# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Wetzlar on the Lahn - Part 2

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WETZLAR ON THE LAHN.
PART II.
The old gateway of the earlier church, which perhaps dates from the eleventh century, has a vestibule, and over this is a little chapel difficult of access, with remains of fresco-painting from the fourteenth century. The remains of the old tower consist of basalt masonry, and in its time the building of the new tower, which is opposite that almost finished on the right side, was begun. The work, however, was interrupted before the old tower was dismantled. The main portal belonging to the fourteenth century, which has been left incomplete, is singularly rich in ornamentation and sculptures. One of the most conspicuous is the fine statue of the Blessed Virgin with the Infant Christ, which stands above the portal. The nave, with its lofty and ample pillars, has a grand effect. The south side appears to belong to the thirteenth, the north to the fourteenth century. On the north side are also to be seen the arches of an old cloister. In the southern wall stands an older door, which appears to have been built at the same period as the choir, consequently belonged to the old church, and was allowed to stand on account of the rich carvings about it. It is surrounded with saints and symbolic figures. Over this door is also a statue of the Blessed Virgin. Under the bracket on which she stands, there is a devil pressing down a human being, which the people have taken for a nun. Thence it was said:
Zu Wetzlar an dem Dom
Sitzt der Teufel auf der Nonn.
But these figures are probably only intended as a contrast to the Virgin and Child. The nave of the church belongs to the Protestants, who cleared away what they considered its rubbish in the side altars and other Catholic internal arrangements, and with the taste of the period erected commodious galleries instead, painting the pillars at the same time with divers colours. A more modern taste has, however, cleared the nave again, and restored it, if not to its original splendour, to a grand simplicity. Doubtless, much that is ancient and curious in the interior has been destroyed in the course of time. There remain, however, two human heads placed on brackets: one is a female head, surrounded with vine leaves, and the other a man’s head, out of the eyebrows, cheeks and mouth of which vine leaves grow. It is probably an illustration of Christ’s parable of the vine. An old stone font, circular and surrounded by eight pillars, is believed to belong to the twelfth century. In the nave there are also in a lateral hall two locked shrines, which are only opened to the Catholics on festivals. One contains a wooden figure of Saint Mary the Virgin, with the body of our Saviour in her lap. The figures are larger than life, and are attributed to the fourteenth century. Other figures were added later,—two angels, who hold up the curtains of a canopy—and by the large figures two small angels, who hold the instruments of the Passion. In the second and smaller shrine is a wooden figure of our Saviour bearing the cross, and another figure behind him assisting. This work appears to belong to the first half of the fifteenth century. The choir displays the transition from the twelfth to the thirteenth century, from the Byzantine to the Gothic style, and is closed at the east end with the five sides of an octagon. It is separated from the nave by a wall, by which the new building when in construction was shut off, to admit of service being performed in the choir. Amongst other curiosities here, is a monument with an old inscription, which is supposed to have been erected by the ​person it commemorates during his lifetime, since the date of his death has only the first two figures, namely, 14—. Here also is preserved a copper crucifix, of the twelfth century. The arrangement by which the Protestants have one half of the church for their service and the Catholics the other, is the same as that which obtains in the town church at Heidelberg. At the eastern angle of the church stands a chapel, dedicated to St. Michael, in which the niche representing the Crucifixion is chiefly conspicuous. It is mentioned as early as 1306; but the present building appears scarcely to represent the original one. All about Wetzlar are bits of old fortifications, remains of religious houses, and names of streets that suggest them. For instance, there is the “Blaue Nonnengasse” or Blue Ladies’ Lane, not far from the church. Those blue ladies are supposed to have been not regular nuns, but Beguines, who performed holy and charitable offices without being bound by irrevocable vows.
Old Teutonic House, at Wetzlar.
From the square where the church stands a narrow street leads up to the Teutonic House, with its ample court-yard. As early as 1286 an old record mentions a house of the Teutonic Order in the town. It is now a school for poor children. The general effect of the building is gloomy and heavy: but the little house to the left of the court has a special interest, as it was that where the Amtmann Buff lived, and from the window of which the celebrated Lotte welcomed her friend Goëthe. He relates in a letter to Rästner how he fled from Wetzlar, and with what feelings he mounted early in the morning in the carriage at the Kronprinz, and how wistfully at the turn into the Schmidtgasse he looked at the old walls of the Teutonic house, and saw the four steps by which he had so often passed up to that interesting abode. The four steps are still there, but the inhabitants of that time are dispersed.
From the Silhöfer Gate a way leads up to the height of Kalsmunt. On Kalsmunt are the remains of the mediæval castle where the imperial governor resided, and in the midst of them a square tower ascribed to the Romans. It is supposed that a Roman military road led up the valley of the Lahn from Confluentia or Coblentz, and, as there was then, in all probability, no bridge, was connected with a ford on the shallow part of the Lahn below this castle. This may possibly have been connected with another Roman road passing nearly in the present direction of the Main-Weser railroad, and connecting this outpost with the settlements in the neighbourhood of Frankfort and Homburg. If we consult Spruner’s map of the “Roman Empire at its Greatest Extent,” we find that the frontier here runs into the territory of the Catti at an acute angle. In no case would the courses of the rivers, with their sinuosities, have been exactly followed, as the Romans regarded short-cuts as of more consequence than engineering facilities, and chose to go over the tops of the hills to avoid hostile ambuscades in the defiles. The place where the Lahn is ​fordable has been called since time out of mind “at the iron hand.” This designation is common as applied to the places where the Romans fortified fords and passes. The presence of the Romans in these parts is testified by a fortified encampment at a short distance off, and also by the fact of abundance of their coins having been found. But the masonry of the square tower appears also to speak for itself. It is built in the style that Vitruvius calls the “ars rustica,” in which the outer blocks of stone are left rough outside, though smoothed and fitted accurately at the places of junction with each other. The pipes or canals, also, in the middle wall of rubble, about a foot square, denote Roman work. These are supposed to have ventilated the vault of the cellar, and to have communicated with air-holes close under the door on the third storey. Even those who are inclined to think that this tower was not Roman, agree that it must have been built by the early Germans in imitation of a Roman structure, long before the rest of the castle, which belongs to the exterior system of fortification of the later middle ages. The name Kalsmunt itself is supposed by many learned authorities to betoken a Roman occupation, as being a corruption of “calvus mons.” This appellation occurs elsewhere where traces of the Romans are found; for instance Kalw in Wurtemberg, the Kalmutt mountain between Edenkoben and Neustadt in the Palatinate, and also the hill Kalmuth near Wertheim on the Main. And this view is supported by such names as the “Villa Calmunt,” or “Calmont,” existing in old French records. The same corruption of a Latin into a German word is found in the numerous names of places, in which the forms “weiler,” “weil,” “wil,” “weiher,” occur, being corruptions of “villa.” This theory, however, has found opponents, who derive the name from the German word “kahl,” which means, as “calvus” does, “bald,” or “bare,” and “mund,” which in old German means “force,” or “defence.” Kahl is either derived from “calvus,” or has a common origin. We may easily suppose that the neighbourhood of this imperial fortification, with its resident governor, was an extreme discomfort to the free town of Wetzlar, as well as an occasional protection, and that the burghers were not sorry when it was suffered to fall to ruin. Wetzlar formed a league, in 1236, with the other free towns of the Wetteran for mutual protection, to take effect expressly during the imperial elections. But Wetzlar suffered most of them through the feuds of the nobles, as it was the most outlying; and although the burghers became valiant warriors, their trade was stunted from this cause for many hundred years. Nor did it escape the ravages of the Thirty Years’ War, when political enmities were aggravated by theological hatred. The year 1646 was a fearful one for Wetzlar, when the Swedish General Wrangel formed a camp in its neighbourhood, in order to wait for the French General Turenne, with a view of a combined attack on the Imperialists, who had fortified themselves in Friedburg. Other misfortunes came on the town in the course of the century—viz., a great flood in 1643, and a fire which destroyed seventy houses in the Lahngasse. In the year 1687 lightning struck the town and burnt fifty houses and twenty granaries; the anniversary of this event was afterwards kept as a fast. In the Seven Years’ War the French felled and burnt for their camp fires a fine wood that stood in the Kuhmarkt. But towards the end of the seventeenth century a new source of prosperity developed itself in the town through the Imperial High Court holding its sittings there. It was opened solemnly on the 15th May, 1693, by the Elector of Treves. Not far from the Oberthor of Wetzlar a path leads to a narrow pretty little dell, called the Kaisersgrund. Here, it was said, was burnt alive an impostor named Tilo Kolup, who gave himself out as the Emperor Frederick II., resuscitated. He was taken by Rudolph of Hapsburg, and executed at Wetzlar, in the year 1286.
The village of Garbenheim, amongst other pleasant places in the neighbourhood of Wetzlar, deserves notice as having been a favourite resort of Goëthe. It is mentioned by him in the “Sorrows of Werther,” under the name of Wahlheim:
“The position of the place on a hill is very interesting, and if one ascends by the footway to the village, one overlooks the whole valley at once. A good landlady who is obliging and cheerful in her old age, provides wine, beer, coffee; and what surpasses all else, is a pair of lime trees, which cover with their wide-spreading boughs the little space before the church, which is surrounded with peasants’ houses, barns and bartons. I have scarcely ever lighted on a little spot so friendly or so homelike, and I have my table and chair brought there out of the inn, drink my coffee there, and read my Homer.”
The spot before the church is still there, with its little houses and courts, but the two lindens with the spreading branches are gone. Many years since there died in one of the smallest houses a widow of ninety years old. She had known Goëthe and Jerusalem, and made much of her knowledge. She used to show visitors a glass out of which Goëthe drank milk, and a rustic chair which she had placed for him, as well as for Jerusalem, under the limes. She bequeathed the glass to her daughter, and the chair to her son, with the old cottage. She had twelve children, and is the young woman of whom Goëthe speaks in the ninth letter, praising her obliging manner and that placidity of temperament which doubtless conduced to her longevity.
Garbenheim now possesses a large inn with a spacious garden at the end of the village. It was formerly a seat of the Proctor of the Imperial Court. In the time when “Werther’s Sorrows” were the rage, the owner put up a mound with an urn to the memory of Jerusalem. A Russian general, in 1813, appropriated the urn and carried it off to St. Petersburg. Visitors are sometimes shown the mound as the grave of Werther, while to others—or, it may be, to the same at a different time—a spot is indicated by the cicerone as having the same interest, in the churchyard at Wetzlar. It is supposed that Jerusalem’s real grave is never shown, but that he was buried in a sort of trench, which was filled with rubbish after a great fire, towards the end of the last century. The unfortunate manner of his death was likely enough to condemn him to obscurity in the grave.
G. C. Swayne.