Wartburg

So here's the big history, and some introductory pictures... I took so many. I do have to say, while the Medieval Christmas market was nice, I wish we had come on a regular day and saw the castle without the extras and the crowds. Also unfortunately, we found a great view from a distance to take a side shot, but the sun was behind the castle so the pictures are meh.

We didn't come here for family history, we came for the Wartburg. It's a huge place. Like the Hohenfestung in Salzburg and the Kaiserburg in Nuremberg that we visited on our last trip, the Wartburg just overwhelms you and dominates the area. So that's worth a visit, not to mention that it was originally begun in 1067 (just one year after William the Conqueror invaded England-- be still my Medieval loving heart!), and parts of it have survived since then. Like all of these structures, it's burned down, been besieged, fired on and et cetera, but it's still here.

The castle has been an important court site of the Wettin family (like the Wittelsbachs down in Bavaria and those darn Hohenzollerns we're going to hear a lot about the Wettins on this trip). It played a supporting role in one of my favorite to teach episodes of Medieval history- the Investiture Controversy between HRE Heinrich IV and Pope Gregory VII, again-- heart palpitations...

Under the Ludowingian dynasty, the court was considered one of the most cultured in the German Reich. Two of the most influential poets/ Minnesängers were part of Hermann I's retinue: Wolfram von Eschenbach (who wrote parts of Parzival in the castle) and Walter von der Vogelweide. It was also the site of the perhaps fictional Sängerkrieg, or Minstrels' War (1206 or 1207), which was the inspiration for Wagner's Tannhäuser, which I listened to in preparation for the visit. You see how far I go for everyone? Opera!

There were other notable figures linked to the castle. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary was raised here, then married to the Ludwig IV.

The castle passed to the Electors of Saxony, and it's with them we get our next big historical adventure: the residence of Junker Jorg. Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony and great patron of education and the Catholic Church, “kidnapped”, then hid Martin Luther on his way back from the Diet of Worms. Luther lived in the castle for close to a year, during which he translated the New Testament from Greek into German. In order to do this, he took a handful of the many different dialects and standardized them so that his translation would be accessible to more people. Okay, more of the few people who could actually read.

A lot of other things happened, of course. Wars, that Napoleon guy, and a prominent part in the Revolution of 1848 and the road to German unification. The Wartburg is so significant to German history, even the Communists recognized its place, and put significant resources in to reconstruction in the 1950s, and again in the '60s.

A few last notes. Another noted visitor was Johann Wolfgang Göthe. He spent a few weeks at the castle making drawings. The castle once housed an extensive treasury of arms, armor, relics, artworks, and the sorts of blingy things one finds in a treasury. When the Red Army withdrew after WWII, most of the treasure “withdrew” with them, never to be seen again. A few items were returning in the 1960s, and the government of Germany has been trying to get the rest back from the new management.

Good luck with that.

So all of this history-- a total Medieval overload-- a hike up the hills to get to the place, and add to all that, a Medieval Christmas market. I was in historian hog heaven.Read more