germans agreed with the poet I Alois Wilhelm Schreiber, when he declared that the medieval Fatherland could always rely on the protection of "loyal German princes" whose castle dwellings were now "sacred" ruins.1 Contrary to these noble sentiments, however, few German princes, or any commoners for that matter, had a concept of a German Vaterland before about 1800. Nevertheless these lines express well both the growing German nationalism of his time and the newly popular concept that the ruined Rhenish castles were documents of a former German greatness maintained and defended by knightly heroes. At the same time, while the ruins became symbols of a lost German glory, the Rhine itself became the object of a nationalistic cult. Despite the fact that it rises in Switzerland, that stretches of its western bank have often been part of France, and that it flows into the North Sea through Holland, the Rhine became the quintessentially "German" river. Tragically, the waterway had too often been wrested from German hands. The villain in this fantasy was, of course, the "hereditary enemy," France. Eternal defence of the Reich and its "sacred" river was the responsibility of Germans now and in the future. The rise of modern German nationalism has been introduced in an earlier chapter. Here we must consider how in the 1840s nationalism led to the reconstruction of "Roland's Arch" (Rolandsbogeri), and the "Royal Throne" (Konigstuhl). Now, for the first time, patriotic members of the general public, some of whom had never seen the Rhine, supported reconNotes to Chapter Eleven are on pp. 363-64. 218

Symbols of German Unity I 219

structions on its banks. Their nationalism, moreover, was a forward-looking attitude, charmed by the romantic image of the German Holy Roman Empire, but actively looking towards a unified and powerful Germany of the future. Two other factors, the Hohenzollerns (not surprisingly) and tourism, also played a role here. "Roland's Arch" and the "Royal Throne" were first made famous through literature and picture books, later by tourism. Indeed most of the first tourists to the Middle Rhine were foreigners, but by the 1840s middle-class German tourists had begun to consider some of the Middle Rhine ruins national shrines. The conservative elite adopted nationalism, approving sites such as Drachenfels and embellishing them with monuments to German glory. After 1871 nationalism, earlier perceived by the establishment as dangerous, even revolutionary, became acceptable, and eventually became an attitude deliberately to be inculcated in the general public. Here, however, we must consider early manifestations of spontaneous national reverence for ruined castles.

Roland's Arch An arch of ashlar stones standing at Rolandseck ("Roland's Corner") near Oberwinter, just south of Bad Godesberg, is all that remains of Burg Rulcheseck or Rolandseck, built around 1100 by Cologne's prince-bishop (Fig. 34). Although its fortifications were improved around 1330, it was badly damaged in fifteenth-century battles between Cologne and the emperor, and was virtually demolished in 1633 during the Thirty Years' War. The site of Roland's Arch was and still is impressive. In 1825 a Prussian bureaucrat reported: On the one side, one overlooks, in the foreground, the Rhine with the beautiful islands Rolands- [Nonnen-]werth and Grafenwerth, the whole chain of the lovely Seven Mountains and a panorama of the broad, splendid valley dotted with villages and cities between which the broad Rhine flows; the view extends over the vast plain towards Cologne and beyond to the region of Dusseldorf and Neuss, and on the other side into the Eiffel and the mountains hear Laach.2

Its commanding location, so appealing to nationalistic romantics, was one of the reasons why attention was focused on the Arch. The other was its legend which told of the loyalty of the knight Roland, Emperor Charlemagne's vassal and nephew, to a young woman of the town of Rolandseck.3 In the nineteenth century even foreigners found this tale of

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Fig. 34. "Roland's Arch" in 1840: Drawn by Nikolaus Christian Hohe shortly after its reconstruction, the "Arch" overlooked the Nonnenwerth cloister and picturesquely framed Drachenfels (with its own legend) to the north. So, too, patriots hoped, would the glorious German Empire be reconstructed in the future. Courtesy of Stadtarchiv und Stadthistorische Bibliothek, Bonn.

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tragic love affecting. In 1851 in a letter to his wife from the Rhine, the Englishman Charles Kingsley wrote that he felt "overpowered by Rolandseek and Nonnenwerth, and that story; it seemed quite awful to find oneself in the presence of it" (italics in original).4 The "Arch" figured in many poems, most notably a popular one by August Kopisch (1799-1853). Jorg Ritzel wrote a novel that contained another poem about the monument, to which Paul Mania wrote a melody that became very well known. Despite the effusions of romantic poets and writers, on the site of the ruin more profit-oriented individuals were at work. In the 1820s the Prussian government, which owned the hilltop, gave custody of the ruin to a local innkeeper, Arnold Carl Groyen, who kept the paths leading to it clear, installed benches, and planted trees and bushes with a view to bringing tourists to his business. At the same time a businessman, one Mollhausen of Bonn, received permission to quarry the stones from the ruin. The modern history of what many believed to be Roland's castle began, as did that of so many Rhine ruins, with the Hohenzollerns. In 1831 the authorities sold the ruin to Privy Councillor von Pomowitz of Cologne, who in turn sold it to Princess Marianne (or Mary Anne), wife of William, King Frederick William Ill's brother. By 1839 the only part of the castle which still stood was an "arch" (actually a window or door opening in the remains of a wall) which, in December of that year, collapsed in a storm. When he learned about the collapse of the ruin, the liberal nationalistic poet, Ferdinand Freiligrath, living in Unkel across the Rhine, mounted a campaign to rebuild it. With the arch, he believed, disappeared one of the reference points linked to the most beautiful and moving Rhine legend. Presenting himself as a chivalric squire of Roland, he began with a romantic appeal in the Cologne News, in January 1840: It is up to you! I stand here with begging hands, Up and down the Rhine I walk, admonishing as I go. Roland's squire, I hasten through the country; Open helmet in outstretched hand, I appeal to you: restore his arch to him!

If Germans could complete the Cologne cathedral, said Freiligrath, then surely they could rebuild the "Arch."5 Given the enlarged reading public and the already widespread fame of the Rhine ruins, it is not surprising that thousands responded to the poet's appeal. Donations began to arrive from students at the nearby University of Bonn and soon from elsewhere in the German states. For Ger-

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mans, the ruin provided a focus for their growing but frustrated patriotic aspirations. In particular, middle-class nationalists, blocked by the authorities' refusal to countenance a united Germany with a constitution which allowed them a share in government, found the reconstruction of a national monument a welcome outlet for their political energies. The authorities, however, were not amused, for they tended to associate nationalists with liberals, some of whom, at this stage were inclined to make revolutionary statements—and indeed would soon (1848) try to make sweeping changes. As for Freiligrath, reputed to be a radical, even a socialist, he had neglected to find out who owned the property. (Private ownership of what is regarded as a national heritage monument would often become a problem for later conservationists in Germany and North America.) At first, therefore, Princess Marianne was understandably annoyed by the apparent expropriation of her ruin by a revolutionary. Although no violent firebrand, Freiligrath was indeed associated with the young Hegelians, who were dedicated to furthering the rational progress of the world. Eventually, however, the princess gave in to public opinion and to the appeals of an influential society woman who was a friend. She must also have known about and possibly shared the castle-enthusiasm of her nephews. Probably, too, her own romanticism triumphed. At all events, in April, 1840 she gave her consent, even endowing a fund to support a school in the village of Rolandswerth, north of Rolandseck. The restoration work would be undertaken by the very active Ernst Zwirner. Having money, an architect, and royal approval did not completely clear the way for the reconstruction, because another problem (which foreshadowed modern conservationist dilemmas) arose. The committee charged with over-seeing the work was divided over the accessibility of the restored ruin. Citizens from Remagen-Oberwinter and Rolandswerth wanted to be able to climb up easily to the site on safe, sturdy stairs. Freiligrath and Zwirner were opposed to this, believing that stairs up the hillside would destroy the ruin's isolated ambience, an attitude which foreshadows the modern sensitivity to the fragility of a heritage site.6 When the locals built a high set of steps near the ruin, Freiligrath personally ordered it dismantled. On the occasion of the "Arch's" completion in July 1840, Freiligrath saluted the Hohenzollern princess in another poem. In these verses he imagined himself among the stonemasons, proposing a toast to the "chatelaine of Rolandseck," "Marianne of the Rhineland."7 In 1842 Frederick William IV, himself a devoted if reactionary German patriot, granted Freiligrath an annual pension in recognition of his service to the nation.

Symbols of German Unity I 223

Two years later, as Freiligrath's political views became more radical, the poet renounced it. Given the autocratic censorship of the time, he had to flee the German states for England, returning briefly in 1848 to participate in the revolt and permanently only in 1868. Freiligrath's views were complex. Later he declared in an essay that he did not mind if tourists chipped away at the arch because they "kept alive the legend and provide the frame for the pale, sorrowing face [of Roland], that hallowed the place."8 This generous attitude, of course, contradicts his desire to preserve the "Arch" from too many visitors and would not please twentieth-century conservationists. Nevertheless in 1914 a monument to Freiligrath himself was erected on the path up from the river. A bronze bust by Siegfried M. Wiens, the poet's nephew, rests atop a short column at the centre of a gently curving wall against a backdrop of greenery. Today the "Arch" is totally covered with ivy, with small trees growing out of it, the absurd perfection of the original romantic castle ruin concept. The poet's successful campaign shows how popular ruins with reputed national significance had become by the 1840s, a fact corroborated by the contemporary reconstruction of the Konigsstuhl.

The Royal Throne The medieval German emperor had traditionally been chosen by the Empire's seven electors in an odd structure near Rhens, south of Koblenz. By 1839 this "Royal Throne" was in ruins, so that the French patriot, Victor Hugo, could write smugly, "the Konigsstuhl has disappeared, as have the Electors"; and—inaccurately—"today four stones mark the place of the Konigsstuhl', nothing marks the place of the Electors."9 Unlike Roland's Arch with its merely legendary associations, the "Royal Throne" documented genuine historical events. In 1376 the seven Electors chose Rhens for their deliberations because it was contiguous to the territory of the four most powerful: Hesse, Cologne, Mainz, and Trier. The emperor commanded the citizens of Rhens to build a suitable meeting place for the elections, and from which to present the elected emperor to the public. Finished by 1377, the original wooden meeting place was decayed towards the end of the 1500s. In 1624 the Elector of Hesse rebuilt it as a stone platform. Each elector could have sat on a separate bench against one of seven walls. (The eighth wall contained the door and stairs to the ground.) Over the centuries a legend emerged about Wenceslas of Bohemia who, when elected German emperor here, ceded his crown to Ruprecht of

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the Palatinate over a wager concerning the merits of certain Rhine wines. But by about 1800 so faded had the "Throne's" significance for the German state become that local people believed that a witches' sabbath was regularly held here. By the end of the eighteenth century the structure was again decrepit. After 1800, when the occupying French built a new road along the Rhine, they wrecked the "Throne" and sold the stones to the burghers of Rhens. For the new masters of the Rhineland it was an unwelcome historical symbol. Emperor Napoleon had no desire to preserve a relic commemorating another imperium. After the French left the Rhineland the remnants of the Throne were scattered throughout the community. Several sections, parts of columns, and mouldings were built into local buildings. In the 1830s, however, some local historians, among them Beck of Neuwied and Dronke of Koblenz, began to take an interest in it and tracked down some of these parts. In 1840 they formed a "Committee for the Restoration [Wiederherstellung] of the Royal Throne," including bourgeois intellectuals and local officials such as Dronke himself, Mayor Christer, Oberbxirgermeister Mahler (both of Rhens) as well as the military engineer von Wussow (who had worked on Ehrenbreitstein and Stolzenfels) and the architect Lassaulx. The Trier district government approved their application to collect contributions with a view to reconstruction. A newspaper announcement appealed for donations from "all those who are interested in the execution of this patriotic undertaking."10 The project organizers would seek out old views and sketches in order to draw up a plan for the renewed structure. A "lively interest" and an "outburst of patriotic feeling" greeted the appeal, said Fritz von Mering in 1844, noting sadly that the structure had been destroyed during the French Revolution.11 It took three years to raise the money, but again the Hohenzollerns played a role, as King Frederick William IV made up the difference between the sum raised by public subscription and the total necessary for reconstruction. The Throne's rebuilders agreed to erect it close to the road which the French had built. But what did the original look like? Accurate medieval representations of the original structure's appearance which agreed with each other were hard to find. Descriptions such as that made by Roger Ascham (around 1551) which described it as a "cockpit" were of no help.12 Thus Lassaulx was allowed considerable licence in designing the 1840s reconstruction, and H.M. Malten could write that the new Royal Throne was built "according to its original form, but more artistically."13 Built of squared black ashlar blocks, with basalt pillars strengthened by buttresses, the restored monument is essentially an octagonal platform,

Symbols of German Unity I 225

six metres high, supported by Gothic arches, with a staircase leading from the outside to the upper level, which is ringed with a balustrade. The discovered fragments were incorporated into the new building. As Malten suggested, Lassaulx's monument differs from the Throne pictured in older documents in several ways. He replaced the formerly horizontal covering of the buttresses with sloping, slightly concave covers and introduced a higher pointed-arched door opening with a three-stepped gable over the stairs and entrance to the platform, for which he planned a sculptural group (Fig. 35). The Throne proved more contentious politically than did Roland's Arch. Ferdinand Freiligrath shared in the hope of the rebuilders that a new empire lay in Germany's near future. But when he, who had led the campaign to save the Arch, was asked to help rebuild the Royal Throne, he refused to contribute his talents to the new project because of its monarchical associations. (Partially relenting, he read the poem quoted above at the 1843 dedication.) His scruples suggested portentous divisions among the nationalists, differences which surfaced during the 1848 dedication of the monument. The occasion seemed doubly important because, at the same time, the Frankfurt National Assembly was meeting to draw up a liberal constitution for a united Germany; delegates from all over the thirty-nine German states looked forward optimistically to a national renaissance. Because a new Germany was being created at Frankfurt, a great festival seemed in order at Rhens, and a large crowd gathered formally to open the rebuilt Royal Throne. Many speeches were made, in one of which the orator suggested provocatively that in future the monument should be called the "People's Throne," the age of kings being past. Partly for this reason, the meeting ended in a brawl. Ironically, this recalled medieval internecine squabbles and was a tragic foreshadowing, for the Frankfurt Assembly itself degenerated into ineffectual discussions and was eventually dispersed by Prussian troops in 1849. As for this symbol of past German glory and future German unity, the Royal Throne's significance lies in its associations, not its architectural beauty. But because of its link to an allegedly great age, nineteenth-century nationalists treasured it. By the 1890s it was surrounded by a beautiful grove of nut trees, between the Rhine and the river road. In 1929 it was moved to a more prominent site on a bluff, the "Hohe Schawall," above Rhens on the Hunsruck-Hohenstrasse from which the view is even more impressive. Unfortunately, however, this position exposed the dry ungainly lines of the rebuilt Throne and removed it from the daily life of

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Fig. 35. Above Rhens, the "Royal Throne" in 1991: Bleakly exposed on a promontory, this ungainly reconstruction of the Electors' meeting place, moved here from the riverbank in 1929, lacks all the accoutrements of the romantic ruin. It has long since ceased to have much national significance for Germans. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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Rhensers. In the later twentieth century it has become more of a curiosity than a shrine. The nationalistic fervour of men such as Ferdinand Freiligrath was combined with an enthusiasm for representative institutions, even republicanism, which threatened the establishment. Consequently their patriotic desire for a unified and liberal Germany was at first of little interest (except as a danger) to governments, or to many of the nobility who were equally uninterested in castle reconstruction. But after revolutionary nationalism seemed to fail in 1848, it became less of a threat to Germany's elites. We have seen how the aristocracy, still concerned to justify their status and power, turned to castle reconstruction in the 1850s, although without explicitly linking their castles to national regeneration. In the mid-1860s the national movement was co-opted by the Prussian government under Bismarck. Thus the castle rebuilding of the last third of the century was associated still with nationalism, but with a nationalism tamed and respectable, unthreatening to Germany's traditional leaders.

A National ''Victory Avenue" In contrast to Rheineck and Stolzenfels, "Roland's Arch" and the "Royal Throne" looked as much to the future as to an idealized past. Supplemented by monuments and statues, they gradually transformed the Middle Rhine into a "national victory avenue."14 The great medieval churches, such as Cologne's cathedral, and the rebuilt castles were joined by newly erected, often officially funded, statues, frequently with medieval associations. At the same time, for the elites, nationalism ceased to have politically and socially disturbing connotations, and the patriotic cult of the Rhine acquired the tacit approval of the local and federal governments. After 1871, the authorities could even approve monuments which explicitly associated King-Emperor William I and his consort Augusta with national unification (as at Koblenz). Some of the monuments have less to do with medieval Germany, than they have to do with the perennial defence of the Fatherland against the French. At Kaub, for example, where in 1814 the Prussian forces crossed the river in pursuit of Napoleon, a statue of General Bliicher was set up in 1894.15 The concept of the reborn medieval German empire combined with the cult of the Rhine is most clearly manifested in the Niederwald Monument, north of Riidesheim on the east bank of the river. This thirty-seven-metre-high monument was built between 1876 and 1883 at the edge of the Niederwald forest. Significantly, it faces west towards

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the "hereditary enemy," France. A bronze armed "Germania" stands on a huge sandstone and quartzite base and holds in her right hand the medieval imperial crown while her left hand rests on a sword.16 As with the projects to rebuild Roland's Arch and the Royal Throne, funds came largely from patriotic donations from members of the public, in particular from veterans' organizations. These statues and monuments, like the rebuilt castles and the cult of the Rhine itself, show how both the educated public and political authorities shared a desire to build on an idealized image of medieval Germany a meaningful sense of history culminating in the glorious unification of 1871.17 In this chapter, we have seen how nationalism motivated the reconstruction of two "sacred" medieval buildings, one as a ruin, the other as a facsimile of the original. Rebuilding them was an act of faith in Germany's future as a united nation. It was part of the transformation of the Middle Rhine into a corridor of national shrines. Finally, it reflected a romantic view of the Middle Ages as an ideal time. Perhaps the best example of an entire medieval castle as a national sacred place is Marksburg, preserved, not rebuilt, with official approval, during the age of the Second Reich (1871-1918) and redolent, as is "Germania," with the insecure and hence overstated nationalism of that time. Now the conservative elite no longer feared its "revolutionary" nature. (In 1871, the Prussian establishment, themselves having taken over the task of unifying Germany, had bought off the liberals with a parliament and the radicals with universal suffrage.) Castle reconstruction remained at least partly political in motivation. Nevertheless a new and more objective and often apolitical influence— scholarly historical research—also explains the preservation of the impressive Marksburg.

TWELVE MONUMENT TO

GERMAN GLORY T

he thirteenth-century St. Mark's Castle or Marksburg towers above the village of Braubach on a tree-covered conical hill on the Rhine's

east bank (Fig. 36). About eleven kilometres (about six miles) south of Koblenz, Braubach and its summit-castle are a regular stop for the Rhine ships from which thousands of tourists disembark annually, attracted by the high-towered castle, 150 metres above the river. They are impressed by the oft-made and inaccurate statement that it is the only medieval castle on the Middle Rhine which has escaped destruction.1 Unlike Stolzenfels, Marksburg is not a romantic, imprecise reconstruction. If it is not, in Bodo Ebhardt's words, "from roof to foundation, including tower, palace, gates, and dungeon ... as it was originally built,"2 at least it is the oldest Middle Rhine castle which approximates the look of a medieval stronghold. By 1920 it had become, in the words of its poet-castellan, a "monument to the heroes of a long vanished age," who had witnessed "the glory of the Empire."3 Climbing up the "Steep Path" [Steiler Pfad] from Braubach gives a sense of the castle's impregnability, as well as superior views of the town of Braubach4 and the valleys of the Miihlbach and the Zollbach, small streams which flank the castle on its north and east sides (Fig. 37). The less stout-hearted travel by car up a road which ascends the eastern side of the hill. To get to the castle's innermost courtyard one must still pass through five gates. A moat and a drawbridge protect the first gate, which is part of the castle's outer defences dating from the fourteenth century. Notes to Chapter Twelve are on pp. 365-68. 229

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Fig. 36. Braubach and Marksburg about 1630: The castle which later became a national monument began its existence as a military stronghold dominating river and town, supplemented in the sixteenth century with the Philippsburg at the Rhine's edge, as seen here in Merian's copperplate. Courtesy of Landesmuseum Koblenz, Festung Ehrenbreitstein.

Monument to German Glory I 231

Fig. 37. From Braubach, Marksburg in 1980: Described in 1925 as a "monument to the honour of German courage, energy, and intellectual grandeur in both past and future," (Oskar Doering, Bodo Ebhardt. Ein Deutscher Baumeister [Berlin: Burgverlag, 1925], p. 121) St. Mark's Castle was nearly impregnable. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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The coat of arms with rampant lion, carved in stone over the door, is that of Count Johann the Warlike of Hesse. On rough cobblestones one passes through a barrel-vaulted tunnel, twenty-five metres long and four metres wide, built during the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). The next defence is the Fox Tower and Gate, also fourteenth century in origin. A long, rising, stone-flagged path follows, lined by old stone walls out of which incongruous but romantic yellow flowers grow. After one passes through the bailey gate in the Castellan's tower, the Loophole Gate, surmounted by a small spire, looms ahead. Still climbing one turns sharply to the left and passes under the seventeenth-century Great Battery with its cannon facing the Rhine, and approaches a passage under the Small Battery, which surveys the Zollbach valley. Here the stairs are carved out of bare rock. Finally one passes through the Iron Gate to the triangular inner courtyard (less than seven metres square) where the surrounding buildings are built with overhanging upper floors to compensate for the lack of space. Out of this cramped area rises the freestanding thirty-nine-metrehigh keep, from which there is a clear and militarily useful view along the Rhine and into the Hunsriick to the west and the Taunus Mountains to the east. The keep has a platform with a crenellated rampart above which rises a round addition over eight metres high. A jail, with a dungeon below it, is in the tower basement. Marksburg's slate roofs are steep and pointed, in the Rhenish style, but the tower smacks of Italy and its walled city-states.5 Whatever its origins this rather un-German tower gives the castle its striking skyline and romantic ambience. Originally plastered white, it must have been a vivid landmark in medieval times. From the tower one can appreciate the castle's roughly triangular ground plan and its strong shield-wall, which is also the outer wall of the main living quarters. The castle has three wings of half-timbered buildings. On the landward or eastern side are the living quarters, built mainly in the fourteenth century and protected against advancing foes by the aforementioned shield-wall about forty metres long and three metres thick in the middle. Because of the castle's cramped location on a rock pinnacle, all of its rooms in the Palas and elsewhere are small. Some of the interior walls have mural paintings; elsewhere the dark old beams stand out dramatically against white wall surfaces. On the ground floor of the Palas is a kitchen where the ceiling is supported by one thick wooden column, and a large stone fireplace dominates. Above the kitchen is the Great Hall bristling with medieval armament. Beside it is the woodpanelled bedroom of the landlord.

Monument to German Glory I 233 Linking the Palas wing to the Rhine Building is St. Mark's Chapel, built about 1437, in the so-called Henry's Tower or St. Mark's Tower, which gives the castle its name. This small polygonal room has groined vaulting resting on ribs bearing crudely carved grotesques (a miser, a glutton, a fool, etc.) as consoles. The ceiling and upper walls are painted with religious scenes and with floral patterns in red, green, and blue, while the lower walls are whitewashed. A steep, narrow stairway in the thick south wall leads up from the chapel to cross-groined vaulted chambers, originally living rooms. In one there is a fourteenth-century fireplace and a bust of the architect-restorer, Bodo Ebhardt. The half-timbered Rhine Building (1706), facing the river, still has the essential cistern in its basement. The Northern House was built in 1708 on the foundations of an older building. Here the German Castle Association [Deutsche Burgenvereinigung] moved its offices in 1933. Its specialized library has more than 10,000 volumes on medieval castles, as well as drawings, plans, and photographs and lore on castles throughout the world. The Marksburg artifacts include fine paintings and sculpture, weapons, domestic utensils and, to the macabre delight of tourists, instruments of torture. Stolzenfels, Rheinstein, Sooneck, and several other castles we have studied have relatively spacious chambers which, if not large enough for a nineteenth-century royal retinue, are light, bright, and airy, with no sense of confinement. The three royal castles met their owners' political and romantic needs in an age before modern archeology and historical study had developed. Marksburg's dark cramped spaces contrast with the relative luxury (and inaccuracy) of the early castle rebuilding movement and reflect the greater scholarly care which was used in preserving this fortress. St. Mark's Castle has its share of legends, one of which was for a time considered historically true and, more important, symbolic of Germany's role as a victim of destructive alien forces. The Emperor Henry Tower was so named because it was believed that in 1105 Henry IV rested here on his way to a meeting in Mainz called by his rebel son, later Henry V Unfortunately, however, old as it is, Marksburg did not exist in 1105. Nevertheless the myth was attractive to German patriots of the nineteenth century because of Henry IV's resistance to Pope Gregory VII, whom nationalists believed instigated the decline of the German Empire. Thus Marksburg, although never destroyed in war, was very much associated with German fears of the foreigner.6 The castle's striking geographical position and relatively healthy state of preservation made it well known to Europeans and North Americans

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through artists' renderings. But, like the legends, the early nineteenthcentury pictures present a distorted picture. The brothers Rouargue, Adolf and Emil, showed it from the north river bank in 1858, towering above Braubach on a hill that appears much higher than in reality and in an intact condition suggesting none of the decrepitude which prevailed at mid-century. A Bartlett steel engraving showed it from the south with softer outlines and more dramatic lighting, but with the verticality of hill and castle intensified. Both these views give the castle greater size and bulk than it in fact ever possessed. Despite these inaccuracies, however, the artists helped to popularize the image of Marksburg throughout the Western world.

Rise and Decline of Marksburg Needless to say, the chronicle of Marksburg differs from that of other Middle Rhine castles with their experience of plunder and destruction. At the start of the thirteenth century, the castle stood on the site which belonged to the Counts of Eppstein, a powerful family who produced four archbishops of Mainz. Because of its highly defensible position, and because its owners had the right to levy tolls on river traffic, it was a valuable property. Later it passed into the hands of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen who improved its defences. After 1479 (until 1803) Marksburg belonged to the Counts of Hesse, one of whom (in 1567) followed noble practice, abandoned his increasingly uncomfortable and unfashionable hilltop fortress and built the Renaissance Philippsburg at the foot of the hill on the riverbank (Fig. 36).7 The invention of gunpowder and other changes in warfare occasioned structural improvements to the castle. Despite its unfashionableness as a dwelling, Marksburg was refortified in 1643-47 when the appropriately named "Sharp Corner," the "Powder Corner" and the tunnel-like entry with its strong bastion were added. Traces of other changes made over the centuries can still be seen where, for example, windows and/or doors have been filled in, leaving the original frame or lintel intact, imbedded in stone. Probably because of these modern defences and the castle's hilltop position, Marksburg escaped attack in the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). To be sure, Spanish mercenaries, as well as the troops of the controversial General Wallenstein (1583-1634), passed by frequently. The local peasants sought refuge here from Swedish forces in 1639. It escaped razing by the French in the 1688-89 war, nor was it damaged in the Seven Years' War

Monument to German Glory I 235

(1756-63). Nonetheless in 1705 a great fire, probably originating in the kitchen, seriously damaged Marksburg. The Palas was saved but the Rhine Building and the North Building had to be rebuilt. After about 1750 the castle became a Hessian state prison, but was nonetheless much neglected. The tiny principality could not afford to maintain the castle's artillery, most of which became unusable. The walls developed large cracks and the worm-eaten wooden bridges and gates were rarely activated. An earthquake in 1780 did further damage. Although Prussian grenadiers and artillerymen were stationed there in 1793, Marksburg continued its charmed life, escaping damage in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In 1803 the castle and the town of Braubach passed over to the royal house of Nassau-Usingen, then after 1815 to the newly created Duchy of Nassau, a patchwork of former fiefs of the former Empire. Still a state prison and now partially a veterans' home as well, its neglect continued. Nassau's rulers, as most of the German dynasties, had little money or other resources. In 1854 a contemporary noted that given the castle's large population of veterans, wives and children, "in an emergency, the garrison could find recruits from within its own ranks."8 But there was also privation which led to damage to the castle's architectural fabric. Not only did the veterans have to bring in their own water supply, but the malefactors were forced to chop up the interior woodwork to heat the castle in winter. On the other hand the continued use of the castle helped to preserve enough of its substance so that, although the dilapidation progressed, Marksburg did not become a stone quarry. After the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 Prussia annexed Nassau. Now Marksburg was Prussian royal property and again the Hohenzollerns played a role in a castle's preservation. No doubt aware of its potential military use as a lookout, the soldierly King (later Emperor) William I commanded that the castle be properly maintained. It was not restored although, upon visiting it in the 1880s, the Crown Prince Frederick (who reigned briefly as German Emperor in 1888), expressed a wish to do so. It ceased to be a prison but until 1900 private persons were allowed to live there, the last tenant being a Major von Mechow. Marksburg's historical importance had been acknowledged as early as 1783 when Wenck's "History of the State of Hesse" made note of it. Already in 1841 the veterans' commandant was giving tours of the castle to interested visitors.9 However, it first attracted sustained scholarly attention when it was discussed in "Antiquities of the Rhine" published in Koblenz (1854) and in Rommel's "History of Hesse" (1820-58). In the

236 / Castles of the Rhine early twentieth century, Marksburg profited from the new historical knowledge and escaped the worst effects of Burgenschwarmerei.

Restoration The refurbishing of Marksburg was inspired by Emperor William II (1888-1918) and by Bodo Ebhardt, who was virtually the emperor's private architect. Although never a soldier or a scholar, the young monarch was fascinated with everything military and historical. His penchant for wearing traditional costumes is well known, as is his habit of intervening wherever or whenever his "God-given" prerogatives allowed. Not surprisingly, William built new castles when he could, such as the Imperial Palace in Posen. For a similar purpose, in 1899 William hired Ebhardt to rebuild Hohkonigsburg in the recently (1871) recovered "German" Alsace (Appendix Three).10 These buildings were to function as popular symbols of the Prusso-German dynasty's authority, to create more internal unity and to develop popular support for the regime. Gradually Marksburg, too, became a national symbol for the masses. The elites had a sense that there was something rotten in the state of Germany which, they hoped, unifying symbols might cure. In 1875 a presumably subversive Marxist party had been founded to incite an allegedly revolutionary proletariat. The situation parallels that of the Prussian government vis-a-vis the Rhineland earlier. The establishment was now concerned to "nationalize the masses," to create for the general public symbols of German glory, symbols which could distract the working classes in particular from their economic and political grievances.11 This endeavour, supplemented by mass education and military conscription, seemed to succeed. By 1900 all ranks of society, including many of the poorest, were permeated by nationalistic feeling. It was not unknown to find working-class apartments decorated with pictures of both August Bebel, the socialist leader, and Kaiser William. To appreciate this development one must understand the blows struck at German pride between 1914 and 1932 which intensified the conservative militarist nationalism already noticeable in the late nineteenth century. In 1918 the second German Reich collapsed to give way to the unsteady Weimar Republic. Imperial glories were again a thing of the past. Worse, the ancient enemy, France, had again tried to suppress Germany with the "infamous" Treaty of Versailles. Conservative militarists refused to abandon their values. The German army, it was said, had been "stabbed in the back" as had been the legendary warrior Siegfried. War memorials

Monument to German Glory / 237

incongruously presented First World War German soldiers as knights in full medieval armour. But the militarism of the republican era was not confined to statues. The mercenary Free Corps were dedicated to fighting Germany's enemies—which often included German democrats. Political parties had private armies; even the parliamentary Social Democrats had their Reichsbanner. The reduced army practised a cool distance from politics but cultivated a contemptuous anti-republicanism in its officer corps. The election to the presidency in 1925 of General Paul von Hindenburg, the First World War hero, symbolized the general population's tendency to revere military and conservative traditions. The elites, themselves now imbued with national pride, saw nationalism as a useful tool. Around the turn of the century several upper-class groups were formed with a view to using patriotic pride to create more loyalty to the regime. Frederick Naumann's National Social Association, founded in 1896, wanted to bring about social reform under the mantle of the monarchy and, in thus reducing the rift between the working masses and the state, create national unity. Similarly active were the League of the Eastern Marches, the School Association, and the Navy League. More radical groups, such as the Pan-German League which tried to galvanize public opinion for aggressive national foreign policies, were rejected by most of the establishment as foolhardy. The somewhat-less-chauvinistic monarch and most of his advisors seem to have believed that castle reconstruction could create suitable and safe symbols of their conservative, moderately nationalistic Germany. Although around 1900 the emperor became interested in Marksburg, it never became a sentimental villa-retreat, because by this time a more sophisticated and exacting view of the past and of historical relics had emerged. The "generation of research scholars" (Giinther Binding's phrase12) was now active. Not only scholars but other educated members of the general public—including the emperor himself—became fascinated with the relics of the past as clues to a precise understanding of other cultures and other times. A new element entered the nexus of factors impinging on the fate of the Rhine's castles: improved historical knowledge resulting from scholarly research. A tension between the new purism and embellishment for esthetic or political motives is noticeable throughout the story of Marksburg's restoration. As we have seen, through castle rebuilding the Hohenzollern princes and their advisors had already tried to teach Rhinelanders loyalty to Prussia. Now, motivated by both genuine love of Germany and fear of social and political change, the German educated class, especially its pedagogues, intended to "nationalize the

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masses."13 This castle, therefore, is as much a reflection of a didactic concern on the part of governments and educators to create national monuments which would educate the public in loyalty to the new German Reich as proof of scholarly progress in the treatment of historic buildings. In 1900 William sold Marksburg to the Association for the Preservation of German Castles (Vereinigung zur Erbaltung deutschen Burgen) for the symbolic price of one thousand marks, with the stipulation that they repair and restore the castle as a document of a great period in German history. The very existence of this group is evidence of the new concern among both the intelligentsia and the elite for the careful preservation of medieval architecture. It had been founded in 1899 by Bodo Ebhardt, already a good friend of the emperor, a fact which no doubt facilitated the transfer of the castle. The Imperial link remained strong. In June 1902, for example, when the Association held their second annual meeting at Marksburg, many guests arrived on a gaily decorated steamer from Koblenz, greeted by cannon salutes. A band played as they walked through the bunting-bedecked town on their way to the castle. (Braubachers appreciated this profitable attention.) After a meal in the castle restaurant, they met in the still unrestored Knights' Hall, not forgetting to send a telegram of homage to William II, who replied with his thanks. Following the sketches of Wilhelm Dilich, Ebhardt, acting for the Castle Association and as castellan, supervised the castle's restoration.14 For the first time on the Middle Rhine, a relatively accurate representation of a medieval castle would be displayed. Ebhardt tried to recreate a complete, unified whole in which the new parts should be indistinguishable from the old, creating a building which looked as much as possible like the original medieval castle. Clearance of debris began immediately in the summer of 1900. As with other sites which interested the general public, restoration proceeded with private donations from throughout the German Reich, and was carried on over the next thirty years. In 1901 the main fortress wall was improved; in 1903 St. Mark's Chapel was repaired and repainted; by 1905 the main tower, the Knights' Hall and its kitchen were finished. In a departure from the growing belief that the old should not be overlaid with the modern, on the walls of the Knights' Hall, the Berlin painters Birkle and Thomer executed new frescoes in 1903, based on sketches by Ebhardt. The cell walls built into the living quarters were removed and the moat was dug out. The top portion of the main tower, removed after the 1705 fire, was reconstituted in 1906, following Dilich. Aware of the role of tourism in support of restoration

Monument to German Glory I 239

efforts, Ebhardt permitted the installation of a modern restaurant in the gate building. Marksburg was one of Germany's first modern architectural restoration projects. Not surprisingly, therefore, many problems arose, most of which have become commonplace to architectural restorers in the past century. Completely new structures had to be built to replace vanished or rotten elements of the castle. For example, a new drawbridge was needed and new roofs had be be added to the gateways. At three of the portals entirely new gates had to be installed.15 But some castle experts asked: is reconstitution with modern means and materials, even in the original form, any more valid than the romanticizing found earlier at Rheinstein? Increasingly another related question was asked: since modern materials were not known to the monument's original builders, is it not better to preserve (i.e., merely to maintain) a structure as it is, even if incomplete or ruined, rather than to replace old parts with new? Consequently the work did not escape criticism, both informed and sentimental. In Der Burgwart, the Castle Association's journal, Ebhardt noted that "carping voices were not lacking when each change was made to the castle . . . as if now the building were in danger, whereas the neglect of earlier times was not objected to with one word."16 When the higher, sharper lines of the restored keep appeared, some Braubachers were disturbed because they felt that the "old, familiar, beloved image" of the castle was destroyed.17 For his part, Ebhardt sought to replicate the look of the original as much as possible, even if contemporary means and materials were necessary. Another article in Der Burgwart, supporting Ebhardt's work at Marksburg, added to the growing controversy over restoration versus preservation. The preservation of everything old or added over time was "blind prejudice,"18 said one writer, who believed that one should not avoid using modern means occasionally. Moreover, one should remove what the "malice of time and the inadequate understanding of earlier times had ruined and destroyed."19 As the restoration proceeded the Hohenzollern emperor maintained his interest. On May 12, 1901, William laid a foundation stone with a time capsule to mark the official start of restoration and then enjoyed a tour of the castle. On September 12, 1905, while on manoeuvres near Koblenz, he paid the castle another visit. On this occasion medieval pomp was extensive. Banners designed by Ebhardt were hung on the battlements and the Kaiser's own standard flew from the topmost tower. The town of Braubach itself was brightly decorated. Upon his arrival cannon roared a salute from the castle's bastions. The architect gave a tour to the ruler,

240 I Castles of the Rhine

who showed great interest in the work underway. Indeed, he visited most of the castle, from the old cellar rooms to the upper room of the Emperor Henry Tower. Although the keep's narrow steps were an awkward climb, he ascended the main tower as well, where he spent several minutes enjoying the view. Wine and refreshments were served later and a silver goblet was made to commemorate the occasion, to be used at future such ceremonies at Marksburg. As the imperial standard was lowered, more cannon volleys signalled the "All-Highest's" departure. The emperor's protection and favour was highly valued and was referred to when critics assailed the Marksburg project. In 1906, after changes to the tower had been condemned, a writer in Der Burgwart gently noted, "considering the recent achievements at Marksburg, the powerful efforts of the Association deserve the recognition which has been given it by, among others, His Majesty himself.. . ."20 At the same time writers in the Burgwart did not hesitate to flatter William to whom, wrote one of them, "posterity will wish to give the name chivalric [ritterlich]."2* For his part the emperor continued to be interested in the Association's activities, especially those involving Ebhardt. In January, and again in October, 1909 the monarch attended lectures given by Ebhardt in Berlin on "English Castles" and on "Hohkonigsburg and its Restoration," respectively. The public flocked to see the restored castle. Whereas before the turn of the century only about 300 people visited Marksburg annually, by 1905 the number had risen to 10,000.22 If one could not visit, one could read about it. Already by 1900 the Berlin-based Verlag fur's deutsche Haus had published a guide book written by Bodo Ebhardt and C. Krollmann. Wilhelm Kotzde's novel, The Fate ofAlheidis, published in 1929, was set at Marksburg. The castle became a favourite site for aristocrats and dignitaries to visit. In the summer of 1903, for example, a count arrived by special steamer from Koblenz, welcomed by saluting cannon. School children and representatives of the local gymnastic and glee clubs, veterans' association of Braubach (with flowers and flags) lined the streets.23 Thus the castle continued to have associations with the glamour of aristocratic life in the present as well as the past. This, of course, was Ebhardt's and William's shared intention. The modern world, alas, could not be kept totally at bay. By the 1930s three nearby smokestacks towered higher than Marksburg's keep, their billowing white smoke indicating the site of Braubach's silver and lead mines. Nevertheless the only serious physical harm done to Marksburg came at the end of the Second World War. When the retreating Ger-

Monument to German Glory I 241 man forces occupied it briefly, they were observed by the advancing Americans who, from the west bank, directed their artillery on what had become again a military target, seriously damaging the tower and the roofs. Perhaps fortunately, earlier in the year Bodo Ebhardt had died at the castle.24

A National Shrine Marksburg became not simply an attraction for pleasure-seeking tourists or an object of scholarly study, but also a quasi-religious monument 25 and a symbol of Germany's indomitability. Oskar Doering, Rhenish Provincial Conservation Officer and biographer of Ebhardt, called Marksburg "a monument to the glory of German courage, energy, and spiritual achievement in the past and present."26 Ebhardt and others devoted much energy to presenting Marksburg as an almost holy place, "an asylum,"27 and a "fountainhead for the fortifying of the German spirit."28 The castle was described in 1926 as "a landmark and visible monument to German knighthood."29 The spiritual importance for modern Germans of medieval military life was also stressed by Ebhardt: Marksburg was a "genuine shrine for the German knightly way of life."30 Unsullied by any of the cruder lusts for conquest or material gain which may have marked the history of other castles, Marksburg, said Ebhardt, never housed robber barons. The castle's incumbents were high-minded leaders concerned with order and good government. In his book, German Castles, he offered a list of the commandants of Marksburg since 1639, from Lieutenant Fingel, through Captain Diesterweg, who died at Marksburg in 1869,31 suggesting an admirable continuity of function for the castle and of purpose for its incumbents. Marksburg was always in the hands of a great landlord, he wrote, and served, "not as a threat," but as a refuge for the people and a protection for the land and highways.32 As did many of the other Rhenish castles, Marksburg was made to serve as a national memorial to more recent conflicts. After Napoleon's defeat at the hands of Prussia and her allies at Waterloo (1815), two French cannon had been set up here as trophies. The First World War was made to seem part of a centuries-old conflict. In 1915 Der Burgwart announced that a memorial tablet was to be set up here for members of the Association who died in "Germany's great heroic struggle against a world of enemies."33 In the first decades of the twentieth century, when in both Europe and North America postcards became popular, Marksburg

242 I Castles of the Rhine figured prominently in the German variety. It seemed a natural choice for one of a 1910 scenic series on "The Rhine," but even in such views the castle was associated with German military values. In 1913 a coloured postcard appeared showing "Young Siegfried" as a fully armed hero (with the sort of moustache currently fashionable!) standing in a mountain landscape dominated by Marksburg.34 In 1940 the Nazi S.S. [Schutzstaffel] revealed plans to transform Marksburg into a "Castle of the Order" at which would be trained future German leader-knights. Nothing came of this effort, which would have been potentially the most dramatic example of the nationalistic obsession with castles as national monuments. Such a use for a medieval castle was a natural result of a mass mood which regarded historic fortresses as symbols of past romance, present national strength, and future national glory.

Bodo Ebhardt The nationalism which made Marksburg a patriotic icon was heavily freighted with conservative social and political values. The first generation of scholarly and professional restorers, many of whom were civil servants, could not escape fully the influence of this mood. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the career and outlook of Bodo Ebhardt himself, who became known to both his supporters and detractors as "the Restorer [Wiederbersteller] of German Castles."35 We have already met Ebhardt in an earlier chapter where his enthusiastic encouragement of wealthy castle builders was described. Ebhardt directed much of his professional attention to glorifying the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the wealthy bourgeoisie. In support of their conservative values he designed the monument to Emperor William I on the Oberspree (1896) and planned a national monument to Bismarck near Bingen (1911), a project which took the form of a castle dominated by a titanic statue of the "Iron Chancellor." Although today most of his studies of medieval castles have been superceded and his reactionary nationalism is embarrassing even to Germans, Ebhardt made important contributions to the practice of architectural conservation, contributions which, if imperfect, were nevertheless an improvement over mid-nineteenth-century attitudes. Fearing that ruins as such could only become more derelict over time, he believed that the collapse of valuable architectural monuments could be effectively stopped only through their complete restoration to a period in their past which best exemplified their purpose and style.36 Influenced by the advances made by historians and archeologists, he maintained that the restorer

Monument to German Glory I 243 should carefully study the pictorial and written records, make enlightened guesses, and produce, as far as possible, an exact copy of the original. In Ebhardt's concern for historical precision he displayed "a puritanical rigour"37 worthy of the French restorationist, Viollet-le-Duc, whose precepts he tried to follow. In fact, so passionate was his concern for verisimilitude, that he insisted that even if a castle was being restored for private use, the government and its conservation authorities should carry out and pay for the work, so that no commercial considerations should unduly influence the restoration. Furthermore, private individuals should be forbidden to do archeological work on or near castle sites. On the other hand he had what now seems to be the odd notion that historians should have less of a role in reconstructing castles than artists and architects.38 In this way he undercut his own principle that historical truth was vital. His drawings and paintings were thorough and precise and the tone of his publications enthusiastic and sincere, but his approach was paradoxical. He had an idealized view of medieval castles and their owners and was too willing to let imagination override precision. In his preface to German Castles, he wrote, A melancholy magic hovers about the defiant walls of the timeworn castles, the towers of which everywhere in Germany's beautiful provinces recall the vanished age of knights and troubadours, of feuds and tournaments, beautiful chatelaines and courtly love. . . . As if built for eternity, they form monuments in the landscape, legend and history envelope them in an eternally green wreath and allow them—as witnesses of times long past—to speak to us descendants clearly even today... . Who has not lingered in such abandoned spots, where swelling and luxuriant nature eliminates all desolation and gives to the ruined building a glow of steadfast youth.39

With Ebhardt, the romanticism of Frederick William IV and his generation lived on. He was more convincing when he extolled castles as the product of a drive for artistic expression. Genuine works of art, they were, he thought, "the most noble objects which remain of the secular art of the early middle ages." In the landscape, their effect "can be compared only with the monumental architecture of the modern age, viaducts, dams, foundries."40 The architect made no effort to conceal his political conservatism. Earlier we noted the advice he gave to rich builders in his Palace Building [Schlossbau]. His identification with Germany's social and political elite is manifest in his other publications. Between 1899 and 1908 he produced a remarkable two-volume work, in folio size, German Castles [Deutsche

244 I Castles of the Rhine

Burgen],41 an impressive study which described the history and present condition of twenty-three castles. Plans, maps, photographs, paintings, sketches (some in colour), and elevations were offered, as well as the coats of arms of noble families and paintings or sketches of the aristocratic owners themselves. There were drawings of architectural details, such as fireplaces and pillars, sketches or paintings of recommended reconstructions, and chronologies of the history of each castle. Ebhardt wanted his readers to regard these castles not simply as architectural monuments, but as documents of an admirable political and social system and so, where applicable, he presented lists of the knights, feudal tenants, castellans, and commandants associated with each castle. The list for Gutenfels, for example, begins with Christian von Cube, appointed in 1241, and ends with Baron von Oberkamp, appointed in 1796.42 In the age of democracy, Ebhardt believed that the German nobility should not abandon their time-honoured and essential role. Their castles were not centres of oppression, but places of refuge from enemies,43 such as "the Huns, Slavs, and Wends and after them from enemy neighbours of all kinds."44 The castles show how "militarism and the high development of all the arts and sciences go absolutely hand in hand." "Under the protection of mighty walls . . . all the arts of peace, all culture and human striving can thrive."45 Burg Vianden in Luxemburg, for example, revealed "the highly developed artistic sense," possessed by the German nobility "in the golden age of knightly culture.. . ,"46 In his biography, Doering shows how Ebhardt believed that medieval castles incorporated German Idealism.47 This was an attitude developed towards the end of the eighteenth century, which suggested to literate people that whatever exists is justified by its very being, and that the state represents the will of God. Ebhardt never explicitly expressed this view but, if it was indeed his attitude, he was not alone in maintaining it, since it was shared by most of the German intelligentsia. Ebhardt was an avowed monarchist and apologist for the Hohenzollern dynasty. German Castles is dedicated to "His Majesty the German Emperor, King of Prussia, Emperor William, in deepest respect. . . ,"48 In the figure of William he believed that the great past of Prussia could be made visible, idealized, and elevated, to justify the significance of the German Imperium. As did William himself, Ebhardt believed that architecture could present, through images of an idealized past, a legitimation of the German Empire. William often visited Ebhardt's home, and attended his public lectures.49 In 1901 he commissioned the architect to take a field trip through Austria, Switzerland, and southern Germany studying and

Monument to German Glory I 245

sketching the castles there. He took a lively interest in the work of restoration at Marksburg and at other castles where Ebhardt was active. Their relationship did not escape critics' attention. A cartoonist who labelled Ebhardt as the "Court Restorationist to His Majesty the Emperor" satirized the architect's idealization of the Middle Ages by having him suggest that the German army adopt the "uniform" of Hermann the Cheruscan who defeated the Roman Legions of Varus in A.D. 9.50 Not unnaturally, Ebhardt's Castle Association developed strong ties to the nobility (who were still the owners of many German castles), and a corresponding patriotic and conservative colour. Aristocrats played a vital role in the work of the Association, which was also linked with the "AllHighest" power in the land. As we have seen, the Association's plans for Marksburg's restoration aroused the emperor's great interest. For his part, William supported and encouraged their work. Ebhardt was highly nationalistic, a not unusual trait in his generation of educated men. In 1898 he wrote that, Whoever, as a good German, studies the history of most of our castles, will see with a bleeding heart how [in] those years a great wealth of cultivation, art, and prosperity was destroyed through the plunder, oppression and often annihilation of the people and the old families and through devastation of innumerable castle structures. ... 51

The history of their castles should teach Germans a "deep horror and honest hatred of our traditional enemies ... the ravagers of the banks of the Rhine," he wrote, warning modern Germans of "what our Fate may be" at the hands of the French in the future.52 One can sympathize with this view, but Ebhardt went on to justify German imperialism. In a public lecture given in 1904, sponsored by the Castle Association and attended by the emperor, Ebhardt explained the allegedly German roots of castles in the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, seized from France by the triumphant Germans in 1871. Rebuilt, such castles would be symbols and continual reminders of "the purely German history of these provinces."53 Luxemburg, too, was a German province. Here, the thirteenth-century Burg Vianden was proof of German heritage.54 Constructed on the boundary between German and French culture, the structure is a mirror of the artistic creativity of both countries; in its overwhelmingly German appearance, however, it is also a witness to the dominion of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, on a site from which even today the view still surveys the German countryside on the left, opposite bank of the Our River.

246 I Castles of the Rhine

It deserved "to be visited by all friends of art who are interested in the medieval architecture of Germany."55 Ebhardt's historical observations nearly approach the contemporary Pan-German expansionism which would have made German provinces of what are now the "Benelux" countries.56 Ebhardt's nationalistic interpretation of Germany's castles did not wane over time. During the First World War he found that Germany's castles had a role to play in the war effort, when he described "the voice of German castles." They recalled the Fatherland's "proud defence of tradition" against the French with their "lust for plunder and blood." He attacked trends in modern German architecture, warning against the use of the "French, unsolid, unhealthy Mansard roof."57 Later, during the Second World War, Ebhardt repeated his view of the "Germanness" of the castles of Alsace, which the Nazi Third Reich had wrested back from foreign hands in 1940.58 To be fair to the German establishment, the officially approved nationalism revealed in these monuments remained basically non-threatening to European stability. When in the early twentieth century more radical nationalistic groups such as the Navy League or the Pan-German League began to favour an aggressive foreign policy, most of the elites stayed with their moderate nationalism, respectful of the status quo. Neither do members of the German Castle Association (mainly aristocrats and upper middle class) seem to have supported the radical nationalists. The Pan-German League, for their part, were not usually acceptable to either the emperor or many of the conservative elite. Of course, like many other clubs and associations, the Pan-Germans enjoyed trips up and down the Rhine, viewing the castles and enjoying the wine. In 1907, for example, they stopped at Assmannshausen, travelled up to the Germania monument and consumed immense quantities of alcohol.59 This largely bourgeois pressure group, however, does not seem to have influenced the noble-dominated Castle Association which restored Marksburg. Although Bodo Ebhardt voiced views which justified the 1871 expansion of Germany's borders, he did not encourage the obliteration of French influence in these territories. For his part, William II patronized the Castle Association, but after the turn of the century, when the Pan-German League began to criticize his policies and to deny his right to preside over symbols of Germany, such as castles, they fell out of his favour. If the Castle Association had exhibited support for critical and radical nationalism, William would not have continued to support their work.

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The views of Bodo Ebhardt and his supporters reveal that German architectural conservation was coloured by feelings which often had little to do with the esthetics of stone and brick or the scientific study of building techniques. Their work represents the culmination of a growing nationalistic passion which, after 1871, had risen, in the words of a German scholar, "to the point of hubris."60 Still, the nationalism expressed at Marksburg was conservative and moderate, respecting established authority. Ebhardt's comments on how castles could teach reflect the didactic aims of some pedagogues who, inspired by historical research and publication, also wanted to use the past to educate the public, especially young people, in patriotic virtues. The restoration of Marksburg gave hints of this endeavour, which we shall examine more fully in the next chapter. Certainly by the time Bodo Ebhardt set to work above Braubach, the modern disciplines of history and archeology were well developed, and consequently the modern notions of heritage conservation were nascent. This topic, too, will be developed in what follows.

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PART FIVE SECURING THE PAST FOR THE FUTURE

THIRTEEN

To ENTERTAIN, ENLIGHTEN, AND EXPLOIT THE TRAVELLER castled crag of Drachenfels," wrote Lord Byron in 1816, "T he"frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine. . . -*'1 Hardly a "typical tourist," Byron nevertheless helped to inspire the first wave of tourists who swept up the Rhine in search of such picturesque wrecks. The new habit of travel for pleasure, which infected the European middle class in the first half of the nineteenth century, was another factor which transformed the Rhenish ruins into monuments and shrines, although the process was catalyzed by a healthy profit motive (Fig. 38). At few places is the effect of this continuing phenomenon better seen than at Konigswinter. Here, on the east bank across from Bad Godesberg, stand Barter's Drachenburg and, not far above it, the impressive ruin of Drachenfels commandingly situated 321 metres above the river, on a spur of the "Seven Mountains" (Siehengehirge).

Drachenfels The Seven Mountains were often the first glimpse which nineteenth-century travellers had of the "romantic Rhine" as their ships, having left the wharf at Cologne, headed south into the gorge. Standing on the deck, Notes to Chapter Thirteen are on pp. 368-70. 250

To Entertain, Enlighten, and Exploit the Traveller I 251

Fig. 38. Cover of the Cologne-Dusseldorf Steamship Schedule, 1897: Steam-propelled ships, especially those of the "K-D" line, made the Middle Rhine a tourist mecca. The picture shows travellers with guidebooks and binoculars approaching Oberwesel and Schonburg. Rhine wine, of course, was—and still is—provided. Courtesy of Koln-Dusseldorfer Deutsche Rheinschiffahrt AG.

252 / Castles of the Rhine

avoiding the soot of the smokestack, clutching guidebooks and binoculars (later cameras) they were confronted with Godesburg's ruins on their right as they passed Bonn and then almost immediately, the jagged ruin of Drachenfels on their left. In the distance, again on their right, loomed Roland's Arch. As the tourist travelled south, the hills gradually closed in. The green cliffs, black rock outcroppings, and small tributary valleys with villages, church spires, and castle ruins presented "a most affectingly beautiful scene," noted Dorothy Wordsworth in 1820.2 Nothing could rival its "eloquent and wild grandeur," wrote Bulwer-Lytton in 1832.3 In the 1830s the gorge in particular had suffered little intrusion from industry and business and was indeed very "wild." Contemporary landscape paintings show verdant hilltops with vineyards on the slopes. With no railway tracks or paved highways to intervene, the greenery (both natural and cultivated) ran down to the river's edge. The "Seven Mountains" had been formed when volcanic lava forced up a range of hills between Linz to the south and Bonn to the northwest, forming as well the high cone on which Drachenfels, a true "summit-castle," was built. Despite the fact that Drachenfels has been a tourist mecca for nearly two centuries, the views of the river and of the Seven Mountains still make it easy to understand why artists and poets were so attracted to it. Artists such as Christian George Schiitz (1718-91) and, especially, British painters such as Thomas Sutherland (1785- ?), Robert Batty (1789-1848), and George August Wallis (1770-1847) led the way with pictures which often present the ruin vaguely menacing through a mist, looming above the exaggeratedly vertical hilltop. Writers, again at first usually British, followed. Seeing it first in a sunset of 1832, Bulwer-Lytton found it standing "on high, like some great name on which the light of glory may shine, but which is associated with a certain melancholy from the solitude" of its position.4 Seven years later the German Ferdinand Freiligrath was more positive as he described the jousting knights which he imagined sparring "At Drachenfels:" The cheeks glow, the heart pounds! Helmet and vizer gleam, And fine, fresh wounds bleed!5

Nineteenth-century tourists, German or foreign, tended to be well-read lovers of quasi-historical tales of exotic heroism. They flocked to "Dragon's Rock" to drink in the atmosphere of the place they had read about. One legend maintains that when the river filled with volcanic ash and lava the townspeople of Bad Honnef appealed to seven giants for help against flooding whereupon the monsters dredged the river with their

To Entertain, Enlighten, and Exploit the Traveller / 253

spades and left piles of debris—the Seven Mountains.6 The most famous of the Rhine legends pertains to the site of Drachenfels itself. "The Song of the Nibelungs" (Nibelungenlied) is a German epic poem written down about 1200. The story is based on the Huns' destruction (in 435 A.D.) of the kingdom of Burgundians, whose capital was Worms on the Rhine. Consequently some of the saga's main characters and events are associated with the river. Siegfried, the hero, hailed from Xanten, a few kilometres west of the Rhine near Wesel. On the Drachenfels site he slays a dragon, frees a princess from its cave, and buries the Nibelungs' treasure in the dead serpent's cave. The gold of the Nibelungs is eventually thrown into the Rhine by Hagen, another major character. Richard Wagner's four part opera "The Ring of the Nibelung" (composed 1854-74) is based on this tale and played a major role in surrounding the nineteenth-century Rhine with even more romance. (We have already seen the role of this legend at Drachenburg.) Such tales were revived in the nineteenth century in newly written verses and popular publications. As well, the stories were assumed by patriots to be somehow quintessentially German insofar as they documented ostensibly "German" virtues such as loyalty and courage. Hence, although Marksburg was the most impressive national castle-shrine, Drachenfels was the first ruin to become a quasi-sacred German site. Given its rich legendary associations, one might have expected that the ruined Drachenfels would be among the first Rhenish ruins to be reconstructed in the nineteenth century. Yet it was never rebuilt and today remains a ruin, much visited, photographed and painted but substantially the same craggy wreck that Wordsworth admired. Although its architectural substance has not been drastically changed, Dragon's Rock is an excellent example of how tourism radically altered the precincts of certain ruins of the Middle Rhine. It has long suffered the presence of a large restaurant and viewing terrace not far from its base. As noted above, Drachenfels' image, broadcast in literature and art, also attracted nationalists who made it into a patriotic shrine which furthered the ruins' appeal to German travellers. The actual history of the great ruin is mundane. Although the Romans used the hillside as a stone quarry for building Cologne and Bonn, they do not seem to have built anything on the hilltop. Around 1149 Cologne's archbishop constructed a watchtower here; by 1167 the tower had become part of a castle built by one of the archbishop's vassals. About this time the lords of Drachenfels took as their escutcheon a winged, flame-spewing dragon, revived later by Sarter at Drachenburg. Originally the castle was simply a huge keep, but in the fif-

254 I Castles of the Rhine

teenth century Drachenfels' owners added new outer defences consisting of a great curtain wall. The castle figured in the ongoing German civil wars, for the Cologne prelate was often at loggerheads with the emperor or with local princes. As we have already seen, nineteenth-century romantic patriots idealized the turbulent Middle Ages as a time of German national glory whereas it was, as Drachenfels history shows, a time of endemic civil war. Moreover, the cheeks of Drachenfels owners' glowed and their hearts pounded at the prospect of simple commercial profit, for much of their wealth derived from the sale of stone from the hillside quarries to Cologne for the building of its cathedral after 1248. The French played no role in this castle's destruction since Germans themselves accomplished the deed. In 1588 Cologne, now Protestant, unsuccessfully besieged Drachenfels, which was held by the Roman Catholic emperor. During the Thirty Years' War, however, after Swedish troops attacked and captured the castle, another archbishop demolished it. The quarry owners of Konigswinter completed its ruin during the next two centuries. The castle itself appears reasonably intact in Merian's 1675 engraving, but very clearly shown is the chute down which stones destined to be building material in Konigswinter and elsewhere were slid from the mountain top to the riverside. Given neglect and quarrying, Drachenfels disintegrated. In 1780 the chapel collapsed. In 1788 the Rhine side of the keep tumbled down. In the fall of 1813 the last of its owners, Max Frederick von der Vorst-Lombeck zu Gudenau, had to move out, and in 1816, he sold the whole site to a stone masonry firm. In 1820 the outer defence wall collapsed. Quarrying continued so that not only the ruin but the whole summit was endangered. Today the powerful keep, twenty-five metres (eighty feet) high, rectangular in plan, buttressed with concrete and lacking one corner, rises like a broken tooth out of the forested mountain. It still has crenellations at the top and several empty window holes. Traces of a foundation, walls, a small round tower, and an entrance gate can also be seen. Less well preserved is another outer wall with a rectangular half-tower. Drachenfels has never been "restored" or rebuilt, but its legendencrusted name made it an essential property (in the theatrical sense) in the recreation of a medieval landscape on the Middle Rhine. As such, it was the object of one of the first efforts to conserve Germany's architectural heritage. Before tourism exerted its influence, a Hohenzollern was at work. When rebuilding Rheinstein Prince Frederick Louis learned of the danger to Dragon's Rock and was concerned that it should literally be

To Entertain, Enlighten, and Exploit the Traveller I 255

falling into the Rhine. He wrote in January 1828 to the Rhenish governor noting that "the history of the area and of local [noble] families" was tied to such castles. "How soon," he asked, " will our beautiful lands and our proud river be "plundered" by the "spirit of speculation," the "profit motive" and "vandalism" to which the nineteenth century seemed to have fallen victim? Because Drachenfels was "national property" he begged the governor to take steps to prevent its further collapse.7 In 1829, inspired by his nephew and/or the governor, King Frederick William III commanded that the quarrying cease and that the ruins be buttressed. His government then purchased the ruin in 1836. The quarry owners were partially compensated. Only in 1855, however, did stabilization work on the tower begin. By this time the tourist business had already established a claim to share the summit with the ruin.8 So, too, the nationalistic movement impinged on Drachenfels. Although it had no particular associations with actual German military glory, Drachenfels became a special memorial to the Wars of Liberation (1813-15). Surrounded as it was with ancient myths which seemed to embody the traditional German value of military courage, perhaps inevitably the new myth about the people's uprising to throw out the French attached itself to this site of Siegfried's triumph. In 1814 a neoclassical obelisk surmounted by an iron cross was dedicated here to local militiamen who had died pursuing the French across the Rhine earlier that year. It stood on a terrace near what later became a restaurant. After it collapsed in 1844, it was repaired and moved to a site farther up the path to the ruin where a facsimile now stands. In 1857 a neo-Gothic spire, designed by Zwirner, was erected on the obelisk's original site with a plaque also commemorating the Wars of Liberation. In 1871 a plaque was set up which gave thanks for the most recent victory of the PrussoGerman forces, again versus the French. In 1913 yet another plaque commemorated the centenary of the Wars of Liberation.9 As the numbers of artists and poets were augmented by newly rich and curious middle-class visitors, Drachenfels saw other changes, some of them not always well advised from the viewpoint of heritage conservation, good taste, or respect for a shrine. Perhaps nowhere else on the Middle Rhine have the interests of the tourism industry been better served than here. Already in 1822 the ruin was recommended to tourists as a marvellous sight, not to be missed. By 1844 Ernst Moritz Arndt noted the "throngs of humanity" (Weltgewimmel) which surrounded Drachenfels.10 In 1883 Alexandre Dumas (1802-70), upon alighting from a steamer at Konigswinter, found himself "surrounded by a whole squadron of don-

256 I Castles of the Rhine

keys and donkey-drivers of both sexes," all eager to take him up to Drachenfels—for a fee.11 Donkeys are still offered to children (and intrepid adults) for the ride up the hillside, and a monument to the heroic donkey stands on Konigswinter's riverbank. In 1833 the first funicular railway in the German states was built to take visitors up the mountain. Later, steam trains were installed which ran until 1953, when electrically powered locomotives replaced them. A small inn was built at Drachenfels in 1834 to serve the already growing number of visitors. Later this "tolerable tavern"12 (John Murray's words) developed into a large two-storey restaurant in half-timbered style with outdoor eating and drinking facilities on its terraces to the south. Near the base of the ruin today, a massive concrete building houses commodious dining rooms to serve the crowds of visitors in the tourist season13 (Fig. 39). At nearly every ruin on the Middle Rhine one can be sure of refreshing oneself at some kind of restaurant, but Drachenfels' must be the largest, ugliest, and most inappropriate to its site. The romantic ambience of Drachenfels, best enjoyed in relative solitude, is gone. An estimate of how much damage has been done to the ruin by thousands of tourists is beyond the scope of our study. However, a German scholar describes how, on a Rhine tour of the 1840s, a young Englishwoman broke a small stone off the nearby Roland's Arch and put it in her purse, exclaiming "I have a piece!."14 Such desecration, which must have frequently occurred and may still be occurring at Drachenfels, raises the now pertinent issue of whether historical monuments should actually be closed to visitors. Perhaps less to be regretted is that fact that fewer Germans understand the sentiment which motivated building the now damaged spire and the forlorn obelisk. Nevertheless without the romanticism, the patriotism, without the Hohenzollerns' intervention and the vulgar aspects of tourism, Drachenfels would no doubt have totally disappeared at the hands of quarriers, as did the nearby Wolkenburg in the Seven Mountains. Conservationists may regret the commercialization of the ruin, but at least the artifact still stands. Construction of another Stolzenfels might have meant a loss as final as if the quarry owners had completed their work. Tourism for its part at least has helped to keep the image of the proud ruin alive in the minds of millions and has helped to prevent demolition of the site. Unlike Drachenfels some castle ruins were totally rebuilt specifically to cater to the tourist trade. After 1919 and especially after 1945, hotels have been installed at, for example, Burg Ockenfels above Linz on the east bank. (Built as the Burg zur Leyen in the fourteenth century by the family

To Entertain, Enlighten, and Exploit the Traveller I 257

Fig. 39. Drachenfels in the 1990s: The ruin is surrounded by evidence of a century of Burgenschwdrmerei ("castle enthusiasm"): an early- and a midtwentieth-century hotel-restaurant; a memorial (lower left) to the Wars of Liberation (1813-15); and Drachenburg (top left). Courtesy of Rahmel Verlag GmbH, Pulheim.

258 I Castles of the Rhine

of that name, it was destroyed about 1475 but was rebuilt as a hotel and restaurant 1924-27.) Oakley Rhinelander's Schonburg at Oberwesel now houses a hotel, "the finest 5«rg-hotel on the Rhine."15 So do Rheinfels at St. Goar (Fig. 40), Reichenstein above Trechtingshausen, Gutenfels above Kaub, and Godesburg. The latter ruin is perhaps the most interesting example.

Godesburg In 1794 this great wreck struck Ann Radcliffe with its "terrible beauty"16 (Frontispiece). In 1820 Dorothy Wordsworth, less intimidated, found it "far-spreading on the summit of the hill, very light and elegant, with one massy tower."17 In 1834 Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859), as did so many who climbed the hill, recorded the magnificent sunset which she enjoyed from here.18 Godesburg, whether perceived as frightening or beautiful, was well suited for savouring fine romantic vistas. In 1844 Arndt described its half demolished towers and breached walls, which, overgrown with evergreen elegaic ivy, still reveal the individual recesses and articulation of the rooms, where the imagination can picture the chambers and apartments of the past, the stalls of the battle steeds, the rooms of the squires and servants and also, making clear the horror of past, the dungeons and torture chambers of imprisoned warriors or criminals. . . . 19

The former castle's tower stands on a hill in the Bonn suburb of Bad Godesberg across the Rhine from Konigswinter. It has not become as much of a national monument as has Drachenfels, but like the latter it was "saved" by official, in part royal, intervention and may survive into the twenty-first century because of its commercial exploitation as a hotel. Unfortunately, whereas the actual architectural substance of the Drachenfels ruin has escaped alteration, despite its exploitation, Godesburg has been twice altered by those who would profit from tourism. Both the Teutons and the Romans had shrines on this cone-shaped hill of basalt rock. The heart of the elliptical summit-castle complex was built in 1210 by the archbishop of Cologne as a defence of his lands' southern boundary, and remained in Cologne's hands until 1794. Godesburg was a favourite residence of the archbishops who, over the centuries, added the keep, larger residential quarters, better fortifications, and the St. Michael's Chapel. As with Drachenfels Godesberg's downfall was started not by the French, but by Germans in one of their many internecine conflicts. In 1583, in the war between Cologne's Protestant archbishop and

To Entertain, Enlighten, and Exploit the Traveller I 259

Fig. 40. Burg Rheinfels in 1991: The well-preserved ruin of Rheinfels now is a prime tourist attraction, parts of it serving as a thirty-seven-room hotel, terrace-restaurant, and a Heimat-museum. The interpolated functions are tastefully integrated into the fabric of the old walls. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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his Roman Catholic successor, Dutch troops blew it up with the newly invented gunpowder. The Swedes occupied it during the Thirty Years' War, after which stone quarrying in the ruin began. In 1794 Godesburg was dismantled by the administration of the French Department of the Rhine and Mosel. Old trees were cut down, quarries were encouraged, and the hilltop was divided into lots and sold. Nevertheless, the romanticism of the age influenced the French prefect de Lezay-Marnesia to preserve St. Martin's chapel and to prevent Godesburg's tower from being used as a windmill. In 1806 the French authorities sold the ruin to Canon Franz Pick (1750-1819), who promised to do whatever was necessary to preserve the castle ruin and who, to this end, put in benches, shrubs, and chestnut trees. In 1817 a Hohenzollern appeared. The city of Cologne, on the occasion of the crown prince's visit, built a staircase in the tower so that young Frederick William could be the first in the modern era to climb to the platform. Nationalism also played a role in focusing attention on the ruin, already a Bonn landmark. In 1818 celebrations were held here to commemorate the liberation from the French three years before. There were religious services, torchlight parades, and bonfires. Later, shooting societies, which liked to associate themselves with old German customs, held meetings here. Thus, like Drachenfels, the ruin became a national monument. Legends gave the ruin the requisite romantic ambience. A popular myth told of a ghost which could not find eternal peace until either the castle was rebuilt or the last stone fell away.20 Artists, and as we have seen, poets, were attracted to it. Canon Pick died in 1819 and the town of Bad Godesberg entered into a long dispute with the Prussian state over ownership rights. Finally, in 1843, we find the Hohenzollerns active again. In 1844 King Frederick William IV (for whom the tower's stairs had been built) gave it to his brother William's wife, Augusta. She loved her neo-Gothic country home at Babelsberg and talked of rebuilding Godesburg as her Hohenzollern relatives had done at Rheinstein and Stolzenfels. In fact she intended to make the castle a home for her son, Frederick William, who was a student at the University of Bonn. In the end only buttressing work was undertaken and the prince lived in a Bonn palace instead. With her unpopular husband William, she had to flee to England after the revolts of 1848. Then in 1850 her planning for Godesburg ceased entirely for, as we have seen, she became committed to charitable work in Koblenz. The ruined walls, with great gaps in them, slowly crumbled, although the round keep was still relatively intact and town authorities continued to supply some

To Entertain, Enlighten, and Exploit the Traveller / 261

maintenance funds. Upon her death in 1889 her grandson, Emperor William II, inherited Godesburg and considered its reconstruction but found the expense too much. Besides, he declared, making it into a habitable royal home would shut out the public who enjoyed it and the view so much.21 The town of Bad Godesberg enjoyed its associations with the ruin and eventually made it the town symbol on its coat of arms. When the mayor indicated his council's desire to own the ruins William returned it to the community (1891), enjoining the civic authorities to care for it and preserve its character. To this end, between 1894 and 1896, St. Michael's Chapel was restored. Unfortunately the town government, with a view to profit, began an insensitive exploitation of the ruin itself. Godesburg had become a popular tourist attraction where, as at Drachenfels, one rode on donkeys up the hillside. By 1850 a small restaurant serviced thirsty and hungry travellers. By 1896, after a long depression, the national economy was in a upswing and the town saw fit to replace this small enterprise with a neoGothic hotel in turreted, half-timbered style with a large dining room in the former Knights' Hall22 (Fig. 41). The changes, by architects Miiller and Grah of Cologne, were approved by the emperor. By 1900 public museums were popular fixtures of ruined castles and here visitors could enjoy a display of weapons from the Berlin Arsenal as well as Roman artifacts. Almost at the same time, what has become a perennial conflict between "developers" and "heritage purists" began over the appropriate use of historic monuments. Godesburg was one of the first occasions on which this modern dispute erupte'd. In a petition to the emperor a Godesberg resident complained that the restaurant was a "desecration of the time-honoured castle."23 In 1905 the Provincial Conservation Officer publicly disapproved of the "unfortunate" renovation.24 Less tactfully, a Bad Godesberg historian in 1906 condemned the "ruthless exploitation of the ruins in the service of the modern tourist industry."25 The contemporary restoration architect Bodo Ebhardt, although he did not object to the erection of dining rooms near ruins, called for the "absolute and total banishment of restaurants from the interior of ruins."26 A new and different appreciation of castles was developing, although it was not yet to have an effect on the treatment of Rhenish ruins. Nevertheless the oriel windows, crenellations, and raftered ceilings of the Godesburg restaurant-hotel found favour with the public. Many formal events were held in the renovated castle. Student fraternities met there and concerts were given. On the 700th anniversary of the castle it

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Fig. 41. Godesburg, about 1896: The precincts of both Drachenfels and Godesburg were profoundly changed by tourism, but the architectural substance itself of the latter ruin was altered in 1896 with a half-timbered restaurant to serve the already large tourist trade. Courtesy of Verein fur Heimatpflege und Heimatgeschichte Bad Godesberg e.V

To Entertain, Enlighten, and Exploit the Traveller I 263

was illuminated and decorated. Those who disapproved of the changes could take comfort from the fact that, in 1900, plans to build near the castle a tower in honour of the late Chancellor Otto von Bismarck were shelved. A 1901 project for a chairlift was also abandoned. The failure of these plans was a benefit to Godesburg because the architectural substance of the ruin survived without the vulgarities and physical damage which even more masses of only vaguely appreciative tourists would bring. There is much to commend this argument. On the other hand a case can be made for the adaptive re-use of ruins because exploiting the traveller's curiosity can lead at least some individuals to better appreciate both history and its physical relics. Thus, granted the degree of risk involved, yet given the massively destructive tendencies of the modern world, a sensitive and controlled exploitation can actually help to secure an architectural document of the past for the future. In Godesburg's case another hotel was built into the ruin in 1960, replacing the 1896 restaurant. The rules of the architectural contest specified a neutral style, which would clearly differentiate the old walls from the new structure, allowing full appreciation of the castle's remains. The needs of tourism are satisfied and the ruin is preserved. At the turn of the century the German educated public remained fascinated by the Middle Ages and such relics as Drachenfels and Godesburg. They were still well read and romantic; they were now more affluent and could travel; and they were learning, rightly or wrongly, to see in "their" ruins monuments to German greatness. Of course, the Hohenzollerns also played roles in these ruins' survival, but the elites were no longer alone in their interest in medieval ruins. Nor could they alter the substance of mouldering walls at will, for the mentors of the educated classes were establishing criteria for the scientific treatment of the national heritage.

FOURTEEN To

STUDY THE

GERMAN PAST the exterior of the rebuilt Burg Katz, the architects wrote that it O f\y^was supposed to reveal

the character of the original castle, and to have the greatest possible resemblance to the pictures which suggest to us its earlier appearance. Because it remained in a habitable condition until the time of the War of Liberation, the castle appears frequently in many older views of the Rhine. But these differ remarkably one from the other.1

Their lively defence was necessary because higher standards of historical accuracy were now being applied to castle reconstruction and to the treatment of ruins as such. Their claim to having consulted old views of Katz suggests their own alertness to the new requirements, as well as the problems faced by even the most conscientious rebuilders. In the 1890s the upswing in the national economy inspired a flurry of castle reconstructions. At the same time, as we have seen, a new approach to historic architecture had emerged. When "improvements" were made to Godesburg, with a view to exploiting tourists' affluence, critics condemned the changes. Marksburg's restoration revealed the influence of the new conservative nationalism, but also occasioned some dissenting comments vis-a-vis the castle's appearance. After the reconstruction of Gutenfels, too, the architect felt obliged to defend his work, in a way that Lassaulx or Schinkel had never felt obliged to do.

Notes to Chapter Fourteen are on pp. 370-72.

264

To Study the German Past / 265

The discipline of modern heritage conservation was born. The most radical supporters of heritage conservation demanded a rigorous examination of all ruins and their dedicated preservation simply as ruins. Now, the experts totally condemned all the reconstruction activities of the previous century. Of course, nationalism was still an influence among the heritage conservationists but, inspired by the new and more precise historical approach, they wanted an exact knowledge of the Fatherland's past. Proof of this change in the attitude came in 1896 when it was the turn of Burg Katz to be rebuilt.

Katzenelnbogen Where the Hasenbach valley joins the Rhine on its east bank, Katz hangs on a spur of rock above St. Goarshausen. The Count of Katzenelnbogen built it in 1393 for both military and economic reasons (Fig. 42). His family was often at war, for which purpose they had begun the construction of the great castle Rheinfels above St. Goar across the Rhine. They also wanted to profit from exacting tolls on the river traffic between St. Goarshausen and St. Goar. After 1479 Katz passed to the lords of Hesse-Nassau. The Spaniards besieged it in 1626, and in 1684 and 1692 the French were driven away, having done great damage. After 1795 during a pause in the French Revolutionary wars, Katz was transferred to the house of Hesse-Kassel, who made some repairs, but "devastation" (the word used by the new commandant)2 prevailed. Invested yet again by the French in 1801, it was blown up in 1806 on the order of Napoleon who, according to local lore, was annoyed when the castle fired a salvo in his honour, causing his horse to shy. In the early 1800s Katz's remains consisted of shattered walls on an irregular six-cornered plan with a powerful round keep on the attack-side and a gutted three-storey Palas. The castle's neighbourhood just north of the Lorelei Rock, 132 perpendicular metres above the water, has given rise to several myths. Here legend says that the Nibelungs' treasure is buried. As well, from the high rock a maiden was believed to lure sailors and fishermen to their deaths. There is also a story that, when "Burg Katzenelnbogen" proved too much of a mouthful, locals began to call it "Burg Katz." The count himself accepted the abbreviation. The ruin, therefore, from which one had an impressive view of Burg Rheinfels across the river, has a location and a reputation which writers, artists and tourists found particularly attractive. In 1838 Victor Hugo visited it and glanced through the visitors' book

266 I Castles of the Rhine

Fig. 42. Above St. Goarshausen, Burg Katzenelnbogen about 1630: Already known popularly as "Cat Castle" and showing some war damage, Katz typically dominated its walled town and commanded the river. This is another of Merian's invaluable records of the Middle Rhine castles. Courtesy of Gutenberg Museum, Mainz.

To Study the German Past I 267

Fig. 43. Burg Katz in 1980: The modern changes to Katz, "restored" between 1896 and 1898, are clearly evident: wide windows and an arcade, which offer fine views of the Rhine panorama, but which would make no sense to the medieval castle builder. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

268 I Castles of the Rhine

where he found that already many Italian, English, and German visitors had been impressed by the "beautiful ruin."3 Initially the ruined Katz was saved by a combination of practical aristocratic interest and romanticism. In 1817, when other castle sites were becoming quarries, Major Frederick von Schmielinski leased the property for twenty-five years. Soon thereafter, in a letter to the government of Hesse-Kassel, he described how the French explosions had strewn stones and other wreckage over the cultivated ground near the ruin, and appealed for assistance in making the land arable again.4 When his plea was refused he applied to buy the ruin outright. In the meantime he started to remove some of the stones and planted saplings. Eventually, after several appeals, he was named the hereditary tenant in 1819, but was required never to demolish the ruin. Although titled, Schmielinski does not seem to have wished to create a hereditary seat for his family or to reconstruct the castle. Aside from his practical tree-planting, he was impressed by the beautiful view from Katz and retained, in his words, a "passionate love of this little place."5 In his final, successful, request to become the ruin's owner, he promised to maintain the ruin's beauty, and "never to lay a destructive hand on this heirloom [Uberlieferung] from the past."6 Unfortunately Katz's later owners were not so respectful of the ruin's substance. On Schmielinski's death it passed to his daughter, who in 1842 sold it to August Frederick von Liitzow, an estate owner from Tessin in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Unlike Schmielinski, von Liitzow was filled with the castle rebuilding passion which by now had seized the Hohenzollerns and other aristocrats. His plans entailed the enlargement of his new Rhenish estate by the acquisition of several hectares of forest suitable for the noble pastime of hunting game. He made parts of the ruin habitable. In 1857 his daughter, Auguste Katharine von Langen inherited Katz. Ferdinand Berg, Landrat or magistrate of the district of St. Goarshausen, rebuilt Katz between 1896 and 1898. Berg was married to an aristocratic lady, cultured and well educated, but with respiratory problems. Because of his wife's frail health and because he wanted a home for his family larger than his official residence in St. Goarshausen, his attention was drawn to the partly reconstructed ruin above the district seat.7 Fascinated by castles in general, Berg was Honorary Chairman of the German Castle Association and was, in his granddaughter's words, "from the beginning very active"8 in all its undertakings. The Cologne architectural firm of Emil Schreiterer and Bernard Below, carried out the "restoration" using Bodo Ebhardt's plans. As at

To Study the German Past I 269

Hohkonigsburg, Ebhardt sought to a create, not a replica, but an imaginative approximation of a medieval castle. The result was a comfortable latenineteenth-century villa with much less attention to historical accuracy than at Marksburg. In 1908 Ebhardt's journal, Der Burgwart, described it as an elegant residence with "all the modern comforts"9 in which, however, the original character of the castle was preserved. A later article in Burgwart praised it as a "peaceful dwelling of a lover of history and nature," the fulfilment of Major von Schmielinski's dream.10 From a distance at least, Katz's cone-shaped towers and craggy site give it a romantic "medieval" ambience (Fig. 43). Ebhardt avoided the inappropriate crenellations which had been grafted onto Stolzenfels and Lahneck but nonetheless altered much. The moat, for example, was obliterated. A projecting glassed-in veranda was built onto the middle of the Rhine front. Beneath a curving gable, loggias and a balcony were constructed between the towers. Decorative corbelling was attached to the wall of southern facade and new large windows were added. The old entrance was modernized and the Palas' door was given a sandstone Renaissance frame. A similar style prevailed in most of the inside doors, ceilings, and panelling, and the rooms were remodelled in Renaissance and Baroque decors.11 A Venetian chandelier graced the drawing room. Only in the dining room, the "Knights' Hall" with cross-vaulted ceiling, did a medieval style appear. Here the arms of Katz's earlier owners and their vassals were represented in Hermann Schaper's paintings, a typical representation of the desired sense of historical continuity and elite power. Adjoining the Knights' Hall was a nineteenth-century "winter garden." The juxtaposition of these two features alone represent what was increasingly felt to be undesirable in the treatment of castle ruins. Magistrate Berg's estate covered thirteen hectares which—an unusual development—were finally cultivated again. On the slopes beneath the castle grapes were grown. In the fall the grape-pressing in the vaults of the keep was a major social event. Nut trees surviving from the Major's time were tended with care and many more trees, especially cherries, were planted. The estate's agriculture provided most of the residents' daily needs. Berg's granddaughter recalls that Katz was "comfortable to live in, tastefully furnished." Important guests, such as Emperor William II, visited and family weddings were "splendidly celebrated here."12 During the First World War the roaring cannon on the Western Front could be heard at Katz, where the ground shook with the concussion.13 After 1918, in accordance with the occupation clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, the French arrived again and three officers were billeted in the

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castle. Yet, despite the contemporary German anti-French hysteria, the foreign soldiers "respected their hosts" and "peaceful coexistence" prevailed. Eventually, given the economic and social upheaval which followed 1918, the Bergs could not sustain their way of life and sold the castle in the early 1920s, retaining the right to live there for a period of time.14 After several years in the hands of another private owner, Katz passed under the control of the Nazi Reich "Labour Service" in 1936 and was a "Leaders School" until 1945. As with Drachenburg the Nazis wanted to associate their government with the glorious military traditions of the past, including life in fortified citadels. Although this was not, of course, the purpose of Ferdinand Berg's restoration, ironically it had more to do with Katz's original purpose.15 For our study Burg Katz is significant because here, for the first time, a castle reconstruction caused widespread and heated controversy. An upsurge of scholarly interest had already occurred, so that by the 1890s castle restoration had to be scientific in the sense of proceeding only after careful study of the remaining walls, foundations, and any other stones found near the site and of any documentary sources. More and more educated Germans wanted to have precise knowledge of the actual appearance, structure, and use of medieval buildings. There was a new interest in accurate reconstruction of castles and a concern for the preservation of ruins, intact, without alteration of any kind. As Gustav Walter at Gutenfels discovered, architects now had to justify every change. In the case of Magistrate Berg's new home, castle buffs, architects and historians who read, for example, the description of Katz in Wilhelm Lotz' Architectural Monuments of the District of Wiesbaden (1880) were not pleased.16 Katz had been one of the few easily accessible sites on the Rhine still offering a chance to study a Burg which, although ruined, was still relatively untouched by reconstruction. Ebhardt's reconstruction, therefore, became a minor cause celebre. Katz had "fallen victim" to a "restoration" "without style ... or character," wrote Otto Piper in Germany's leading conservation journal.17 In his classic Castle Lore Piper reiterated this view, calling it was the worst restoration on the Middle Rhine.18 The editors of Denkmalpflege noted sadly that the fundamental principles of architectural chhonservation were not employed here. "It is to be most deeply regretted," they wrote, that the architects did not succeed in persuading the owner, who had "a great love for old Rhenish castles," to preserve the ruin more in the state in h which it was found.19 A 1905 article in Denkmalpflegee condemned not only the reconstruction of Katz, but also that of "Stolzenfels, Heimburg,

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Sooneck, Falkenburg [Reichenstein], Rheinstein, Klopp, Kaup [Gutenfels?] and Lahneck.. . ."20 The author chose the relatively untouched ruins of Rheinfels, above St. Goar, as a challenge to conservationists to save a ruin intact, without grafting onto it a modern structure, however "medieval" in appearance that might be. On the other hand, Ebhardt's journal, Der Burgwart, in an article supporting the author of the Katz plans, insisted that the "castle character" of the site "remained more or less preserved."21 In the pages of Denkmalpflege, Schreiterer and Below themselves felt obliged to defend their work, stating that they were simply fulfilling a commission and never intended to create a precise reconstruction of the original Katz. They claimed that the "many old Rhine views" which they consulted all differed as to Katz's medieval appearance, so that no one could be sure what the original looked like.22 If it was to become a modern home, its original character as a military structure could not be replicated. Because, they claimed, Katz had never been a dwelling for a knightly family, but was a barracks for a small armed force, it was pointless to retain the older layout of rooms in what was to be a twentieth century dwelling. Moreover, it was their patron's wish to retain only the exterior in a medieval form while the interior should be a "comfortable and healthy home."23 Instead of narrow openings, a modern residence must have many wide windows, especially in Katz's case, from which to enjoy the views of the Rhine. The new owner wanted terraces and balconies as well. Lest they seem to be shifting too much responsibility onto their client's shoulders, however, they noted that he had insisted on the preservation of the old trees in the courtyard, and they praised his concern that as much of the old walls as possible be preserved.24 Still, the builders stressed how much of the original they had preserved or at least echoed in their reconstruction. The main walls of the old castle, still in good condition, served to define the limits of the new and were preserved up to the window lintels. Several small towers were rebuilt exactly in their old form. A service building built outside the castle close to the walls was erected on the site where a similar building had earlier stood. From a distance the profile of the castle corresponded "rather precisely" to that of the old Katz, although they admitted that one of the three round towers on the Rhine side had not been rebuilt, because of its faulty construction and unreliable foundations. We tried, they said, to avoid creating "something foreign in its exterior appearance."25 A gabled structure between the two towers on the Rhine side was completely new, the ruins here had to be demolished, and if the arched motif here was

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"alien" to the old fortress, yet its basic traditional form harmonized with the castle's overall appearance.26 Anyway, they wrote, architects of the past, in rebuilding older structures, did not handle them with excessive respect. These spirited declarations reveal that it was now no longer possible to rebuilt castles in the romantic way applied to Stolzenfels or Lahneck. The controversial reconstruction of Katz documents the growing knowledge, sophistication, and expertise of architecture conservationists which was to affect the approach to ruins in the later twentieth century. Nevertheless, with the important exception of Stahleck, few other castle reconstructions were attempted on the Middle Rhine in the years of the two great wars (1914-45). The era of the Bonn Republic, however, saw both great prosperity and a more careful attitude to castle ruins, a mentality expressed by both private owners and public authorities. Although the following examples fall outside of the main chronological framework of our study, they are worth noting as a contrast to the attitudes which produced the rebuilt Katz.

Martinsburg In the mid-twentieth century, middle-class castle buffs continued to play a role through donations to the upkeep of castles but, not having the means or the available ruin, did not usually preserve or restore castles as dwellings. There is one notable exception. In 1975 Dr. Johannes Romberg purchased Martinsburg in Oberlahnstein, and restored it in a way that earned the praise of contemporary castle and restoration experts.27 One of Mainz's toll stations on the river bank, first built in 1244, it was rebuilt 1497-1503. In the eighteenth century, the Rhine facade and the roof of the main tower were remodelled. This water-castle consists essentially of four wings around a courtyard with a six-cornered keep on the southwest corner, and a dwelling tower on the northwest (Fig. 44). The Grand Duchy of Nassau took it over after the Napoleonic Wars, at which time it was virtually intact. But in 1862 its outer works were destroyed during the building of the east bank railway. Gradually broad railway yards developed on its landward side, destroying its environs and threatening its future. After 1866 it fell to Prussia, which used it as offices for local tax administrators. Although it was relatively intact, after 1945 the province of RhinelandPalatinate found it increasingly difficult to maintain and sold it to Dr. Romberg, who carried out a complete series of repairs and restoration work. Now its three-storey walls have their original appearance, stuccoed

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Fig. 44. Oberlahnstein, Martinsburg in 1980: Although most postwar Denkmalpflege has been carried out by public authorities, Martinsburg is an example of restoration by a private individual for the love of a valuable architectural landmark. A mixture of medieval fortress and baroque palace (the hip-roofed projecting wing), this water-castle has a sextagonal tower which has been left unpainted. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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and painted white, with dark red window frames. The stones of its tower remain unplastered and unpainted. In 1990 Romberg created a foundation to offer prizes to private castle owners who undertake similarly sensitive preservation of their properties. Both Bodo Ebhardt and Otto Piper would be pleased with this endeavour.

Pfalzgrafenstein On her trip down the Rhine in 1818, Johanna Schopenhauer was astonished to see a castle which resembled "a great warship with outstretched sails" approaching her own vessel; "the whole building," she wrote, "seems to swim"28 (Fig. 45). One of the few castles of the Middle Rhine to have remained continually used by public authorities is this remarkable Pfalzgrafenstein, or Pfalz, which stands impressively in the middle of the Rhine near Kaub. The Pfalz is probably the most famous Rhine castle, at least to North Americans, because its picturesque location has led to its appearance on countless tourist posters and advertisements.29 It survived into the 1900s in good condition because of its constant use as a beacon on a dangerous rocky shoal in the river, and because transforming it into a royal palace or an early tourist mecca was inhibited by its inaccessible site. Thus it remained virtually intact into the twentieth century. The Pfalz had very practical origins as a toll station. Its pointed, prowlike southern facade could also serve as an icebreaker. It was also a formidable fortress, bristling with watchful turrets and with only one small entrance. Typically, its origins lay in the practical exigencies of medieval life. About 1327 a freestanding five-sided tower, six storeys high, was built here by Ludwig, Elector of Bavaria in order to increase his toll revenue. Because Pope John XXII wanted him to exempt prominent people from these tolls, there were disputes, which probably led Ludwig, later as emperor, to build between 1338 and 1342 a six-sided turreted ring-wall twelve metres high around it for defence purposes and as a better icebreaker. Expanded in 1607 with a bastion on the east side, its interior is distinguished by a beautiful arcade with wooden galleries. In the middle of the eighteenth century the Baroque roof was added to the tower. One aspect of Pfalz' existence remained constant until 1805: toll collection. With Gutenfels above Kaub on the east shore, the Pfalz, due to its unusual location and shape, is probably the most painted, drawn, and photographed castle in the Rhine gorge. As well, the site has important patriotic associations for here, on January 1, 1814, the Prussian Marshal Blucher and his Prusso-German forces crossed the ice as they drove the

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Fig. 45. From above Kaub, the Pfalz in 1980: Painted its original colours, the Pfalz looks more quaint than gloomily romantic. Still inaccessible, however, except by boat, it continues to survey two of the Rhine's basic modern industries: tourism and quarrying. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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French out of the German states. And so the public mind connected it with the Wars of Liberation and the crusade against the French who had wrought such havoc in Germany. On the other hand Schopenhauer, unimpressed by the interior, found "the low vaulted rooms . . . like a prison, into which only faintly comes the daylight through the narrow windows, and the roar of the waves constantly crashing against these walls must, especially at night, be frightful."30 This aspect of the Pfalz suggests another reason why the rich were not attracted to the castle as a summer retreat. It passed into the hands of Nassau in 1803 and into Prussian ownership in 1866. Minor war damage, sustained in the Second World War, was repaired and in 1946 it became the property of the Administration of State Palaces and Gardens of the West German province of Rhineland-Palatinate. At this time the Pfalz had a very shabby look and was in need of thorough repair. The Provincial Office for Heritage Conservation [Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege] carried out careful restoration work between 1967 and 1975. Using remnants of the Baroque paint, the restorers painted the renewed plaster white and the wooden parts bright red. As well the arrow loops on the west side, which had been walled in, were opened up and the original gate on the northeast side was restored. Historically appropriate slate tiles were used to repair the roof. Thus, in the post-monarchical era, government ownership did not lead to misuse for political or nationalistic ends. Nor did entrepreneurs exploit its tourist appeal. Hence Pfalzgrafenstein never became a hotelrestaurant or a privately run museum.31 Here, at least, the involvement of public authorities has led, at first inadvertently, and later deliberately, to the securing of a reasonably accurately preserved and restored medieval Rhenish castle. The skill of experts trained in restoration methods, moreover, has been well used. Since the 1930s most of the extant castle ruins of the Middle Rhine, have remained largely unrebuilt. Many have been preserved, as ruins, in the way that modern experts such as Georg Dehio recommended. The general rule is to fix the ruin in its present state. Where the ruins were never or only partially touched by the reconstruction mania, the model of Rheinfels has been followed (Fig. 51). There, although a hotel stands in one of the castle's outworks, the heart of the ruin is buttressed but not rebuilt. In the rare instance where a castle is still largely intact, as is the Pfalz, the model of Marksburg has been followed, but more carefully. Rarely is a quasi-total reconstruction undertaken, but there is one example of this endeavour which should be considered.

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Nassau In the case of Burg Nassau, on a hill across the Lahn River from the town of Nassau, the Rhineland-Palatinate Administration of State Palaces and Gardens has been involved in a relatively rare modern example of almost total reconstruction (Fig. 46). Built in the twelfth century by the Counts von Laurenburg, Nassau fell to Trier in 1159. Repairs and improvements were made in the sixteenth century, but its decline set in soon thereafter. Used for a while as a stone quarry, it fell victim to romantic nineteenthcentury castle buffs who, although they buttressed the tower (in order to use it as a viewing platform), cleared away all the fallen stones—potentially valuable evidence of medieval construction techniques—from the castle precinct and installed gardens. Later it suffered damage in the Second World War. Since 1970, after careful excavation and using the 1635 Merian engraving, provincial government experts reconstructed the Palas and, in 1977, completed reconstruction of the keep with its hipped roof, battlements, and turrets. It now stands again proudly gleaming on its forested hilltop. An unobtrusive restaurant has been provided nearby. Here the notion has prevailed that reconstruction helps the general public to understand the historic significance of a site. Alois Riegl and other purists would disapprove of this enterprise, but at least there was no intent to provide a dwelling for the rich or powerful. Bodo Ebhardt, and perhaps Otto Piper as well, would understand this need to explain the past to the present. The aim of the reconstruction is still didactic but not in the reactionary political sense of a century ago. Absent too has been the shrill nationalistic propaganda which marked late nineteenth-century reconstruction. Nevertheless the questions must be asked: did reconstruction, however accurate, prevent future scholars from using better methods to investigate the original ruin as an historical document? And can the rebuilders be sure that, unwittingly, their own values have not in some as yet unknown way coloured the appearance of their reconstruction so that in another century the new Nassau will instantly be recognizable as a late twentieth-century—and possibly faulty—reconstruction? Every freshman history major learns that the past is always adjusted to satisfy contemporary needs. Certainly the rebuilding of the Middle Rhine castles proves that, regardless of how pure a castle's rebuilder believed his motives to be, his political and social values were reflected in his work.

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Fig. 46. Above Nassau, Burg Nassau about 1990: A rare late twentiethcentury example in the Middle Rhine area of an attempt at accurate reconstruction. The aims of the conservationists are neither as passionately nationalistic nor as didactic as in the previous century but, with its concrete additions, relative isolation, and lack of connection to other structures, is the undertaking justified? Courtesy of Schoning & Co. & Gebr. Schmidt GmbH & Co., Liibeck.

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Modern Denkmalpflege Elsewhere on the Rhine Private associations have played a large role in the twentieth century, as the example of the German Castle Association showed. But by the 1920s private groups found that the riverside ruins had been pre-empted by princes, nobles, and wealthy bourgeois rebuilders. They therefore turned their attention to sites a kilometre or two to the west or east of the great river. For example, the Rhenish Association for Heritage Conservation and Landscape Protection has been active in the preservation of the ruins of Stahlberg, a thirteenth-century fortress of Cologne, later of the Counts Palatine, located above Steeg, behind Bacharach. Destroyed by the French in 1689 only the round keep of this fortress stands today well preserved. The Association also acquired the ruined Virneburg, build 1042 near Mayen, west of Koblenz several kilometres north of the Mosel River. These sites are maintained as ruins, to be studied and enjoyed for what they can reveal of the past. Since the monarchy's collapse in 1918, the republican political authorities have accepted responsibility for some Rhenish castles, especially the former Hohenzollern properties. Prussia's newly created Administration of State Palaces and Gardens took over maintenance duties, dividing them among various ministries, in particular the Forest Administration, as at Eltville. Some local authorities also purchased and protected significant castles. After the Second World War, when Prussia itself was formally abolished by the victorious allies, the provinces of Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse continued to administer castles such as Stolzenfels, Sooneck, and Pfalzgrafenstein. Tourism, of course, is actively promoted and funds are occasionally provided for archeological work and repairs. Today, careful analysis and study of extant walls and other features, as advocated by scholars such as Dehio, is usually the rule. No ruin, at least in the public domain, can be approached without thoroughgoing research. Castle study is now as exact a science as any other historical or archeological discipline. The overriding concern is for the value of ruins as evidence of past history. Despite exceptions, such as Burg Nassau, the aim is usually to display and to interpret only what is original and authentic. There are few efforts to rebuilt ruins in a "historical style," as happened frequently in the past, because this practice not only produced historical counterfeits but also destroyed much of what was left of the original structure's substance. When a ruin is to be used for some modern purpose, the effort is made to separate the old and the new, as some would

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argue has successfully occurred at Godesburg where a modern hotel has been built into part of the ruins. An overview of contemporary architectural conservation methods in Germany is beyond the scope of this study. One example of making a detailed inventory may suffice. By December 1985 scholars calculated that the province of Hesse had a total of 725 sites worthy of study, including 120 palaces on the sites of partly ruined castles, five former cloisters on castle sites, twelve castles partly rebuilt or in ruins, sixty mansions with castle remains, seventy-two larger castle ruins, fifty smaller castle ruins, ninety-five castle sites with remains of walls, sixty castle sites with walls and moats, 178 documented castle sites with no remains extant, fiftyseven putative sites, and sixteen questionable sites.32 Recently the debate about the original colour of castle walls has been resolved, at least for the foreseeable future. Scholars do not regard this as a trivial matter, and have convened international conferences on it.33 Today the notion prevails that in the twelfth and thirteen centuries castles were extremely colourful in appearance, although in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the trend was more conservative. At the end of the middle ages, white with a red trim was still popular. Nowadays castles, with their dark, bare walls, "wear the rags and tatters of beggars," said a German castle expert sadly.34 The romantic age found this appealing, enjoying the apparent congruence between the rugged cliffs and the battered stone walls. Although some believe that stuccoing and painting protects the stones from weathering, there is reluctance to do this to even the relatively intact castles. The Pfalz, Martinsburg, and Boppard's electoral castle have nevertheless been stuccoed and painted. Churches in the Rhineland, such as Koblenz' St. Castor, have also been colourfully repainted. Some castle ruins remain relatively untouched. We have already noted Burg Hammerstein. Above Rheindiebach, for example, Fiirstenburg also remains more or less as the romantic poets and painters discovered it. On the other hand some ruins are in a lamentable state of disrepair. Burg Stein, just below Burg Nassau, was built (1369) by the von Steins, vassals of the counts of Nassau. In 1621 it was abandoned by the von Stein family for their palace in the town of Nassau. Today it stands crumbling away, overtaken by trees, undergrowth, and vandals. Nothing has been done to preserve Stein so that descriptions of only a century ago cannot be understood today, so great has been the loss of its architectural substance.35 Stein, of course, does not have the commanding position of its partner Nassau, and tourism is a less profitable factor several kilometres away from the banks of the romantic Rhine.

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Yet if restoration destroys valuable historic evidence, perhaps Riegl's principles should be allowed to operate on sites such as Burg Stein. German heritage enthusiasts, like their counterparts everywhere, face a dilemma: if, in a still relatively "intact" castle such as Marksburg, one replaces original timber with modern wood, even if the insertions are carefully cut and crafted to resemble the original, is one not gradually transforming the castle into a modern structure and therefore not "preserving" a medieval building? In theory at least, over time the architectural substance of such a building could be totally replaced, rendering it a replica, not a restoration, and certainly not a historic structure. What would be the difference between such a copy and Burg Katz, since both would be largely modern structures? All of which raises the question: what is the purpose of restoration or preservation? To give added life to the original building because of its own intrinsic qualities? or to use the structure to teach the community a specific lesson about its history and values? Both? An affirmative answer to the second question was, as we have seen, most often given in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany. But as we have also seen, the lesson was deeply nationalistic and often dedicated to preserving the political status quo. Such propaganda was unacceptable to some Germans then, and certainly is unpalatable to many today. Many people now would respond to the above question by asserting that a preserved ruin or a restored castle can teach objective lessons about the past, lessons which are worth learning, even without political or patriotic content. Furthermore, such a venue can teach its lessons in an entertaining way, without damaging the architectural substance of the structure, an undertaking which the carefully controlled guided tours at Marksburg, for example, seek to achieve. Nevertheless, the relatively objective and broadly appealing tour commentaries which both tourists and school classes encounter at Stolzenfels or Marksburg today are a late twentiethcentury phenomenon. A century ago, while some academics (mainly scholars) believed that a ruin could teach them objective facts about the past, other academics (mainly pedagogues) believed that a castle, ruined or not, could teach political values to the public and to youth. This is the theme of our next chapter which shows how the nationalism and didacticism focused on castles operated well into the twentieth century.

FIFTEEN

To TEACH THE YOUNG AND THE IGNORANT Have buildings a language?—can stones speak? Can our forefathers' works, the towering spire, the defiant wall, the charming oriel window reveal to us even today after five hundred, nearly one thousand, years, what stormy attacks raged against it long ago—what merry celebrations glittered within it long ago—what quiet heartfelt sighs rang out within it long ago?'

Ebhardt believed, as did many others, that buildings could B odo indeed speak and must be allowed to speak their message, especially to the young or the ignorant among the general public. Restored or rebuilt as youth hostels, libraries or museums, castles could be teaching milieus for the use of the responsible educated classes in elevating the national consciousness, particularly of youth. The early romantics had also found a moral lesson in ruins, but it was usually a personal one unrelated to the wider community. The princes and aristocrats had occasionally opened their historically furnished homes, but only to members of the well-to-do public and not as part of any mass educational project. Around 1900 young people themselves were drawn to ruins and soon their elders co-opted this interest for national purposes. The notion had also developed that historic architecture belonged to the entire German people who had a responsibility to preserve it and use it to teach children.2

Notes to Chapter Fifteen are on pp. 372-73.

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Those who would use castle ruins as pedagogical tools had three goals. They wished, first, to inculcate national pride in Germany's past achievements; second, to teach the supposed virtues of modern Germans' heroic ancestors; and third (more common later in the twentieth century) to teach an objective understanding of history and a respect for historic architecture. The method was also threefold. Ruined castles could be used as museums in which displays of artifacts (armour, cannon, etc.) could inspire awe and pride. Less pointedly, libraries housed in castles could have rich historical collections, especially devoted to Heimatkunde (local history and culture). As youth hostels, the renovated or rebuilt castles could offer young people the experience of eating, sleeping, meeting, and playing in a medieval fortress and thus imaginatively recreating past German life. Each castle, with its own specific history, could be used to teach lessons about the locality and about Germany itself.

Youth Hostels Chronologically, the rebuilding of castles as youth hostels occurred before their use as full-fledged museums or libraries. Ruins destined to become hostels, however, passed through the by-now-familiar stages. Often the Hohenzollerns were interested but did not effect many changes. Bourgeois or noble owners made some alterations. Finally, the failure of royal, aristocratic or upper-class owners' plans, or a change in the function of a ruined castle, left it ready for the hostel movement in the twentieth century. Other castles which have figured in our study have also served or still serve travelling young people. Part of Oakley Rhinelander's Schonburg, for example, is a youth hostel. The Lower East Front of Ehrenbreitstein is the most spectacular site of a hostel, but we have also noted (among others) Boppard, rebuilt first as a government tax office.3 Today, visitors to Burg Stahleck above Bacharach may be impressed by the well-equipped facilities installed in this refurbished mountaintop fortress for the accommodation of travelling young people. With its wide welcoming courtyard, half-timbered buildings, and fine views of the river, Stahleck is the best example of a ruin rebuilt with a view to both serving and training youth.

Burg Stahleck Stahleck's history was similar to that of other castles of the Middle Rhine (Fig. 47). Built on a promontory about 1135 by Cologne's archbishop, it was connected by walls with Bacharach's own fortifications. A deep reservoir or moat separates the shield-wall from the other bank of a natural

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Fig. 47. Bacharach and Burg Stahleck about 1672: Merian shows Stahleck fulfilling one of its purposes: to defend the town in its shadow. The artist must have been impressed with the monster cannon (upper left), given his large detailed rendering. In this view the walls linking Burg and fortified town are clearly shown as are Bacharach's own walls and some of its commerce. Courtesy of Bachem Verlag, Cologne.

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rocky gulch. After 1214 the Wittelsbach (Bavarian) Counts of the Palatinate owned it. Often besieged during the Thirty Years' War, in 1666 it was partly reconstructed, only to be blown up in 1689 by the French. In the early nineteenth century, its walls were crumbling, the window and door openings mere holes in an extensive wreck. When he and his relatives were obtaining various ruins, Crown Prince Frederick William purchased the site in 1828, giving it to his wife Elizabeth, who wanted to reconstruct this former seat of her ancestors. Consequently some of its ruined walls were levelled—an action which later would be considered highly insensitive—but fortunately nothing else was done, although it remained Hohenzollern property throughout the rest of the century. The ruin became well known in art and legend. In 1841 a Scottish water-colourist, William Leighton Leitch (1804-83), showed it as a massive complex, without towers to be sure, but glowering moodily over little Bacharach. A photograph of 1860 records a few shattered walls with gaping window openings and a stunted Bergfried. Legends which associated Stahleck with both conflict and eventual reconciliation between Germans helped make the castle attractive to nationalists.4 By 1900, when private organizations seeking to educate the community and its youth were taking possession of those few ruins still not rebuilt, Stahleck's site and legendary associations impressed the Rhenish Association for Heritage Conservation and Heimat Protection (Rheinischer Vereinfiir Denkmalpflege and Heimatschutz), which in 1909 purchased the ruin from the Prussian Royal Domains Administration and eventually decided to rebuild it as a youth hostel. The most pressing preservation work was carried out immediately. Reconstruction began in 1925 with Diisseldorf architect Ernst Stahl (1882-1957) in charge. A new building was erected on the old foundations on the north side, overlooking a suburb of Bacharach. The lower floor here was buttressed with reinforced concrete. In this mainly half-timbered structure would live the "house father" in charge of the kitchen and two large dormitories, with accommodation for sixty-eight visitors. In the western part of the ruin near the keep, construction of a special girls wing began in 1926, with sixty-five beds. The ring- and shield-walls were buttressed and partially rebuilt. On the Rhine side, in 1931 the Palas was convincingly rebuilt, almost entirely of stone, with a very high peaked roof (Fig. 48) and much later (in 1965-67) the keep with its pointed roof was completed. The youth hostel proved extremely popular: by 1934 it had recorded 30,000 overnight stays. In 1935 Stahleck became one of the Nazis' twenty-seven official Jugendburgen (Youth Castles), devoted to "national-

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Fig. 48. Burg Stahleck in 1980: Partially reconstructed between the two world wars, Stahleck is not an accurate reproduction but its half-timbering, gables, and warm-hued stone provide an exciting ambience for young hikers. Whether, on the other hand, the castle itself can suggest moral or patriotic values (as intended) is debatable. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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political education." At the castle's formal dedication to Nazi aims, a Hitler Youth leader noted that youth hostels were "centres for the training of the German spirit and the life of the German people [volkiscb Leben]" The speaker went on to extol in Nazi jargon the Germans' 2,000-year struggle to preserve their "culture, blood and race."5 Stahleck's towers embodied this sacred militance. Still a hostel today, the castle no longer echoes with such dubious rhetoric, but its change from ruin to youth home not only is the most impressive of our examples, but also reflects the purpose of other reconstructions.

Andernach The original archbishop's castle in Andernach was destroyed in 1349 in the conflict between the Cologne archbishop and the burghers who typically sought more independence from his control. It was rebuilt by the archbishop in 1369. A town castle, it is not located on a hillside but close to the river as are Eltville and Linz. Its walls of basalt lava, slate, and rubble stone were built in order to dominate the Rhine, but in order to protect it from the people of Andernach, a moat was dug around it. Thus the castle is further evidence not of medieval German glory but of strife among Germans. The walls of the city as well as the castle suffered during the Thirty Years' War and were ravaged by the French in 1689. But not only German princes and French kings were responsible for Andernach castle's demise, for in 1820 and again in 1850 the local burghers contributed to its ruin by tearing down parts of the walls. By mid-nineteenth century the surviving keep, on a square plan, with an ogival tracery frieze on the uppermost storey, and remnants of corner lookout turrets, was still attached by a wall with empty windows to the round Powder Tower. Little else but the moats remained. After 1836 a prison was established in the keep which, in 1838, was given a hipped roof. The Prussian state renovated it about 1900-1 and in 1911 it became a youth hostel.6

Dattenberg and Other Hostels Southeast of Linz, Burg Dattenberg, with its massive Romanesque keep, was probably built by Werner von Dadenberg in 1242, and it became the seat of his family, vassals of Cologne. On the brow of a hill, above the town of Dattenberg, the ruin was in a choice spot for reconstruction because it offers a good view into the Rhine and the Ahr valleys and of the Eiffel mountains. Before becoming a youth hostel the ruin attracted aristocratic and bourgeois interest. About 1845 a lawyer named Stoppenbach

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built a villa on its grounds after which a Baron von Mengershausen made a few changes. In 1887 the Berlin architect Adolf Fuchs began to develop an estate here, incorporating the renovated Palas of the ruin into a new villa, giving it its present appearance: three storeys, with step-gable, and a corner tower with steepled roof. Of the original ruin only the keep remains, although there are some reconstructed defence works as well. Since the turn of the century the villa has had many owners, becoming a youth hostel in the 1920s. After 1945 it was in great disrepair, until in 1949 the city of Cologne took possession of it, re-establishing a hostel in the keep. Northeast of Lorch, and slightly back from the east bank of the Rhine, in the valley of a Hunsriick tributary of the Rhine, Burg Waldeck was built about 1120 and became a coparcenary Mainz possession. Once a huge moated complex, it was sold in 1813 to quarriers and only several ruined buildings have survived. On a deliberate search for a castle which they could use as a hostel, the Nerother Wandervogel discovered it in 1919. Since 1922, when it came into their possession, they have maintained and expanded it. This youth group also owns Burg Hohlenfels in the nearby Taunus mountains. The youth movement and its supporters were also active on other tributaries of the Rhine. Burg Blankenheim, a fifteenth-century castle, was sold for its stones at the beginning of the nineteenth century but in the early 1900s was rebuilt as a youth hostel and a home for young gymnasts. The sixteenth-century Schloss Freusburg in the Bonn area was renovated as a youth hostel in 1923. At the foot of Burg Hammerstein, a youth hostel was installed in the Renaissance-style castellan's home (Burgmannshof). First mentioned in 1556, by the eighteenth century this three-andone-half storey tower was owned by Rommersdorf Abbey, and after the secularization it became the possession of the Prince of Nassau-Weilburg. In the early twentieth century it was owned by a vintner who could no longer maintain it. In 1912, therefore, the provincial heritage conservation authorities made a financial contribution to its maintenance. However by 1919 its roof had collapsed and it was in ruins. Then in 1921 the Hammerstein Working Association (Hammersteiner Werkgemeinschaft), a group of Wandervogel, took it over and with the help of the province started to clean it up and buttress its walls. Inflation wiped out their finances but the more solvent German Youth Hostels Association was able to maintain a hostel here for a while. By 1937 it was again in the hands of the counts of Hammerstein!

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Museums The princes, nobles, and rich middle-class castle rebuilders had made informal museums of their homes for largely self-serving purposes. In contrast, the museums discussed below were inspired by the Heimat movement, which motivated Rhinelanders to collect artifacts and lore of local history: castles seemed well suited for this purpose. We have seen how, on the national level, many among the German intelligentsia wanted castles to teach uplifting patriotic lessons to as wide an audience as possible. Hence castles such as Marksburg became shrines of German national glory. This chapter examines institutions which were much smaller in scale. Indeed, in 1905, even the small fake ruin Mosburg became a museum of local history. Later, larger genuine castle ruins such as those at Eltville, Klopp, Linz, Koblenz, and especially at Rheinfels, were developed as museums of local interest, often including libraries for local history. Unlike most of the museum-like rebuilt castles of the rich, these institutions were created by men with some training or at least aspirations to professionalism. Although many of the museums discussed below are twentieth-century establishments, they owe their existence to the fascination with local history which developed in the nineteenth century and which continues today. They are, however, devoid of the intense nationalistic ambience of, for example, Marksburg. Eltville The castle at Eltville was saved from ultimate ruin by the Prussian royal family but, unlike Sooneck, Rheinstein or Stolzenfels, enjoyed under Hohenzollern ownership a benign neglect which brought it intact as a ruin into the twentieth century (Fig. 49). Not subject to romantic "restoration" or reconstruction, it survived to benefit from the influence of both the new scholarly knowledge and the Heimat movement's concern for preserving and displaying artifacts of local lore. Close to the bank of the river, Burg Eltville was built by Trier's archbishop around 1330 to defend his domains from his Mainz counterpart. A four storey tower which was a combination palace-fortress with a quadratic inner courtyard, the castle is actually the southeast corner of the city fortifications. This crenellated and turreted Bergfried, similar to those of the archbishops' castles at Boppard and Andernach has on its first floor a Grafenkammer ("Count's Chamber"), richly decorated with wall paintings. Later, despite Trier's precautions, the Mainz archbishops acquired Eltville. It was enlarged in 1487 but the Swedes burned it in 1635, wreck-

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Fig. 49. Eltville, castle of the archbishop of Mainz in 1991: Now a charming civic arts centre with a lush rose garden (donated by Montrichard, Eltville's French twin city) the carefully restored Bergfried stands near the tour ship's wharf. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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ing the Palas but leaving the tower intact. Rebuilt in 1682 with a new east wing, it remained Mainz' property until the Napoleonic secularization of church land in 1803, at which time it passed to Nassau. An 1858 engraving by the Rouargue brothers shows the tower still in good repair, but with a gap in a side wall. Other walls were well maintained, the crenellations and corbelling preserved, and the four-storey keep, made habitable. Grand Duke Adolf of Luxembourg was the owner in 1866 when, following Prussia's defeat of Nassau in the Seven Weeks' War, the Prussian monarchy added it to its collection of Rhine castles and undertook repairs. In 1902 an architect, one Eichholz, produced the first architectural and historical description of the castle. No rebuilding was undertaken at this time, so few romantic accretions occurred. In fact fourteenth-century wall paintings were revealed in 1904. Also in that year windows suitably decorated with the arms of Mainz were installed. In 1914, by which time there was a more alert concern for preservation rather than restoration, the Prussian government made some further repairs, restoring the wall paintings and a large fireplace on the first floor. The keep served as the local offices of the Prussian Ministry of Forests which carried out research on the castle. The area's chief forester lived in the castle and wrote its architectural history (1901-30). In 1936 the Prussian government transferred ownership of the Burg to the town of Eltville. Inspired by the private Castle Association of Eltville, the city employed the talents of Diisseldorf architect Ernst Stahl to complete a reasonably faithful restoration 1937-38. Flanked by parts of the dungeons and moats, the square tower with its pointed hipped roof has recently been repainted its original dazzling white with a pink stone trim. It has long been used as a civic cultural centre and museum of Eltville history. Klopp On a hill above Bingen, across the Rhine from Rudesheim, stands the high, square keep of Burg Klopp, a summit-castle which houses the City of Bingen's Heimat Museum on its several floors. The site offers commanding views north to the junction of the Nahe and the Rhine and to the Taunus mountains, east to the Rheingau and Rudesheim, and south to where the Rhine broadens on its way from Mainz. The Romans established a castle here about A.D. 10. The tower of the medieval Klopp was built about 1281, possibly on the Roman foundations. Here the popular mind's obsession with the tribulations of the Holy Roman Empire selected a local castle as site for a nationally regrettable event. In 1106 (before the surviving keep was built) local legend maintains that Emperor

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Fig. 50. Burg Klopp in 1991: The reconstructed Bergfried houses a Heimat-museum on its several floors and, from its battlements, offers a superb view of the Rheingau. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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Henry IV, who resisted the supposedly Empire-destroying Pope Gregory VII, was held prisoner in the tower by his son. (Hammerstein and Marksburg also share this mythical distinction!) The castle was destroyed by the French in 1689 and the remaining parts blown up by the forces of Mainz in 1711. Early nineteenth-century paintings show ruined walls on a stone platform with not even a tower extant. Still intact was a wall connecting the ruin with the town of Bingen. As with many of those ruins which had escaped major reconstruction by 1900, several factors prevented Klopp from crumbling totally away or from becoming a stone quarry. Certain bourgeois individuals used the ruin to profit from the tourist movement. The state of Hesse, which took control in 1815, had sold it by the 1840s to a lawyer named Faber. After 1854 another owner, a certain Rosenthal of Berlin, found the money to rediscover and renovate the well. Both Faber and Rosenthal charged tourists a small fee to climb the tower of the castle gate in order to enjoy the view. But neither could afford major reconstruction. Attracted by Klopp's site, hallowed by Roman and imperial German associations, the Bingen city government constructed new municipal offices on the site in a stiff neo-Gothic style between 1875 and 1879. Into this complex the architect E. Soherr incorporated the rebuilt keep (Fig. 50). This twenty-six-metre-high tower, with crenellations and four corner turrets, dominates the compound, which also includes a nineteenth-century arched gate and a viaduct over a moat. The museum displays the usual array of prehistoric and Roman artifacts, as well as medieval and more recent finds, including weapons and viticultural objects. Linz Linz castle, another result of the ruthlessly practical politics exercised by the medieval archbishops, has also become a Heimat museum. Cologne's archbishop, like the other powerful clerical princes, wanted to suppress the aspirations of city dwellers and so built this moated castle near the river at the northwest corner of the insubordinate city, about 1368. The city fathers were compelled to maintain the castle and never to alter the fortifications without the archbishop's permission. (They retaliated by building an impressive Rathaus.} The archbishop's castle has an eightsided corner tower, and a spacious half-timbered inner courtyard. Today only the tower is a medieval structure, everything else having been added in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The present owners of the castle make a shameless pitch for the tourists' Mark, widely publicizing

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their museum with its restaurant and other amenities, including a torture chamber.7

Boppard At Boppard, also, the Local History Museum is housed in a riverside castle. As with Eltville's Burg, nationalists must have been hard pressed to associate this castle with a benevolent, cultured and hunt-loving aristocracy. Built after 1327 by Trier's archbishop, who suppressed a rebellion in the town, it consists of a huge square medieval keep and seventeenth-century wings, stuccoed white with grey slate tiles, similar in style and location to Eltville's riverside Burg. A fire in 1499 destroyed much of the original castle except the keep. From 1818 until 1821 this sober, businesslike administration building was the local prison. From the 1830s to the 1940s, it served as a civic tax office, a girls school, local law courts, and a youth hostel. After 1950 it began its career as the Museum of the City of Boppard. Concurrently the same wing and the tower were remodelled for continuing use by the law courts.8

Bromserburg Farther upstream, in Riidesheim, Bromserburg was destined for a more sophisticated exploitation. In 1908 after serving as a renovated home for an aristocratic family (Chapter Nine), it was leased for five years to the newly founded "Gentlemen's Rheingau League of Old Riidesheim," which hoped to improve tourism in the area. Although the town of Riidesheim purchased it in 1941, the Second World War and its aftermath disrupted their plans. In 1950 it became a privately operated Museum for the History of Wine displaying Roman finds as well as other artifacts related to local viticulture. Obviously the foregoing examples of adaptive re-use of castles reveal more than just local antiquarian pursuits. The old fortresses served as schools, hostels, law courts, and administrative offices, as well as museums with archives or libraries. The most impressive example of a museum housed in a ruined castle lies above St. Goar on the west bank of the Rhine.

Rheinfels High above ... rose the vast dismantled ruins of Rheinfels, the lightning darting through its shattered casements and broken arches and brightening the gloomy trees that here and there clothed the rocks and tossed to the angry wind. Swift wheeled the water-birds over the river... uttering their discordant screams.9

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Burg Rheinfels is a ridge-castle, the most impressive ruin of the Middle Rhine today. Its appeal has not dwindled since 1832, when Bulwer-Lytton penned the overwrought description above or when, at about the same time, it attracted the attention of Prince Frederick Louis and the crown prince who, as Frederick William IV, purchased it in 1843. The present extensive ruins are all that remain of a powerful late medieval fortress with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century additions: the largest, strongest, and most beautiful fortress on the middle Rhine. The story of Rheinfels underlines the fact that, although the French were unceasingly active in their efforts to conquer the Rhine and reduce its castles, endemic civil war among German princes, which weakened the Empire's defences (including its Rhenish castles) opened the door to the enemy. Far from being a relic of the glories of the medieval German Empire, therefore, Rheinfels may well be a symbol of the civic strife which wrecked German unity long before the French developed their policy of "divide and rule." One of the counts of Katzenelnbogen built a fortress here in 1245, on the site of a monastery, to serve as a toll station and residence. Beginning in 1255 the League of Rhenish Cities, hating the high tolls, began a fifteen-month siege of the castle, with thousands of soldiers and horsemen as well as ships from twenty-six cities—all to no avail. Thus the castle acquired its reputation for impregnability. Around 1350 another count of Katzenelnbogen built a large Palas with round towers and a shield wall, also with towers. Towards the end of the fifteenth century a count of Hesse-Kassel added a great Renaissance Schloss as well as stables and a cavalry barracks, a new chapel and a remodelled south wing. His crenellated keep, forty metres high, was topped by a superstructure ten metres high. Above the main gate stood a twenty-twometre-high clock tower with a tent-like roof. The upper two or three floors of the Schloss sported extensive half-timbering, and its many-gabled roofs, oriel windows, filials, turrets, flagpoles, and banners made it a landmark on the river. Wilhelm Dilich accompanied his series of drawings in 1608 with the comment: This castle, in a most glorious situation, was the finest ornament of its surroundings, the red sandstone contrasted with the lighter plaster surfaces, the timber framing was red and purple, and dark blue slate of the variform roofing in some places covered the upper parts of the walls.10

Rheinfels' commanding position made it an impressive site from the river, and from its battlements the tourist or student can still appreciate its

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Fig. 51. Above St. Goar, Burg Rheinfels in 1980: Modern preservation of the few remaining walls of the Darmstadter Building (seen from what was the interior) have stripped the castle of ivy and other "romantic" accoutrements, giving the ruin a stark, almost "postmodern" look. Twentyfirst-century poets will not find romantic inspiration here, but the ruins are stabilized and safe. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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potential control over its rivals. Standing on the shattered clock tower today one can easily make out Burg Katz, possession of the Protestant Hesse-Kassel at St. Goarshausen across the river. Burg Thurnberg ("Mouse"), which adhered to the Roman Catholic archbishop of Trier, looms farther upstream. After 1479 its new owners, the counts of Hesse-Darmstadt, having seen the effect of Trier's cannon on Boppard's walls, improved Rheinfels' outerworks so that it became one of the strongest fortresses on the entire Rhine. By 1604 the two lines of Kassel and Darmstadt were embroiled in the Hessian War of Succession. Two years later the Imperial Court tried to end the conflict with a decision favouring Darmstadt. But the count of Kassel would not vacate the castle, and so in the summer of 1626 the emperor authorized Cologne to send 8,000 men, including two Spanish regiments, to enforce the court's decision. The outerworks were blown up and serious damage was done to the rest of the castle. The count eventually vacated, but Rheinfels itself remained impregnable. The count of Hesse-Darmstadt repaired the damaged parts of the castle, only to face in 1647 a successful attack by his jealous Kassel relatives, to whom the still uninvested Rheinfels was surrendered. From 1649 one of the Kassels built new outworks, Fort Scharfeneck and the Ernst Redoubt, which towered behind the complex, strengthening the castle further. Nevertheless with little sense of loyalty to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, it seems this count also tried to sell Rheinfels and its sister castle Katz to King Louis XIV of France!11 As it transpired the castle's ultimate doom was pronounced by French ambitions. Rheinfels had successfully resisted France's attack in 1642 during the Thirty Years' War, but in 1692, because it was a vital link in the chain of west bank castles which barred their way across the river during the Wars of Reunion, the French besieged it again. The defenders were forced to tear off plaster, break up roofs and cover the storehouses and powder magazine with manure in order to lessen the impact of cannonballs. Again, the castle was held intact, and reconstruction began. Another French assault was repulsed in 1734. During the Seven Years' War, French troops launched a surprise attack and besieged the castle— again without success. When Revolutionary armies invaded the Rhineland in 1794, St. Goar was occupied. Now, tricked by the enemy and badly defended by his own men, Rheinfels' elderly commander was forced to admit the French without a battle. At this time many of the castle's steep slate-covered roofs still gleamed and the rich, half-timbered gables of white and red still dazzled

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the eye. But the end was near. In 1796 the French occupants blew up the outer-works and in the following year, the keep and the palace. Thus, said Bodo Ebhardt truthfully, the French forces destroyed Rheinfels' walls, "even after they no longer had military value."12 In 1812, after further plunder, the ruin was auctioned off by the French to quarriers. Local businessmen lacked the patriotic sensitivities which were soon to prevail. The new owner, Peter Glass, a merchant of St. Goar, began to ship Rheinfels' stones as well as door and window mouldings down the river for the construction of the new Ehrenbreitstein. Hoping to profit also from romanticism, he built a small inn in the former parade square where the residents of St. Goar could meet for a glass of wine and the pleasure of the fine view of the river. Vineyards and gardens were also planted within the ruin.13 A mere forty years after its final destruction, Rheinfels became an object of fascination. Tourists began to make the trek from the river shore up the steep hill. For artists its gloomy hulk was the essence of the "sublime." Again, British painters led the way with the most vivid (if inaccurate) representations. In 1834 the Scottish artist David Roberts (1796-1864) showed Rheinfels caught in a ray of sunlight during a fierce storm in which lightning and rain lashed the old walls. In the 1850s Frederick Bamberger (1814-73) presented a more realistic rendering of the site from the Griindelbach valley to the northwest, while an anonymous copperplate artist showed it from the riverbank with telegraph lines and a railway train marking the advance of "progress." Rheinfels attracted writers as well. In 1818 Johanna Schopenhauer was dryly surprised to find that its ruins were "much more picturesque than one would expect to find in such a short time after their destruction,"14 while on its battlements in 1834 Bettina von Arnim satisfied her passion for sunset views from ruins.15 "I greet you, Spirit of Romanticism," wrote Freiligrath in 1842, "as... I contemplate thy most beautiful sanctuary on the Rhine!"16 In step with the Heimat movement the natives of St. Goar recorded neighbourhood legends, the most popular of which concerned a local aristocratic maiden who was faithful unto death to her crusader lover. Thus the ruin was associated with that ostensible German virtue, personal loyalty. By 1825 the Hohenzollerns were at work. In that year the architect Lassaulx included Rheinfels in his search for a restorable castle for Prince Frederick Louis but rejected it, suggesting Sooneck instead. In 1843 as he was rebuilding Stolzenfels, King Frederick William IV bought the ruin to prevent further destruction and decay. Some observers now had hopes that Rheinfels would be returned to its former glory, as happened to

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Stolzenfels.17 However, although the ruin remained Hohenzollern property, this did not occur. It may have been fortunate that the royal family never turned its undivided attention to Rheinfels, because their plans, drawn up by the engineer Karl Schnitzler, envisaged an enlarged keep and north wing as well as a new palace in place of the Darmstadter wing, largest part of the ruin, which overlooks the Rhine. The addition of these changes would have destroyed much of Rheinfels' historic substance, including the keep and the inner ring-wall. As it turned out, the Prussian royal family played a more modest, constructive role. When in 1903 a high supportive wall at Fort Scharfeneck collapsed, undermined by heavy rain, a thorough investigation ensued and William II ordered buttressing to be done. Now, in the spirit of the new scholarly approach to ruins, detailed diagrams and elevations were made.18 The German Republic took possession of Rheinfels in 1919 after which it passed to the town of St. Goar with the intention of preserving it as a ruin. Others had grander, less sensitive plans. As noted by a plaque which stands above one of the entrances, commemorating the successful resistance to the French siege of 1692, the ruin had become a national monument. Soon the intensified nationalism of the post-Versailles era twice endangered the ruin's integrity. In 1930 the conservative Steel Helmet [Stablhelm], Germany's veterans' organization, sought to restore the North Wing for training their personnel, a reconstruction which would have involved transforming this section into modern meeting rooms, dormitories and bathrooms. Many objections to this plan were raised. "Are the Rhine Castles becoming politicized?" asked the Cologne People's News in January 1931—an ironic question, since the Rhine castles, as monuments to the nation and to conservative values, had been politicized for over a century. Ultimately the provincial Department of Heritage Conservation refused permission to the Steel Helmet. Remaining attractive to conservative nationalists, Rheinfels continued to be "politicized." After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Hitler's government planned to build a large outdoor amphitheatre, a Thingplatz, in the area of the main moat (on the western side of the ruin, today's parking lot) which would have made the ruins merely a picturesque backdrop for their political spectacles. Instead, in 1934 an amphitheater was built above the Lorelei rock, across the river. In 1937 the High Battery, a defensive gallery facing southwest, and the Hansa Hall were rebuilt on the inspiration of the St. Goar branch of the Hanseatic Order of Merchants. The Second World War ended these efforts temporarily. In 1956, with the beginnings of the West German

300 I Castles of the Rhine "economic miracle," a terrace restaurant was opened by the town of St. Goar. A hotel soon followed. Between 1963 and 1965 the vaulted ground floor of the seventeenth-century Women's Building (Frauenbau) was rebuilt. Here a local history museum has been established with models, maps, and artifacts. Modern museological principles prevail, including the use of computers.19 More imposing than Linz, Boppard, or Bromserburg, Rheinfels nevertheless escaped reconstruction and therefore not only houses a museum but also is itself an artifact which can be studied by historians and archeologists.

Libraries When not adapted to museum use, the Middle Rhine castles have been used for related purposes. Some of the museums house small libraries. In a rare case a reasonably intact castle has been converted as a library. In Koblenz, for example, the city library's local history collection was long kept in the Old Castle (Alte Burg) near the Mosel Bridge (Fig. 52). Built in 1277 by Trier, this Zwingburg was designed to control the insubordinate residents of Koblenz. After damage during the Thirty Years' War it was rebuilt. In private hands after 1806, in the 1820s it was linked by the new Prussian authorities to a fortified gate on the Mosel Bridge as part of their modern defences of the city (which included the fortresses discussed in Chapter Four). When these walls were removed in 1890 the three-storey Romanesque Old Castle stood alone with two small towers flanking it. If not exactly a robber baron's hideout, neither did the Old Castle have much to do with the achievements or trials of the medieval German Empire. Nevertheless it is an attractive, even charming, building and has been frequently renovated, in particular 1897-1900, with funds from the city and the Rhineland province. Koblenzers are proud of its quaint turrets and cheerful whitewashed walls which, when war damage was repaired after 1945, became part of the city's public library system. It now houses the Civic Archive and the Youth Library. After 1918, when the dynasties of the German states abdicated, their palaces and castles formally became public property. This affected Rheinstein, Stolzenfels and other Hohenzollern castles, as well as the Hessian properties on the Middle Rhine. Psychologically, however, the German nation had already appropriated all the ruined or rebuilt castles as its own property. Encouraged by poets and artists, scholars, and teachers, the masses understood the symbolism of the Rhine castles. The fervent nationalism of the nineteenth century had penetrated all classes of Ger-

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Fig. 52. Koblenz, the "Old Castle" (Alte Burg) in 1991: Overlooking the Mosel and its famous Balduin Bridge (built around 1340), this former town castle of the Archbishop of Trier has housed parts of the civil library and archive, a sympathetic "recycling" similar to that of Eltville. Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

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man society and, as we have seen throughout this study, was a major factor in the preservation and/or reconstruction of the Rhenish castles. Around 1900 growing local patriotism and a desire to educate and indoctrinate the young in love of country emerged as added factors which would prolong the castle preservation movement into the twentieth century. On the other hand, the use of castles as hostels probably had minimal success pedagogically. Although the ambience of a ruin or castle-like reconstruction may have helped in indoctrinating young people, success in the endeavour likely depended more on the teaching skills of their leaders, parents, and teachers than on architecture. But as with tourism, involvement of youth leaders and sympathetic authorities probably saved some ruins from ultimate disappearance, although in Stahleck's case, much of the original was lost in reconstruction. Yet what more might have been lost to weather, quarrying, and neglect? Castle rebuilding as a heritage movement reflected an atavistic attitude, fearful of the modern world, seeking to revive the values of a longdead era. Castle-rebuilders did not try to adapt past values to present realities but instead sought a retreat into the past, defiantly upholding oldregime attitudes in a hated present.20 Even many young people were willing to believe in this ethos, as the values of the Youth Movement and as Stahleck and other Middle Rhine castle-hostels reveal. Admittedly, the museums and libraries housed in castles do not explicitly show this reactionary nationalism at work. In fact they offer examples of a more constructive adaptation of historic architecture for contemporary purposes, a point which we must consider more fully in our final chapter.

PART Six CONCLUSION

SIXTEEN

"CAN STONES SPEAK?" t Burg Stahleck "one can actually become, for a short time, a A knight. .." and "can enter into history" claims a recent German

writer.1 As we have seen, for two centuries and for various reasons, millions of people have shared a desire to "travel in time," not a risible hope but one which has inspired some of the best historical writing and may also serve a healing social and psychological purpose. Focussing on castle rebuilding and on the related preservation movement, this study has tried to explain the reasons (escapist, political, scholarly, and so on) why Germans tried to revive or preserve a medieval landscape on the Middle Rhine.2

Recreating the Middle Ages The rebuilding of ruined castles, the construction of pseudo-castles and the drive to preserve ruins qua ruins were responses to nineteenth-century political, cultural, social, and economic change. Castle-mania reflected much of German national experience of this turbulent era. Although related to the modern heritage conservation movement, it was not solely concerned with understanding and appreciating the past as such but was also rooted in contemporary attitudes and served present needs. Even when the Middle Ages were to recreated in an intellectual sense (i.e., when a ruin was preserved in order to understand the medieval age better), non-scholarly aims occasionally prevailed.

Notes to Chapter Sixteen are on pp. 373-74. 304

"Can Stones Speak?" I 305

The factors which inspired the actual rebuilding of castle ruins ranged from a romantic yearning for an ideal age, a desire to buttress the power of the Prussian state, aristocratic ambition and bourgeois pretension, to tourism, nationalistic pride, scholarly interest, and the Heimat movement. Many of these factors were reactions to the sweeping changes brought about by the modernization process. In a useful shorthand, many history textbooks describe nineteenth-century European developments as a reaction to the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. The effect of these changes provoked a sense of insecurity among the rulers, aristocracy, upper middle class, and ultimately among the nameless artisans, shopkeepers, and professionals of small towns. This psycho-political motive reflected a sense that things were changing too fast; that valued institutions and beliefs were in danger of being lost; that the present age was dangerous to dearly held attitudes and institutions; that life in general must have been better in an earlier period. The medieval past became a refuge from a present to which many did not want to adapt.3 Sometimes this mood was merely sentimental, but often it was political. As we have seen, Germany's elites expressed and used their own conservative nationalism in the rebuilding of castles. They were assisted by spontaneous developments in other spheres. A literary and artistic movement—romanticism—inspired an interest in castle ruins as milieux in which comfortable day-dreaming could occur. The political ambition of the Prussian regime occasioned the rebuilding of Ehrenbreitstein, the only castle ruin rebuilt as a genuine military stronghold to resist French invasion and quell local rebellion. In the reconstruction of Rheinstein, Sooneck, and Stolzenfels, the Hohenzollerns' rebuilding added private romanticism to the motive of princely power enhancement. In these castles, the desire to state the Prussian presence in the newly acquired Rhenish province accompanied a desire to escape into an apparently less complicated past. Aristocratic and bourgeois castle rebuilding reflects a similar combination of romanticism with status-defending or status-expressing motives. Burg Lahneck, for example, is a good reflection of the ambitions of the nobility, while Schonburg and other castles reveal the pretensions of the upper middle class, the latter seeking to emulate the former. Princely, noble, and bourgeois castles were to be symbols of an ostensibly permanent establishment, unshakeable by change. Nationalists, at first radical and later conservative, also sought to use castles in a defence against the loss of a treasured entity: a strong and united German Empire. By the 1840s an increase in tourist travel led to

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Fig. 53. Above Oberlahnstein, Burg Lahneck in 1980: A rainy mist recreates the sort of evocative vista which enthralled nineteenth-century romantics and which will probably still produce a frisson of delight in twenty-first century tourists. And why not? Courtesy of Robert R. Taylor.

"Can Stones Speak?" I 307

the use of ruins, reconstructed or not, as restaurants, hotels or scenic outlooks for the pleasure of German patriots as well as foreign travellers. (The profit motive, of course, was also evident here.) At this time nationalism in its revolutionary stage inspired the partial reconstruction of Burg Rolandseck ("Roland's Arch") and the "Royal Throne." By the end of the century, among the patrons and architects involved in reconstruction, romantic nostalgia was less in evidence, but nationalism, now more conservative, was still a powerful factor. The best example of this is the work of Bodo Ebhardt at Marksburg after 1899, which also reflects the more scholarly approach now being taken towards ruins; a concern for historical precision was noticeable. The reconstruction of Burg Katz reflects the controversy among heritage conservationists over the matter of accuracy, where national pride was less in evidence. Castles, however, were now seen as instruments for giving the young and the ignorant an appreciation of national history and culture. Therefore attempts were made to set up youth hostels in, for example, Stahleck. Another way of achieving this aim was to build a museum into a ruin as at Rheinfels, which phenomenon occurred almost as a coda to the main movement. Antiquarianism and scholarship were at work here, and the curators and historians were less in the service of a conservative nationalism. In short, the German experience shows how political motives can influence undertakings which appear to be purely antiquarian, or esthetic matters such as rebuilding a famous castle or the buttressing of a beautiful ruin. In the late twentieth century Germans have continued to be concerned with the fate of the Rhenish castle ruins. As our study has suggested, governments, private associations, and individuals still try to protect these structures. Their work, as did the earlier efforts of the Hohenzollerns, aristocrats, wealthy bureaucrats, and bankers etc., reveals the effect of many influences but also shows how far heritage conservation techniques and attitudes have developed since the early nineteenth century. Although the use and embellishment of these ruined or intact castles still reflects certain social and cultural attitudes, they are no longer part of a landscape which speaks of reactionary and/or nationalistic political values. Ironic reversals have occurred. Industrialization, and especially the spread of the railway, partly accounted for the demise of certain castles and the birth of a movement to save others. Now the railways' older structures are regarded as equally valuable "heritage" monuments. The station at Rolandseck, built between 1855 and 1856, has elegant glass and cast iron porches, and wide balconies from which wonderful views of the

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Rhine, including the Seven Hills and Drachenfels, were savoured. One could ride a donkey from here up to nearby Roland's Arch. Designed to resemble a rural villa, the station saw many social and cultural events. As vegetation obscured the view, more commodious leisure facilities developed, the Federal Railways sought efficiency, and the station was scheduled to be demolished. In 1971, however, the provincial government intervened, "recycling" it as an art gallery and cultural centre, while maintaining it as a railway station.4 And so modernization in the form of railways, first seen as constructive, then, to a later generation, destructive, is now regarded as another phenomenon worthy of study, its artifacts deserving preservation.

Rescuing the Present In 1815 the valley of the Middle Rhine was lined with vineyards and orchards, traversed by some commercial river traffic, but with a somnolent economy. The most impressive visual features of its towns were their churches. From Cologne to Mainz, the former "Priests' Lane" (Pfaffengasse) was still marked by the spires and towers of chapels, parish churches, or cathedrals. As for the ruins of medieval castles which crowned the hilltops or dotted the river bank, they were of no use to anyone save as quarries. Yet about the same time began a great landscape transformation. The Prussian government, soldiers, princes, poets and painters, native and German tourists, nationalists, historians, pedagogues—all played a role in a radical change in the look of the Middle Rhine. Although many factors were involved in this reconstruction, it was not impelled by simple, well-funded antiquarianism or scholarship but, as we have seen, castles "restored" by Hohenzollerns, nobles, and bourgeois displayed "the signature of power on environment."5 Even those lesser projects which transformed ruins into youth hostels revealed a political purpose. Governments and elites, teachers and architects took a leading role in what gradually became known as heritage conservation or Denkmalpflege—yet always with a view to creating new political symbols to reflect their own values and to command the public's respect. The pioneering Hessian edict of 1818, for example, aimed to use buildings for patriotic and educational purposes, and later laws and projects did the same. Robert Hewison's view that the late twentieth-century "heritage industry" of Britain "involves a reassertion of social values that the democratic progress of the twentieth century is doing away with" need be only slightly reworded to apply to the German castle enthusiasm of the nine-

"Can Stones Speak?" I 309

teenth century.6 "Democratic progress" was one of the changes which the German rebuilders wished to turn back, by using castles to assert suitable values, social and political.7 Is this to be regretted? In the United States and Canada, and particularly in Ontario with its exceptionally weak heritage legislation, lamentations are often heard, because government and powerful private institutions do not take a more active role in the conservation and preservation of our architectural heritage. Nevertheless the involvement of influential authorities in the heritage movement can lead to manipulation of process and results. The German experience on the Middle Rhine suggests that the involvement of the powerful and rich can include the intrusion of political motives—which many North Americans would deplore. To a large extent, the Rhenish castles were (especially in the years 1815-60) deliberately fabricated symbols of the political power of the Prussian elite, designed to impress and even intimidate the local population. After 1871, with the approval of many of the general public, they became the didactic symbols of the strength and glory of the revived German Empire. And so, whether the Rhenish ruins were being rebuilt, restored, or preserved from the first entry of the Hohenzollerns on the scene to the era of Bodo Ebhardt, a political motive persisted. The rebuilt castles were "summoned ... to the rescue of the present."8 Nevertheless, contradictions abound. If the reconstruction of Stolzenfels, Rheinstein, Sooneck or, later Heimburg or Katz, damaged irretrievably the medieval architectural substance of the ruin, in the first three cases, at least, the result was works of architecture which increasingly have become valuable in themselves, both as monuments to the taste of the nineteenth century and as sources of tourist revenue. Moreover, the work of patriotic restorationists such as Ebhardt at Marksburg has not extensively damaged the original structure, and ongoing restoration and preservation at the site constantly reveals further insights into medieval architecture and culture.9 In fact, the intervention of the Hohenzollerns in the 1820s was as powerful an element in the revival of interest in the Rhenish ruins as was romanticism or scholarly research. Moreover, the princes (unlike the poets) had the wherewithal to recreate a version of the Middle Ages which helped to inspire further research—and ultimately greater accuracy—in restoration and preservation. Without the involvement of the Prussian elite, would the ruins of Drachenfels or Stolzenfels have suffered a better fate in local private hands? In 1925 when Oskar Doering, Ebhardt's biographer, looked back on the reconstruction of Hohkonigsburg in Alsace, he believed that here the

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German people and their princes had been united in a common effort to "reawaken ... that spirit of genuine Germanness, the sacred inheritance of the German Fatherland, German culture, German art, German steadfastness and readiness for sacrifice, German courage and German foresight."10 Little of this rhetoric is heard today. While Germans remain justifiably proud of the Middle Rhine castles, they do not seem to associate them with foreign invasion or with national humiliation or regeneration, as did their grandparents.11 Udo Borniger ended his recent history of Burg Stahleck with the comment that the international fame of the youth hostel there is so great that, in the 1980s, more foreign youths had stayed overnight here than had Germans.12 When Stahleck's restored tower was re-opened in 1967, however, a breath of nineteenth-century Burgenschwdrmerei was felt in the reference to Stahleck as "a fragment of the romantic age." Nevertheless, in the presence of the leaders of the French and English youth organizations, one German speaker on that occasion explicitly dedicated the castle to "the youth of neighbouring lands, indeed the whole world."13 The German experience should not seem alien to North Americans. In Central Europe during the last century and in North America today, the demands of a modernizing society conflicted—and conflict—with the need to preserve meaningful architectural documents of the past. In both societies, there was—and still is—a belief that newness is good and change ("progress") is always beneficial or at least profitable. The unquestioned German faith in the railways in the 1850s, for example, parallels the post-1945 North American faith in freeways. In both eras, communal identity and valuable parts of the built environment were eradicated. There are differences, however. The architectural documents of Germany were ruined and had been so for centuries. Even those not ruined had long ago lost their original function. The architectural documents of Canada and the United States, on the other hand, are often in use until shortly before they are threatened, hence are usually not ruined and could still be used, although not necessarily for their original purposes. The danger here is not from decay over centuries or damage in war but from wilful destruction for purposes of private, corporate or government profit. When the castle rebuilders constructed Stolzenfels or Katz in order to realize political aims or private ambitions, the problem was not that the end product was ugly or useless or that the rebuilders were not honourable men. Much of Stolzenfels, for example, is beautiful and the whole is, as a museum, interesting and, as a tourist site, profitable. Its rebuilders, moreover, were not especially corrupt. The legitimate regret of scholars

"Can Stones Speak?" I 311

was that the original architectural substance as evidence of the past was damaged, possibly irrevocably. "A castle or a castle ruin is a historical document." This, the first maxim of a 1988 German handbook for preservationists,14 expresses a principle widely upheld today but learned only after a century of mistakes.

The "Language" of the Rhenish Ruins Today What do the castles historically "document"? Undoubtedly, the ruins of Ehrenfels or Hammerstein still speak volumes to the archeologist and historian. Unfortunately, in the reconstruction of castles such as Sooneck, much has been lost. On the other hand, as we have seen, the history of the Rhenish castles did not cease when their original tenants moved into urban Schlosser. These castles, ruined or not, acquired a new purpose in the early nineteenth century, a life which they still sustain, thanks to the various influences which we have studied. Thus even the romantic and historically inaccurate reconstructions, such as Rheinstein, document public attitudes of the 1800s, which has been one of the themes of this book. North Americans should not assume that Germans have been better at architectural conservation than they have been. As noted, if Europeans were ahead of us in preserving their historic buildings, they also outstripped us in destruction. Napoleon, for example, destroyed castles when they had lost most of their military value. Germans then mined their ruins for building stones or built entirely new structures on ruins of priceless historical interest. They forcibly grafted new buildings onto older, damaged, ones. Railway builders wiped out other valuable traces of medieval architecture. In each of these cases, historic records in stone (impossible to replace) were destroyed. Both societies today share the need to adapt sensitively their valuable older buildings to modern needs, with minimum damage to historically revealing and otherwise valuable architecture. Governments, private wealth, and citizens' organizations all share this responsibility. Nevertheless, although appropriately preserving a historic structure as a museum is intellectually pleasing, not every building, whether ruined or not, can be put to this purpose. Adapting ruined or rebuilt castles to serve the tourist trade may have given them an added lease on life. Nevertheless the combination of modern transportation, high standards of living and tourism still threaten the integrity of the Middle Rhine landscape and communities. As I write this, European heritage conservation groups,

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galvanized by justifiable horror, are protesting the plans to build a "Gran Dorado" holiday resort near Oberwesel. Elsewhere in Germany the managers of important historic and cultural sites, such as the Wartburg, find that growing human traffic undermines the very stability of old walls. On the other hand, while admittedly the flood of tourists to museums housed in castles or other impressive older structures can damage the architectural fabric of these buildings, an argument can be made that the adaptive re-use of parts of ruins as hotels or restaurants actually preserves them from further ruin. To be sure, most tourists do not worry about the difference between reconstructed and authentic castles. Although they are impressed to know that a certain structure is "five hundred years old!" they do not care if, as in Godesburg's case, the restaurant and hotel were built in 1960. Still, without the intrusion of the modern and the touristic, contemporary economic realities prescribe abandonment or worse for some of the Rhenish castle ruins. This is a dilemma which will be difficult to resolve.

Some Lessons North Americans should not feel superior to Germans. We should not assume that politics or nationalism have played less of a role in our preservations or reconstructions. In Canada, at least, the extensive and costly reconstruction of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia and of Quebec's Lower Town have been undertaken at least in part to affirm the francophone presence on this continent and—paradoxically—to strengthen Canadian political unity. In the United States, it is a given that Americans take patriotic pride in the preserved homes of the Founding Fathers and hundreds of lesser politicians, even those of questionable integrity. We are also familiar with the problem of preserved historic sites as vulgarized tourist meccas. The danger exists that historic structures, ruined or intact, can suffer precisely because the public has learned to value them. The hordes at Drachenfels are duplicated in Canada at Niagara-on-the-Lake, a historic town which has attracted an important theatre festival, a score of good restaurants, a new "up-scale" housing subdivision, and thousands of visitors annually—all of which threaten to destroy that charm which originally made the town so attractive. Obviously, controls of some kind must be enforced. Perhaps the Germans will offer North Americans lessons here as well. Most readers know how a historic building as a symbol can be passed from one regime to another, its meaning changed. The survival of Tsarist

"Can Stones Speak?" / 313

palaces during the Soviet era in Russia is a good example. In our study of the Rhenish castles we have seen a similar, if less dramatic, example. While some ruins (such as Roland's Arch) have lost most of their original symbolic nationalistic content, others continue to appeal to, and be used by, Germans. Burg Stahleck, rebuilt in the era of intense nationalism, may survive as a source of patriotic inspiration, but also functions as home to European youth as well. Rheinfels, preserved as an artifact of national pride at the turn of the century, was nearly "Nazified" in the 1930s, but endures, like Stahleck, as a site where Germans may indulge in patriotic reverie or simply marvel at curios in the museum, or just "have fun." Nothing, of course, prevents later generations or governments from reviving the Rhine castles as symbols of a glorious Empire tragically ruined by foreign treachery. The didactic title of this chapter is borrowed from Bodo Ebhardt. Although one may disparage his blatantly reactionary views and his intemperate nationalism, one can sympathize with his genuine concern for structures which, while historically fascinating, are also quite simply useful. Older buildings, sensitively "recycled," may indeed assist scholars, or symbolize a community's history and values. Few conservationists, moreover, should condemn the more mundane use to which the Rhine castles are put today, for while they contribute immeasurably to the economies of small towns such as St. Goar or Bacharach, their function may be even more profound. At Godesburg, writes a Canadian journalist, "a casual visitor feels he has returned to the thirteenth century."15 In a postmodern society increasingly beset by social, political, and psychological tensions, the castles can offer the travelling public relaxation, instruction, and esthetic enjoyment. Both natives and foreigners alike can rejoice that Pfalzgrafenstein, for example, is a beautiful monument, a comforting reference point in a world constantly being changed by mass communication, confusing technology, and ephemeral popular culture. Far away from the village of Kaub, the image of the Pfalz is correctly associated with cultural enlightenment, romantic dreams, gastronomic and viticultural pleasures, and physical rehabilitation—all through the imbibing of sunshine, fresh air, and perhaps a glass of Riesling on the open top deck of a "white ship." Today the castles of the Middle Rhine are part of the cultural heritage of every member of western civilization.16 The question which both Canadian anglophones and francophones must ask themselves is: Is re-creating a historic site worth the expense? What parts of the built environment are worth saving and who decides? The German experience suggests that the most intense concern for the

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national heritage is felt by nation-states in which there is a profound sense of disunity and an unease with present reality. Rebuilding the castles of the Middle Rhine, however, does not seem to have prevented the national catastrophes which befell Germany in the twentieth century. Unity of sorts, re-achieved in 1990, was more the result of changes in the international scene than of internal efforts, much less of domestic Kulturpolitik. Moreover, as we have seen, each of those individuals and groups concerned to preserve structures has had its own agenda. Neither scholars nor "grassroots" enthusiasts, neither the wealthy nor the bureaucrats, lacked political motives in the modern German reconstruction phenomenon. One lesson seems to be that great political and nationalistic aims cannot be achieved through preservation or restoration projects. Ruins should be cherished as such since their architectural reconstruction, even if accurate, can obscure the genuine past from us. Yet because a society without architectural clues to its experience and identity suffers from collective amnesia, the conservation of some extant historic buildings can and should serve a public goal beyond the merely academic or esthetic aims. The task for conservationists is to take a constructive position between the pole of purism and that of political exploitation.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX ONE

GLOSSARY OF ARCHITECTURAL TERMS USED arcade: row of arches, resting on columns, free-standing or attached to a wall arrow slits: loops or embrasures: slits in walls through which archers fired Auslattferburg: "spur or ridge-castle", so named because of its topographical site Burg: see castle Baroque (Barock): seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century architecture, marked by lively decoration and swelling forms battlement: a narrow wall constructed on the outside edge of the top of a wall as protection for defenders of a castle bastion: a low structure projecting from a castle wall, usually sharp-angled to protect the curtain wall Bergfried: see keep Biedermeier: interior decor of the period 1815-48, characterized by simple classicism Burgwart: see castellan casemate: a small room built into a castle wall castellan: commanding officer of a castle castle: a fortified dwelling coparcenary castle: a castle in which several noble families lived console: a bracket or support for a balcony, decoration (i.e., a statue) or machicolation corbel: a block of stone projecting from a wall 316

Glossary of Architectural Terms Used I 317317

crenellations: notches in battlements curtain wall: main outer wall of a castle, often connecting towers or bastions drawbridge: a platform at the main gate of a castle, over the moat, which can be drawn up by chains or ropes finial: a slim, vertical piece of stone decorating the top of a merlon or a roof frieze: narrow strip of stone used to define, connect, or decorate parts of a castle gable: end part of a wall on the front of a roof, often also as a decoration above a window or door Ganerbenburg: see coparcenary castle Gipfelburg, a "summit-castle" Gothic: architecture of the later Middle Ages, characterized by pointed arches in wall openings Gothic Revival: a late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century movement to revive Gothic architecture; "Neo-Gothic" half-timber: wooden frame walls filled with clay and sticks Hangburg: a castle which sits or "hangs" half or two thirds of the way up a hill, usually on a promontory hipped roof: a roof with sloping in place of vertical ends keep: the main tower (donjon, Bergfried) of a castle, in Germany often tall and narrow machicolation: an opening in a projection from a wall or tower from which to drop objects on an enemy moat: a ditch around a castle, often filled with water merlon: tall segment of alternating tall and low parts of a battlement Neo-Gothic: see Gothic Revival oriel window: an upper floor bay window portcullis: iron clad grille of wood, suspended on chains, moved up and down at the main gate of a castle palace: as distinct from a castle, an undefended dwelling, usually in a town Palas: living quarters of a castle ravelin: a fortress' outwork consisting of two connected walls of a salient, beyond the moat ring-wall: a circular defensive wall, usually enclosing a Palas and a Bergfried Romanesque: early medieval architecture, characterized by round arches salient: a projecting bastion Schildmauer: see shield-wall

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shield-wall: a particularly thick and high wall protecting the only line of attack to a castle built on a mountain or on a spur Schloss: see palace step-gable: a gable with stepped outline on both sides Talhurg: a "valley-castle," lying in the floor of a valley. Some Talburgen are actually Wasserburgen, "water-castles," their moats fed by the Rhine itself turret: a narrow tower jutting out from a larger one, used as a lookout Wasserburg: a castle the moat of which is linked to a natural body of water (a river or a lake) Zwinger: the outermost wall of a castle

APPENDIX Two

MEDIEVAL FANTASIES Bless'd ... is he who, midst his tufted trees, Some ruin'd castle's lofty towers sees, Imbosom'd high upon the mountain's brow, Or nodding o'er the stream that glides below.1

T oday, tourists who wander through the "tufted trees" of the Niederwald above the Rhine may come with some surprise upon a small

castle-like ruin almost submerged in the greenery on the "mountain's brow." Signs indicate that this is "Rossel Castle," built in the 1770s by Count von Ostein, at nearly the same time that Richard Payne Knight wrote the above lines. Rossel has no "lofty towers," and sceptics may believe that it is too small or even too "new" to be a genuine medieval Burg, and they are correct. Little political intent went into its construction, for it was entirely a product of romanticism. Burg Rossel was nevertheless the first "knightly castle" to be built on the Middle Rhine in the modern era.

Burg Rossel Rossel stands 250 metres above the river on the east bank, just north of Rudesheim, from which it can be reached by cable lift. In early views of the area, such as that of the English artist Robert Batty (1789-1848), Rossel appears from Bingen across the Rhine as a strange small knob of a structure "imbosom'd high" upon a spur of the Taunus. Today it is not Notes to Appendix Two are on p. 374. 319

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visible from Bingen or Riidesheim because the forest has grown to surround it, but its close proximity to the Rheingau makes it still a muchvisited site. Atop an almost perpendicular cliff, Rossel's walls rise on a square foundation with a round tower at one corner. Built of rubble stone consisting of Taunus quartzite, the "ruin" was never plastered or painted, as those of genuine castles often were. A rough, weatherbeaten look was wanted, but decorative touches suggesting the Middle Ages were also needed; hence the corbelling around the upper walls and the pointed windows. Count von Ostein embellished Rossel's precincts with an "Enchanted Grotto," a tunnel sixty metres long, with a rotunda at one end, from which impressive views into the Rhine valley could be enjoyed from lanes cut through the woods. As well there was a classical "forest temple" and a hermitage. These structures were all required by a mind imbued with late eighteenth century romanticism—and absolutely essential was a "ruin." Never intended as a residence, Rossel's interior served no practical purpose. Of course strolling aristocrats, rounding a corner on a semi-wild path, would suddenly encounter it in the distance and enjoy delightfully melancholy, if not actually "bless'd," thoughts. Built mainly as a viewing platform, it served well for at least half a century, until it began fall into genuine ruin. (It is closed to the public today.) In 1840 Adelheid von Stolterfoth, declared its site to be "definitely the most beautiful spot in the Rheingau."2 In 1841 the historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) found that the view "could compare in poetic and in picturesque quality with the loveliest and most magnificent that I have ever seen."3

Mosburg The Duke of Nassau built his fake ruin near Wiesbaden in an English garden. Mosburg was designed by the ducal architect Carl Florian Goetz (1763-1829). Unlike Rossel the "ruin" was built on late-medieval foundations of a water-castle, probably an eighth-century fortress of the rulers of Nassau.4 Nevertheless, unplastered and rough stone walls, creeping vines, pointed windows, and irregular towers prevail here. Mosburg was built to look overgrown by nature and sunk into a green landscape. Walking along the winding paths of the English garden one encountered the "ruin" suddenly or else glimpsed it from afar across the artificial lake. Its surrounding moat is spanned by a three-arched stone bridge leading to an entrance in a tower and a small courtyard. The main

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building is of rubble stone and brick. Its four-sided tower housed a banquet room of—not medieval—but classical decor, and a circular staircase. A wrong-headed desire for historical accuracy was at work here: when the Church of Our Lady in nearby Mainz was demolished, some of its stones were incorporated, as were six gothic tombstones (including two of the counts of Katzenelnbogen) from an abbey at nearby Eberbach. In the tower of the Mosburg the tombstones were set up in niches, as was done later in the first major castle reconstruction on the Middle Rhine, at Rheinstein. (These artifacts were returned to the abbey in 1936.) "Traditional German furnishings" were sought in order to make the interior as genuine as possible.5 By about 1805 Duke Frederick August and other Germans were beginning to be aware of Germany's great historical past. But visitors did not condemn the looting of genuine historic sites. In 1841 Alois Schreiber recorded his pleasure at viewing the "priceless old monuments from various places and from various ages ... especially the abandoned abbey of Eberbach."6 A respect for the integrity of genuine ruins would not develop for another seventy years. Open to the public, this "ruin" continued to please until at least the middle of the nineteenth century. Goethe found it to be "a very pleasingly designed knightly castle."7 Later Richard Wagner, whose operas were set in a mythical Rhineland, urged Duke Adolf von Nassau to let him use Mosburg as a home and studio—in vain. After Adolf was forced to abdicate (in 1866, when Prussia seized the Duchy after defeating Austria), Mosburg was sold to the new government. Neglected, it soon fell into genuine decay. Nevertheless in 1905, as a growing interest in local traditions transformed several of the Rhine castles,8 it became a museum of local history. For the past forty years, however, with its interior closed, gutted, and scrawled with graffiti, it has been what one visitor accurately described as "an abomination of desolation."9 At last, Mosburg is a genuine ruin.

The Stein Tower Rossel and Mosburg were built free-standing, in versions of an English park. The Stein Tower was added to a pre-existent building, itself in a park. This third example of early castle enthusiasm on the Middle Rhine is thus partly similar in intention to Rossel and Mosburg, but was not supposed to resemble a ruin. Moreover, its construction reflects a political motive—a conservatism tinged with atavistic nationalism—which would

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influence deeply the castle builders of the later nineteenth century. As well, its symbolism had a much wider appeal, as we have seen. In 1808, after his career as advisor to the Prussian king had ended, Carl Frederick vom und zum Stein (1757-1831) returned to his birthplace, the family Schloss in the town of Nassau on the Lahn River not far from where it joins the Rhine. In his capacity as first minister, he had helped to revitalize Prussia after its catastrophic defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Jena (1806), and to create the conditions by which the Prussians, with their allies, drove the French out of Central Europe. To Stein goes much of the credit for the modernization of the Prussian army and bureaucracy as well as the liberation of the Prussian serfs. Deeply impressed by the wartime wave of national feeling which had swept the German educated class, he envisioned a revival of a German empire. In this mood he commissioned the architect Johann Claudius von Lassaulx to design a neoGothic tower as an addition to his home (the aforementioned Scbloss, built 1621 and enlarged 1755). The tower was to commemorate the Wars of Liberation 1812-15. Construction lasted from 1816 to 1819. The Stein Tower is of pink sandstone, three storeys high, on an eightsided foundation, between the middle and southern wings of the older palace. An excellent example of the neo-Gothic, the tower has slightly protruding buttresses, pointed windows, and a pointed main portal. It is sometimes referred to as the "Memorial Tower," because of its function as a patriotic monument. The Cologne sculptor Peter Josef Imhof created neo-Gothic bas-reliefs for the facade representing the wartime virtues of unity, faith, courage, and endurance. The patron saints of Prussia, Austria, and England are shown, while Alexander Nevsky stands for the patron saint of Russia. The entrance is also embellished with the comforting first words of Luther's hymn, "A mighty fortress is our God." On the main floor is a marble bath, which Heinz Biehn suggests was designed to involve physical purification as a preliminary to the spiritual exaltation which the upper floors should provide.10 Above lay Stein's study and library, with genuine medieval stained glass taken from the parish church at Dausenau, another example of culling artifacts from genuine medieval sites. As well, there are portraits of Luther and Melanchthon, the Saxon Electors who inaugurated the German Reformation and the Prussian generals of the Wars of Liberation, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Bliicher. Very probably it was in this study that Stein worked on his great collection of German historical documents, the Montimenta Germaniae Historica, itself evidence of a growing interest in serious historical study. On the third floor is a Hall of Honour with ribbed-

Medieval Fantasies I 323

vault ceiling, plaques and marble busts commemorating the recent wars. Here are King Frederick William III of Prussia, Tsar Alexander of Russia, and Emperor Francis I of Austria. These are the work of Christian Rauch, who was later to work at the Prussian king's Stolzenfels. Originally this room, too, was lit through stained glass windows, giving it a chapel-like feeling. The Stein Tower, which became a great attraction for German patriots in the following decades, is an example of a cult of the Wars of Liberation which Germans maintained until at least the First World War. Countless monuments to this conflict were built on the Middle Rhine and throughout Germany.11 Although the Tower, like Frederick William TV's Stolzenfels, is a nationalist monument, it looks backward to a revival of the Holy Roman Empire rather than forward. This romantic nationalism of the elite did not envision a reunited Germany with modern institutions and a capitalist economy, as did the nationalism of the liberal middle classes. As we have seen, the ruined castles became part of this obsession. The Tower is also a reminder of the growing German fascination with the past and the creation of the modern discipline of history. Thirdly it is, of course, a miniature imitation fortress, like Rossel and Mosburg, reflecting the love of "knightly castles" and their romantic connotations.12 The passion for "instant" ruins and striking towers continued along the Rhine, and as late as 1894 a Kunstruine (artificial ruin) was built at Schloss Reichardshausen, near Oestrich on the east bank of the river between Riidesheim and Eltville. Here a wealthy vintner concealed some of his more practical, functional buildings behind a facade of a gabled Palas with a high round tower of red standstone. Rossel, Mosburg, and the Stein Tower were the first Rhenish products of romanticism, which began to look on the natural landscape and relics of the past as the occasion of deep and stirring thoughts and feelings. They were not supposed to appeal to the masses, as later reconstructed castles were intended to do. This romantic impulse was never absent from later castle rebuilding or ruin preservation, and has not much declined today. On the other hand, the Stein Tower, at least, suggests a new interest in Central Europe as the home of German-speaking people. This atavistic nationalism was not linked to political reform, but rather looked backward to a supposed golden age of German political unity and strength. It was therefore deeply conservative and, insofar as the elite castle-rebuilders were concerned, would remain so.

APPENDIX THREE

HOHENZOLLERN CASTLE PROJECTS OUTSIDE THE RHINELAND absolute monarchy's final century, perhaps no other dynasty built as I nactively as did the Hohenzollerns. The Romanoffs may have achieved greater scale, but in the period 1815-1918 the Prussian royal family probably erected more buildings. We have referred to Frederick William TV's architecture in Berlin and Potsdam and William IPs palace in Posen. The details of these and other structures lie beyond the scope of our study, but three examples of Hohenzollern castle reconstruction outside the Middle Rhine are indeed relevant.

Marienburg Because the motives for rebuilding this East Prussian castle of the Teutonic Knights were not simply historical or esthetic, they help to shed light on the background of the Rhenish castle reconstructions.1 Founded around 1274, this huge fortress had been rebuilt by the Knights of the Teutonic Order in the fourteenth century as part of their eastward crusade to convert and conquer the Slavic peoples. In 1794 Frederick Gilly (1772-1800) had made sketches of Marienburg which revived interest in the ruined fortress. Then the poet Max von Schenkendorf described it in Notes to Appendix Three are on pp. 374-75. 324

Hohenzollern Castle Projects Outside the Rhineland I 325

an essay published in 1803. Joseph von Eichendorff, another romantic poet of the time wrote about the condition of this ruined masterpiece, lamenting its decay. In 1804 King Frederick William III ordered that the castle be rebuilt. But the Prussians' terrible defeat at the Battle of Jena retarded the project until, with court architect Schinkel in charge, reconstruction began in 1817 and was finished in 1842. In 1824 Goethe noted his approval that the "important" and "enormous monument" was being restored.2 In 1815 Theodor von Schon (1773-1856), former advisor to Prussian Chancellor Stein, suggested to his successor Hardenberg that the Marienburg would be a suitable site for meetings of the Prussian Diet, thus strengthening the union of monarch and people which had ostensibly flourished in the recent Wars of Liberation.3 After von Eichendorff had produced the drama, The Last Hero of Marienburg in 1830, he was commissioned by King Frederick William IV to write a pamphlet on "The Reconstruction of the Palace of the Order of the Teutonic Knights" (1842). In this latter work Eichendorff declared that a "sworn brotherhood" should develop between the Marienburg and the Rhineland. The Marienburg project was possibly what inspired Prince Frederick to reconstruct a castle on the Rhine. These early reconstruction efforts at Marienburg were condemned by later scholars such as Otto Piper. Nevertheless a second building phase lasted from 1881 to 1922, and the Nazi government used the castle for functions such as the swearing in of new Hitler Youth members, which was carried in the Gothic hall with candlelight and torches. Marienburg was badly damaged in the Second World War, after which the town associated with the castle became the Polish Malbork. The castle, however, was partly reconstructed again in the 1960s.

Burg Hohenzollern In an era when dynastic privileges were being challenged, family pride compelled the Prussian king to reconstruct Burg Hohenzollern near Hechingen on the Danube River in Wurttemberg (Fig. 54). The first castle was built here before 1267 on an isolated hilltop, and was rebuilt by 1466. Burg Hohenzollern was the family seat (Stammburg) of the Hohenzollerns. In 1415 the dynasty's northern branch had been granted Brandenburg. In 1576 the southern or Roman Catholic Hohenzollerns split into several lines, including the house of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, and the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Meanwhile, although the castle had been strengthened after 1618, it gradually fell into ruin.

326 I Castles of the Rhine

Fig. 54. The German States, France, and Luxemburg in 1815. Courtesy of Loris Gasparotto, cartographer, Brock University.

Hohenzollern Castle Projects Outside the Rhineland I 327

When Crown Prince Frederick William visited the ruins in 1819, he decided to rebuild the castle. At that time only the chapel and a tower were standing. He started some maintenance work, did not like it, and began again in 1844. In the meantime he had commissioned Rudolf von Stillfried-Rattonitz to collect and study early documents relating to the Hohezollerns and to investigate the possibility of reconstruction. Frederick August Stiiler would be the architect, aided by the military engineer von Prittwitz. Only after the frightening and violent 1848 outbreaks, and after the dynasty's southern territories of Hohenzollern and Sigmaringen became parts of the Prussian state in 1851, did work begin in earnest. Unlike Stolzenfels, the new Burg Hohenzollern became a fortified refuge to shelter the dynasty in troubled times.4 Subterranean rooms were provided in case of war or revolution. Frederick William, remembering the barricades that had blocked Berlin's streets in 1848, followed the construction closely, making suggestions for alteration. The work was largely finished by 1867. Like Stolzenfels, Hohenzollern was not a replica but almost entirely a new structure. The main buildings of Hohenzollern surround a horseshoe-shaped courtyard. The architect stressed vertical accents and a picturesque massing of structures of different heights. Spires, turrets, and towers predominate. There is a free-standing, four-sided, turreted gate tower, oriel windows, and step-gables. On Frederick William's suggestion the small chapel imitates the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and the west choir of the Naumburg Cathedral. The style is neo-Gothic, believed by nationalists to be the only genuine German style. Stiiler incorporated the remains into an impressive towered and spired romantic vision of a Middle Ages that never existed. Larger and more impressive than Stolzenfels, both at close hand and from a distance, it still appeals to the popular view of what a "fairy-tale castle" should be like,5 a good example of that "pathetic romanticism" which wanted "pure monuments of historical greatness."6 Its resemblance to a genuine castle was unimportant. For the Hohenzollern family, of course, the castle was important as the ancestral home. In 1865 the suggestion was made that Prussia might trade with Austria the enclave of Hohenzollern, without the castle, for part of Schleswig-Holstein, over which the two states were soon to be at war. King William I's dynastic pride would not allow this, for the castle was a monument to his family. The king, in fact, officiated at the fortress's opening ceremony in 1867 when the first service—Protestant—was held in the restored chapel. Kaiser William II loved to stay here, in "my dynasty's hereditary fortress."7

328 I Castles of the Rhine

In 1919 most of the major Hohenzollern palaces and castles became state property, but in the 1930s Hohenzollern reverted to the Hohenzollern family. At end of the Second World War the occupying French forces placed the last crown prince under house arrest here. Today Burg Hohenzollern has probably more significance for the ex-ruling family than it has ever had. The last emperor's grandson and head of the family, Prince Louis Ferdinand, sponsors concerts in the castle. More important, from 1945 to 1991 the sarcophagi of Kings Frederick William I and Frederick II ("the Great") rested here. (They have since been moved back to Potsdam.) The last crown prince and his consort Cecily, as well as Princes Hubertus and Frederick, are buried here, too, in a small cemetery. The banners of old Prussian regiments are kept here, and one of the bronze portals of the wrecked Emperor William Memorial Church in Berlin is installed in the Evangelical chapel. Bronze statues of Hohenzollerns originally created in the 1880s for the Berlin Arsenal's Hall of Honour are in the six bastions. A museum houses artifacts and mementoes of the Prussian rulers, including the royal crown created in 1889. A Sevres porcelain breakfast service belonging to Napoleon and seized by the Prussian general Bliicher at Waterloo, a souvenir of the Wars of Liberation, is in the treasury. Needless to say the castle is a great tourist attraction.

Schloss Sigmaringen The Hohenzollerns also reconstructed the castle of Sigmaringen on the Danube (like Burg Hohenzollern) in Wiirttemberg (Fig. 54). Begun in the twelfth century and expanded continually, the castle lies on a great crag overlooking the town of the same name and the Danube. As noted above, the descendants of the Swabian Hohenzollerns split in 1576 into two lines and both built castles. With the formal abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Hohenzollerns of Sigmaringen achieved full sovereignty. Participating in the French satellite "Confederation of the Rhine," with practical self-aggrandizement (and no modern nationalism), they entered the service of Napoleon, expanding their territories through the French emperor's secularization of clerical lands. From here this Hohenzollern line went on to further dubious distinction as the family whose Prince Leopold (1835-1905) was a candidate for the Spanish throne, a situation which led to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. In 1945 the castle briefly became the last seat of the Vichy government. After a fire in 1893 which destroyed the east wing, Schloss Sigmaringen was rebuilt 1899-1906 by the architect Emanuel von Seidel of Munich.

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Smaller and less imposing than Burg Hohenzollern, the palace's stepgables and red-tiled roofs present a warmer image. Its style is a romantic mixture of Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance. Prince Anton of Hohenzollern began a collection of prehistoric objects here and started a museum dedicated to the history of the dynasty. The palace has many large ornate rooms, including a baroque Hall of Ancestors, a weapons and coach collection, a room devoted to hunting trophies, paintings by old German masters, and a Heimat-museum. The Schloss is still owned by the Hohenzollerns.

Hohkonigsburg Hohkonigsburg stands west of Schlettstadt,8 forty-five kilometres (twentyeight miles) south of Strasbourg and fifteen kilometres (nine miles) west of the Upper Rhine, in politically sensitive Alsace (Fig. 54), populated by both French- and German-speaking people, but from the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) until 1919 a part of Germany. Founded in the twelfth century by the Hohenstaufen family, it was demolished in 1462. Although reconstruction followed, the Swedes burned it during the Thirty Years' War. By the nineteenth century Hohkonigsburg's ruin stretched out abandoned and gloomy on a ridge above the town. The importance of Hohkonigsburg to nationalists was made clear in a patriotic speech in March 1871 after the German victory over the French: The frontier province in the west [Alsace-Lorraine] has been won back for the national community. The estranged and lost sons of our common German mother have come home... . Simultaneously with the regaining of the old lands of the Reich, the old German Reich has been restored to life.9

The huge ruin above Schlettstadt, however, languished for nearly another thirty years until 1899, when the city council, which owned it, gave it to the emperor, hoping that he would finance its preservation or reconstitution, an action which echoed that of the burghers of Koblenz who earlier had given Stolzenfels' ruins to the crown prince. They may have been partly inspired by the notion that the castle, in the words of the new journal, Denkmalpflege, contained "many memories of the German Imperial age."10 Bodo Ebhardt's biographer, Oskar Doering, also developed the theme of the rebuilt fortress as a possession of the entire German nation, as both a monument to German greatness and an instrument for the education of German youth.11

330 I Castles of the Rhine

Eager to rebuild the castle immediately, the emperor in 1900 allocated 150,000 marks annually from his own budget for reconstruction and commissioned Ebhardt to undertake the task. For eight years the Reichstag allotted funds and some money also came from the government of Alsace-Lorraine. Therefore, said Doering (without offering any other evidence), "the construction of Hohkonigsburg was a concern of the whole German Fatherland." Not since the completion of the Cologne Cathedral, he claimed, had a construction project been such a "concern of the entire German people."12 Much remained of the original castle and many walls still stood up to the roofline. Ebhardt claimed that he did not seek a restoration (Wiederherstellung) which would cost too much, but sought on the other hand "to care for and to preserve what good fortune has left to us of the glories of greater times."13 This was his approach at Marksburg, but nevertheless he did much more on this project, so that only an expert can distinguish between the older and the rebuilt parts. Matching the old with the new required skilled artisans, so that Hohkonigsburg, like all of Ebhardt's castles, provided (in Doering's words) "training sites for a new age of German craftsmen." In fact such structures are "reminders that there are high artistic ideals, which one must not, in despair, or in a false interpretation of the democratic trend of our time, consign to the scrapheap."14 Obviously, Doering shared Ebhardt's suspicion of democracy. The completion of the castle was ceremoniously announced in May 1908, on, said Doering, "a day of joy, in which the whole Reich participated enthusiastically."15 An impressive structure, Hohkonigsburg's walls are of reddish stone, with red tile and green roofs. Like other Hohenzollern reconstructions in southwest Germany, Hohkonigsburg was embellished with drawbridges, turrets, large rooms decorated with hunting trophies, an armament and weapons collection, and so on. Given its much-disputed location, its appearance is appropriately more fortress-like than, for example, Sigmaringen. The reconstructed castle occasioned much controversy.16 In 1908 the editor of Der Burgwart felt obliged to defend this form of "restoration."17 In 1912 Otto Piper found it to be wanting in accuracy, because it was marred by several merely decorative structures and the roof forms were incorrect. Piper had found it much pleasanter and more informative to stroll through the beautiful ruin, wherein the castle's construction had been clearly revealed precisely because of its ruined condition. This insight was lost. "Nowadays," he wrote, " one can visit the new castle only with the enforced accompaniment of a tip-thirsty guide."18 Twenty

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years later Doering was still concerned to defend the architect from accusations of inaccuracy in restoration or—worse—destruction of the substance of a ruin which might offer valuable historical evidence. Ebhardt, said Doering, carried out "the most painstaking investigations of [the ruin's] structural stability as well as architectural research." To such work "we owe the final [sic] clarification of the history and development of this castle."19 Here was a note of that late nineteenth century confidence that all was known that could be known. This is not the place to defend or attack Ebhardt's scholarship, but it seems clear that his act of rebuilding Hohkonigsburg (as Schinkel's at Stolzenfels) prevented later scholars, with greater knowledge and better technology, from learning more from the ruin.

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NOTES

334 I Notes to pages xiii-2

Preface 1 Bernard Levin, Enthusiasms (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983), p. 122. 2 Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1964), p. 44. 3 An untranslatable German word meaning "the German people," but with suggestions of an ethnic "soul" and biological purity. Throughout this book, I have translated most German words, but where the meaning is complex, I have—after suggesting a translation—continued to use the original German. Elsewhere, when a German word is easily understood and used frequently, I have left it in the German, italicized. Words such as Burg, Palas, and Burgfried fall into this category. See also Appendix One. 4 Harold D. Lasswell, "Building as Political Communication: The Signature of Power on Environment," in Daniel Lerner, ed., Communication Research: A Half-Century Appraisal (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1977), p. 284. 5 English-language publications include: William Anderson, Castles of Europe from Charlemagne to the Renaissance (London: Elek, 1970), which is, perhaps, the best; Christopher Chant, Castles (London: Roydon, 1984); Geoffrey Hindley, Castles of Europe (Feltham: Hamlyn, 1968); Hans-Joachim Mrusek, Castles of Europe (New York: Hart, 1973); and Wolfgang F. Schuerl, Medieval Castles and Cities (Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell, 1978). 6 Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling, Rheinische Hohenhurgen, 3 vols. (Neuss: Verlag Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1964). This classic of castle lore was produced while Bornheim was Provincial Conservation Officer for RhinelandPalatinate (1948-80). 7 Ibid., vol. l,p. 13. 8 Heinz Biehn, Residenzen der Romantik (Munich: Prestel, 1970), p. 10. 9 Ibid. 10 Renate Wagner-Rieger and Walter Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlossbau (Munich: Prestel, 1975). The interest is not limited to the Federal Republic of Germany. To this volume, for example, Hannes Stekl contributed a study of Austrian pseudo-medieval castles as "symbols of power" (pp. 187-94) and Mark Girouard discussed the castle revival in England (pp. 83-86). 11 Naomi Reed Kline, ed., Castles: An Enduring Fantasy (New Rochelle, N.Y: Caratzas, 1985). 12 Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik am Rhein. Studien zum Wiederaufhau von Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, und Sooneck (1823-1860) (Munich: Prestel, 1979).

Introduction. 1 Werner Ross, introduction to Wolf-Dietrich Gumz and Frank J. Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise. Gedichte und Lieder. Eine Textsammlung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986), p. 13. 2 Kurt Tucholsky, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 3: 1929-32 (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1960), p. 332. 3 Victor Hugo, Le Rhin. Lettres a un ami (Mulhouse: Editions rencontres, 1968), p. 313. 4 The image is from Goronwy Rees, The Rhine (New York: Putnam's, 1967), p. 79.

Notes to pages 2-13 I 335 5 Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (London: Macmillan, 1970), vol. 2, p. 54. 6 Rudolf Schiller, Im Zauber der Mittelrhein. Vielbesungene Landschaft zwischen Koblenz und Mainz (Heidelberg: Brausdruck, n.d.), p. 9. 7 Hugo, Le Rhin, p. 314. 8 Thomas Hood, "Up the Rhine," Works (New York: A.M.S. Press, 1972) vol. 5, p. 12. 9 A paraphrase from Friedrich J. Worner, Burgen, Schlosser, und Bauwerke der Hohenzollem in 900Jahren (Moers: Steiger, 1981), p. 9. 10 On the stretch of the Rhine between Mainz and Bonn, there are more castles than on any other similar length of river in Europe. (Walther OttendorfSimrock, Burgen am Rhein [Bonn: Stollfuss, 1973], p. 7.) 11 A good source of this sort of castle lore is Walter Avenarius, Mittelrhein, mit Hunsriick, Eifel, Westerwald. Landschaft, Kultur, Geschichte, Kunst, Burgenkunde (Nuremberg: Glocke and Lutz, 1974), pp. 12-18. 12 Typical of recent exhaustive scholarly research on medieval castles is FriedrichWilhelm Krahe's Burgen des deutschen Mittelalters. Grundriss-Lexikon (Wiirzburg: Weidlich, 1994) which offers more than four thousand ground plans of German castles. 13 Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling, Rheinische Hohenburgen (Neuss: Verlag Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1964), vol. 1, p. 273. 14 Quoted in the "Mitteilungen" of the German Castle Association, no. 43, 1991, p. 33. 15 Ulrich von Hutten, Deutsche Schriften (Munich: Winkler, 1870), p. 325. 16 Churches and monasteries, on the other hand, were more likely to survive because they could offer sanctuary to political refugees and because of their aura of holiness. 17 A rare castle remained intact into the twentieth century only to be damaged by modern war. The Untere Burg at Rheinbreitbach, built in the thirteenth century, was still standing in 1939, only to be damaged in the Second World War, and then to be neglected, until it was so dilapidated that the local authorities felt themselves obliged to tear it down. 18 Udo Borniger, Geschichte und Wiederaufbau der Burg Stahleck (Bacharach: Verein fur die Geschichte der Stadt Bacharach und die Viertaler e.V, 1988), pp. 22-29. 19 Hugo, Le Rhin, p. 328. 20 Others were aware of the new uncomfortable juxtaposition of steam powered industry and traditional ways. An oil painting, by August von Wille (1828-87), captured this transformation of Rhineland towns. His "View of Barmen" (in the Bonn Museum) shows elegantly dressed hunters with their dogs, returning from a hunt in the countryside, greeted by a goatherd. In the distance, the city looms with its smoke and industrial chimneys, already dwarfing the church spires. 21 Jeffrey M. Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland 1789-1834 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 315. 22 Today, even the smaller towns of the "romantic Rhine" have concrete or stone companies, working out of older quarries. Linz, for example, supports a basaltic stone industry.

336 I Notes to pages 14-33 23 Other towns, such as Kaub, Rudesheim, Lorch, Bacharach, Wellmich, and Oberwesel, were also cut off from the river by railway lines, with corresponding damage to their medieval aspect. St. Goar, on the other hand, was spared this problem, for the line (1857-59) passed on the hillside of the town. 24 Bodo Ebhardt, Deutsche Burgen (Berlin: Wasmuth, 1899), vol. 1, p. 247. 25 K. Baedeker, Die Rheinlande von der Schweizer bis zur Hollandischen Grenze (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1895), p. 278. 26 See the Canadian Encylopedia (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1988), vol. 2, p. 981. 27 They would agree with Jacques Dalibard that "heritage is a cause as basic and as universal as fulfillment and survival" (Canadian Heritage, Summer 1988, p. 4). 28 See Charles B. Hosmer. Presence of the Past: A History of the Preservation Movement in the U.S. before Williamsburg (New York: Putnam, 1965). 29 This point of view is argued by Robert Hewison, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline (London: Methuen, 1987). 30 At this point in our study Heimat is best translated as "hometown." See Chapter Three. 31 In this definition, Peter N. Stearns also includes the growth of the state, a rational approach to planning and order, and secularism (European Society in Upheaval: A Social History since 1750 [New York: Macmillan, 1975], p. 2). 32 The term is used by Max Dvorak, Kathechismus der Denkmalpflege (Vienna: Julius Bard, 1916), pp. 30 and 32. 33 The Upper Rhine flows out of Switzerland past Freiburg and Worms, towards Mainz. The Lower Rhine lies below (north of) Bonn and passes Cologne.

Chapter One 1 Or so reported Thomas Coryat, an Englishman who made the journey in 1608 (Jeffrey Trease, The Grand Tour [London: Heinemann, 1967], p. 61). 2 Ann Radcliffe, "On Ascending a Hill Crowned with a Convent near Bonn," one of her "Miscellaneous Poems," in Gaston de Blondeville (London: Colburn, 1826), vol. 4, p. 188. 3 William Beckford (1760-1844), The Travel-Diaries of William Beckford of Fonthill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), vol. 1, p. 43. 4 Throughout this study, references to "Germany" or "Germans" refer to German-speakers, especially as many of them in the nineteenth century yearned for a political unity, corresponding to their perceived cultural unity. 5 Between Bingen and Bonn alone, up to around 1400, there functioned twentyfive toll stations. In 1648, between Mainz and Cologne there were still thirteen toll stations. As much as 50 per cent of the income of the Cologne archbishops derived from Rhine toll charges. These statistics can be found in Geschichtlicher Handatlas der Rheinprovinz (1926), cited in Burgen und Schlosser, 1990/11, p. 20, and Horst-Johs Tiimmers, Rheinromantik. Romantik und Reisen am Rhein (Cologne: Greven, 1968), p. 29 and 136. 6 Bodo Ebhardt, who wanted to rehabilitate aristocratic architecture, including the castle, stressed its function as an asylum for the common people (Deutsche Burgen [Berlin: Wasmuth, 1898], p. vi).

Notes to pages 33-40 I 337 7 A list of eight functions for a castle is in Walter Avenarius, Mittelrhein, Mit Hunsriick, Eifel, Westerwald (Nurnberg: Clock and Lutz, 1974), p. 2. 8 The Cologne People's News, April 2, 1931, quoted in a display at the Heimat museum at Rheinfels. 9 T.C.W. Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland 1792-1802 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), passim. 10 Quoted in ibid., p. 302. 11 In 1798, for example, the French judicial system, including trial by jury, was introduced. All subjects were equal before the law and the tax collector. The privileges of the nobility and the priesthood were abolished and agrarian reforms were introduced. The power of the guilds was dismantled. In 1804 the Napoleonic code of laws was introduced—and was not relinquished by Rhinelanders for nearly a century. 12 The tomb of the French revolutionary General Marceau still stands at the base of the ramparts of Fort Francis in a Koblenz suburb. The pyramid, guarded by stone lions and with an iron gate bearing French republican symbols, was erected in 1796. On a hill west of the Rhine town of Weissenthurm, north of Koblenz, stands a granite obelisk, begun in 1797, a memorial to the French General Hoche, who had led the victorious French troops across the Rhine at Neuwied. In the square in front of St. Castor's Church in Koblenz stands a fountain set up by the French prefect, Jules Doazan, to commemorate Napoleon's campaign in Russia in 1812. 13 In 1815, Hardenberg, the Prussian Chancellor, suggested to Lord Castlereagh that a system of Pufferstaaten (buffer states) be created along the Rhine. He saw no cultural identity between Prussia and the Rhine (Tummers, Rheinromantik, p. 57). 14 W.D. Robson-Scott, The Literary Background of the Gothic Revival: A Chapter in the History of Taste (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), p. 202. 15 Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik am Rhein. Studien zum Wiederaufbau von Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, und Sooneck. 1823-1860 (Munich: Prestel, 1979), p. 10. 16 Jeffry M. Diefendorf, Businessmen and Politics in the Rhineland 1789-1834 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 313. 17 In 1838 attempts to restore the Wartburg began. The keep was wholly and inaccurately rebuilt 1853-59 and the artist Moritz von Schwind executed frescoes there on historic themes. 18 This castle's history reflects that of many others, especially Stolzenfels. The medieval structure was rebuilt several times only to be destroyed by the French in 1688. As a wedding present, the ruin was given to the Bavarian Crown Prince Maximilian by his Palatine subjects in 1842. Renovated 1845-46, it is still owned by the Wittelsbachs. As for the Hambach Festival, Karl Wegert has recently shown that, much more than a nationalistic liberal demonstration, it was part of a general protest movement on the part of petty bourgeois smalltowners enduring wrenching modernization. It was nonetheless disturbing to the authorities (German Radicals Confront the Common People: Revolutionary Politics and Popular Politics 1789-1849 [Mainz: Zabern, 1992], pp. 145-55). 19 Quoted by Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 10.

338 I Notes to pages 40-44 20 Quoted in ibid., p. 160. Although there is no evidence that Berlin, in rebuilding Ehrenbreitstein as a modern fortress, had listened to Gorres, his advice may have inspired the city fathers of Koblenz to give the ruined Stolzenfels to the crown prince (ibid., p. 49). 21 Heinrich Heine, "Briefe aus Berlin," Samtliche Schriften (Munich: Hanser, 1971), vol. 2, p. 216. Later, in the 1920s, J.H. Morgan observed differences between the Rhinelanders and the Prussians, and also claimed—by this time wrongly—that they were much attached to France (Assize of Arms: Being the Story of the Disarmament of Germany and her Rearmament [London: Methuen, 1945], vol. 1, p. 9). 22 Heine, "Briefe," vol. 2, p. 61. 23 Tummers, Rheinromantik, p. 57. 24 Heinrich von Treitschke, History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century (London: Jarrold, 1914), vol. 6, p. 503. 25 Lysbeth Walker Muncy refers to the Prussian government's "abiding suspicion and hostility toward the Catholic Church, Catholic church-political ambitions and the Centre Party" ("The Prussian Landrdte in the Last Years of the Monarchy: A Case Study of Pomerania and the Rhineland in 1890-1918," Central European History, 6 [1973]: 315). 26 Heinrich Friedjung, The Struggle for Supremacy in Germany 1859-1866 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1966), p. 179. See also A.J.P. Taylor, Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 (London: Oxford, 1974), p. 140. 27 In 1851, the king expressed his pleasure by erecting a new protestant church, the Church of Christ, in early Romanesque style here. In 1852, he attended its consecration. 28 Bismarck's "Culture-Struggle" which imposed restrictions on the Catholic Church throughout the Reich in the 1870s only briefly retarded this process. Later manifestations of Rhenish discontent were ephemeral. After the fall of the empire in 1918, a group of Rhenish separatists were encouraged by France to form an independent pro-French Rhineland state, an effort which failed (Harry E. Nadler, The Rhenish Separatist Movements During the Early Weimar Republic, 1918-24 [New York: Garland, 1987], pp. 20-21, and 460-461). 29 W. Forst, Das Rheinland in Preussischer Zeit. Zehn Beitrage zur Geschichte der Rheinprovinz (Cologne: Grote, 1965), p. 63. 30 Carl Gustav Carus, Paris und die Rheingegenden. Tagehuch einer Reise im Jahre 1835 (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1836), pp. 40-41. 31 Strictly speaking, the Rhenish Palatinate is a part of the Rhineland. Located south of Rheinhessen, and including the old Rhine cities of Speyer and Worms, this territory was granted to Bavaria in 1815. 32 Hans A. Schmitt, "From Sovereign States to Prussian Provinces: Hannover and Hesse-Nassau, 1866-18761," Journal of Modern History, 57 (March 1985): 316-17. 33 E.M. Almedingen, The Emperor Alexander II (London: Bodley Head, 1962), p. 97. 34 Quoted in Malve Grafin Rothkirch, Prinz Carl von Preussen 1801-1883. Kenner und Beschutzer des Schonen. Eine Chronik aus zeitgenossischen Dokumenten undBildem (Osnabriick: Biblio Verlag, 1981), p. 79.

Notes to pages 44-47 / 339 35 This double purpose is implied by Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, pp. 113-14. 36 In the Wagnerian sense, the rebuilt castles integrated architecture, sculpture, and painting, creating "total works of art" (Gesamtkunstwerke) which excluded the profane world (Renate Wagner-Rieger, "Romantik und Historismus," in Renate Wagner-Rieger and Walter Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlossbau [Munich: Prestel, 1975], p. 19). 37 Paul Zucker, The Fascination of Decay: Ruins—Relic, Symbol, Ornament (Ridgewood, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1968), p. 3. 38 They believed that the Middle Ages had "a shared and ordered spirituality" which their own "tawdry, secular, individualistic times" lacked (David Lowenthal in Christoper Shaw and Malcolm Chase, eds., The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia [Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989], p. 21). 39 These "foolish ways" of the medieval period were "a nauseating dish / of Gothic illusion and modern lie / That's neither flesh nor fish." Such "newfangled chivalry" was the "mouldiest trumpery" of the Middle Ages (From "Germany: A Winter's Tale," in Frederic Ewen, ed., The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine, translated by Aaron Kramer [New York: Citadel, 1948], p. 216.) Heine may have recalled that one of the first of these faux-medieval tournaments was held 1799 and 1800 at a gothicized castle built 1797 in Silesia at which the Prussian Queen Louise awarded medals. In 1817 at Schloss Rosenau in Coburg, knightly games and a court ball in medieval dress were held to celebrate the Duke's engagement. This fad was not merely German. In 1839 the British Lord Eglinton staged a medieval tournament at his Scottish estate, an occasion which attracted 100,000 spectators to watch enthusiastic young nobles jousting and fencing (Christina Gascoigne, Castles of Britain [London: Thames and Hudson, 1975], pp. 34-35). 40 Marc Girouard, Life in the English Country House (New Haven: Yale, 1978), p. 242. 41 Clive Church, Europe in 1830: Revolution and Political Change (London: Allen andUnwin, 1983), p. 12. 42 Andreas Ley, Die Villa als Burg. Ein Beitrag zur Architektur des Historismus im sudlichen Bayern 1842-1968 (Munich: Callwey, 1981), p. 36. 43 Hans Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire, 1871-1918 (Dover, N.H.: Berg, 1985), p. 11. 44 The adaptation and survival of the European aristocracy is analyzed in several studies, in particular: Gregory W Pedlow, The Survival of the Hessian Nobility, 1770-1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); and Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York: Pantheon, 1981). 45 See Hannes Stekl, "Schlosser als Machtsymbole. Wirtschafts- und sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte historisticher Schlossbauten," in Wagner-Rieger and Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlossbau, pp. 187-94. 46 Naomi Reed Kline, "Age of Chivalry," in Naomi Reed Kline, ed., Castles: An Enduring Fantasy (New Rochelle: Caratzas, 1985), p. 9. 47 Renate Wagner-Rieger in Wagner-Rieger and Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlossbau, p. 13.

340 I Notes to pages 48-51 48 In Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase, eds., The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989), p. 25. The rebuilt noble castles are, in the words of an Austrian scholar, "an unmistakable demonstration of power" (Stekl, "Schlosser also Machtsymbole," p. 191). 49 The von Hammersteins were in the vanguard of defending conservative aristocratic interests. Baron Wilhelm von Hammerstein-Schwartow (1838-1904) was editor of the Kreuzzeitung (1881-95). 50 Frederick William IV proclaimed a vague backward-looking nationalism which irritated Vienna, but remained hostile to modern liberal nationalism. His Gothic buildings did not indicate a sympathy for revolution. 51 Winneburg, destroyed in 1802 by the French, fell into Prussian hands in 1815. More typical of Metternich's taste was his Schloss Konigswart, in Bohemia, built 1833-39 in a neo-classical style. 52 This analysis of the motives of nineteenth-century castle restorers is not intended to detract from the genuinely useful activity of contemporary history-conscious members of the nobility, 53 Dolores L. Augustine, "Arriving in the Upper Class: The Wealthy Business Elite of Wilhelmine Germany," in David Blackbourn and Richard J. Evans, eds., The German Bourgeoisie: Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 72. 54 "Liberalism ... is by no means to be understood as the system of popular freedom in general," said one of them, "but as a system in the special interest of quite specific elements of society which are assembled in the commercial and middle class" (quoted in Theodore S. Hamerow, The Social Foundations of German Unification 1858-1871: Ideas and Institutions, [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], vol. 1, p. 136). 55 Robert Jaffe, "Die Burgen in der Poesie," Burgwart, 1904-5, p. 68. 56 Wehler, The German Empire. 57 The "feudalization" thesis was maintained by Hans Ulrich Wehler (ibid.), while the recent disagreement has been formulated by David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, most notably in their Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). 58 Quoted in Hagen Schulze, The Course of German Nationalism: From Frederick the Great to Bismarck, 1763-1867 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 96. 59 Augustine, "Arriving in the Upper Class," pp. 47 and 51. 60 Ibid., p. 52.

Chapter Two 1 "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (Canto Three, Verse XLVI) quoted in Russell Noyes, ed., English Romantic Poetry and Prose (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 805.

Notes to pages 53-62 / 341 2 Johann Georg Krunitz, quoted in Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik am Rhein. Studien zum Wiederaufbau von Rheinstein, Stolzenfels und Sooneck (1823-1860) (Munich: Prestel, 1979), p. 153. 3 Quoted in Naomi Reed Kline, ed., Castles: An Enduring Fantasy (Gloucester, Mass.: Hammond Castle Museum, 1982), p. 14. 4 Ruins have exerted a fascination well into the twentieth century, even for North Americans. See, for example, pages 156-74 of Edwinna von Bayer's Garden of Dreams: Kingsmere and Mackenzie King (Toronto: Dundurn, 1990). 5 Robin Feuer Miller, "The Castle in the Gothic Novel," in Kline, ed., Castles, p. 41. 6 Perhaps this is why the allure of the decaying fortress has lasted into our own time, when Rose Macaulay has written that "castles, by common consent, should be ruined" (Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins [Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977], p. 225). 7 Quoted by Robin Feuer Miller in Kline, ed., Castles, p. 39. 8 Quoted in Georg Friedrich Koch, Die Grossen Deutschen Maler. Die Geschichte ihrer Kunst vom 9. vis 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Safari, 1962), p. 197. 9 An anonymous poet, quoted in Wolf-Dietrich Gumz and Frank J. Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise. Gedichte und Lieder (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986), p. 137. 10 "Vereinigten Staaten," Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe, und Gesprdche (Zurich: Artemis, 1949-52), vol. 2, pp. 405-406. 11 Goethe, quoted in Horst Johs Tummers, Rheinromantik. Romantik und Reisen am Rhein (Cologne, 1968), p. 14. 12 Goethe, Rheinreise, p. 57, cited in Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 112. 13 Georg Forster, quoted in Tummers, Rheinromantik, p. 43. 14 J.K. Dahl, quoted in Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 111. 15 Friedrich von Schlegel, quoted in Tummers, Rheinromantik, p. 43. 16 Quoted in Gvinther Binding, Rheinische Hohenburgen in Skizzen des 17. Jahrhunderts. Zeichnungen des Majors Theodor Scheppe und des Archivrats Leopold Eltester (Cologne: Bachem, 1975), pp. 19-20. 17 Quoted in Gumz and Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise, p. 26. 18 Thomas Hood, "Up the Rhine," Works (New York: AMS Press, 1862/1972), vol. 5, p. 5. 19 Quoted by Michael Bringmann, in Renate Wagner-Rieger and Walter Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlosshau (Munich: Prestel, 1975), p. 28. 20 Hood, Works, vol. 5, p. 6. 21 The romantic discovery of the medieval world had further profound effects on the art and science of architecture, a consideration which is beyond the scope of this book. We should note, however, that the new awareness of medieval building styles created a neo-Gothic and a neo-Romanesque movement. The ubiquitousness of these styles in nineteenth-century public architecture is obvious to English-speaking people familiar with, for example, the British or Canadian Houses of Parliament. Historical styles were also applied to factories, railway stations, and other modern buildings, a phenomenon of which the Middle Rhine boasts countless examples. 22 Anthony Brandt "A Short Natural History of Nostalgia," Atlantic Monthly (December 1978), p. 60. 23 Bodo Ebhardt, Der Schlossbau. Eine Betrachtung fiber Neubau und Wiederherstellungvon Schlossern, vol. 1 (Berlin: Burgverlag, 1914), p. 11.

342 I Notes to pages 63-68 24 Robert Reineck, 1838, quoted in Gumz and Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise, p. 84. 25 Heinrich von Treitschke, History of Germany (London: Jarrold, 1915-19), vol. l,p. 360. 26 Quoted in Gordon A. Craig, The Germans (New York: Putnam's, 1982), p. 311. 27 See R. Hinton Thomas, Liberalism, Nationalism, and the German Intellectuals, 1822-1847: An Analysis of the Academic and Scientific Conferences of the Period (Cambridge: Heffer, 1951). 28 Bodo Ebhardt, "Castles of the Rhine," Art and Archaeology, 31 (February 1931): p. 137. 29 Quoted in Hannibal von Luttichau-Barenstein, "75 Jahre Deutsche Burgenvereinigung," Burgen und Schlosser (1974), 2, p. 132. 30 Quoted in Paul Ortwin Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein. Wanderungen und Fahrten derRomantik (Berlin: Atlantis, 1938), p. 21. 31 "Der heil'ge Rhein," in "Das Lied vom Rhein," in Gumz and Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise, p. 229. 32 Treitschke, History of Germany, vol. 1, p. 397. 33 Ibid., p. 361. 34 We have already noted the occasions where Germans, not the French, were responsible for the destruction of Rhenish castles. Conveniently, of course, these examples were overlooked by patriots. More recently, Walther Ottendorf-Simrock has noted that in the four "waves" of assaults on the Rhenish castles, the first was that of the German Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg against the barons of Rheinstein, Reichenstein, Sooneck, and Rheineck in the thirteenth century (Walther Ottendorf-Simrock, Castles on the Rhine [Bonn: Stollfuss, 1980], p. 15). 35 Strombergers could not forget the French who attacked again in 1798. A monument set up in 1833 commemorates the heroic defence of Schloss Goldenfels here by the Prussians. 36 Founded in the seventeenth century, the Rochus Chapel, due to its hilltop site, was used as a command post by the French. Rebuilt, it burned in 1889. The present large and ungainly structure dates from 1895. 37 Quoted in Hermann Oncken, Napoleon III and the Rhine: The Origin of the War of 1870-71 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1928/1967), p. 11. 38 Lettre XIII of Hugo's Le Rhin. Lettres a un ami (Lausanne: Rencontre, 1968), p. 126. 39 As well, in the same year, Napoleon's remains were returned to France and laid to rest in a magnificent ceremony at the Church of Les Invalides in Paris. His nephew, Louis Napoleon, attempted a coup at Boulogne. On the diplomatic level the French, out-manoeuvred by Britain in Egypt, tried to revive their prestige by adopting an active foreign policy in Europe. 40 Alfred de Musset (1810-57) replied, "We have already had it, your German Rhine," and suggested that the Germans should do their laundry in their "free, German Rhine" (quoted in Treitschke, History of Germany, vol. 4, p. 398). 41 Bodo Ebhardt, "Die Sprache deutscher Burgen," Burgwart, 16 (1915): 10. 42 The French writer, Frantz Funck-Brentano (1862-1947), wrote in 1919 that the Rhine was France's natural frontier and to attain that border was France's

Notes to pages 68-74 / 343 "cause sacree" (Frantz Funck-Brentano, La France sur le Rhin [Paris: Librairie de la societe du Receuil Sirey, 1919], p. 496). 43 Bodo Ebhardt, Deutsche Burgen als Zeugen deutscher Geschichte (Zillessen, 1925), p. 240. 44 Karl Stommel, noted in T.C.W Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland 1792-1802 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), p. 249, n. 163.

Chapter Three 1 Oskar Doering, Bodo Ebhardt. Ein deutscher Baumeister (Berlin: Burg-Verlag, 1925), p. 124. 2 Ernst Moritz Arndt, "Die Rheinfahrt," in Wolf-Dietrich Gumz and Frank J. Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise. Gedichte und Lieder (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986), p. 252. 3 Heinrich von Treitschke, History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century (London: Jarrold, 1919), vol. 4, p. 503. The steamship had a similar effect in North America. See, for example, Patricia Jasen, "From Nature to Culture: The St. Lawrence River Panorama in Nineteenth-Century Ontario Tourism," Ontario History, 85, 1 (March 1993): 43-64. 4 Horst Johs Tiimmers, Rheinromantik. Romantik und Reisen am Rhein (Cologne, 1968), p. 71. 5 Johann Jakob Hasslin, Der Rhein in romantischer Zeit. Von Mainz bis Dusseldorf (Hanau: Peters, 1979), p. 25. 6 H.M. Malten. Schloss Stolzenfels am Rheine (Frankfurt: Bronner, 1844), pp. 191-92. 7 Tummers, Rheinromantik, p. 99. 8 For a humorous study of English tourists on the Rhine, see William Makepeace Thackeray, "The Kickleburys on the Rhine," The Christmas Books of Mr. WA. Titmarsh (London: Smith, Elder, 1869), vol. 17, p. 164. The influx of Britons had a positive side not only for the fortunes of innkeepers, guides (amateur or professional), or steamship and railway owners. The village of Kiedrich in the Rheingau, which was the home of the Baronet Sutton for almost twenty years, saw its churches restored at the expense of the English noble. 9 Thomas Hood, "Up the Rhine," Works (New York: A.M.S. Press, 1862/1972). 10 Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Pilgrims of the Rhine (Boston: Dana Estes, 1900). 11 Alois Schreiber, Der Rhein. Handbuch fur Reisende in den Rheingegenden, den angrdnzenden Thdlern und Baden, in Holland und Belgien (Heidelberg: Engelmann, 1841), p. iii. 12 In his title, Klein did not use the word "Tourists," but a much more precise German term, "Schnellreisende," which translates clumsily, but appropriately, as "those who travel fast." 13 Thackeray, "The Kickleburys on the Rhine," pp. 138 and 163. 14 Dorothy Wordsworth, Journal of a Tour on the Continent (London, 1820/1970), vol. 2, p. 44.

344 I Notes to pages 74-84 15 Adelheid von Stolterfoth, Beschreibung, Geschichte und Sage des Rheingaues und Wisperthales (Mainz: Kunze, 1840), p. 19. 16 Anthony Brandt, "A Short Natural History of Nostalgia," Atlantic Monthly (December 1978), p. 63. 17 Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea o/Heimat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. x and 9. The word Heimat has some of the vague but comfortable connotations as the English word "heritage" has acquired recently. 18 Brandt, "A Short Natural History," p. 60. 19 Georg Dehio, "Denkmalschutz und Denkmalpflege im neunzehnten Jahrhundert," quoted in Marion Wohlleben, ed., Georg Dehio. Alois Riegl. Konservieren, nicht restaurieren. Streitschriften zur Denkmalpflege um 1900 (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1988), p. 96. 20 The founder, Karl Fischer, encouraged his followers to defend Germans' rights in the former Poland and to support an overseas colonial empire. For a general history of this phenomenon, see Walter Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1984). 21 Doering, Bodo Ebhardt, p. 131. 22 Karl Hartnung, Richard Schirrmann und Wilhelm Miinker. Die Griinder und Gestalter der deutschen Jugendherbergen (Hagen, 1953), p. 10. 23 Ibid., p. 17. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., p. 18-19. 26 From the decree (June 22, 1818) of the grand duke of Hesse (quoted in S.T. Madsen, Restoration or Anti-Restoration: A Study in English Restoration Philosophy [Oslo: Universitetsvorlaget, 1976], p. 104). 27 Remains of Roman fortresses were found at Neuwied-Heddersdorf in 1898 and at Remagen in 1902. Excavations at Bendorf-Sayn and at Bad Ems uncovered traces of Limes-towers, which were reconstructed. 28 See Kristine Ottesen Garrigan, Ruskin on Architecture: His Thought and Influence (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973); and Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival: An Essay in the History of Taste (London: Murray, 1962). 29 Ferdinand von Quast, "Pro memoria in bezug auf die Erhaltung der Altertiimer in den Koniglichen Landen" (1837), in Norbert Huse, ed., Denkmalpflege. Deutsche Texts aus drei Jahrhunderten (Munich: Beck, 1984), p. 82. 30 Quoted in Gisbert Knopp, "Entwicklung und Grundsatze der Inventarisation in der staatlichen Denkmalpflege am Beispiel der Rheinlande," Burgen und Schlosser (1986), vol. 2, p. 658. 31 In other German states, Baden in 1811 began an inventory of Roman remains. As noted, Hesse began an index of architectural monuments in 1818; Wurttemberg, after 1824; Bavaria, between 1854 and 1871. 32 Curt Tillmann, Lexikon der deutschen Burgen und Schlosser (Stuttgart: Hierseman, 1958), p. viii. Tillmann found 19,000, a figure which includes 6,500 ruined castles and traces of ruins, as well as palaces. 33 Peter Paret, Art as History: Episodes in the Culture and Politics of 19th-century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 50.

Notes to pages 85-91 I 345 34 Only traces of this Villa Regia remain. See Giinther Binding, Rheinische Hohenhurgen in Skizzen des 19. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Bachem, 1975), pp. 21-24. 35 Otto was the son of Ludwig I, who attempted similar measures in Bavaria. 36 Schreiber, Der Rhein. Handbuchfiir Reisende, p. 346. 37 Ibid., p. 104. In the view of one late-twentieth-century conservationist, these regulations have not yet been improved upon (John Harvey, The Conservation of Buildings [London: John Baker, 1972], p. 28). 38 Ferdinand von Quast, "Pro memoria in bezug auf die Erhaltung der Altertiimer in den Koniglichen Landen" (1837), in Huse, ed., Denkmalpflege, p. 78. 39 Protective action was taken during the Second World War and after 1945 a more rigorous classification was begun. In the Rhineland, the authorities had purchased important castles in the 1920s and, after 1945, the provinces of Rhineland-Palatinate and of Hesse continued to administer several castles. 40 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1961), p. 185. 41 The city's walls were rebuilt in a single period style, despite evidence of the existence of several building stages. 42 Bodo Ebhardt, Deutsche Burgen (Berlin: Wasmuth, 1898), p. vi-viii. 43 Max Dvorak, Kathechismus der Denkmalpflege (Vienna: Julius Bard, 1916), p. 29. 44 Otto Sarrazin and Oskar Hossfeld, eds., "Introduction," Denkmalpflege, I, 1 (4 January 1899): 1-2. 45 Bavaria was praised; Prussia was criticized. The legal protection of buildings throughout Germany was declared insufficient. Several North African states, the delegates were told, had better heritage conservation laws than did Germany (Denkmalpflege, I, 13 (18 October 1899): 106). 46 Huse, ed., Denkmalpflege, p. 93. 47 "Kulturarbeiten" is difficult to translate, but has connotations of "tasks necessary to preserve German culture and the German way of life" (i.e., "culture-work"). 48 Ebhardt,"Zur Geschichte der Vereinigung zur Erhaltung deutscher Burgen," Burgwart,6 (1904-5): 73. 49 In 1908 they ventured to Silesia; in 1909, to the lower Rhine and Westphalia; in 1910, to Thuringia; in 1911, to Wurttemberg. By the 1920s they were visiting remoter areas in Germany, such as East and West Prussia, including the (temporarily) Free City of Danzig (1929). In 1925 they were in Austria (the Tirol and Vorarlberg) and Liechtenstein. In 1938 they again toured Austria, with trips into Hungary and Yugoslavia. 50 For a list of the castles the preservation of which the Association supported, see ibid., p. 75. 51 A public lecture was given in Berlin on December 6, 1904, on this structure, by a Dr. Schubrink (Burgwart, 6 (1904-5): 40). They have since expanded their purview to include fortresses all over the world and their archive at Marksburg is probably the best on European castle lore. 52 After 1905 the subtitle was changed to "Castle Lore and Medieval Architecture" (Burgenkunde und mittelalterliche Baukunst). In 1953, the association's

346 I Notes to pages 91-93 name was changed to Deutsche Burgenvereinigung e.V zum Schutze historischer Wehrbauten, Schlosser und Wohnbauten. 53 There were hints of a new academic vigilance as early as 1845, when August Reichensperger had written, "the first and most important rule in any restoration (Restauration) is ... this: to restore as little as possible and as invisibly as possible, to guarantee for the old only its survival, and to reconstruct (wiederherzustellen) deficiencies exactly according to the original or possible in the spirit of the original" (quoted in Frank Schweiger, Johann Claudius von Lassaulx 1781-1848 [Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1968], p. 193). In 1858 von Quast, Prussian Conservation Officer, condemned "restorations" which "annihilated all traces" of a structure's history, and "ripped away the threads which form an organic link between us and the past" (quoted in Huse, Denkmalpflege, p. 66). 54 Ebhardt, "Wie sollen wir unsere Burgruinen erhalten?," Denkmalpflege, 31

(May 1899): 54. 55 Quoted in Wohlleben, ed., Georg Dehio. Alois Riegl, p. 29. 56 Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling, Rbeinische Hohenburgen (Neuss: Verlag Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1964), vol. 1, p. 299. 57 Denkmalpflege, August 30, 1899, p. 88. 58 Ferdinand Luthmer, Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmaler des Lahngehiets, Frankfurt, Keller, 1907, p. 204. 59 Burgwart, 9 (1909-10): 126. 60 Werner Meyer, "Afterword to Otto Piper," Burgenkunde. Bauwesen und Geschichte der Burgen (Munich: Piper, 1912), p. 645. 61 Otto Piper, "Was zur Wiederherstellung und zur Erhaltung unserer Burgenreste geschehen ist," Denkmalpflege, 1, 10 (August 9, 1899): 79. See also his Burgenkunde, pp. 632-634. 62 Ibid., p. 627. 63 The second edition of Castle Lore (1906) was greeted by a reviewer in Burgwart as "bad-tempered, impetuous, irritable, angry." He castigated Piper ("lazy, unscientific") for not acknowledging the existence of Burgwart and its many contributions to knowledge about castles. This review Piper described in his third edition preface as "particularly malicious and scornful" (Piper, Burgenkunde, 1912, p. xvi). 64 This Renaissance Schloss had been destroyed by the French in 1689-93, and in 1764 a fire had added to its decrepitude. The beautiful Ottheinrich Building remained—and remains today—a gutted facade. The government of Baden wanted to reconstruct it as a symbol of the post-1871 German revival. 65 Georg Dehio, "Was wird aus dem Heidelberger Schloss werden?," in Wohlleben, ed., Georg Dehio. Alois Riegl, p. 34. 66 Dehio, "Heidelberger Schloss," p. 37. 67 To "restore" is to create "a thing which is neither old nor new, a dead academic abstraction" (ibid., p. 41). 68 Dehio, "Denkmalschutz und Denkmalpflege im 19. Jahrhundert," in Wohlleben, ed., Georg Dehio. Alois Riegl' p. 94. 69 Dehio, "Denkmalschutz," p. 96. 70 Riegl was Keeper of Textiles at the Museum of Applied Arts, professor at the University of Vienna, and General Conservation Officer of the Austrian

Notes to pages 93-106 I 347

71 72 73 74 75

Central Commission for Research and Preservation of Artistic and Historic Monuments, 1900-5. Alois Riegl, "Der moderne Denkmalkultus, sein Wesen und seine Entstehung," in Wohlleben, ed., GeorgDehio. Alois Riegl, pp. 49 and 58. Riegl, "Denkmalkultus," p. 60. Dvorak, Kathechismus, pp. 39-40. Gunter Stanzl, Zum Umgang mit Burgen und Burgruinen. Merkblatt (Mainz: Landesamt fiir Denkmalpflege, 1988), p. 5. Ibid., p. 8.

Chapter Four 1 John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin (London: George Allen,, 1903), vol. 2, p. 356. 2 Quoted in Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik am Rhein. Studien zum Wiederaufbau von Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, und Sooneck (1823-1860) (Munich: Prestel, 1979), p. 113. 3 Forster, quoted in Paul O. Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein. Wanderungen und Fahrten der Romantik (Berlin: Atlantis, 1938), p. 41. 4 Its construction involved an incident which illuminates the careful diplomacy of the time, when the Kingdom of Prussia and the Empire of Russia sought to co-operate in security. At the northeast corner of the fortress stands the "Unnamed Tower" perhaps the strongest outwork of the complex. An inscription on a stone near the top of the tower reminded passersby that in July 1821, the Grand Duke Nicholas and the Crown Prince of Prussia laid the stone after having inspected the construction works. Military authorities did not want to give the tower two names. Nor were they comfortable naming it after one of the princes for fear of offending the other. And so the Prussians called it "the unnamed tower." The commemorative stone was wrecked by Allied soldiers in the last days of the Second World War as they used it for target practice. 5 Johanna Schopenhauer, quoted in Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, p. 136. 6 Many of the builders described at this time as "engineers" would probably be considered architects by modern North American standards. The engineers involved in castle rebuilding were often well educated and had aspirations to greater cultivation. Kees Gispen has shown the effects of this desire to be acknowledged as creative intellectuals in his New Profession, New Order: Engineers and German Society 1815-1914 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1989). 7 Hartwig Neumann and Udo Liessem, Die Klassizistische Grossfestung Koblenz. Eine Festung im Wandel der Zeit: preussische Bastion, Spioneobjekt, Kulturdenkmal. Mit dem vollstdndigen Reprint der deutschen Ausgabe des "Spionagewerks" von J.H. Humfrey: "Versuch ernes neu angenommenen FortifikationsSystems zur Verteidigung der Rhein-Grenze," Niirnberg, 1842 (Koblenz: Bernhard und Graefe, 1989), p. 30. 8 William Beckford, The Travel-Diaries of William Beckford of Fonthill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), vol. 1, p. 43. 9 Carl Gustav Carus, Paris und die Rheingegenden. Tagebuch einer Reise im Jahre 1835 (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1836), p. 59.

348 I Notes to pages 106-11 10 Charles Kingsley, Letters and Memoirs of His Life (London: King, 1876), vol. 1, p. 292. 11 However, she found it appealing to imagine the medieval castle's spectacular demise and writes that the original castle was "destroyed during the late war, and the old citadel, a venerable ruin, fell with a tremendous crash, huge fragments tumbling into the river, which it had for ages so bravely overlooked" (Journals [London: Oxford University Press, 1963], vol. 2, p. 49). 12 John Murray, A Handbook for Travellers on the Continent: Being a Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland (London: John Murray, 1865), p. 283. 13 In 1888 the Prussian War Ministry decided that the walls were no longer necessary, and they were removed in 1890. A broad avenue, the Kaiser William Ring, now the Friedrich Ebert Ring, was laid out in their place. 14 Keith L. Nelson, Victors Divided: America and the Allies in Germany, 1918-1923 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 320. 15 Koblenz itself was part of the so-called second occupation zone, not vacated by the British, French, and Belgians until 1929. Cologne was the centre of the first zone, which the allies left in 1926; Mainz was the centre of the third zone, which they left in 1930. 16 Nelson, Victors Divided, p. 371. 17 James E. Edmunds, Occupation of the Rhineland 1918-29 (London: HMSO, Imperial War Museum, 1987), p. 207. 18 Ehrenbreitstein now houses a youth hostel, a restaurant, and several archives. Its walls are weathered to a grey-brown. Several of its buildings have been restored, painted a bright cream colour with the stones of the gateways a warm orange. There is more vegetation on its hillside than in the early nineteenthcentury paintings. Within and even on its walls grow yellow wild flowers, lilacs, chestnuts and other grasses, trees and shrubs. Despite careful preservation and maintenance, it seems to sink into the landscape or to be emerging out of the rocky hill. As nature tries to reclaim its stones it becomes as romantic as the well-preserved and much older Marksburg or ruins such as Rheinfels. Recently both the State of Rhineland-Palatinate and the city of Koblenz have begun the restoration of Ehrenbreitstein because of its national significance. Every August, during the "Rhine in Flames," when it is illuminated with floodlights, its original military purpose is suggested—but only as part of a romantic show involving the riverside castles from Koblenz to Braubach. Across the Rhine, Koblenz's several fortresses are also being restored. 19 Except for a southern section of the redoubt (Fort Huberling), Fort Alexander was torn down in 1922. The surviving part shelters 1,700 graves of Second World War soldiers. Fort Constantine, almost completely intact, today still has its faded name over its bricked-up entrance and still looms above Koblenz's main railway station. In 1988, the state of Rhineland-Palatinate granted Interior Ministry funds to Koblenz to restore Fort Constantine, the structural core of Fortress Franz, and the Redoubt Asterstein. Even these smaller structures are now, like Ehrenbreitstein, considered of national importance. 20 Jakob Wenz, Elf Jahre in Fesseln! Die Leidengeschichte der Koblenzer Bevolkerung wdhrend der Besatzungszeit (Koblenz: General-Anzeiger, 1930), p. 105.

Notes to pages 111-19 / 349 21 Ibid. 22 Bodo Ebhardt, Deutsche Burgen als Zeugen deutscher Geschichte (Zillessen, 1925), p. 221. 23 Neumann, Die Klassizistische Grossfestung Koblenz, p. 32.

Chapter Five 1 Quoted in Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik. Studien zum Wiederaufbau von Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, und Sooneck (1823-1860) (Munich: Prestel, 1979), p. 112. 2 See Robert R. Taylor, Hohenzollern Berlin. Construction and Reconstruction (Port Credit: P.D. Meany, 1985), passim. 3 Heinz Biehn, Residenzen der Romantik (Munich: Prestel, 1970), p. 13. 4 German was decreed the only language for use in schools here after 1873, and was made compulsory for commerce in 1876, for the courts, in 1877. A settlement law of 1886 made it possible for the government to buy lands in Posen and other eastern provinces for the use of German peasants. 5 The official guide to the palace noted that the palace should "reawaken in the broadest circles of the population the memory of the great age of the German Emperors of the middle ages." Similarly the politician Frederick Naumann (1860-1919) said that the palace should "proclaim the capture of the east for German Kultur." Trying to create more popular support for the unified Germany, Naumann wanted to build bridges between Germany's elites and the masses. Posen's imperial palace could be a rallying symbol of the new empire as well a lesson to the local Polish population. (Quoted by Michael Bringmann, "Was heisst und zu welchem Ende studiert man den Schlossbau des Historismus," in Renate Wagner-Rieger and Walter Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlossbau (Munich: Prestel, 1975), p. 35. 6 Biehn, Residenzen der Romantik, p. 10. 7 A robber baron who lived in the castle kidnapped for his wife a beautiful young woman who died in giving birth to their daughter. Although the child grew up to fall in love with a suitably young and noble swain, the robber baron promised her to an older knight. A swarm of stinging flies prevented the bridal procession from getting to the church whereupon the father, seeing the error of his ways, relented. 8 The Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (New York: AMS Press, 1966), vol. 1, p. 170. Parts of the "Golden Legend" were set in the Voigtsburg. The poem, translated into German by the Baroness Elize von Hohenhausen and into French by Paul Blier, did its part to make the "Romantic Rhine" famous throughout the English-speaking world. 9 Quoted in Biehn, Residenzen, p. 131. 10 Quoted by Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 150. 11 Quoted in Frank Schwieger, Johann Claudius von Lassaulx 1781-1848. Architekt und Denkmalpfleger in Koblenz (Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1968), p. 86. 12 Quoted in Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 17. 13 Eva Brues, Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Lebenswerk, vol. 12: Die Rheinlande (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1967), pp. 150-51.

350 I Notes to pages 119-25 14 Schnitzler had also designed Frederick's Jagerhof palace in Diisseldorf, and had worked on Fortress Ehrenbreitstein (Schwieger, Lassaulx, p. 86). His brother Karl (1789-1864) was employed at Ehrenbreitstein and Stolzenfels. 15 Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 37. 16 A controversy arose over Wilhelm Kuhn's share of the work, for his claim to have been the major architect on the project was challenged by Lassaulx. Unfortunately for Lassaulx, the cornerstone acknowledges only Kuhn's contribution. For the details of this dispute, see Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, pp. 19-30. 17 This was why later scholars condemned it as inaccurate in this setting (see, for example, Otto Piper, "Was zur Wiederherstellung und zur Erhaltung unserer Burgenreste geschehen ist," Denkmalpflege, 1, 10 [August 9, 1899], p. 79). The style was popular in England at the same time, in such places as Eastnor Castle (1811-20), Ashridge Park (1808-17), and Cholmondeley Castle (finished 1804). As noted, it influenced the three Hohenzollern Rhenish castles as well as Prince William's Babelsberg, near Berlin. 18 Adelheid von Stolterfoth, quoted in Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 159. 19 Carl Gustav Carus, Paris und die Rheingegenden. Tagebuch einer Reise im Jahre 1835 (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1836), p. 40. Two of the best contemporary descriptions are from Carus, and J.K. Dahl, Die Burgen Rheinstein und Reichenstein mil der Clemenskirche am Rhein (Mainz: Johan Wirth, 1832). 20 Carus, Paris und die Reingegenden, p. 38. 21 H.M. Malten, Schloss Stolzenfels am Rheine (Frankfurt: Bronner, 1844), pp. 175-77. 22 One of the halberds displayed had been found in the ruins of the castle itself (Dahl, Rheinstein, p. 54). 23 A. Matthei, Kurzer Fuhrer durch die Burg Rheinstein, Kiel, 1905, quoted in Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik p. 34. 24 Quoted in Brues, Die Rheinlande, p. 152. 25 The exterior of the chapel, which had suffered from weathering, was repaired in 1989. 26 Matthei, 1903, cited in Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 35. 27 Dahl, Rheinstein, p. 56. 28 Ibid., p. x. 29 Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 43. None of the Hohenzollern princes seem to have left any written statement of their political intentions in rebuilding Rhine castles. Most of Frederick's own papers were destroyed in a fire at Schloss Kamenz in Silesia. Nevertheless, by citing the letters of von Ingersleben and others, and by analysing the response to the castle-building program, Rathke makes a convincing case. My own study of the Hohenzollern building program in Berlin supports the view that there was a longstanding Prussian policy to use royal architecture as propaganda for the dynastic cause. 30 By the early 1970s it was functioning as a museum, incorporating a restaurant. However, the Mecklenburg family relinquished control of the furnishings and artifacts, partly to the Prussian Administration of State Palaces and Gardens in Berlin, and partly through unwise private financial transactions, so that the Burg lost most of its original contents. The opera singer Hermann Hecher,

Notes to pages 125-34 / 351 with the support of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, purchased the castle in 1975, and, the following year, opened it to the public again. The wall paintings have been restored. A further restoration began in 1987, not to its original medieval appearance, but to that of around 1830. "Friends of Burg Rheinstein" raise money for continuing maintenance. 31 Alexander Duncker, ed., Die landlichen Wohnsitze, Schlosser, und Residenzen der Ritterschaftlichen Grundbesitzer in der preussischen Monarchic, 1873, vol. 12, no. 708. 32 Otto Piper, Burgenkunde. Bauwesen und Geschichte der Burgen zunachst innerhalb des Deutschen Spracbgebiet (Frankfurt: Weidlich, 1912/1967), p. 632. See also his several articles in Denkmalpflege referred to above. 33 These questions have never been totally resolved. The writer of a 1974 guide to the Rhine castles believed that Rheinstein was restored "with artistic sense and historical understanding" (My Heilmann, Burgen und Ritter am Rbein. Ein historischer Ftihrer zwischen Bingen und Koblenz [Dusseldorf: Henn, 1974], p. 47).

Chapter Six 1 Quoted in Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik. Studien zum Wiederaufbau von Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, und Sooneck (Munich: Prestel, 1979, p. 168. 2 When I refer to the Stolzenfels of the Middle Ages, I shall use the term Burg, fortress or castle; the rebuilt Stolzenfels of the nineteenth century will be termed a Schloss or palace, which it is. For an explanation of the difference, see Appendix One. 3 The Romans built a town here, recognizing its strategic site. Two Roman milestones set up under the Emperors Claudius (A.D. 41-54) and Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138-61) and other artifacts were found near Kapellen in the eighteenth century. 4 Victor Hugo, Le Rbin. Lettres a un ami (Mulhouse: Rencontre, 1968), p. 138. 5 Georg Poensgen, introduction to Robert Dohme, Beschreibung der Burg Stolzenfels (Berlin: Kiihn, 1850/1986), p. 12. 6 Quoted in Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik, p. 49. 7 The crown prince's grateful reply to Koblenz, written on April 30, 1823, was sent from Berlin only on July 29, three months later. Rathke speculates that some persons at court, suspicious of the city's intentions, may have wished to prevent an improvement of the relations between Prussia and its Rhenish provinces, especially if the impressionable and romantic crown prince were being used by "radical" Rhinelanders (ibid., p. 50). 8 Quoted in ibid. p. 58. 9 Ibid., p. 94. 10 See Robert R. Taylor, Hohenzollern Berlin. Construction and Reconstruction (Port Credit: P.O. Meany, 1985), chap. 7. 11 Engel in Otto Biisch, ed., Friedrich Wilhelm IV in seiner Zeit. Beitrd'ge eines Colloquiums (Berlin: Colloquium, 1987), p. 170. 12 Quoted in Helmut Bohme, ed., The Foundation of the German Empire: Select Documents (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 66. 13 H.M. Mai ten, Schloss Stolzenfels am Rheine (Frankfurt: Bronner, 1844), p. 29.

352 I Notes to pages 134-40 14 Thus, like his cousin Fritz Louis, he had been influenced by both travel and reading. 15 Quoted in Rathke, Burgenromantik, p. 47. 16 Quoted in ibid., p. 48. 17 Ludwig Dehio, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, Ein Baukiinstler der Romantik (Berlin, 1961), p. 17. 18 Ibid., pp. 19 and 90. 19 Quoted in Rathke, Burgenromantik, p. 113. A similar motive had earlier motivated government advisor Theodor von Schon (1773-1856) to recommend to Chancellor Hardenberg that the Prussian Diet meet regularly in the restored Marienburg in order to strengthen the union of monarch and people. 20 He suggested use of the Bavarian arms of Crown Princess Elizabeth's family, too (ibid., pp. 71-72.) Instead, the Prussian coat of arms was installed above the main entrance. 21 Quoted in ibid., p. 114. Frederick William sympathized with King Ludwig I of Bavaria who wanted to create "a better world" in which "the bourgeois idea of equality would be neutralized or nullified by means of monumental sublimation" (Jorg Traeger, Der Weg nach Walhalla. Denkmallandschaft und Bildungsreise im 19. Jahrhttndert [Regensburg: Bernhard Bosse Verlag, 1987], p. 335). 22 Rathke, Burgenromentik, p. 84. Between 1777 and 1793, outside Koblenz's walls, Archbishop Clemens Wenceslas of Trier had built a palace from plans by the French architect Michel d'lxnard. A plain but large three-storey classical structure, its colonaded portico is flanked by broad curved wings half-surrounding a wide expanse of lawns and gardens. Used as a military hospital by the French, Russian and Prussian forces, by 1815 its interior was badly damaged. King Frederick William III ordered the palace's renovation, 1822-26, as a law court, a plan which fell through due to the main hall's poor acoustics. In 1841 his son, Frederick William IV, chose the long unused electoral palace as his official residence in the Rhineland. The main rooms, including the Throne Room, were renovated accordingly in 1842-45 by Stiller under the direction of Lassaulx. The palace remained an official royal residence until 1918. The exterior has recently been restored to its rich brown and cream colours. 23 Ibid., p. 97. 24 Architects Ludwig Persius and Heinrich Strack (1805-80) also helped with the overall supervision. 25 Quoted in Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling, Schloss Stolzenfels (Mainz: Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz), p. 3. 26 Quoted in Rathke, in Renate Wagner-Rieger and Walter Krause, eds., Historismm und Schlossbau (Munich: Prestel, 1975), p. 18. 27 Frederick William loved viaducts, which appear in his plans for Belriguardo, a new Berlin palace (Dehio, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, pp. 16 and 31). 28 Unfortunately, according to Baedeker in 1895, "The castellan shows the visitors around and, typically in the summertime, fulfills his duties with the utmost possible speed" (Karl Baedeker, Die Rbeinlande von der Schweizer bis zur Holldndischen Grenze [Leipzig: Baedeker, 1895], p. 278). 29 Malten, Schloss Stolzenfels, p. 75. 30 The others portrayed include "Faith" (Gottfried of Bouillon at the Holy Grail after conquering Jerusalem), "Poesie" (King Philip of Swabia and Irene with

Notes to pages 141-46 I 353

31

32 33

34

35 36

37

38 39

Minnesanger on a Rhine journey), "Minne" (Emperor Frederick II greeting his fiancee Isabella of England, also on the Rhine), "Loyalty" (Herman of Siebeneichen trying to rescue Emperor Frederick Barbarossa), "Steadfastness" (the crusader Gottfried von Bouillon in Jerusalem), "Love" (the meeting of Frederick II with an English princess at Stolzenfels (Alexander Duncker, Die landlichen Wohnsitze, Schlosser, und Residenzen der Ritterschaftlichen Grundhesitzer in der preussischen Monarchic nebst den koniglichen Familien-, Hans-, Fideikommiss-, und Schatull-Giitern [Berlin: A. Duncker, 1858-77], vol. 12, no. 658). As for King Johann, Frederick William's concern to provide a proper resting place for the bones of this distant ancestor, who had fallen in the Battle of Crecy (1346), led him to commission Schinkel to build a memorial in the form of a hermitage at Montclair, a tenth-century castle near Mettlach in the southwest corner of the Rhine province, a monument which was completed in 1838. In 1855 the king commanded that the castle ruins, consisting of several large corner towers and the east wall of the Palas, be buttressed. Cornelius was a painter after the king's heart, because he, too, was interested in the art of the past as well as in German myth. He was one of the "Nazarenes," a group of German painters working in what was considered an early Renaissance style. He also illustrated the "Song of the Nibelungs" which later fascinated the composer Richard Wagner. As well, he worked for Frederick William IV in Berlin on frescoes for both the Campo Santo (planned royal mausoleum), and for the renovated cathedral. A seventeenth-century drawing shows a simple low structure with a gabled roof on this site. The Alhambra in Granada was the model, suggests Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling, Heinz Cuppers, and Wilhelm Weber, Burgen und Schlosser. Kunst und Kulturin Rheinland-Pfalz (Luxemburg: Ahrtal, 1985), p. 185. This church was built above Remagen by Baron von Furstenberg-Stammheim. Having taken over the hilltop property in 1836, he hired Ernest Frederick Zwirner (1802-61) who designed the neo-Gothic many-spired church, consecrated in 1857. A family crypt, fashionable again in noble castle-reconstruction, was in this case installed in the open space before the church. The king ordered these to be heightened above the dimensions of the original plan (Malten, Schloss Stolzenfels, p. 94). This misplaced passion for authenticity was seen in the building of Mosburg (Appendix Two). Similarly, after 1846, under Lassaulx's direction, the chapel at Ramersdorf in Oberkassel was dismantled and moved across the Rhine to Bonn's old cemetery, which entailed the loss of its ceiling painting. In 1855 the engagement of Princess Louise of Prussia to the Prince Regent of Baden was announced and celebrated here, with a great banquet. After that occasion, a participant tellingly noted that the king had "somewhat subordinated comfort to picturesque effect" (Alfred von Reumont, quoted by Rathke in Wagner-Rieger and Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlossbau, p. 96). This may have been the experience of many guests. Quoted in Wolf-Dietrich Gumz and Frank J. Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise, Gedichte und Lieder. Eine Textsammlung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986), p. 300. Described in Chapter Eleven.

354 I Notes to pages 146-54 40 Duncker, Die landlichen Wohnsitze, vol. 12, 1973, no. 685. On the need for objectification of German national pride and accomplishments, see George L. Mosse, Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movement in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York: New American Library, 1977). 41 See Bornheim gen. Schilling, Rheinische Hohenburgen, p. 16. 42 Rathke, Burgenromantik, p. 111. 43 Monk Gibbon, The Rhine and its Castles (London: Putnam, 1957), p. 70. 44 Schinkel himself lamented the use of modern building materials in the architectural fabric of older buildings. He criticized the introduction of an iron railing on the Wesel City Hall in 1833 (quoted in Norbert Huse, ed., Denkmalpflege. Deutsche Texte aus drei Jahrhunderten [Munich: Beck, 1984], p. 63). 45 Otto Piper, "Was zur Wiederherstellung und zur Erhaltung unserer Burgenreste geschehen ist," Denkmalpflege, 1, 10 (August 9, 1899), p. 80. See also his Burgenkunde. Bauwesen und Geschichte der Burgen (Frankfurt: Weidlich, 1895/1967), p. 633. 46 Rathke, Burgenromantik, p. 94. 47 After the Second World War, during which the furnishings had been stored away, the palace was redecorated. Again, nineteenth-century works such Scheuren's pictures were used as a guide. Today it belongs to the province of Rhineland Palatinate and is a much-visited museum and tourist attraction.

Chapter Seven 1 Since medieval times, ruling European families had made a public ceremony of the hunt. For example, the famous illuminated manuscript, the Tres riches heures of Jean, Due de Berry (1346-1416), a religious "book of hours," is also a document of the life of this noble including the pageantry associated with the hunt and falconry. 2 Johanna Schopenhauer, quoted in Paul O. Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein. Wanderungen und Fahrten der Romantik (Berlin: Atlantis, 1938), p. 130. 3 On the Rheingau, Carl then quoted the English artist John Black: "this paradise, like the Naples region, may be styled a piece of heaven fallen to earth." Typically, Black's "Picturesque Tour Along the Rhine," published in London in 1820, was well known to the prince (Malve, Countess Rothkirch, Prinz Carl von Preussen 1801-1883. Kenner und Beschutzer des Schonen. Eine Chronik aus zeitgenossischen Dokumenten und Bildern [Osnabruck: Biblio Verlag, 1981], P-121). 4 In Sooneck's legend of the Blind Marksman the castle's virtuous lord, blinded and imprisoned by a robber baron, took one well-directed shot in an act of vengeance. In another myth, a Sooneck robber baron fell into the devil's clutches. 5 Quoted in Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik am Rhein. Studien zum Wiederaufbau von Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, und Sooneck (1823-1860) (Munich: Prestel, 1979), p. 117. 6 So speculates Ursula Rathke, Sooneck Castle (Mainz: Administration of the Castles of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, no. 8, 1979), p. 8.

Notes to pages 154-61 I 355 7 Of the Prussian princes, Albert was the least involved. After his divorce from his first wife Marianne in 1849, he withdrew from any active role in Sooneck's reconstruction. 8 The same phenomenon occurred in Britain, where, in the nineteenth century, hunting was "now upgraded in their hierarchy of values" (Marc Girouard, Life in the English Country House [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978], p. 215). 9 Rathke, Burgenromantik, p. 142. 10 Ibid., p. 136. 11 Quoted in ibid., p. 142. 12 Rathke, Sooneck Castle, p. 121. With the work on Marienburg, Sooneck marked a "Kulminationspunkt" in Prussian national heritage conservation (p. 146). 13 Quoted in Rathke, Burgenromantik, p. 131. 14 Cited in Rothkirch, Prinz Carl von Preussen, p. 214. 15 From letters of Prince Carl, written in 1871 and 1873, quoted in ibid., p. 219. 16 After the abdication of the last emperor in 1918, the castle became public property. Ironically, despite its defensible look, it could not resist looters, although Stolzenfels, with more weight as a political icon, escaped this fate. Near the end of the Second World War, the castle was plundered of much its furnishings. Several stolen pictures later turned up in the homes of residents of nearby Niederheimbach. According to Herr Meissner, of the Department of Denkmalpflege, Rhineland-Palatinate, there is no evidence that American soldiers were involved in the looting (Correspondence of November 27, 1989). After 1945 it passed into the control of the Administration of Castles of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate. As noted, it is furnished with Biedermeier furniture, pictures (including old views of the Rhine), and accoutrements, but none of the original furniture. 17 Charles Kingsley, Letters and Memoirs of his Life (London: King, 1876), p. 293. 18 Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling, Heinz Cuppers, and Wilhelm Weber, Burgen und Schlosser. Kunst und Kultur in Rheinland Pfalz (Luxemburg: Ahrtal, 1985), p. 44. 19 Quoted in Walther Ottendorf-Simrock, Castles on the Rhine (Bonn: Stollfuss, n.d.), pp. 47-48. 20 Another legend concerned one of the original Hammersteins, Wolf, who, with six daughters, was bitter that fate had not blessed him with a male heir who would loyally support him in possible adversities. But after Emperor Henry IV (reigned 1050-1106) took refuge here from persecution at the hands of his own usurping son, old Wolf thought more of his daughters! 21 Ernst Moritz Arndt, quoted in Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, p. 200. 22 Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Pilgrims of the Rhine (Boston: Dana Estes, 1900), p. 126. 23 The story concerns Jutta of the Rudesheim Bromsers, who owned Ehrenfels. Her father, setting off on a crusade, made a vow that his daughter would become a nun, but when he was gone she fell in love with a young knight. Upon her father's return, the young woman agreed to her father's plan, but, dressed as a bride, said goodbye to her lover and threw herself into the Rhine from one of Ehrenfels' towers. It was said that fishermen saw her ghost.

356 I Notes to pages 163-64 24 This English neo-Gothic palace stands outside Berlin near Potsdam. Built of brick, with a round tower, it boasts crenellations, filigree decoration, and pointed windows, but its lines are rectilinear and its roofs flat, showing the influence of English neo-Gothic. In this way, it echoes the look of Rheinstein and, with its keep-like tower and the layout of its wings, influenced Schinkel's later Stolzenfels. 25 This did not mean, however, that William was unaware of the importance of associating his dynasty with the successful imperial dynasties of the German past, with a view to justifying the new Hohenzollern ascendancy. After Prussia annexed Goslar, former seat of the Salian German emperors, in 1866, he took an interest in the remains of the imperial palace and the tomb of Emperor Henry III (reigned 1046-56) there. In 1868 William supported the first restoration work and eventually (1873-79) the Prussian government, assisted by the Reichstag, paid for reconstruction. In the rebuilt palace Hermann Wislicenus (1825-99) painted a fresco cycle including the tale of Briar Rose, an allegory of the long sleep and final reawakening, under the Hohenzollerns, of the German Empire. The attempt to associate the Prussian dynasty with imperial rulers of the German past continued after William's death. In 1900, equestrian statues of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (reigned 1155-90) and the late KingEmperor were erected in Goslar. 26 Quoted in Wolf-Dietrich Gumz and Frank J. Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise. Gedichte und Lieder. Eine Textsammlung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986), p. 185. 27 Johanna Schopenhauer, quoted in Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, pp. 121 and 129. Adelheid von Stolterfolth's 1839 lines also reflect the age's delight in horrible associations: "From the bleak debris [of Mouse Tower] comes a roaring and crashing;/ Then from the dungeon in the tower, I hear a faint moaning" ("Rheinisches Leben," quoted in Gumz and Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise, p. 114). 28 H.M. Malten, Schloss Stolzenfels am Rheine (Frankfurt: Bonner, 1844), p. 179. 29 Ferdinand Luthmer, Die Bau- and Kunstdenkmaler des Rheingaues, vol. 1: Rheingau (Frankfurt: Keller, 1907-14), p. 55. 30 Two final examples of castle-rebuilding by relatives of the Prussian Hohenzollerns may suffice. Princess Marianne (1810-83), wife of Prince Albert, purchased Schloss Reinhartshausen at Erbach on the right Rhine bank in 1855. This had been a manor house built 1754, possibly on the site of Burg Allendorf. Situated in a park and now a hotel, it remains Hohenzollern property. The southern relatives of the Prussian dynasty became involved as well. Prince Karl Anton von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen renovated the thirteenth-century Burg Namedy, just north of Andernach. Plundered, misused, and rebuilt several times, it was restored in 1856 by a bourgeois and renovated in 1896 when an aristocrat whose family had owned it in the eighteenth century repossessed and expanded it. After it had been remodelled as a hotel in 1907 by the Eberbach brothers, the Princes von Henckel-Donnersmarck and von Hohenlohe purchased it. Finally, in 1909 Prince Karl Anton bought it and made it into a rural estate. With its baroque tower and gables, Namedy is not a pseudomedieval castle and its purpose was and remains more practical than earlier Hohenzollern reconstructions. Members of the family still occupy the palace.

Notes to pages 165-71 / 357

Chapter Eight 1 The notorious "Ems Telegram" originated with King William Fs entourage at Ems in 1870. He was taking the waters here when the crisis over the Hohenzollern Candidature for the Spanish throne occurred. His adjutant's telegraphed description of an interview between the king and the French ambassador was edited and published by the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in such a way as to inflame French public opinion. This led to the French declaration of war, the Franco-German war of 1870-71, the Prussian unification of most of the German states, and the establishment of the German Reich. In the spa gardens, a statue of the emperor still stands near the spot where the famous interview took place. 2 See Thomas Nipperdey, "Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert," Historische Zeitschrift, 206 (1968): esp. 533. 3 A bronze statue of a youth clutches a book to his chest, raises one hand, and faces east toward the heart of Prussia-Germany, with an eagle at his feet. Erected in 1928, the base of the monument has a medallion with a bust of the great nationalist, sometime critic of Prussia, and erstwhile propagator of French Revolutionary ideals. 4 Drachenfels was suggested as a suitable site for this monument, but the young William II, the late emperor's grandson, chose Koblenz. The statue was destroyed in the Second World War, but the plinth and surrounding architecture remains. Over thirty-seven metres high, the statue, by Emil Hundrieser (1846-1911), faced the rivers' junction. The words "To William the Great" appear at the top of the plinth. At its base is a powerful image in relief of an eagle subduing serpents—dissidents within the Reich, or the French enemy? As a reminder of domestic discontent and a perceived foreign threat, on the base of the statue is a plea for German unity: "the Reich will never be destroyed, as long as you are united and loyal." Completed in 1897, the monument was inaugurated by William II, as an expression of gratitude to the late monarch for his role in the unification of Germany and as a symbol—on a crucial site—of the alleged strength of the new German Empire. 5 Quoted in Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik am Rhein (Munich: Prestel, 1979), p. 159.

Chapter Nine 1 From "Geistesgruss. Beim Voruberfahren an Burg Lahneck gedichtet," Samtliche Gedichte. Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe, und Gesprache (Zurich: Artemis, 1949-52), vol. 1, p. 68. 2 A young knight, courting the daughter of Lahneck's lord, was said to have swum the Lahn every night in order to meet his lady. Her waving a scarf from the keep was his signal to plunge into the river. The tale's ending varies, with him murdered by her father or drowning in the Lahn. Every evening her ghost was said to wave from the tower. In another legend the Knights Templar of Jerusalem were said to have built Lahneck. When the Archbishop of Mainz besieged it, a dozen defending Templars, who were popularly believed to have been the last of the heroic order, perished.

358 I Notes to pages 171-78 3 Carl Gustav Carus, Paris und die Rheingegenden. Tagebuch einer Reise im Jahre 1835 (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1836), p. 58. 4 Victor Hugo, Le Rhin. Lettres a un ami (Mulhouse: Rencontre, 1968), p. 317. 5 Quoted in Naomi Reed Kline, "The Gothic Revival," Castles: An Enduring Fantasy (New Rochelle, N.Y: Caratzas, 1985), p. 34. In fact, one British visitor to Lahneck may have absorbed too much of this Gothic romance. The short novel, The Young Foreign Lady (Das fremde Fraulein] by Wilhelm Schafer (1868-1952), is based on the fate of a young English tourist who died in 1851 after having become trapped atop Lahneck's keep when the decrepit staircase collapsed. Her frantic waving of a scarf to attract attention to her plight terrified local peasants who believed they saw the ghost of the legendary maiden. 6 Little is known about Morarty, or as is more likely, Moriarty. Baron von Preuschen, the present owner of Lahneck, has a small portrait but no other information on the man (Correspondence, November 11, 1989). The archive of the German Castle Association has no details about him (Correspondence with Walter Avenarius, January 23, 1990). Neither do the Newcomen Society for the Study of the History of Engineering and Technology, nor the Institute of Engineers of Ireland (Correspondence January 23, 1990, and April 25, 1990 respectively). 7 Wilhelm Lotz, Die Baudenkmdler im Reg.-Bez. Wiesbaden (Berlin: Ernst and Korn, 1880), p. 272. 8 In 1945 at the end of the Second World War, American artillery damaged Lahneck, leaving only one room intact. Repairs, however, led to archeological discoveries, including older sections of the outer wall and the well in the kitchen. Today the inhabited castle, which still includes a restaurant, is owned by Baron von Preuschen. The original plaster still peels from the outer walls. Flower gardens, shrubs, trees, and creepers create a romantic atmosphere of decay, as Lahneck seems to sink comfortably into its natural surroundings. In the summer open-air performances of the Koblenz civic theatre take place here. 9 They were in love with the same woman and, in fighting for her, each died by the other's sword. Another version maintains simply that the owner of one of the castles killed his brother, owner of the other fortress. 10 Liebenstein is connected to twelfth-century Sterrenberg by a craggy ridge. The latter ruin was first an imperial castle, then owned by the Lords of Bolanden as an Imperial fief. Later (1315) it fell into the hands of the Archbishop of Trier. Abandoned in the sixteenth century, its ruin stretches along a spur of rock behind a double moat with a double shield-wall. Apart from the keep, the Palas and other defensive structures are recognizable. It passed to Nassau in 1806 and later to Prussia. Although in the nineteenth century a local entrepreneur built a restaurant in the ruins, unlike Liebenstein, Sterrenberg is owned by the Rhineland-Palatinate Provincial Administration of State Castles. 11 Johanna Schopenhauer, quoted in Paul O. Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein. Wanderungen und Fahrten der Romantik (Berlin: Atlantis, 1938), p. 122. 12 Adelheid von Stolterfoth, Beschreibung, Geschichte und Sage des Rheingaues und Wisperthales (Mainz: Kunze, 1840), p. 59. 13 Michael Bringmann, in Renate Wagner-Rieger and Walter Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlossbau (Munich: Prestel, 1975), p. 43. My analysis here owes much to Bringmann's work.

Notes to pages 178-84 / 359 14 Born into a Bremen merchant family in 1865, he began his adult life in his family's profession, until his talent for drawing propelled him to the Berlin Academy of the Arts and Crafts Museum, after which he taught himself architecture. As well, he designed civic and business structures and, as we have seen, rural villas for the rich. He became the leading—but not unchallenged— German expert in castle restoration. When the Wartburg in Saxony was being restored, he designed its new restaurant in 1912. Apart from his most famous undertaking, Marks burg, he worked on Hohkonigsburg, 1900-1908 (Appendix Two), and Veste Coburg, 1911-23. In 1899 Ebhardt founded and edited Der Burgwart, the organ of the German Castle Association, which successfully encouraged, through its pages, the study of various castles and palaces. Although my study focuses on his reactionary political conservatism, I do not wish to detract from his constructive role the development of architectural heritage conservation. 15 Ferdinant von Quast, "Pro memoria ..." in Norbert Huse, ed., Denkmalpflege. Deutsche Texte aus drei Jahrhunderten (Munich: Beck, 1984), p. 80. 16 Bodo Ebhardt, Der Schlossbau. Eine Betrachtung fiber Neubau und Wiederherstellungvon Schlossem (Berlin: Burgverlag, 1914), p. 19. 17 Ibid., p. 20. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., p. 19. 20 Ibid., p. 18. 21 Ibid., p. 6. 22 Oskar Doering, Bodo Ebhardt. Ein deutscher Baumeister (Berlin: Burg-Verlag, 1925), p. 42. 23 Alexander Duncker, Die landlichen Wohnsitze, Schlosser, und Residenzen der Ritterschaftlichen Grundbesitzer in der preussischen Monarchic... (Berlin: A. Duncker, 1873), vol. 12, no. 696, n.p. 24 Ibid. 25 Except for the east wing and the chapel, the Schloss itself was destroyed in 1945 during the Second World War and so became yet another ruin on the site. The castle/palace complex of Sayn, including the English garden in the town of Bendorf, has been neglected in the later twentieth century. However, the present owner, Prince Alexander zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, president of the German Castle Association since 1986, has begun conservation measures (Rheinische Zeitttng, 10/11 [August 1996]: 14). 26 Walter Avenarius, Mittelrhein. Mil Hunsriick, Eifel, Westerwald. Landschaft, Kultur, Geschichte, Kunst, Burgenkttnde (Nuremburg: Clock and Lutz, 1974), p. 295. 27 Heinrich Neu and Hans Wcigert, Kunstdenkmdler des Kreises Neuwied (Diisseldorf: Schwann, 1940), p. 59. 28 Arndt, quoted in Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, p. 200. 29 Quoted in Walther Ottendorf-Simrock, Burgen am Rhein (Bonn: Stollfuss, 1973), p. 75. 30 Bodo Ebhardt, "Schloss Arieufek [fie] bei Honningen am Rhein," Burgwart, 32 (1931): 26ff. 31 Duncker, Die landlichen Wohnsitze, vol. 15,1880, no. 884.

360 I Notes to pages 184-91 32 The "Valhalla" to which Rathke refers is the German Hall of Fame built near Regensburg 1830-1842 by King Ludwig I of Bavaria (Rathke, Burgenromantik, p. 151). On this neo-classical temple, built into a hillside above the Danube River, see Jorg Traeger, Der Weg Nach Walhalla. Denkmallandschaft und Bildungsreise im 19. Jahrhundert (Regensburg: Bosse, 1987). 33 Duncker, Die landlichen Wohnsitze, 1867-68, vol. 10, no. 546. 34 Hugo, Le Rhin, p. 193. 35 Few, however, enjoy the remarkable history of Burg Eltz on the Mosel, which was owned by the von Eltz family from 1157 until 1956. A coparcenary castle, it received additions in 1472 and 1590, suffered a fire in 1920, and was reconstructed.

Chapter Ten 1 Quoted in Herbert Roch, Fontane, Berlin und das 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Weiss, 1962), p. 266. 2 The phenomenon was not confined to Central Europe. In England for example, parvenu nobles built or expanded neo-Gothic, neo-Tudor, or neo-Elizabethan manor houses such as Shadwell Park in Norfolk, or Eaton Hall in Cheshire. In Canada, the Thousand Islands have Boldt Castle, built 1900-04; Toronto has its Casa Loma, begun 1905, both expressions of middle-class status seeking. 3 Between 1871 and 1918, the German emperors created 1,129 new nobles from the ranks of the bourgeoisie (Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 421). 4 "To own a feudal estate, to have one's son serving in the Garde du Corps or practising a new feudal code of honour in the university duelling fraternities, became the new bourgeois ideal" (Hans Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire [Dover, N.H.: Berg, 1985], p. 45). The concept of bourgeois "feudalization" has been challenged recently by historians such as Geoff Eley and Richard Evans. Dolores L. Augustine, moreover, differentiates between "feudalization" (social and political deference to the nobility) and "aristocratization" (merely aping noble behaviour) (Patricians and Parvenus: Wealth and High Society in Wilhelmine Germany [Oxford: Berg, 1994), p. 7). The latter phenomenon can definitely be seen in the rebuilt castles of the Middle Rhine. 5 Naomi Reed Kline, "The Popular Explosion," in Naomi Reed Kline, ed., Castles: An Enduring Fantasy (New Rochelle, N.Y: Caratzas, 1985), p. 72. 6 Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling, Heinz Cuppers, and Wilhelm Weber, Burgen und Schlosser. Kunst und Kultur in Rheinland-Pfalz (Luxemburg: Ahrtal, 1985), p. 188. 7 Michael Bringmann, in Renate Wagner-Rieger and Walter Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlossbau (Munich: Prestel, 1975), p. 41. 8 A German scholar has described this latter phase of castle rebuilding as "pathetisch-romantisch" (Heinz Biehn, "Schlossbauten der Romantik in Hessen und der Historismus," in ibid., p. 109 [Biehn quotes here his own Residenzen der Romantik]]. 9 Rathke, in ibid., p. 97. 10 Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Pilgrims of the Rhine (Boston: Dana Estes, 1900), p. 122.

Notes to pages 191-200 I 361 11 Ernst Moritz Arndt, quoted by Paul Ortwin Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein. Wanderungen und Fahrten der Romantik (Berlin: Atlantis, 1938), p. 188. 12 Theobald von Bethman Hollweg, Reich Chancellor from 1909 to 1917, was his grandson. 13 Alois Schreiber, Der Rhein. Handbuch fur Reisende. . . (Heidelberg: Engelmann, 1841), p. 359. It is now closed to the public. 14 Baron Fritz E. von Mering, "Das Schloss Heimburg," Geschichte der Burgen, Ritterguter, Abteien, und Kloster in den Rheinlanden, vol. 7, (1844), 1973, pp. 58-59. 15 Andreas Kohlschiitter, ed., A Genius in Chaotic Times: Edmund H. Stinnes on his Father, Hugo Stinnes (1870-1924) (Bern, 1979), pp. 24 and 45. Today Heimburg is a forbidding pile, almost overgrown with creepers and other ill-tended bushes and trees, but still inhabited. Industrialists-cum-castle-rebuilders were also active near the Middle Rhine. At Cochem, on the Mosel River, west of Koblenz, the Berlin industrialist JJ. Ravene built a virtually new castle, 1868-77, on the ruins of an imperial fortress destroyed by the French in 1689. The architects Hermann Ende and Julius Raschdorff incorporated architectural parts from other ruins. 16 Ferdinand Freiligrath, quoted in Walther Ottendorf-Simrock, Castles on the Rhine (Bonn: Stollfuss, 1980), p. 55. 17 They had spurned all lovers' advances and "for this they were sunk in the Rhine/ and changed into rock and hard stone" (quoted in Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, p. 145). 18 Quoted in H.M. Malten, Stolzenfels am Rhein (Frankfurt: Bronner, 1844), p. 163. 19 Correspondence with Dr. Wilhelm Avenarius of the German Castle Association, January 23,1990. 20 There are other examples of Americans purchasing European castles. William Waldorf Astor bought Hever Castle in Kent and had it redesigned 1903-7 by F.L. Pearson in a neo-Tudor style. Perhaps ruins have a special fascination for North Americans. Henry Ward Beecher in 1855, for example, wept when he saw the ruins of Kenilworth: "I had never seen an old building; I had never seen a ruin" (quoted in David Lowenthal, The Past Is Foreign Country [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], p. 114). 21 Undated letter from Rhinelander to the German Castle Association, in the archive of the Association, Marksburg, Braubach/Rhein. 22 After Rhinelander died in 1946, the town of Oberwesel bought Schonburg from his son in 1950 with the family's stipulation that it become an international youth hostel. By 1953 his wish had been executed and eventually a hotel was added. In the 1960s the keep was partly rebuilt. Preservation work continued in the 1980s. Today a massive television aerial jauntily stands on the hostel roof. 23 Monk Gibbon, The Rhine and Its Castles (London: Putnam, 1957), p. 154. 24 Magnus Backes, Wellmich am Mittelrhein. Mit Burg und Kloster EhrenthaL Neuss, Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerci, 1974, p. 3. 25 In 1945 Maus suffered artillery damage at the hands, not of the traditional enemy, the French, but of the Americans. 26 Johanna Schopenhauer, quoted in Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, pp. 120 and 122.

362 / Notes to pages 202-9 27 A legend concerns a mysterious English knight who, at a Cologne tournament, wooed Guta, sister of Count Philip of Kaub. When he later returned to claim his faithful bride, it was discovered that he was Richard of Cornwall, elected German emperor. The fortress is said to be named for Guta. 28 Bodo Ebhardt, Deutsche Burgen als Zeugen deutscher Geschichte (Zillessen, 1925), p. 222. 29 According to a popular story, the emperor was irritated because, when his ship passed by, he was not greeted by cannon salutes from its tower (My Heilmann, Burgen und Ritter am Rhein: ein historischer Fiihrer zwischen Bingen und Koblenz [Diisseldorf, Henn, 1974], p. 119). 30 Bodo Ebhardt, Deutsche Burgen, p. 222. 31 Gustav Walter, Schloss Gutenfels am Rhein. Geschichte und Beschreibung (Kolner: Verlags-Anstalt, n.d.), p. 27. 32 Further changes of ownership followed, including a period, 1909-11, when it was the property of Duke Heinrich Borwin zu Mecklenburg. Then Joseph Massenez of Wiesbaden took it over. In 1935 the manufacturer Georg Edel purchased it. After 1945 it was renovated as a apprentices' home. In 1952-54 the romantic additions were removed when it was converted into a vacation home. Since 1959 Rei-Werke of Boppard has owned it, and it has been operated as a youth hostel, a hotel, and restaurant. 33 Walter, Schloss Gutenfels, p. 25. 34 Ibid., p. 29. Walter seems to have suffered bankruptcy for Gutenfels was sold in 1910. Recent owners have removed some of the romantic fixtures. 35 Correspondence with Dr. H. Herzog, of the Rhineland-Palatinate Office for Heritage Conservation, January 29, 1990. 36 It is now the residence of the French ambassador to Germany. To the north, in the Ruhr valley, at Essen, Alfred Krupp (1812-77) built his Villa Hiigel, a Renaissance-classical style mansion of 300 rooms sprawling on a hilltop, surrounded by a giant iron fence. Villa Hiigel is not in the style of a medieval castle, but well reflects the self-glorification of the nouveau riche seen in castle renovation or building. 37 "Du stolze Burg, erbaut am schonsten Ort/Bring jenem Gluck, bleib Deutschen Geistes Hort! /Wo Raub geherrscht und wilder Fehden Wuten,/ Entfalte nun der Friede seine Bluthen." 38 It perfectly embodies the attributes of Heinz Biehn's "lofty-elevated-solemn (pathetisch] romanticism" ("Schlossbauten der Romantik in Hessen und der Historismus," in Wagner-Rieger and Krause, eds., Historismus und Scblossbau, P-109). 39 Because of its size and extravagance, its name, and its location, I have called Drachenburg a "castle," although it might be more precisely labelled as a florid villa. The latter building type has been described by Andreas Ley as a "freestanding, relatively large, representative, lordly \herrschaftlich] family dwelling with a park or garden, which must have a certain theatrical appearance" (Andreas Ley, Die Villa als Burg. Ein BeitragzurArchitekturdes Historismus im siidlichen Bayern 1842-1968 [Munich: Galley, 1981], p. 26). 40 Robert Geissler, quoted by Gerd Braun, "Ein Hundert Jahre 'Walhalla des Rheinlandes'. Zur Baugeschichte der Drachenburg bei Konigswinter" Burgen

Notes to pages 210-23 I 363

41 42 43

44

und Scblosser. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Burgenvereinigung e. V. fur Burgenkunde und Denkmalpflege (1987), II, p. 81. Angelika Schyma, Schloss Drachenburg in Konigswinter (Neuss: Neusser Druckerei,1990),p. 4. Ibid, p. 15. The same vigilance has been absent since 1945. Today, additions of equally dubious value are the nearby "Hall of the Nibelungs" containing Wagnerian scenes, a reptile zoo, which seems to be associated with the dragon legend, and the "Dragon's Cave" itself. During the Second World War, the mansion stood in the path of the advancing American forces, suffering considerable damage from artillery fire. After the war the palace became a school again, but when this venture closed, it was threatened with collapse due to years of neglect. In 1971 a manufacturer from Godesberg restored much of it and opened it to the public. The province of North-Rhine-Westphalia took over the mansion in 1990, continuing to operate it as a museum. In 1989 a private heritage preservation institute took over Drachenburg and completed the restoration.

Chapter Eleven 1 Quoted in Magnus Backes and Giinther Stanzl, "Burgruinen—Freizeithobby oder archaologische Kulturdenkmaler," Burgen und Schlosser. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Burgenvereinigung e.V. fur Burgenkunde und Denkmalpflege (1987), II, p. 57. This attitude supports Paul Zucker's point that the reaction of the viewer to ruins reflects "his emotional attitudes, his cultural and intellectual level; but, even more, the prevalent concepts of his time: the 'Zeitgeist'" (Paul Zucker, The Fascination of Decay: Ruins—Relic, Symbol, Ornament [Ridgewood, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1968], p. 2). 2 Quoted in Josef Ruland, Der Rolandsbogen in Remagen-Rolandseck. Zur Wiedererrichtung vor 150 Jahren (Neuss: Neusser Druckerei und Verlag, 1990), P-3: .

3 Believing that her lover, Roland, had been killed in battle, the young woman renounced the world, joining the convent on the nearby island, Nonnenwerth. However, the knight returned and, mourning his lost love, built the Rolandseek castle overlooking Nonnenwerth, where he lived out his life, gazing frequently at the island in the river. 4 Charles Kingsley, Letters and Memoirs of his Life (London: King, 1876), vol. 1, p. 292. 5 Ferdinand Freiligrath, Werke (Berlin: Deutsches Verlagshaus Ong, 1974), First Part, pp. 174-75. 6 Today visitors can arrive by car but purists still puff their way up a steep path from the riverside. The restaurant terrace covering the site has reduced the "Arch" to a mere curiosity. 7 Ibid., pp. 177 and 179. 8 Quoted in Hans Heinrich Welchert, Wanderungen zu den Burgen und Domen am Rhein (Tubingen: Wunderlich, 1970), p. 26. 9 Victor Hugo, Le Rhin. Lettres a un ami (Mulhouse: Rencontre, 1968), p. 320.

364 I Notes to pages 224-28 10 Quoted in Frank Schwieger, Johann Claudius von Lassaulx 1781-1848. Architekt und Denkmalpfleger in Koblenz (Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1968), p. 87. 11 Fritz E. Mering, Geschichte der Burgen, Rittergiiter, Abteien, und Kloster in den Rheinlanden, vol. 7 (Cologne: Arend, 1844), p. 31. 12 Quoted in Monk Gibbon, The Rhine and Its Castles (London: Putnam, 1957), p. 114. 13 H.M. Malten, Schloss Stolzenfels am Rbeine (Frankfurt: Bronner, 1844), p. 131. 14 Walter Forst, "Das Rheinland und die Welt," in Das Rheinland in preussischer Zeit. Zehn Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Rheinprovinz (Cologne: Grote, 1965), p. 205. Forst's reference is to the "Victory Avenue" (Siegesallee), a long row of statues of victorious Hohenzollerns set up in Berlin's Tiergarten 1898-1901 (See Robert R. Taylor, Hohenzollern Berlin: Construction and Reconstruction [Port Credit: PD. Meany, 1985], chap. 10). Along the Middle Rhine, buildings and monuments, both old and new, became part of what a more recent study calls an "avenue of monuments" (Denkmdlerstrasse) (Jorg Traeger, Der Weg nach Walhalla. Denkmallandschaft und Bildungsreise im 19. Jahrhundert [Regensburg: Bernhard Bosse Verlag, 1987], p. 146). 15 To commemorate the Wars of Liberation little Braubach has a "warriors' monument" (Kriegerdenkmal)) a large, ponderous tower with corbelling, crenellations, and turrets surveying the river shore, designed by Bodo Ebhardt (1907). 16 Germania, set up after the Franco-Prussian War and the establishment of the new Reich, expresses the fulfilment of nationalists' hopes for German strength and unity, especially since the figure holds the imperial crown. On the base are large bronze reliefs, which include portraits of Kaiser William I, his generals and princes, including Bismarck, as well as scenes from the campaigns of the Franco-Prussian War. There are life-size allegorical representations of Peace and War as well as Father Rhine giving to his daughter, the Mosel goddess, a sentinel's horn. Verses from the "Watch on the Rhine" are inscribed on the base. The meaning of the statue's posture, however, has not always seemed clear. Germania seems to be saying to France defiantly: Behold, we Germans are united and powerful now in our empire. Challenge us if you dare! (On the symbolism of the monument see Thomas Nipperdey, "Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert," Historische Zeitschrift, 206 [1968]: 565). 17 Noting that 327 monuments were built to William I, 1888-1902, and 470 "Bismarck columns" were erected, 1898-99, a scholar of this phenomenon has described how "the mass of masonry and statuary which went up in Germany in this period [1871-1914] was remarkably large and made the fortunes of sufficiently pliable and competent architects and sculptors" (Eric Hobsbawn, "Mass-producing Traditions: Europe 1870-1914," in Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983], pp. 264 and 274.

Notes to pages 229-39 I 365

Chapter Twelve 1 The fourteenth-century Pfalzgrafenstein, equally famous because of its midstream position near Kaub, has also survived nearly intact, but is not as old. 2 Bodo Ebhardt, "Castles of the Rhine.'Mrt and Archaeology, 31 (1931): 134. It had been carefully preserved "without any innovations," continued Ebhardt with some licence (ibid., p. 135). "Thank God," he wrote elsewhere with more justification, it had been saved from "one of those pernicious 'restorations'" of the nineteenth century (Deutsche Burgen [Berlin: Wasmuth, 1899- ], P-16). 3 H.J. Grueneberg, quoted in Richard Meinel, "Die Marksburg im Spiegel alter Postkarten," Burgen und Schlosser. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Burgenvereiginung e.V. fur Burgenkunde und Denkmalpflege, 1 (1986): 5. 4 The town of Braubach is twinned with Villeneuve in Burgundy, France. Resentment of the invasions of the "hereditary enemy" from west of the Rhine has largely been put aside. 5 One of the castle's owners, the Count of Katzenelnbogen, who travelled to northern Italy in 1311-12, may have brought back with him impressions of the towers of Tuscany (Werner Bornheim gen. Schilling. Rheinische Hohenburgen [Neuss: Verlag Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1964], vol. 1, p. 89). 6 The other legend is more romantic. A young woman, whose fiance was reported dead, was about to marry another man. But when the priest prayed to St. Mark to preserve the lady, an abyss swallowed up the bridegroom. The woman, twice denied matrimony, became a nun, after which her original fiance appeared. Disappointed, he threw himself and his horse off the cliff. 7 Philippsburg was destroyed by fire in 1613, then was largely demolished, although today both the original gate structures and the east wing with halftimbered gables can be seen, plus some of the western dwelling house with its nineteenth century changes. (This is not the same Philippsburg—at Ehrenbreitstein—discussed in Chapter Four.) 8 Quoted in Walter Avenarius, Mittelrhein. Mit Hunsriick, Eifel, Westerwald. Landschaft, Kultur, Geschichte, Kunst, Burgenkunde (Nuremberg: Clock and Lutz, 1974), p. 414. 9 Alois Schreiber, Der Rhein. Handbuch fur Reisende (Heidelberg: Engelmann, 1841), p. 249. 10 He loved to stay at Burg Hohenzollern at Hechingen in Wiirttemberg, which his great-uncle Frederick William IV had restored (Appendix Two). 11 George L. Mosse, Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York: Fertig, 1975). 12 Gunther Binding, Rheinische Hohenburgen in Skizzen des 19. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Bachem, 1975), p. 24. 13 The phrase is George L. Mosse's. 14 Bodo Ebhardt contributed an essay to a new edition of Dilich's sketches (Carl Michaelis, ed., Dilich's rheinische Burgen nach Handzeichnungen Dilichs [Berlin: Franz Ebhardt, 1900]). 15 Bodo Ebhardt, Die Grundlagen der Erhaltung und Wiederherstellung deutscher Burgen (Berlin: Ernst, 1901), p. 14.

366 I Notes to pages 239-42 16 Bodo Ebhardt, "Zur Geschichte der Vereinigung zur Erhaltung deutscher Burgen," Burgwart, 6 (June 1905): 74. 17 C. Krollmann, "Die Wiederherstellungsarbeiten an der Marksburg," Die Burgwart, 7 (April 1906): 55. 18 Ibid., p. 53. 19 Ibid., p. 54. 20 Ibid., p. 56. 21 Robert Jaffe, "Die Burgen in der Poesie," Der Burgwart, 6 (1905): 68-69. "Ritterlich" cannot be translated merely as "chivalric" because the English word does not have the additional connotations of knighthood's soldierly qualities. 22 Ebhardt, "Zur Geschichte der Vereinigung," p. 74. The annual total of visitors is now over 170,000 (Deutsche Burgenvereinigung e.V, Mitteilungen, 43/1991, p. 16). In the guest book are the names of heads of state who have continued to visited it, including Richard Nixon, 1963, and Olav V of Norway, 1973. 23 Ebhardt, "Das Marksburgfest 1903," Burgwart, 4 (August 1903): 98. 24 Bodo's son Friedrich, a Koblenz architect, lived on in the castle as its castellan and was president of the Castle Association throughout the 1950s. The Ebhardt family plot is in the castle garden, near the northwest bastion. Further study of the castle's structure continues. Since the Second World War, with the ensuing damage repaired, the Marksburg has become one of Germany's leading tourist attractions. Its maintenance is supported by the Department of Heritage Conservation of the Province of Rhineland-Palatinate, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, and by entrance fees. Further excavations, research, and restoration have proceeded. In 1977-78, restoration work began on the Knights' Hall, the living quarters, and the chapel. Restoration and partial reconstruction continued through the late 1980s and early 1990s. Work on partly rebuilding, stabilizing, and plastering the chapel tower, for example, was finished in 1993. 25 Bodo Ebhardt and C. Krollmann, Die Marksburg. Ein Fuhrer (Berlin: Verlag fur's deutsche Haus, 1900). 26 Oskar Doering, Bodo Ebhardt. Ein deutscher Baumeister (Berlin: Burgverlag, 1925), p. 121. 27 Bodo Ebhardt, Deutsche Burgen als Zeugen deutscher Geschichte (Zillessen, 1925), p. 230. 28 Ibid. 29 R.A. Zichner, Die Marksburg bei Braubach am Rhein (Mainz, 1926), p. 31. 30 Ebhardt, Deutsche Burgen, p. 230. 31 Ibid., p. 25. 32 Ibid. 33 Der Burgwart, 16, 2 (1915), p. 22. Subsequent wartime editions of the journal announced on the first page of each edition those who had been killed. 34 Meinel, "Die Marksburg," pp. 5-7. Marksburg, still a source of some national pride, appeared on a series of West German postage stamps honouring historic architecture as national monuments. 35 Doering, Bodo Ebhardt, p. 72. 36 Burgenverein Schk>ss Hainchen, ed., "In memoriam Prof. Bodo Ebhardt" (pamphlet, 1965, in German Castle Association archive, Braubach/Rhein), n.p.

Notes to pages 243-45 / 367 37 Alois Riegl, "Neue Stromungen in der Denkmalpflege," quoted in Marion Wohlleben, ed., Georg Dehio. Alois Riegl. Konservieren, nicht restauriern. Streitschriften zur Denkmalpflege urn 1900 (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1988), p. 115. 38 These ideas were expressed in his Uber Verfall, Erhaltung, und Wiederherstellung von Battdenkmalen mil Regeln farpraktische Ausfiihrungen, cited in ibid., p. 116. 39 Ibid., pp. v-vi. 40 Both quotations from Hans Heinrich Welchert, Wanderungen zu den Burgen und Domen am Rbein (Tuubingen: Wunderlich, 1970), p. 249. 41 Deutsche Burgen (Berlin: Wasmuth, 1899-1908). Another of Ebhardt's notable studies was the two volume "European Fortifications of the Middle Ages" (Der Wehrbau Europas im Mittelalter. Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung der europaischen Burgen [Berlin, 1939]). These were more scholarly in tone than the two foregoing examples. The first volume deals with the castles of Spain, Portugal, and Italy; the second, with those of Scandinavia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, and European Turkey. The Second World War and Germany's renewed expansion was underway when the second volume was published, which explains Ebhardt's references to the castles of "what was formerly Poland." The castles of the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, formerly independent Czechoslovakia, then (since early 1939) part of Germany, are considered. There is no discussion of castles in France, England, or the Low Countries. Nevertheless, both volumes have none of the chauvinism which marred his earlier work. 42 Deutsche Burgen, pp. 239-40. This book is replete with lavish printer's ornaments depicting, for example, jousting knights, and illuminated letters. 43 Ibid., p. vii. 44 Ibid., p. vi. 45 Bodo Ebhardt, "Die Sprache deutscher Burgen," Burgwart, 16 (1915), p. 10. 46 Deutsche Burgen, p. 492. 47 Albert Hofmann, an architect, in the introduction to Doering, Bodo Ebhardt, p. 7. 48 Deutsche Burgen, n.p. 49 There is a foreshadowing in Ebhardt's relationship with William II of that of Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler. Many an absolute ruler has formed a special patron's relationship with a favourite architect, but one wonders if Speer had been aware of the emperor's patronage of Ebhardt. He does not mention Ebhardt in his memoirs (Erinnerungen [Berlin: Propylaen, 1969]). 50 Doering, Bodo Ebhardt, p. 179. 51 Deutsche Burgen, p. vii. 52 "Die Sprache deutscher Burgen," Der Burgwart, 16 (1915), p. 10. 53 The Vosges (Vogesen) were "German mountains," and castles here were "valuable heirlooms of our people" (Ebhardt, Die Burgen des Elsass [Berlin: Franz Ebhardt, 1904], pp. land 22). 54 Deutsche Burgen, opposite p. 480. Built by the Counts of Vianden, it had been given to Nassau at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. In 1820 Nassau sold it to quarriers. In 1827 two men, Mathieu and Prisse, purchased the ruin to prevent further damage. In 1841 William II of Holland bought the ruin, and after 1850 Prince Henry of Holland restored the chapel. Ebhardt showed in a sketch how the castle could be restored.

368 I Notes to pages 246-52 55 Deutsche Burgen, p. 492. 56 Fritz Fischer's well-known works have documented this aspect of German imperialism. See, for example, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: Norton, 1967). 57 Repeating the official interpretation of why Germany was at war, he averred that the "decadent French" were envious "of the healthy life of our people"; the "greedy English," of "our thriving trade"; "the Russian vassals," of "our industriousness and our knowledge" (Bodo Ebhardt, "Die Sprache deutscher Burgen," DerBurgwart, 16 (1915): 2-6). 58 Alsace's "thousand-year-old castles" were proof of its "Germanness" (Ebhardt, "Tausendjahrige Burgen bezeugen das Deutschtum des Elsass," Der Burgwart, 41 [1940]: 1-8). In other articles in the post-First World War era, Ebhardt had discussed the Alsatian castles as well as "German Border Castles" elsewhere. In his "German Castles," Ebhardt also included Burg Kinzheim in Lower Alsace near the old Imperial city of Schlettstadt (Selestat) which was associated with Charlemagne, Emperor Lothar, and Rudolf of Habsburg. 59 Roger Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the PanGerman League 1886-1914 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), p. 166. 60 Helmut Bohme, ed., The Foundation of the German Empire: Select Documents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 2.

Chapter Thirteen 1 "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1816), quoted in Russell Noyes, ed., English Romantic Poetry and Prose (New York: Oxford, 1956), p. 807. In the heart of Konigswinter, below Drachenfels, a plaque set up in 1984 commemorates Byron because he made these forested hills "world famous" for which "the city of Konigswinter is grateful." Drachenfels is still the most popular ruin in Germany. Among similar mountain attractions, only Rio de Janeiro's Sugarloaf Mountain welcomes more visitors annually (Eugen Hollerbach, Drachenfels. Konigswinter on the Rhine. Illustrated Guide of the Drachenfels [Pulheim: Rahmel, n.d.), p. 6). In the 1960s, Drachenfels still attracted about one million visitors annually (Horst-Johs Tummers, Rheinromantik. Romantik und Reisen am Rhein [Cologne, 1968], p. 1). 2 Dorothy Wordsworth, Journals (London: Macmillan, 1970 [1820]), vol. 2, p. 45. 3 Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Pilgrims of the Rhine (Boston: Dana Estes, 1900), p. 86. 4 Ibid., p. 85. 5 Ferdinald Freiligrath, "Auf dem Drachenfels," quoted in Wolf-Dietrich Gumz and Frank J. Hennecke, eds., Rheinreise. Gedichte und Lieder. Eine Textsammlung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986), p. 87. Similarly, in the Seven Mountains, wrote Emanuel Geibel (1815-84), "There comes from the distant past/ A ringing through my soul,/ The wonder-world of legend/ Opens up to me and blooms. / I see on the Dragon's Rock/ The maiden condemned to death / I hear the crashing strokes / Of the sword which frees her" (ibid., p. 135). Geibel was a German nationalist, conservative in politics, who officially sang the praises of the Prussian unification of Germany in 1871.

Notes to pages 253-61 I 369 6 A variation tells that the giants created a bed for a large lake which annually flooded, thus creating the Rhine itself. A smaller scale legend holds that it was to these hills that the seven dwarves brought Snow White to protect her from her wicked stepmother. In another Drachenfels legend, two knights both claim the same young lady, who somehow becomes a sacrifice to a dragon. Her faith in God intimidates the monster and divine intervention releases her. (Presumably the knights' rivalry continued.) 7 Quoted in Ursula Rathke, Preussische Burgenromantik am Rhein (Munich: Prestel, 1979), p. 150. 8 In 1891-92, further buttressing was installed. More repairs were necessary when lightning struck the ruin in 1905. Since 1945, the Federal Government and that of Northrhine-Westphalia have carried out more work to support the mountain itself and thus the ruin. 9 In the frenzy of nationalistic monument building which swept Germany around 1900, a monument to Emperor William I was planned for the slope below Dragon's Rock: a triumphal arch with an equestrian statue of the late "William the Great." Fortunately this was never built, and, as we have seen, William II, the grandson, chose the "German Corner" at Koblenz. 10 Ernst Moritz Arndt, quoted in Paul Ortwin Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein. Wanderungen und Fahrten der deutschen Romantik (Berlin: Atlantis, 1938), p. 204. 11 Alexandre Dumas, quoted in Johann Jakob Hasslin, Rheinfahrt. Von Mainz zum Meer (Munich: Prestel, 1952), p. 137. 12 John Murray, A Handbook for Travellers on the Continent: Being a Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland (London: John Murray, 1865), p. 270. 13 The ruin suffered light damage in the Second World War and today is the property of the province of North Rhine-Westphalia. 14 Quoted in Hans Heinrich Welchert, Wanderungen zu den Burgen und Domen am Rhein (Tubingen: Wunderlich, 1970), p. 26. 15 Harper's Bazaar, March 1978, p. 18. 16 Ann Radcliffe, quoted in Johann Jakob Hasslin, Der Rhein in romantischer Zeit. Von Mainz bis Diisseldorf (Hanau: Hans Peters, 1979), p. 13. 17 Wordsworth, Journals, p. 44. 18 Bettina von Arnim, quoted in Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, p. 52. 19 Arndt, "Wanderungen aus und um Godesberg" Bonn, 1844, quoted in Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, p. 183. 20 Another legend was associated with the "High Cross" (built around 1331-49) on the road between Bonn and Bad Godesberg. The Knight of Godesburg had two sons, one of whom murdered the other. After roaming for twenty years he finally returned, penitent, to the monastery of Heisterbach (across the Rhine in the Seven Mountains) where he remained until his death. The original Gothic spire, surmounted by a cross, was said to have been made of stones taken from near Drachenfels across the Rhine. 21 Ursula Rathke, in Renate Wagner-Rieger and Walter Krause, eds., Historismus und Schlossbau (Munich: Prestel, 1975), p. 100. 22 The exploitation of the ruin and its appeal for tourists has continued into the later twentieth century. In 1959, wanting to incorporate the monument into

370 / Notes to pages 261-70 the life of the town, the city authorities of Bonn-Bad Godesberg removed the late 19th century additions and in 1959, beside the ruin on the hilltop, they commissioned the building of a hotel in the same harsh reinforced concrete as was used near Drachenfels. The new building, designed by Gottfried Bohm, was neutral in colour so as not to detract from the castle's dignity. Great broad plate glass windows allow a magnificent view of the Rhine and of Drachenfels opposite, but from the outside glare forbiddingly. Although originally the concrete clashed harshly with the castle's old stones, today it has weathered into tones similar to those of the ruin. The Knight's Hall has been restored and the original layout of the ruins made clear to visitors. 23 Quoted in Walter Haentjes, Geschichte der Godesburg (Bonn: Athenaum, 1960), p. 91. 24 Ibid., p. 92. 25 Ibid. 26 Bodo Ebhardt, "Wie sollen wir unsere Burgruinen erhalten?" Denkmalpflege, 1 (1899): 63. At Marksburg, Ebhardt's own restoration project, a restaurant (but never a hotel) was established at the outer precinct of the castle.

Chapter Fourteen 1 Emil Schreiterer and Bernard Below, "Die Burg Katz bei St. Goarshausen," Die Denkmalpflege, 2,15 (1900): 117. 2 Quoted in Otto Reiner, "Die 'Katz' und ihrer Geschichte," Der Burgwart 3 (1909): 52. 3 Hugo, Le Rhin. Lettres a un ami (Mulhouse: Rencontre, 1968), p. 155. 4 Reiner, "Die 'Katz' und ihrer Geschichte," p. 52. 5 Ibid., pp. 52 and 54. 6 Ibid., p. 54. 7 Correspondence with Berg's granddaughter, Mrs. Gabriele Berneck (London, U.K.), February 8,1990. 8 Bobo Ebhardt, "Zur Geschichte der Vereinigung zur Erhaltung deutscher Burgen," Burgwart, 6 (1904-5): 74. 9 Burgwart, 10 (1908): 48. 10 Reiner, Burgwart, 1909, p. 56. 11 The Renaissance style, especially in its German form, became the preferred "German" style after about 1870, when Gothic was determined to be "French" (Andreas Ley, Die Villa als Burg [Munich: Callwey, 1981], pp. 49-50). 12 Correspondence with Mrs. Gabriele Berneck, February 8,1990. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 The Nazis' use of Katz was part of their program to train future generations. Throughout Germany they built three new castles, "Ordensburgen," on remote hilltops, where the students, known as "Junkers," took three-year courses in leadership in relatively luxurious circumstances. The S.S. also rebuilt castles for similar purposes in Westphalia and in the Eiffel (see Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany 1918-1945 [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1968], and Robert R. Taylor, The Word in Stone: The Role of Architecture

Notes to pages 270-80 / 371

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32

33

34

in the National Socialist Ideology [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974], pp. 204-7). Since 1945 Katz has had many other uses, including a refugee asylum, a private boarding school, offices for the Evangelical church, and federal government holiday resort. In 1988 it was temporarily closed because of its decrepit condition, but by 1990, it had a Japanese owner, who paid 4.3 million marks for the structure and planned to make it into a fifty-bed hotel. Wilhelm Lotz, Baudenkmale des Regierungsbezirks Wiesbaden (Berlin: Ernst und Korn, 1880), published by the Nassau Association for Archeology (Altertumskunde) and Historical Research. Otto Piper, " Was zur Wiederherstellung und zur Erhaltung unserer Burgreste geschehen ist," Denkmalpflege, August 30,1899, p. 89. Otto Piper, Burgenkunde. Bauwesen und Geschichte der Burgen (Frankfurt: Weidlich, 1912/1967), p. 633. Denkmalpflege, 2, 5 (1900): 118. Von Behr, "Die Ruine Rheinfels bei St. Goar a. Rhein als Gegenstand der Denkmalpflege," Die Denkmalpflege, 7, 9 (June 12,1905): p. 65. Reiner, "Die 'Katz' und ihrer Geschichte," p. 48. Schreiterer and Below, "Die Burg Katz bei St. Goarshausen," p. 117. Ibid., p. 118. Ibid., p. 119. Ibid. Ibid., p. 118. The work was "exemplary" (vorbildlich), said the Castle Association (Mitteilungen,43 [1991]: 24). Quoted in Paul Ortwin Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein. Wanderungen und Fahrten der Romantik (Berlin: Atlantis, 1938), p. 132. In fact, along with the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and Castle Neuschwanstein of the "mad" King Ludwig of Bavaria, it probably is the best-known architectural symbol of Germany on this continent. Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, p. 132. Because of its prominent and potentially useful position as a lookout, Pfalz suffered some artillery damage in 1945. Only in the 1960s, however, did it cease to have any practical function beyond attracting tourists. A long, manmade stone breakwater now helps break ice and to protect Pfalz. The castle can still be reached only by boat from Kaub. Rudolf Knappe, "Zur Aufstellung eines vollstandigen Katalogs der Burgen im Lande Hessen," Burgen und Schlosser, 1986/11, p. 75. Today the modern province of Rhineland-Palatinate has listed about 600 castles, castle ruins, and palaces (Gunter Stanzl, Zum Umgang mit Burgen und Burgruinen. Merkblatt [Mainz: Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlosser, 1988], p. 5). See, for example, "Internationale Colloquium in Koblenz. Tutz und Farbigkeit' an mitterlalterlichen Bauten" (November 1990), Mitteilungen of the Deutsche Burgenvereinigung, 43 (1991): 31-32. Since 1993, when preservation work began on Burg Ehrenfels, efforts have been made to preserve as much of the original plaster as possible. Ibid., p. 32.

372 / Notes to pages 280-99 35 Paul-Georg Custodis and Kurt Frein, Nassau an der Lahn (Neuss: Neusser Druckerei und Verlag, 1986), p. 2.

Chapter Fifteen 1 Bodo Ebhardt, "Die Sprache deutscher Burgen," Burgwart, 16 (1915): 2. 2 We have already noted Georg Dehio's statement of this view in Chapter Three. 3 In 1967, there were fifty youth hostels in the Rhineland (Udo Borniger, Geschichte und Wiederaufbau der Burg Stahleck [Bacharach: Verein fur die Geschichte der Stadt Bacharach und die Viertaler e.V, 1988], p. 44). Use of castles as schools was less common but we have seen how both Drachenburg and Katz became schools for future Nazi leaders. 4 One tale is about a robber baron who was at odds with the archbishops of both Trier and Mainz. The other was, for Germans, an even more symbolic story of reconciliation and peace among Germans. The daughter of the Count Palatine, allied to the Hohenstaufen faction, had been engaged in childhood to a son of the Duke of Saxony, allied to the Guelphs. Later, when the king of France asked for her hand it was granted by her ambitious father but the girl refused to renounce her previous fiance. Her mother invited the Saxon youth to Burg Stahleck and the couple were secretly married at the Pfalz, not far away. The father eventually forgave her and thus a longstanding feud among Germans was resolved. 5 Quoted in Borniger, Geschichte und Wiederaufbau der Burg Stahleck, p. 41. 6 It is no longer a hostel today, but, surrounded by a fine garden, is maintained by the Department for Heritage Conservation of the province of RhinelandPalatinate. 7 In the early 1990s, a holograph display supplemented the obligatory torture chamber. 8 The ruined parts were stabilized 1970-72 and the keep was restored 1974-79. Now owned partly by the province of Rhineland-Palatinate and the town of Boppard, it is administered by the Administration of State Palaces of the Rhineland-Palatinate, a department of the Provincial Office for Heritage Conservation (Landesamt fur Denkmalpflege). 9 Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Pilgrims of the Rhine (Boston: Dana Estes, 1900), p. 216. 10 Quoted in R. Engel, BurgRheinfels. St. Goar (Boppard: Rheindruck, n.d.), p. 6. 11 Ibid., p. 14. 12 Bodo Ebhardt, "Castles of the Rhine," Art and Archaeology, 31 (1931): 133. 13 Alois Schreiber, Der Rhein. Handbuch fur Reisende in den Rheinggegenden, den angranzenden Thd'lern und Badern in Holland und Belgien (Heidelberg: Engelmann, 1841), p. 243. 14 Johanna Schopenhauer, quoted in Paul Ortwin Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein. Wanderungen und Fahrten der Romantik (Berlin: Atlantis, 1938), p. 134. 15 Bettina von Arnim, quoted in ibid., pp. 51-52. 16 Ferdinand Freiligrath, "Dank des jungen Deutschland an die Romantik," quoted in Rave, ed., Der Deutsche Rhein, p. 220. 17 H.M. Malten, Schloss Stolzenfels am Rheine (Frankfurt: Bronner, 1844), p. 162. 18 Von Behr, "Die Ruine Rheinfels bei St. Goar a. Rhein als Gegenstand der Denkmalpflege," Denkmalpflege, 7, 9 (June 12,1905): 67.

Notes to pages 300-10 I 373 19 Today, not only is there the museum on the site, but also a thirty-seven room hotel (opened 1972), run by the Hanseatic Order of Merchants, where the southern outer fortifications (Fort Scharfeneck) once stood. These structures have been built in a sympathetic style with slanting grey slate roofs and pointed spiky gable windows. 20 The 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II shows how other governments could use a retreat into past glory to escape an uncomfortable present.

Chapter Sixteen 1 Udo Borniger, Geschichte und Wiederaufbau der Burg Stahleck (Bacharach: Verein fur die Geschichte der Stadt Bacharach und die Viertaler e.V, 1988), p. 3. 2 Only the largest, most accessible, and best documented castles have been discussed. Many others in the Middle Rhine area were made habitable again or partially rebuilt during the period studied. These include Burg Krieshoven (near Euskirchen), Olbriick and Renneberg (both near Neuwied), Schoneck (near Boppard), and Schaumburg (on the Lahn). 3 This phenomenon has been analyzed in late twentieth-century Britain by Robert Hewison, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline (London: Methuen, 1987). 4 Boppard's neo-classical station, built 1859, was destroyed in 1989 as the town traffic required wider streets. 5 The phrase is Harold D. Lasswell's, in "Building as Political Communication: The Signature of Power on Environment," in Daniel Lerner, et al., eds., Communication Research: A Half-Century Appraisal (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1977), p. 280. 6 Hewison, The Heritage Industry, p. 10. Germany in the last century, of course, was not suffering a process of decline, but the reverse. 7 With public authorities playing a role in architectural preservation and with cyclical economic changes, there is the danger that only "politically correct" structures will be preserved, as in East Germany in the years 1945-60, when Hohenzollern structures or Christian churches were neglected, or in the USSR when for a time after 1917 Romanoff palaces and Christian buildings were ignored or misused. 8 Hewison, The Heritage Industry, p. 15. 9 On some of the more recent improvements made at Marksburg, see Burgen und Schlosser, 43 (1991): 15. 10 Oskar Doering, Bodo Ehhardt. Ein deutscher Baumeister (Berlin: Burg-Verlag, 1925), p. 137. 11 The excellent series of popular short books, "Rheinische Kunststatten" (Rhenish Artistic Sites), produced by the Rhenish Association for Heritage Conservation and Landscape Protection, is notable for its scholarly tone and its eschewing of patriotic hype. The Association has dropped the ideologically loaded word Heimat from its name. 12 Borniger, Geschichte und Wiederaufbau der Burg Stahleck p. 45. 13 Ibid., p. 43.

374 I Notes to pages 311-27 14 Gunter Stanzl, Zum Umgang mit Burgen und Burgruinen. Merkblatt (Mainz: Landesamt fur Denkmalfplege/ Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlosser Rheinland/Pfalz, 1988), p. 5. 15 Peter Lust, Two Germanics: Mirror of an Age (Montreal: Harvest House, 1966), p. 28. 16 And of Eastern civilization! In July 1996, a replica of Marksburg, complete with a "German village" and an artificial Rhine, was opened on the island of Miyako in Japan (see Mitteilungen of the German Castle Association, 58/1996, p. 8).

Appendix Two 1 Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824), quoted in Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), p. 222. 2 Adelheid von Stolterfoth, Beschreibung, Geschichte und Sage des Rheingaues und Wisperthales (Mainz: Kunze, 1840), p. 64. 3 Jacob Burckhardt, quoted in Heinz Biehn, Residenzen der Romantik (Munich: Prestel, 1970, p. 43. 4 Ibid., p. 98. 5 Ibid., p. 99. 6 Alois Schreiber, Der Rhein. Handbuch fur Reisende in den Rheingegenden, den angrdnzenden Thdlern und Bddern, in Holland und Belgien (Heidelberg: Engelmann, 1841), p. 189. 7 Quoted in Biehn, Residenzen der Romantik, p. 101. 8 Plundered in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, the building was taken over by the Hessian government in 1968. 9 Monk Gibbon, The Rhine and Its Castles (London: Putnam, 1957), p. 169. 10 Biehn, Residenzen der Romantik, p. 103. 11 Biehn rightly calls it "a prototype of the [German] national memorial halls of liberation of the nineteenth century" (ibid., p. 104). 12 Bombs and the billeting of occupation troops during the Second World War damaged the palace and the tower, much of which has been repaired.

Appendix Three 1 A good description of the reconstruction project is in Norbert Huse, ed., Denkmalpflege. Deutsche Texte aus dreijahrhunderten (Munich: Beck, 1984). 2 Goethe, Uber Kunst und Altertum, in Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gesprdche (Zurich: Artemis, 1965), vol. 13, p. 968. 3 In seeking to rouse popular enthusiasm for the campaign against Napoleon, King Frederick William III had made a famous and successful appeal, "To my People." This partly gave rise to the myth that the Wars of Liberation involved a mass uprising to drive the French from the Germany. 4 Heinz Biehn, Residenzen der Romantik (Munich: Prestel, 1970), p. 281. Andreas Ley writes of a count, who, after the violence of 1848, changed his plans to renovate his villa in a Byzantine style and opted instead for a fortresslike reconstruction (Die Villa als Burg [Munich: Callwey, 1981], p. 30).

Notes to pages 327-31 I 375 5 That the rebuilt Hohenzollern resembled no fifteenth-century castle disturbed Otto Piper who, in the 1890s, was one of the first scholars to object to this sort of falsification (Burgenkunde. Bauwesen und Geschichte der Burgen zunachst innerhalb des Deutschen Sprachgebiet [Frankfurt: Weidlich, 1967; 1st ed., 1895], p. 633). It still does not please historians and other experts. In 1959, Curt Tillmann in his Lexikon der Deutschen Burgen und Schlosser wrote that the castle was built in "a very debatable [anfechtbar] neo-Gothic, only palatable from a distance" ([Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1959], vol. 1, p. 422). 6 Biehn, Residenzen der Romantik, p. 284. 7 Quoted in ibid., p. 187. 8 Or "Selestat," for Alsace is now part of France. 9 W Maurenbrecher of Konigsberg, quoted in Helmut Bohme, ed., The Foundation of the German Empire: Select Documents (London: Oxford University, Press, 1971), p. 33. 10 Denkmalpflege,2(mO): 119. 11 Oskar Doering, Bodo Ebhardt. Ein Deutscher Baumeister (Berlin: Burg-Verlag, 1925), p. 131. 12 Ibid., pp. 131 and 137. 13 Bodo Ebhardt, Die Burgen des Elsass (Berlin: Franz Ebhardt, 1904), p. 20. Ebhardt uses the word "restoration" (Wiederherstellung) loosely. For him it could mean replication based on documented reality (as at Marksburg), but also the creation of an impressive, but inaccurate pseudo-medieval palace on the well-preserved ruins of an older one. 14 Doering, Bodo Ebhardt, p. 136. 15 Ibid., p. 131. The patriotic exaggeration was typical, but because Doering's work was published in 1925, somewhat wistful for, since 1919, Alsace—and Haut-Koenigsbourg—was in French hands. 16 Otto Piper, Burgenkunde. Bauwesen und Geschichte der Burgen (3d ed.; Frankfurt: Weidlich, 1967, 1912), pp. 634-40. 17 Burgwart, 9 (1907-8): 63-65. 18 Ibid., p. 627. 19 Ibid., p. 130 and 129. Elsewhere, Doering stresses the architect's "absolute precision" in research (ibid., p. 131).

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378 I Castles of the Rhine Anderson, William. Castles of Europe from Charlemagne to the Renaissance. London: Elek, 1970. Avenarius, Wilhelm. Burgen und Schlosser in Rheinland-Pfalz. Fremdenverkehrsband Rheinland-Pfalz, 1975. Avenarius, Wilhelm. Mittelrhein. Mit Hunsruck, Eifel, Westerwald. Landschaft, Kultur, Geschichte, Kunst, Burgenkunde. Nuremberg: Clock and Lutz, 1974. Backes, Magnus, ed. Hessen. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1966. Backes, Magnus. Kaub am Rhein mit Burg Ehrenfels und dem Pfalzgrafenstein. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1967. Wellmich am Mittelrhein. Mit Burg Mans und Kloster Ehrenthal. Neuss: Gesellschaft fiir Buchdruckerei, 1974. Backes, Magnus, and Busso von der Dollen. Die Marksburg. Bau- und Kunstgeschichte einer rheinischen Burg. Restaurierungsmassnahmen und Bauunterhaltungseit 1975. Koblenz: Gorres, 1993. Beyer, Heinrich. Burg Stolzenfels. Koblenz, 1842. Beyer, H. Heimat-Museum der Stadt Bingen a. Rhein. Burg Klopp: Bingen, Pennrich, 1969. Biehn, Heinz. Residenzen der Romantik. Munich: Prestel, 1970. Binding, Giinther. Rheinische Hohenburgen in Skizzen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Zeichnungen des Majors Theodor Scheppe und des Archivrats Leopold Eltester. Cologne: Bachem, 1975. Bornheim gen. Schilling, Werner. Rheinische Hohenburgen. 3 vols. Neuss: Verlag Gesellschaft fiir Buchdruckerei, 1964. Oberwesel. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1974. , and Hans Caspary. Castles and Monuments of the State of RhinelandPalatinate. Lahnstein: DS Druck-Service, 1981. , Cuppers, Heinz, and Wilhelm Weber. Burgen und Schlosser. Kunst und Kultur in Rheinland Pfalz. Luxemburg: Ahrtal, 1985. Borniger, Udo. Geschichte und Wiederaufbau der Burg Stahleck. Bacharach: Verein fur die Geschichte der Stadt Bacharach und die Viertaler e. V, 1988. Briies, Eva. Die Rheinlande: vol. 12 of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Lebenswerk. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1968. Busley, Josef, and Heinrich Neu. Die Kunstdenkmaler des Kreises Mayen: vol. 17:1 of Paul Clemen. Kunstdenkmaler der Rheinprovinz. Diisseldorf: Schwann, 1941. Chant, Christopher. Castles. London: Roydon, 1984. Clemen, Paul. Die Kunstdenkmaler des Kreises Bonn. Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1905. Die Kunstdenkmaler des Kreises Neuwied: vol. 16:2 of Kunstdenkmaler der Rheinprovinz. Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1940. Die Kunstdenkmaler des Kreises Koblenz: vol. 16:3 of Kunstdenkmaler der Rheinprovinz. Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1944. , and Walther Zimmermann. Die Kunstdenkmaler des Kreises Ahrweiler: vol. 17 of Kunstdenkmaler der Rheinprovinz. Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1938. Custodis, Paul-Georg. Bad Ems. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1980.

Select Bibliography I 379 Sankt Goarshausen mit Burg Katz und Patersberg. Neuss: Gesellschaft fiir Buchdruckerei, 1981. , and Kurt Frein. Nassau an der Lahn. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1986. Dahl, J.K. Die Burgen Rheinstein und Reichenstein mit der Clemenskirche am Rhein. Mainz: Johann Wirth, 1832. Dehio, Georg, ed. Hessen. Vol. 1 of Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmdler. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1966. Die Rheinlande von der holldndiscben Grenze bis zum Rheingau. Vol. 2 of Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmdler. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1972. Dilich, Wilhelm. Dilich's rheinische Burgen. Nach Handzeichnungen Dilichs. Berlin: Ebhardt, 1900. Doepgen, Heinz, and Roland Gunter. Burgen, Kirchen und Schlosser im Raume Bonn. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1978. Dohme, Robert. Beschreibung der Burg Stolzenfels. Berlin: Kiihn, 1850. III. Korps des deutschen Heeres. Die Festung Ehrenbreitstein. Geschichtlicher Riickblick und Fiihrer durch die Festungsanlagen. Koblenz: Gorres, 1977. Duncker, Alexander, ed. Die Idndlichen Wohnsitze, Schlosser, und Residenzen der Ritterschaftlichen Grundbesitzer in der preussischen Monarchic nebst den koniglichen Familien-, Haus-, Fideikommiss- und Schatulle-Gutern. 16 vols. Berlin: Verlag von A. Dunker, 1858-77. Ebhardt, Bodo. Deutsche Burgen. 2 vols. and supplement. Berlin: Wasmuth, 1899-1908. Die Grundlagen der Erhaltung und Wiederherstellung deutscher Burgen. Berlin: Ernst, 1901. Die Burgen des Elsass. Berlin: Verlag Franz Ebhardt, 1904. Der Schlossbau. Eine Betrachtung fiber Neubau und Wiederherstellung von Schlossern. Berlin: Burgverlag, 1914. Deutsche Burgen als Zeugen deutscher Geschichte. Zillessen, 1925. Die Marksburg und ihre Geschichte. Ein neuer Fiihrer. Braubach: Burgverlag Marksburg, 1935. Der Wehrbau Europas im Mittelalter. Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung der europdischen Burgen. 2 vols. Stollhamm: Rauschenburg, 1958. , and C. Krollmann. Die Marksburg. Ein Fiihrer. Berlin: Verlag fur's deutsche Haus, 1900. Einsingbach, Wolfgang. Eltville im Rheingau. Neuss: Verlag Gesellschaft fiir Buchdruckerei, 1977. Engel, R. Burg Rheinfels. St. Goar, Boppard: Rheindruck, n.d. Enkelmann. Sankt Goar und das Burgenerlebnis in der Dichtung. Sankt Goar, 1962. Firmenich, Heinz. Stadt Konigswinter. Neuss: Gesellschaft fiir Buchdruckerei, 1978. Gall, Ernst, ed. Pfalz und Rheinhessen. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1961. Pfalz und Rheinfranken (Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmdler). 1943/1961.

380 I Castles of the Rhine Die Rheinlande von der holldndischen Grenze bis zum Rheingau. Vol. 2 of Georg Dehio, ed. Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmaler. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1938. Gassner, Edmund. Die Eltuiller Burg, Stddtebauliches Denkmal am Rbein. Wiesbaden: Ritter, 1980. Gibbon, Monk. The Rhine and Its Castles. London: Putnam, 1957. Gilles, Reinhard. Baudenkmdler in Andernack und den Stadtteilen Eich, Kell, Miesenheim undNamedy. Ein Kurzfiibrer. Andernach: Oertel, 1989. Grebel. Das Schloss und die Festung Rheinfels. Ein Beitrag zur Rheinischen Geschichte. St. Goar: Gassenroth, 1844. Haentjes, Walter. Geschichte der Godesburg. Bonn: Athenaum, 1960. Die Godesburg. Bad Godesberg: Gutenberg, 1965. Heilmann, My. Burgen und Ritter am Rbein: ein kistoriscker Fiihrer zwischen Bingen und Koblenz. Diisseldorf: Henn, 1974. Herchenroder, Max. Der Rheingaukreis. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1965. Hiecke, Robert. The Marksburg. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1978. Hindley, Geoffrey. Castles of Europe. Feltham: Hamlyn, 1968. Hollerbach, Eugen. Drachenfels, Konigswinter on the Rhine: Illustrated Guide of the Drachenfels. Pulheim: Rahmel, n.d. Hoster, Joseph. Guide to Cologne Cathedral. Cologne: Greven, 1965. Hotz, Walter. Burgen am Rbein und an der Mosel. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1956. Kleine Kunstgeschichte der deutschen Burg. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965. Kleine Kunstgeschichte der deutschen Schlosser. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974. Kemp, Franz Hermann, and Udo Liessem. Bendorf-Sayn. Neuss: Neusser Druckerei, 1988. Krause, Kurt. Deutsche Ruinen. Leipzig: Goldmann, 1924. Liessem, Udo. Das Mittelrhein-Museum in Koblenz und seine Bauten. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1977. , Ulrich Lober, and Bertram Resmini. Die Festung Ehrenbreitstein und das Landesmuseum Koblenz. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1978. Lotz, Walter. Baudenkmale des Regierungsbezirks Wiesbaden. Berlin: Ernst and Korn, 1880. Luthmer, Ferdinand. Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmaler des Rheingaues. Frankfurt am Main: Keller, 1907. Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmaler des Lahngebiets. Frankfurt am Main: Keller, 1907. Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmaler der Kreise Unter-Westwald, St. Goarshausen, Untertaunus, und Wiesbaden Stadt und Land. Frankfurt am Main: Keller, 1914. Malten, H.M. Schloss Stolzenfels am Rhein. Frankfurt: Bronner, 1844. Medding, Wolfgang. BurgLahneck. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1974.

Select Bibliography / 381 Mering, Fritz E. von. Geschichte der Burgen, Ritterguten, Abteien, und Kloster in den Rheinlanden und den Provinzen Julich, Cleve, Berg, und Westfalen. Cologne: Arend, 1833-61. Meyer, Werner. Deutsche Schlosser. Frankfurt: Weidlich, 1969. Deutsche Burgen. Frankfurt: Weidlich, 1969. Michel, Fritz. Der Ehrenhreitstein. Koblenz: Krabbensche Buchdruckerei, n.d. Die Kunstdenkmaler der Stadt Koblenz. Die profane Denkmdler und die Vororte. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1954. Mrusek, Hans-Joachim, and Irene Roch. Castles of Europe. New York: Hart, 1973. Neu, Heinrich, and Hans Weigert. Kunstdenkmaler des Kreises Neuwied. Edited by Paul Clemen. Kunstdenkmaler der Rheinprovinz. Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1940. Neumann, Hartwig, and Udo Liessem. Die Klassizistische Grossfestung Koblenz. Eine Festung im Wandel der Zeit: preussische Bastion, Spionageobjekt, Kulturdenkmal. Mit dem Vollstandigen Reprint der deutschen Ausgabe des "Spionagewerks" von J.H. Humfrey: "Versuch eines neu angenommenen Fortifikations-Systems zur Verteidigung der Rhein-Grenze," Nurnberg, 1842. Koblenz: Bernhard and Graefe, 1989. Ottendorf-Simrock, W, and M.J. Mehs. Burgen am Rhein. Bonn: Stollfuss, 1973. Piper, Otto. Burgenkunde: Bauwesen und Geschichte der Burgen zunachst innerhalb des Deutschen Sprachgebiet. Munich: Piper, 1912. Prossler, Helmut. Koblenz und Ehrenbreitstein. Geschichte, Stadtdrundgang, Sehenswurdigkeiten. Koblenz: Selbstverlag Dr. Helmut Prossler, n.d. Rathke, Ursula. Preussische Burgenromantik am Rhein. Studien zum Wiederau/bau von Rheinstein, Stolzenfels, und Sooneck (1823-1860). Munich: Prestel, 1979. Rave, Paul O. Der Deutsche Rhein. Wanderungen und Fahrten der Romantik. Berlin: Atlantis, 1938. Ruland, Josef. Der Rolandsbogen in Remagen-Rolandseck. Zur Wiedererrichtung vor 150Jahren. Neuss: Neusser Druckerei, 1990. Schindler, Ottheinz, and Manfred Huiskes. Andernach. Innenstadt. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1979. Schmidt, Richard. Burgen und Schlosser in Schwaben. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag 1958. Schonhofen, Werner. Hammerstein am Rhein. Neuss: Neusser Druckerei, 1987. Schuerl, Wolfgang F. Medieval Castles and Cities. Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell, 1978. Schyma, Angelika. Schloss Drachenburg in Konigswinter. Neuss: Neusser Druckerei, 1990. Spennemann-Weber-Haupt, Gisela. St. Goar mit Burg Rheinfels und Biebernheim. Neuss: Gesellschaft fur Buchdruckerei, 1973. Strack, Herbert. Bonn-Bad Godesberg. Vom kurfiirstlichen Bad zur Diplomatenstadt. Neuss: Neusser Druckerei, 1990. Tillmann, Curt. Lexikon der deutschen Burgen und Schlosser. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1958. Walter, Gustav. Schloss Gutenfels am Rhein. Geschichte und Beschreibung. Cologne: Kolner Verlags-Anstalt, n.d.

382 I Castles of the Rhine Welchert, Hans Heinrich. Wanderungen zu den Burgen und Domen am Rhein. Tubingen: Wunderlich, 1970. Wanderungen durch den Burgen und Schlossern in Hessen, Rheinhessen undder Pfalz. Frankfurt: Societats-Verlag, 1976. Weyres, W, and A. Mann. Handhuch zur rheinischen Baukunst des 19. Jahrhunderts. 1800-1880. Cologne: Greven, 1968. Worner, Friedrich J. Burgen, Schlosser und Bauwerke der Hohenzollern in 900 Jahren. Moers: Steiger, 1981. Zeune, Joachim. Burgen. Symbolen der Macht. Ein neues Bild der mittelalterlichen Burg. Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1996. [This book has several useful insights into the original castle-building movement, but, because it came to my attention only recently, I have not been able to incorporate them into my own study] Zichner, Rudolf Arthur. The Castle of Rheinstein: A Descriptive Guide to the Castle, its Artistic Treasures and Other Objects of Interest. Mainz: Rheingold, 1953. Zichner, Rudolf Arthur. Die Marksburg bei Braubach am Rhein. Mainz: 1926.

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Index I 385 Abbema, L. von, 188, 209 Ahrental Palace, 188 Albert, Prince of Hohenzollern, 30, 44,112,115,154,155,157,159,198, 355 Alexander, Prince of Hohenzollern, 118,125 Alexander, Fort, 107,108, 110, 348. See also Koblenz fortresses Altena Castle, 80 Andernach Castle, 86, 287, 289, 372 Anton, Prince of Hohenzollern, 329 Arenfels Palace, 182-84 Ariendorf Palace, 179 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 65, 72, 133, 160, 182,191,193,255,258 Arnim, Achim von, 58, 136,177 Arnim, Bettina von, 59,136, 258, 298 Aster, Ernst Ludwigvon, 103, 104, 107 Augusta, Princess of Prussia, 112, 155; Empress of Germany, 30, 49, 148, 167,168,227,260 Baedeker, K., 15, 74,194, 352 Barfuss, Franz Wilhelm von, 185, 194 Below, B., 264, 268, 271 Berg, F., 215, 268-70 Bethmann Hollweg, M.A., von, 191-94 Bismarck, O. von, 42, 43, 64, 67, 163, 212, 213, 227, 242, 263, 338, 357, 364 Boisseree, M., 58, 82 Boisseree, S., 58, 82, 84 Boos von Waldeck, J., 181 Boosenburg, 123, 200-201, 204 Boppard Castle, 280, 283, 289, 294, 300, 372 Braunsberg Castle, 187 Brentano, C. von. 59, 136, 177 Brohleck Castle, 214 Bromserburg, 176-77, 294, 300 Bulwer-Lytton, E.G.E., 59, 73,160, 191,252,295 Byron, Lord, 51, 59, 73, 250, 368 Carl, Prince of Hohenzollern, 30, 44, 45,112,115,118,150,151,154,156, 159,163,354

Carus, C.G., 43, 105, 120-21,124, 171, 350 Charlotte, Princess of Hohenzollern, 30,44,135,123 Clemen, P, 84, 91, 92, 159, 182 Cohausen, C.A. von, 82, 85 Constantine, Fort, 107,110, 348. See also Koblenz fortresses. Dattenberg Castle, 287 Doering, O., 80, 231, 241, 244, 309, 329,330,331,375 Drachenburg Castle/Palace, 184, 188, 190, 196, 206-14, 215, 250, 253, 257, 270, 362-63, 372 Drachenfels Castle, ii, 21, 25, 60, 73, 75, 87,118,148, 206, 208, 209,210, 214, 219, 220, 250-57, 258, 260, 261, 262,263, 308, 309, 312, 357, 368-69, 370 Dumas, A., 255 Duncker, A., 60, 146 Dvorak, M., 90, 92, 94, 207 Ebhardt, B., 62, 68, 85, 89-90, 91, 92, 111, 178,182,184, 204, 229,233, 236-41, 242-47, 261, 268-69, 270, 271, 274, 277, 282, 298, 307, 309, 313, 329, 331, 336, 359, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 370, 375 Ehrenbreitstein Castle, 10,12, 44, 57, 61, 68, 74, 88, chap. 4 passim, 124, 125,131,135,138,139,147, 149,154, 166,171, 224,283,298, 305, 338, 348, 350 Ehrenfels Castle, 24,114,134,146, 160,161-62,163,177, 311, 355, 371 Eichendorff, J. von., 54, 59, 325 Elizabeth, Queen of Prussia, 132, 139, 141,142,143,148,285,352 Eltville Castle, 7,161, 279, 287, 289-91, 294, 300 Forster, G., 54, 58,103,105, 341 Frederick I, King of Prussia, 112, 328,

386 I Castles of the Rhine Frederick II, King of Prussia, 45, 113, 122,124, 328 Frederick III, Emperor, 30, 212, 235, 260 Frederick August, Duke of Nassau, 55, 56, 321 Frederick Carl Louis, Prince of Hohenzollern, 30, 115 Frederick William Louis, "Fritz Louis," Prince of Hohenzollern, 18, 30, 41, 45, 49, 76, 82, 86, chap. 5 passim, 151,163, 170, 177,198, 254-55,295, 298, 325, 350, 352 Frederick of HohenzollernSigmaringen, 49 Frederick William I, King of Prussia, 328 Frederick William II, King of Prussia, 30,44,45,55,113 Frederick William III, King of Prussia, 30, 38, 42, 44, 45, 87,103,105,107, 108,112,113,115,132,154,156, 221, 255, 323, 325, 352, 374 Frederick William IV, as Crown Prince, 30, 42, 45, 82, 87, 114, 115, 118, 119, 124, chap. 6 passim, 154, 156, 160, 191, 260, 285, 295, 327, 329, 338, 347, 351; as King of Prussia, xiv, 30, 37, 41,44,45,57,87,112,113,114, chap. 6 passim, 150,156,157,159, 160, 166,167,181,184,188, 189, 193, 198, 212, 222, 224, 243, 260, 298, 323, 324, 325, 338, 340, 352, 353, 365 Freiligrath, F., 145, 151,198, 221, 222-23, 225, 227, 252, 298 Friedrichstein Palace, 14 Furstenburg Castle, 2,199, 280 George, Prince of Hohenzollern, 118, 123,125 Godesburg, ii, 8, 64, 75, 206, 252, 258-263, 264, 280, 312, 313, 369-70 Goethe, J.W von, 37, 56, 57, 58, 82, 170,171,177,321,325 Gorres, J., 40, 65, 129, 167, 168, 338, 357

Gutenfels Castle, 12, 58, 83, 146, 148, 202-205, 244,258, 264,270, 271,274, 362 Habel,F., 83,176,204 Hammerstein family, 48,161, 170, 288, 340, 355 Hammerstein-Schwartow, W von, 340 Hammerstein Castle, 6, 25, 48,112, 160-61,162,280,288,293,311 Heimburg, 92,152, 185, 194-96, 205, 215,270,309,361 Henry, Prince of Hohenzollern, 125 Hoffmann, R, 123, 200, 204 Hoffmann,W, 184,209 Hohenzollern Castle, 156, 325-28, 365, 375 Hohkonigsburg, 80, 92,113, 236,240, 269, 309, 329-31, 359 Hood, T., 4, 60, 73 Hugo, V, 2, 13, 59, 67, 129,171, 185, 223, 265 Ingersleben, C.H.L. von, 118, 350 Johannisberg Palace, 48, 214-15 Karl Anton, Prince of HohenzollernSigmaringen, 356 Katzenelnbogen Castle, xvi, 20, 73, 89, 146,199, 200, 215, 264-72, 281, 297, 307, 309, 310, 370-71, 372 Kingsley,C, 106, 159,221 Kirsch-Puricelli family, 187 Kirsch-Puricelli, von, N., 187 KleinJ.B.A., 74,115,343 Klopp Castle, 4, 12, 271, 289, 291-93 Koblenz fortresses, 88, 98,106-107, 110, 147,149, 348. See also Forts Alexander and Constantine Kopisch, A., 163,221 Kuhn,W, 119, 120, 125,350 Lahneck Castle, 3, 8, 14, 57, 59, 112, 128, 129,138,140,148,170-75,

Index I 387

177, 190, 269, 271, 272, 305, 306, 357-58 Lassaulx, J.C. von, 82,119,125,137, 138,151,184,193,198, 224, 225,264, 298, 322, 350, 352, 353 Lassaulx, PE. von, 173 Liebeneck Palace, 175 Liebenstein Castle, 75, 175, 358 Linz Castle, 14, 287, 289,290-94, 300, 372 Longfellow, H.W, 59,115 Lotz,W, 83,173,270 Louis XIV, 11, 66, 68,128,146, 297 Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Hohenzollern, 328 Louise, Queen of Prussia, 132, 153, 212,339 Luthmer, E, 92, 163 Malten, H.M., 72, 121, 140,145, 163, 224, 225 Marianne, Princess of Hohenzollern, 112,221,222 Marianne, Princess (wife of Prince Albert), 30,157,355,356 Marie, Princess of Hohenzollern, 30, 44, 156, 158 Marienburg, 87, 118, 122, 134, 140, 146,324-25,352,355 Marksburg, xiv, 3, 8, 9, 20, 21, 43, 45, 69, 89, 90, 91, 92,138, 148,158, 202, 228, chap. 12 passim, 253, 264, 269, 276, 281, 289, 293, 281, 307, 309, 330, 348, 359, 366, 370, 374, 375 Martinsburg, 3,14, 272-74, 280 Mecklenburg family, 350, 362; Princess Barbara, Duchess of Mecklenburg, 125 Mering, F. von, 49, 194, 224 Metternich, K.L.W von, 39, 48, 133, 145,177,340 Moller,G., 84, 85,177 "Morarty," 173,358 Morris, W, 17, 88, 89, 90 Mosburg, xvi, 56, 77,289, 320-21, 323, 353, 374

Mouse (Maus) Castle, 60, 83,148, 199-200, 204, 297, 361 Mouse Tower, 151,161,162,163, 356 Murray,]., 74,106,256 Namedy Castle, 356 Napoleon I, Emperor of France, 11, 35, 36,103,132, 202, 224,227, 241, 265,311,322,328,342,362,374 Napoleon III, Emperor of France, 42, 67, 342 Nassau Castle, 20, 92, 277-78, 279, 280 Nassau Palace, 66, 82, 322, 374 Naumann, F., 237, 349 Nollig Castle, 59,214 Obere Burg (Rheinbreitbach), 214 Ockenfels Castle, 59, 256 Oettingen family, 176 Old Castle (Koblenz), 300, 301 Oppenheim family, 210; A. von, 184; S. von, 206 Ostein, F.C. von, 55, 319, 320 Persius, L, 156, 352 Pfalzgrafenstein Castle, 57, 134, 202, 204, 274-78, 279, 280, 313, 365, 371, 372 Piper, O., 85, 90, 92, 94,125,147, 270, 274, 277, 325, 330, 346, 350, 375 Preuschen family, 175; R. von, 173; L. von, 175; R. Mischke von, 358 Pugin, A.WN., 82 Quast, F. von, 83, 87,136,178, 346 Radcliffe, A., 25, 54, 59,171, 258 Ramersdorf Palace, 184, 209, 353 Reichenbach Castle, 91 Reichenberg Castle, 83, 176, 204 Reichensperger, A., 65, 83, 84, 346 Reichenstein Castle, 6,12, 148, 150, 154,185-87,194,258,271,342 Reinhartshausen Palace, 356

388 I Castles of the Rhine Rheineck Castle, 112, 148, 181, 191-94, 227, 342 Rheinfels Castle, 8, 21, 33, 58, 78,103, 146,158,161,163, 258, 259,265, 271, 276, 289, 294-300, 307, 313, 348, 373 Rheinstein Castle, xvi, xvii, 8,14, 37, 41,45,48,82,87,99,104,111,123, chap. 5 passim, 127,132, 135,141, 147, 148,149, 150,151, 155, 156, 157, 159,160,163,168,177,181,194, 200, 205, 215, 233, 239, 254, 260,271,289, 300, 305, 309, 311, 321, 342, 350-51, 356 Rhinelander, O., 190,197-99, 258, 283, 361 Riegl,A.,93,94,277,281,346 Roland's Arch, 64, 210, 218, 219-23, 225, 227, 228, 252, 256, 307, 308, 313 Rolandseck Castle, 59, 60, 219-23, 307, 363 Rosenburg, 205-206 Rossel Castle, xvi, 55, 56, 74, 85, 214, 319-20,321,323 Royal Throne, 3, 64, 86, 218, 219, 223-27, 228, 307 RuskinJ., 82, 88, 90, 93, 98 Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck, J. von, 184 Sarter von Hoffmann, S., 196, 206, 208, 209-10, 212, 214, 215, 250,253 Sayn Castle, 179; Palace, 14, 179-81, 184,194,359 Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, L. von, 181 Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, A. zu, 359 Schenkendorf, M. von, 65, 112, 324 Schinkel, C.R, 83, 86, 87,113,115, 118,119,125,136,137,139,146,147, 205,264,325,331,353,354 Schlegel, R von, 58, 65, 82, 341 Schleswig-Holstein, E.G. zu, 49 Schmielinski, R von, 268, 269 Schnitzler, A., 119, 350 Schnitzler, K., 104,137,138,143, 154, 155,299,350 Schonburg, xvi, 8, 12,134, 190,196-99, 200, 204, 251, 258, 283, 305, 361

Schopenhauer, J., 58, 103, 150, 163, 177,200,274,276,298 Schreiber, A., 73, 74, 86,194, 218, 321 Schreiterer, E., 264, 268, 271 Sigmaringen Palace, 328-29, 330 Simrock, K., 59, 60, 177, 198 Sinzig Palace, 206 Sooneck Castle, xvii, 6, 8, 37, 45, 58, 87,88,99,104,111,112,114,148, chap. 7 passim, 168, 171,194, 209, 233, 271, 279,289, 298, 305, 309, 311, 342, 354, 355 Stahl, E., 285, 291 Stahlberg Castle, 91,279 Stahleck Castle, 5, 12, 48, 91, 112, 272, 283-87, 302, 304, 307, 310, 313, 372 Stein, C. vom und zum, 11, 37, 82, 212, 322,325 Stein Castle, 11,280, 281 Stein Tower, 66, 321-23 Sterrenberg Castle, 5, 75,175, 358 Stinnes, H. 196,215 Stolterfoth, A. von, 74, 177, 320, 350, 356 Stolzenfels Castle, xiv, 3, 7, 37, 42, 57, 64, 82, 99, 111, 112, 119, chap. 6 passim, 149, 270, 272, 289, 329, 337, 338,351,352-53 Soltzenfels Palace, xvi, xvii, 8, 9, 61, 84, 85, 87, 88, 91,104,105, 114, 123, 124, 126, chap. 6 passim, 149, 155,156, 157, 158, 159,160,161, 166, 167,168, 171,173,174,181,182,183,194,198, 206, 224, 227, 229, 233, 256, 260, 269, 270, 272, 279, 281, 298, 299, 300, 305, 309, 310, 323, 327, 331, 350, 351, 355, 356 Stiller, F.A., 137,138, 327, 352 Sturm family, 123, 200 Thackeray, WM., 74, 343 Treitschke, H. von, 42, 63, 65, 72, 82 Txishaus, B., 188, 209 Untere Burg (Rheinbreitbach), 335

Index I 389 Viollet-le-Duc, E.-E., 88-89,178,243 Virneburg, 91,279 Walter, G., 204-205,270, 362 Westerholt-Gysenburg, F.L. von, 179, 182,184 Wilhelmine Luise of Anhalt-Bernburg, 122,123, 124 William, Prince of Hohenzollern, 30, 221 William I, as Prince, 30, 46, 112,113, 115,135,154,155,156,157,159,260; as King of Prussia, 125, 159, 161,167, 168,193, 235, 327, 356, 357; as Emperor of Germany, 148, 159, 163,

165,168,210,211,212, 227,242, 356, 357, 359, 364, 369 William II, Emperor of Germany, xiv, 30, 49, 92,113,125,148, 178, 206, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 244-45, 246, 269, 299, 324, 327, 329, 355, 359, 367, 369 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 2,106, 252, 253,258,348,357 Wolkenburg, 14, 256 Wussow, P von, 99, 135-36,137,138, 143,145,155,156,157 Zwirner, E.E, 179, 182, 209, 222, 224, 255, 353