some Wohlegemuths--as usual, with backgrounds in a blaze of gold, and
figures with tortuous limbs, pinched-in waists, and caricatured
countenances. In a room, pretty plentifully encumbered with rubbish, I
saw a charming Snyders; being a dead stag, suspended from a pole. There
is here a portrait of Albert Dürer, by himself; but said to be a copy.
If so, it is a very fine copy. The original is supposed to be at Munich.
There was nothing else that my visit enabled me to see particularly
deserving of being recorded; but, when I was told that it was in this
Citadel that the ancient Emperors of Germany used oftentimes to reside,
and make carousal, and when I saw, now, scarcely anything but dark
passages, unfurnished galleries, naked halls, and untenanted
chambers--I own that I could hardly refrain from uttering a sigh over
the mutability of earthly fashions, and the transitoriness of worldly
grandeur. With a rock for its base, and walls almost of adamant for its
support--situated also upon an eminence which may be said to look
frowningly down over a vast sweep of country--the Citadel of Nuremberg
should seem to have bid defiance, in former times, to every assault of
the most desperate and enterprising foe. It is now visited only by the
casual traveler--who is frequently startled at the echo of his own
footsteps.
While I am on the subject of ancient art--of which so many curious
specimens are to be seen in this Citadel--it may not be irrelevant to
conduct the reader at once to what is called the Town Hall--a very large
structure--of which portions are devoted to the exhibition of old
pictures. Many of these paintings are in a very suspicious state, from
the operations of time and accident; but the great boast of the
collection is the "Triumphs of Maximilian I.," executed by Albert
Dürer--which, however, has by no means escaped injury. I was accompanied
in my visit to this interesting collection by Mr. Boerner, and had
particular reason to be pleased by the friendliness of his attentions,
and by the intelligence of his observations. A great number of these
pictures (as I understood) belonged to a house in which he was a
partner; and among them a portrait, by Pens, struck me as being
singularly admirable and exquisite. The countenance, the dress, the
attitude, the drawing and coloring, were as perfect as they well might
be. But this collection has also suffered from the transportation of
many of its treasures to Munich. The rooms, halls, and corridors of this
Hôtel de Ville give you a good notion of municipal grandeur.
In the neighborhood of Nuremberg--that is to say, scarcely more than an
English mile from thence--are the grave and tombstone of Albert Dürer.
The monument is simple and striking. In the churchyard there is a
representation of the Crucifixion, cut in stone. It was on a fine, calm
evening, just after sunset, that I first visited the tombstone of Albert
Dürer; and I shall always remember the sensations, with which that visit
was attended, as among the most pleasing and impressive of my life. The
silence of the spot--its retirement from the city--the falling shadows
of night, and the increasing solemnity of every monument of the
dead--together with the mysterious, and even awful, effect produced by
the colossal crucifix--but yet, perhaps, more than either, the
recollection of the extraordinary talents of the artist, so quietly
sleeping beneath my feet--all conspired to produce a train of
reflections which may be readily conceived, but not so readily
described. If ever a man deserved to be considered as the glory of his
age and nation, Albert Dürer was surely that man. He was, in truth, the
Shakespeare of his art--for the period.
[Footnote A: From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour."
Dibdin's tour was made in 1821.]
NUREMBERG TO-DAY[A]
BY CECIL HEADLAM
Nuremberg is set upon a series of small slopes in the midst of an
undulating, sandy plain, some 900 feet above the sea. Here and there on
every side fringes and patches of the mighty forest which once covered
it are still visible; but for the most part the plain is now freckled
with picturesque villages, in which stand old turreted châteaux, with
gabled fronts and latticed windows, or it is clothed with carefully
cultivated crops or veiled from sight by the smoke which rises from the
new-grown forest of factory chimneys.
The railway sets us down outside the walls of the city. As we walk from
the station toward the Frauen Thor, and stand beneath the crown of
fortified walls three and a half miles in circumference, and gaze at the
old gray towers and picturesque confusion of domes, pinnacles and
spires, suddenly it seems as if our dream of a feudal city has been
realized. There, before us, is one of the main entrances, still between
massive gates and beneath archways flanked by stately towers. Still to
reach it we must cross a moat fifty feet deep and a hundred feet wide.
True, the swords of old days have been turned into pruning-hooks; the
crenelles and embrasures which once bristled and blazed with cannon are
now curtained with brambles and wall-flowers, and festooned with
Virginia creepers; the galleries are no longer crowded with archers and
cross-bowmen; the moat itself has blossomed into a garden, luxuriant
with limes and acacias, elders, planes, chestnuts, poplars, walnut,
willow and birch trees, or divided into carefully tilled little garden
plots. True it is that outside the moat, beneath the smug grin of
substantial modern houses, runs that mark of modernity, the electric
tram.
But let us for the moment forget these gratifying signs of modern
prosperity and, turning to the left ere we enter the Frauen Thor, walk
with our eyes on the towers which, with their steep-pitched roofs and
myriad shapes and richly colored tiles, mark the intervals in the
red-bricked, stone-cased galleries and mighty bastions, till we come to
the first beginnings of Nuremberg--the Castle. There, on the highest
eminence of the town, stands that venerable fortress, crowning the red
slope of tiles. Roofs piled on roofs, their pinnacles, turrets, points
and angles heaped one above the other in a splendid confusion, climb the
hill which culminates in the varied group of buildings on the Castle
rock. We have passed the Spittler, Mohren, Haller and Neu Gates on our
way, and we have crossed by the Hallerthorbrücke the Pegnitz where it
flows into the town. Before us rise the bold scarps and salient angles
of the bastions built by the Italian architect, Antonio Fazuni, called
the Maltese (1538-43).
Crossing the moat by a wooden bridge which curls round to the right, we
enter the town by the Thiergärtnerthor. The right-hand corner house
opposite us now is Albert Dürer's house. We turn to the left and go
along the Obere Schmiedgasse till we arrive at the top of a steep hill
(Burgstrasse). Above, on the left, is the Castle.
We may now either go through the Himmels Thor to the left, or keeping
straight up under the old trees and passing the "Mount of Olives" on the
left, approach the large deep-roofed building between two towers. This
is the Kaiserstallung, as it is called, the Imperial stables, built
originally for a granary. The towers are the Luginsland (Look in the
land) on the east, and the Fünfeckiger Thurm, the Five-cornered tower,
at the west end (on the left hand as we thus face it). The Luginsland
was built by the townspeople in the hard winter of 1377. The mortar for
building it, tradition says, had to be mixed with salt, so that it might
be kept soft and be worked in spite of the severe cold. The chronicles
state that one could see right into the Burggraf's Castle from this
tower, and the town was therefore kept informed of any threatening
movements on his part.
To some extent that was very likely the object in view when the tower
was built, but chiefly it must have been intended, as its name
indicates, to afford a far look-out into the surrounding country. The
granary or Kaiserstallung, as it was called later, was erected in 1494,
and is referred to by Hans Behaim as lying between the Five-cornered and
the Luginsland Towers. Inside the former there is a museum of
curiosities (Hans Sachs' harp) and the famous collection of instruments
of torture and the Maiden (Eiserne Jungfrau). The open space adjoining
it commands a splendid view to the north. There, too, on the
parapet-wall, may be seen the hoof-marks of the horse of the
robber-king, Ekkelein von Gailingen. Here for a moment let us pause,
consider our position, and endeavor to make out from the conflicting
theories of the archeologists something of the original arrangement of
the castles and of the significance of the buildings and towers that yet
remain.
Stretching to the east of the rock on which the Castle stands is a wide
plain, now the scene of busy industrial enterprise, but in old days no
doubt a mere district of swamp and forest. Westward the rock rises by
three shelves to the summit. The entrance to the Castle, it is surmised,
was originally on the east side, at the foot of the lower plateau and
through a tower which no longer exists.
Opposite this hypothetical gate-way stood the Five-cornered tower. The
lower part dates, we have seen, from no earlier than the eleventh
century. It is referred to as Alt-Nürnberg (old Nuremberg) in the Middle
Ages. The title of "Five-cornered" is really somewhat a misnomer, for an
examination of the interior of the lower portion of the tower reveals
the fact that it is quadrangular. The pentagonal appearance of the
exterior is due to the fragment of a smaller tower which once leaned
against it, and probably formed the apex of a wing running out from the
old castle of the Burggrafs. The Burggräfliche Burg stood below,
according to Mummenhof, southwest and west of this point. It was burned
down in 1420, and the ruined remains of it are supposed to be traceable
in the eminence, now overgrown by turf and trees, through which a sort
of ravine, closed in on either side by built-up walls, has just brought
us from the town to the Vestner Thor.
The Burggraf's Castle would appear to have been so situated as to
protect the approach to the Imperial Castle (Kaiserburg). The exact
extent of the former we can not now determine. Meisterlin refers to it
as a little fort. We may, however, be certain that it reached from the
Five-cornered tower to the Walpurgiskapelle. For this little chapel,
east of the open space called the Freiung, is repeatedly spoken of as
being on the property of the Burggrafs. Besides their castle proper,
which was held at first as a fief of the Empire, and afterward came to
be regarded as their hereditary, independent property, the Burggrafs
were also entrusted with the keeping of a tower which commanded the
entrance to the Castle rock on the country side, perhaps near the site
of the present Vestner Thor. The guard door may have been attached to
the tower, the lower portion of which remains to this day, and is called
the Bailiff's Dwelling (Burgamtmannswohnung). The exact relationship of
the Burggraf to the town on the one hand, and to the Empire on the
other, is somewhat obscure. Originally, it would appear, he was merely
an Imperial officer, administering Imperial estates, and looking after
Imperial interests. In later days he came to possess great power, but
this was due not to his position as castellan or castle governor as
such, but to the vast private property his position had enabled him to
amass and to keep.
As the scope and ambitions of the Burggrafs increased, and as the
smallness of their castle at Nuremberg, and the constant friction with
the townspeople, who were able to annoy them in many ways, became more
irksome, they gave up living at Nuremberg, and finally were content to
sell their rights and possessions there to the town. Beside the guard
door of the Burggrafs, which together with their castle passed by
purchase into the hands of the town (1427), there were various other
similar guard towers, such as the one which formerly occupied the
present site of the Luginsland, or the Hasenburg at the so-called
Himmels Thor, or a third which once stood near the Deep Well on the
second plateau of the Castle rock. But we do not know how many of these
there were, or where they stood, much less at what date they were built.
All we do know is that they, as well as the Burggrafs' possessions, were
purchased in succession by the town, into whose hands by degrees came
the whole property of the Castle rock. Above the ruins of the "little
fort" of the Burggrafs rises the first plateau of the Castle rock. It is
surrounded by a wall, strengthened on the south side by a square tower
against which leans the Walpurgiskapelle.
The path to the Kaiserburg leads under the wall of the plateau, and is
entirely commanded by it and by the quadrangular tower, the lower part
of which alone remains and is known by the name of Burgamtmannswohnung.
The path goes straight to this tower, and at the foot of it is the
entrance to the first plateau. Then along the edge of this plateau the
way winds southward, entirely commanded again by the wall of the second
plateau, at the foot of which there probably used to be a trench. Over
this a bridge led to the gate of the second plateau. The trench has been
long since filled in, but the huge round tower which guarded the gate
still remains and is the Vestner Thurm. The Vestner Thurm of Sinwel
Thurm (sinwel = round), or, as it is called in a charter of the year
1313, the "Middle Tower," is the only round tower of the Burg. It was
built in the days of early Gothic, with a sloping base, and of roughly
flattened stones with a smooth edge. It was partly restored and altered
in 1561, when it was made a few feet higher and its round roof was
added. It is worth paying the small gratuity required for ascending to
the top. The view obtained of the city below is magnificent. The Vestner
Thurm, like the whole Imperial castle, passed at length into the care of
the town, which kept its Tower watch here as early as the fourteenth
century.
The well which supplied the second plateau with water, the "Deep Well,"
as it is called, stands in the center, surrounded by a wall. It is 335
feet deep, hewn out of the solid rock, and is said to have been wrought
by the hands of prisoners, and to have been the labor of thirty years.
So much we can easily believe as we lean over and count the six seconds
that elapse between the time when an object is dropt from the top to the
time when it strikes the water beneath. Passages lead from the water's
edge to the Rathaus, by which prisoners came formerly to draw water, and
to St. John's Churchyard and other points outside the town. The system
of underground passages here and in the Castle was an important part of
the defenses, affording as it did a means of communication with the
outer world and as a last extremity, in the case of a siege, a means of
escape.
Meanwhile, leaving the Deep Well and passing some insignificant modern
dwellings, and leaving beneath us on the left the Himmelsthor, let us
approach the summit of the rock and the buildings of the Kaiserburg
itself. As we advance to the gateway with the intention of ringing the
bell for the castellan, we notice on the left the Double Chapel,
attaching to the Heathen Tower, the lower part of which is encrusted
with what were once supposed to be Pagan images. The Tower protrudes
beyond the face of the third plateau, and its prominence may indicate
the width of a trench, now filled in, which was once dug outside the
enclosing wall of the summit of the rock. The whole of the south side of
this plateau is taken up by the "Palast" (the vast hall, two stories
high, which, tho it has been repeatedly rebuilt, may in its original
structure be traced back as far as the twelfth century), and the
"Kemnate" or dwelling-rooms which seem to have been without any means of
defense. This plateau, like the second, is supplied with a well. But the
first object that strikes the eye on entering the court-yard is the
ruined limetree, the branches of which once spread their broad and
verdant shelter over the whole extent of the quadrangle.
On leaving the Castle we find ourselves in the Burgstrasse, called in
the old days Unter der Veste, which was probably the High Street of the
old town. Off both sides of this street and of the Bergstrasse ran
narrow crooked little alleys lined with wooden houses of which time and
fire have left scarcely any trace. As you wander round the city tracing
the line of the old walls, you are struck by the general air of
splendor. Most of the houses are large and of a massive style of
architecture, adorned with fanciful gables and bearing the impress of
the period when every inhabitant was a merchant, and every merchant was
lodged like a king. The houses of the merchant princes, richly carved
both inside and out, tell of the wealth and splendor of Nuremberg in her
proudest days. But you will also come upon a hundred crooked little
streets and narrow alleys, which, tho entrancingly picturesque, tell of
yet other days and other conditions.
They tell of those early medieval days when the houses were almost all
of wood and roofed with straw-thatching or wooden tiles; when the
chimneys and bridges alike were built of wood. Only here and there a
stone house roofed with brick could then be seen. The streets were
narrow and crooked, and even in the fifteenth century mostly unpaved. In
wet weather they were filled with unfathomable mud, and even tho in the
lower part of the town trenches were dug to drain the streets, they
remained mere swamps and morasses. In dry weather the dust was even a
worse plague than the mud. Pig-styes stood in front of the houses; and
the streets were covered with heaps of filth and manure and with rotting
corpses of animals, over which the pigs wandered at will. Street police
in fact was practically non-existent. Medievalism is undoubtedly better
when survived.
[Footnote A: From "The Story of Nuremberg." Published by E.P. Dutton &
Co.]
WALLS AND OTHER FORTIFICATIONS[A]
BY CECIL HEADLAM
A glance at the map will show us that Nuremberg, as we know it, is
divided into two almost equal divisions. They are called after the names
of the principal churches, the St. Lorenz, and the St. Sebald quarter.
The original wall included, it will be seen, only a small portion of the
northern or St. Sebald division. With the growth of the town an
extension of the walls and an increase of fortification followed as a
matter of course. It became necessary to carry the wall over the Pegnitz
in order to protect the Lorenzkirche and the suburb which was springing
up around it. The precise date of this extension of the fortifications
can not be fixt. The chronicles attribute it to the twelfth century, in
the reign of the first Hohenstaufen, Konrad III. No trace of a
twelfth-century wall remains; but the chroniclers may, for all that,
have been not very wide of the mark. The mud and wood which supplied the
material of the wall may have given place to stone in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. However that may be, it will be remembered that
the lower part of the White Tower, which is the oldest fragment of
building we can certainly point to dates from the thirteenth century.
All other portions of the second wall clearly indicate the fourteenth
century, or later, as the time of their origin....
Beyond the White Tower the moat was long ago filled up, but the section
of it opposite the Unschlittplatz remained open for a longer period than
the rest, and was called the Klettengraben, because of the burdocks
which took root there. Hereabouts, on a part of the moat, the
Waizenbräuhaus was built in 1671, which is now the famous Freiherrlich
von Tuchersche Brewery. Here, too, the Unschlitthaus was built at the
end of the fifteenth century as a granary. It has since been turned into
a school.
We have now reached one of the most charming and picturesque bits of
Nuremberg. Once more we have to cross the Pegnitz, whose banks are
overhung by quaint old houses. Their projecting roofs and high gables,
their varied chimneys and overhanging balconies from which trail rich
masses of creepers, make an entrancing foreground to the towers and the
arches of the Henkersteg. The wall was carried on arches over the
southern arm of the Pegnitz to the point of the Saumarkt (or
Trödelmarkt) island which here divides the river, and thence in like
manner over the northern arm. The latter portion of it alone survives
and comprises a large tower on the north bank called the Wasserthurm,
which was intended to break the force of the stream; a bridge supported
by two arches over the stream, which was the Henkersteg, the habitation
of the hangman, and on the island itself a smaller tower, which formed
the point of support for the original, southern pair of arches, which
joined the Unschlitthaus, but were so badly damaged in 1595 by the high
flood that they were demolished and replaced by a wooden, and later by
an iron bridge.
Somewhere in the second half of the fourteenth century, then, in the
reign of Karl IV., they began to build the outer enceinte, which, altho
destroyed at many places and broken through by modern gates and
entrances, is still fairly well preserved, and secures to Nuremberg the
reputation of presenting most faithfully of all the larger German towns
the characteristics of a medieval town. The fortifications seem to have
been thrown up somewhat carelessly at first, but dread of the Hussites
soon inspired the citizens to make themselves as secure as possible. In
times of war and rumors of war all the peasants within a radius of two
miles of the town were called upon to help in the construction of
barriers and ramparts. The whole circle of walls, towers, and ditches
was practically finished by 1452, when with pardonable pride Tucher
wrote, "In this year was completed the ditch round the town. It took
twenty-six years to build, and it will cost an enemy a good deal of
trouble to cross it." Part of the ditch had been made and perhaps
revetted as early as 1407, but it was not till twenty years later that
it began to be dug to the enormous breadth and depth which it boasts
to-day. The size of it was always a source of pride to Nurembergers, and
it was perhaps due to this reason that up till as recently as 1869 it
was left perfectly intact. On the average it is about 100 feet broad.
It was always intended to be a dry ditch, and, so far from there being
any arrangements for flooding it, precautions were taken to carry the
little Fischbach, which formerly entered the town near the modern
Sternthor, across the ditch in a trough. The construction of the ditch
was provided for by an order of the Council in 1427, to the effect that
all householders, whether male or female, must work at the ditch one day
in the year with their children of over twelve years of age, and with
all their servants, male or female. Those who were not able to work had
to pay a substitute. Subsequently this order was changed to the effect
that every one who could or would not work must pay ten pfennige. There
were no exemptions from this liturgy, whether in favor of councillor,
official, or lady. The order remained ten years in force, tho the
amount of the payment was gradually reduced....
At the time of the construction of these and the other lofty towers it
was still thought that the raising of batteries as much as possible
would increase their effect. In practise the plunging fire from
platforms at the height of some eighty feet above the level of the
parapets of the town wall can hardly have been capable of producing any
great effect, more especially if the besieging force succeeded in
establishing itself on the crest of the counterscarp of the ditches,
since from that point the swell of the bastions masked the towers. But
there was another use for these lofty towers. The fact is that the
Nuremberg engineers, at the time that they were built, had not yet
adopted a complete system of flank-works, and not having as yet applied
with all its consequences the axiom that that which defends should
itself be defended, they wanted to see and command their external
defenses from within the body of the place, as, a century before, the
baron could see from the top of his donjon whatever was going on round
the walls of his castle, and send up his support to any point of attack.
The great round towers of Nuremberg are more properly, in fact, detached
keeps than portions of a combined system, rather observatories than
effective defenses.