page_title: Kyffhäuser
section_title: Kyffhäuser legend
hierarchical_section_title: Kyffhäuser / Kyffhäuser legend
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Barbarossas Erwachen (1880) - Wandgemälde von Hermann Wislicenus (1825-1899) im Goslarer KaiserpfalzEnglish: A depiction of the legends associated with Frederick I, painted by Hermann Wislicenus
context_page_description: The Kyffhäuser, sometimes also referred to as Kyffhäusergebirge, is a hill range in Central Germany, located on the border of the state of Thuringia with Saxony-Anhalt, southeast of the Harz mountains. It reaches its highest point at the Kulpenberg with an elevation of 473.4 metres. The range is the site of medieval Kyffhausen Castle and the 19th century Kyffhäuser Monument; it has significance in German traditional mythology as the legendary resting place of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
context_section_description: According to a king asleep in mountain legend, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who actually drowned on 10 June 1190 in the Calycadnus River near Seleukeia in Asia Minor during the Third Crusade, is not in fact dead, but sleeps in a hidden chamber underneath the Kyffhäuser hills. He sits motionless at a stone table and his beard has supposedly grown so long over the centuries that it grew through the table. As in the similar legend of King Arthur, Barbarossa supposedly awaits his country's hour of greatest need, when he will emerge once again from under the hill. The presence of ravens circling the Kyffhäuser summit is said to be a sign of Barbarossa's continuing presence. Similar rapture legends refer to Emperor Frederick II or to Charlemagne sleeping in the Untersberg near Salzburg.
  The Barbarossa myth was first documented in the late 17th century and later popularized by the Brothers Grimm and a poem written in 1817 by Friedrich Rückert. Frequently taken up by Romantic authors, and satirized in Germany. A Winter's Tale by Heinrich Heine, it became the expression of the desire for the Old Empire's re-emergence as a German nation state. When the Kyffhäuser Monument was built at the ruins of the Imperial Castle in 1890–1896, with a statue of Frederick Barbarossa and an Emperor William monument, the German Emperor William I was thought to have "laid to rest" Barbarossa by the 1871 unification of Germany.
  The true background of the Kyffhäuser legend might be found in a cave on that mountain, in which important human remains were found. Some 130 persons seem to have been sacrificed to a female goddess in Bronze to Iron age times. Traces of canibalism were found. This sacrifice to the goddess in the mountain (as well as in lakes and swamps) might be connected to the veneration of goddess Freia, Hulda or Dame Holle in the region. It could also be connected to the Venusberg of Wagner's Tannhäuser, set in the same area. The cave can be seen on the hill side, but is not accessible, due to a grate protecting it.
caption: Barbarossa awakens, 19th-century painting by Hermann Wislicenus in the Imperial Palace of Goslar
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