The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-10-19
AN OLD GERMAN TOWN.
The Early Home of the Empress Maria
Theresa.

Berlin Letter to Boston Advertiser.
The Harz mountains have no considerable
elevation, except at one point 1.-THE Brocker 3 400
feet, but on the eastern side rise so abruptly
from the fairness of cultivated fields rs to en-
nance their dignity by the striking contrast.
They have done their very best here in the first
effort. At the summit of this eastern elevation,
where frs and beeches run part way
down the slope and corn has worked
its way up to meet them, stands
Schloss Blankenburg, half residence,
half fortress, very solid, very homely, long and
low. One would say that its site iusti6es the
use of this building as a residence, for if the
views from it's windows were less fine, the ex-
ecrable furniture of its rooms would make life q
burden. The explanation of it's original, and, in
early times, more important character of a fort
ress, is obvious. The town is built on the hill
side below the castle, and the town wall depends
from the loop which it makes about the heavy
masonry and rock work of its Burg, as one may
plainly see. The wall spreads out in pear-shape
below to inclose the few hundred houses.
Peasant women here have a custom which
may illustrate this dependence. They do not
carry their babies on the arm, but an arrange
ment like the lower half of skirt is hung around
the neck, over one shoulder and under the other,
reaching to the waist. In the bosom of that
lower fold the child is probably snug enough
80 Blankenburg seems to have been carried by
the castle; but no longer an infant town., it has
broken its wall and kicked itself loose from the
stone skirt, of which one now finds fragments
used as the r~eady-made sides of dwelling
houses, and a considerable piece still
hanging about the shoulders of the
Schloss. To free her hands for work
the peasant woman has invented her portable
creche; evidently the old counts of Blankenburg
had need of both hands. Right and left from
their hill, within rifle range almost, are two
other fortified heights-these totally ruinous-
Regenstein and Heimburg. 1t was not a quiet
neighborhood in days of old. The profession of
robber-b baron was ov~ercrowded. Competition
was so keen IN the fourteenth century that one
Count Regenstein was three times made pris-
oner by the citizens of a neighboring town. The
citizens were clement, and twice dismissed him
with an admonition, but finally shut him up in
a cage (stiH to be seen in Quedlinburg), and so
exhibited him to the public as an incorrigibly
thievish bird.
I'm one of the rooms of the Schloss Maria
Theresa was born, the castelar, will tell us.
That is not true; but the lovely and brilliant
Empress passed her early childhood here. Look
ing out from this window one sees Just below on
the slope the Rathhaus, in the walls of which
are embedded cannon balls, perpetuating the
memory Of a siege by Wallenstein in the thirty
years war. Covering the vast eastern plain are
grain fields, without fences, and now showing
various colors, woods of artificial appearance,
cleared of underbrush and their trees set out in
rows. Fields and woods are really the most en-
joyable sights here, of course, Just as their ruder
forms in America have always seemed more beau
tiful than city halls and factories. Novelty of
associations can do little more than deepen and
quicken customary forms of enjoyment.