Nuremberg Legends
by William Cracraft
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Built around a fort perched on a crag, Old Nuremberg is a city of war, love and legend. Altstadt, or Old City, dominated by three cathedrals and a menacing old fort, is still surrounded by the wall that protected it from marauders throughout the Middle Ages.
The city center, largely automobile-free, is peopled with fantastic sculpture,
small sudden fountains, nine churches, two towers and the fort. One of the oddest
statues in the old city is that of a bagpiper, a by-product of one of the worst
scourges of the
Europe: the Black Plague.
In 1437, during the Dark Ages, the plague settled on Nuremberg, reaping its
grim harvest. Gone a-drinking to forget the misery of the times, a bagpipe-playing
Nuremberger over-imbibed and in his perambulations homeward succumbed to the
liquor,
spending the night in a ditch.
Unfortunately, come morn the wayward musician was mistaken for dead rather than dead drunk and loaded on a body-cart full of plague victims. It’s easy to understand the error, as the piper was, no doubt, a bit greenish and smelly from the regurgitation of last night’s potations and contact with the contents of a typical medieval ditch.
When
the bag-piper awoke he found himself in company with, instead of the congenial
companions of the previous evening, clammy and rotting corpses being conveyed
to a mass grave. Terror-stricken, the piper struggled free of the jiggling bodies
and clutching his bagpipes leapt from the cart.
The hardy tippler outlived the plague and always attributed his survival to the beneficial effects of liquor. Years later, townspeople erected this modest statue in celebration of his escape.
Europe’s fountains continually fascinate visitors with their age and embellishments. In the old days fountains were neighborhood gathering places, necessary installations, infra-structure, if you will. Nuremberg has a number of remarkable fountains, but none is better known than der Schöne Brunnen, or The Beautiful Fountain, a sixty-foot wonder of gold filigree and color originally intended to cap the main tower of the near-by Frauenkirche or Church of Our Lady.
In 1390, as the completed spire was readied for its removal to the church
roof, the townspeople demanded it be left at street level, changed it to
a fountain and installed it in the Hauptmarkt across from the church. In
romantic Nuremberg, even the fence
surrounding the fountain has a legend.
Six hundred years ago an unappreciated apprentice decided to display his talents to his master by installing a seamless brass ring in the fence surrounding der Schöne Brunnen. Amazed townspeople couldn’t believe the seamless ring, which had appeared overnight, was man-made and attributed wish-granting powers to it. Even today, that six-inch ring, when turned full circle by hopeful young wives, is said to guarantee a baby because, as everyone knows, the stork gets its eternal supply from the Schöne Brunnen.
Altstadt is divided into two districts, St. Sebald and St. Lorenz, named
after cathedrals of the same names. The churches, ancient and ornate, drawing
thousands of tourists, dominate their respective districts, but the true
guardian of the city is
the massive Imperial Castle, squatting on the red rock that gives the
city its name.
In Old German, Nuremberg means Rocky Mountain, after the sandstone rise that anchors the fort. Located at one of the crossroads of Europe, Nuremberg was first named in a document in 1050, 16 years before William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, conquered England. The Imperial Castle was one of the family possessions of Germanic rulers, and 40 emperors and kings made regular visits to the castle in its 950-year history, right up to Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1915.
Within this warlike edifice stands Sinnwellturm or Sinwell tower, built around 1275. By day the tower has one of the best views of Nuremberg. By night, well, no one goes up in the tower at night--on account of the ghost.
Sinnwellturm, thick, strong and high, dominates the castle. During tumultuous
times scores of lookouts manned all the angles of the bastion to watch
for approaching enemies, but during quiet times a single guard living in
the tower’s dank base stood
a lonely vigil.
A hundred years after the tower was built, a certain watchman assigned to the
tower was preparing his evening 
meal
when he heard the wail of an infant. Upon investigation he discovered a basket
on his doorstep containing a baby girl well-swaddled
against the cool night air. The good man, who had no wife to warm his hearth,
took the child in and, when inquiries as to her birth proved fruitless, kept
the child by him and raised her as his own.
This daughter of Sinnwellturm shared the watchman’s simple meals and played in the gloomy staircase of the old keep and the sunshine of the palace courtyard. Time and again the girl looked out from Sinnwellturm over the green Bavarian countryside dreaming of caravans and far cities. Girls grow into women and when the foundling turned sixteen, the outside world beckoned. One night she slipped away without a word to her old foster-dad.
Sad and lonelier than ever, the old man stayed on at his job, growing a bit eccentric over the years. He finally went to his ultimate reward, never having seen his little girl again. Then one day the young woman, ill-treated by an unimproved world, returned to her foster-father and childhood home.
When the still-young woman found her father had long since passed under St.
Peter’s gaze she was overcome with remorse. One last time she climbed the hundred
steps to Sinnwellturm’s lookout post. Stepping to the window where she had often
sat
dreaming, she leapt to her death. Unfortunately, her act of contrition brought
her no peace for those that live in the shadow of the tower say when the moon
is full her spirit is seen roaming Sinnwellturm still searching for her old
dad.
