A Whit Monday at Rothenburg

By G.J. Malik

IT was my German teacher in Hamburg — a Dr Buck, pronounced Book — in 1938 who told me of the existence of a town called Rothenburg ob der Tauber. As part of learning German I told him how, a few weeks earlier, I had seen "the whole of Germany by travelling around with my parents by car". I rattled off the names of the towns in which we had stopped, so he asked me if we had visited a place called by this long and, to me, a jaw-breaking name. I confessed that I had not even heard of it.

It was by chance, and not by good management, that I arrived in Rothenburg ob der Tauber on Whit Monday 1998. The day turned out to be the day to arrive. Let me explain that Whit Monday is a holiday in Germany — but not by any means in all European countries. It falls 50 days after Easter Sunday so it is a moveable feast, unlike Christmas. This year it happened to fall on June 1. When I arrived at the city gate there was a barricade in front of me. Everybody I spoke to said I could not go to the hotel I was booked at because "there is a festival in progress and the procession will be blocking the way to your hotel in a few minutes".

I drove round the outside of the city walls till I found a policeman who advised me to park in the nearest car park and wait till 6 p.m. It was then 3 p.m.!

By now you have guessed that Rothenburg is situated on a high cliff overlooking a bend in the river Tauber and is a walled city. In the 18th century, Gibbon said that there were 300 walled cities in Germany. Today there are very few and Rothenburg probably has the most complete medieval fortifications of any city in Europe. Otherwise also the medieval character and appearance of the city have been maintained while, unobtrusively, providing it with all modern amenities. I got the impression that every other house is either a hotel or a restaurant because tourism seems to be its raison d’etre.

The actual bend is now the City Garden with a low wall at the top of the cliff overlooking the river so that the visitor runs no risk of falling off. In fact the valley is full of trees and the river is only visible from a few places. The green valley with isolated houses visible on the other side is a fine sight. The garden ends at the city wall which completely surrounds and "protects" the Old City. Outside the wall, there are modern buildings, car parks, motor workshops and the other appurtenances of a modern town.

The wall itself is pierced by several medieval gates and has a protected (roofed) walkway on top. From this, the garrison could look through loopholes and shoot attackers with bows and arrows, crossbows, ballistae and muskets. The walkway now provides a pleasant, if rather narrow, walk from which one can see the rooftops and narrow streets of Rothenburg and catch glimpses of the surrounding countryside through the loopholes. A better view of the lovely Bavarian landscape is obtained from the Belltower atop the Town Hall.

At the time of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), Rothenburg was a Protestant city. It fell to the Imperial forces of General Count von Tilly who immediately announced his intention of flattening it.

However, he was well received by the city bigwigs who gave him the best local wine to drink. Obviously this was to his taste because he was mollified and offered to spare the city if anybody could be found to equal him in drinking a flagon (3.25 litres). The old burgermeister, Nusch, proved equal to the job and so the city was spared on Whit Monday, 1631. Did some one mention that Tilly did not survive to celebrate the next Whit Monday?

Anyway, the result on Whit Monday 1998 was that all the inhabitants and a few thousand tourists congregated to dedicate themselves to the serious work of drinking and eating. This was done mainly at stalls set up in the old (now dried up and turfed) moat surrounding the city wall. Such was the influx of tourists, that I got the impression that every available open space had a food or drink stall in it. In addition, a large crowd — many of its male members in 17th century military uniforms — marched through the main streets culminating in City Hall Square in which my hotel was situated. Of course, they marched to martial music and sang as they went along. The photographs show a few of the marchers.

I saw nobody misbehaving under the influence of liquor. Protestant and Catholic churches co-exist side-by-side in the streets. Better still, there is a Jew Street in which two impressive houses bear the names of prominent rabbis of long ago who were noted Talmud scholars in their days.