The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1890-11-28

have been different had Cleopatra's nose
been bit more turned up, 1t is easy to see:
how that history would have been different
had death not quickly cut down Conradin,
the last scion of house which ruled not
only the seven ancient electorates of Ger
many. but dominated far beyond Teu.0nic
borders. His was no name to tally along !
with the great names of his ancestors. was
Conradin's. yet lie was the last of them all, ;
and his death ended the Hohenstaufen
sway; And what sway it was to;be sure!
Think OF not only the Germans but of the
Italians OF Naples and Sicily, Of the Bur
glndians in France. of the Dutch, the Danes,
the Poles lorded over BY this great rdce Of !.
kings. -: .
Eight hundred years ago Frederick: Won
Bueren built the stout old castle which stood
here, and of which one may still see con-
temporary representation in picture in
one of the churches at Gmuend. But the
war Of the peasants was too much for even.
this imperial height. and the walls we're
razed TO the ground. The peasant leaders
would likely have been glad to .raze the
mountains too had they been able. In a
chapel on the slope there is an old fresc0.
III pretty bad shape TO be sure, but which
the iconoclasts have spared. Perhaps
whitewash saved it, who knows? 1t repre-
sents the greatest of the house of HQhen-
staufen. Frederick Barbarossa, as entering
the church by door near by. and in an irl-.
scription records that he was "am0r bo-
norum, terror malorum Uhe delight. of the
good and the terror OF the bad) He was.
certainly the terror OF the. bad, aud his en-
emies would have said of the good also.
Looking over lovely Wurtemberg, it is a
hard place from which to tear ones self
away, is this Hohenstaufen summit. The
French say that TOurane is the garden. of
France; that is what Wurtemberg is to Ger
many. The view becomes more and more
wonderful with the dying day bringing out
new shadows One gazes on his long path
down to Goeppingen as well as on his
longer one up from Gmuend, and SO the;
tourist has his own precious little personal
associations to -.
CHIME IN. GRoTEsoUELY ENOUGH -:
With the larger history. What an interest
comes into any history of place which.one
has seen! Travel becomes then NO less an
education than a pleasure. The element of
personality must center in it, then there is
Interest ii not enthusiasm. Otherwise it is
but mass of dSy bones, the uuappetiz:ng
picking of which is called history. e.',
And there are the paths growing DINNER,
the one down past the villages and into
the busy, fertile valley of the Neckar, the
other through the forest and across the
meadows of Lorch. We shall be going
ing that string of industrial towns extend
ing from Aalen to Stuttgart, but the
path up by Lorch was nothing else nor
less than a step back into the Middle
Ages. For as the castle which once
crowned this height was the living place Of
the Hohenstaufen SO was the Benedictine
monastery at Lorch their burial place.
There lie those old warriors who made
men tremble, yet somehow as the traveller
looks down upon that spot even from this
other spot where much of their lives wera
lived, it is strange cOntrarness which
takes hold of him.. The royal mausoleum
does not now seem to ennobie Larch half
SO much as the fact that once upon time,
and u recent tine, too, there lived there a
lean-looking, cadaverouS schnOl-b0y. Little
did his teacher, the Pastor Moser, think
that the boy would one day immortalize him
in his earliest drama. Yet the day came
soon, for the drama was written when the
lad was but 10 years old. Many time he
must have stood by the graves OF the
Hohenstaufen and unused upon their fallen
greatness. One nigh: almost say, though,
that it was ali immortal doing homage TO
the mortal Stirring aud splendid as have
been the deeds of arms, those works Of the
pen and brush and chisel are stronger. Tho
names of poets and artists have come ring
ing down the ages with far clearer sound
than those of generals and p0tentates. The
wOrfd-often a grabbed, crusty old master,
again often easily daZzfed like an unreas0n-
ing child-eannot in the long run of its
history withhold the most enduring fame to
those who have the best right to be called
creators. Mighty, then, as was the monarch
Friedrich BarbarosSa, the man Friedrich
Schiller was niightier.