WARTBURG (WARTBURG CASTLE)

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the medieval castle of Wartburg, formerly the residence of the Landgraves of Thuringia, proudly perched on its hill, is worth a trip. Its exterior is splendid, and it still has some superb rooms. It was founded, according to legend, in 1067 by Ludwig der Springer (Louis the Jumper). The buildings grouped around two courtyards were built in the following centuries. For Catholics and Protestants alike, Wartburg is a place of pilgrimage. Elisabeth of Thuringia lived there from 1211 to 1227. This princess, after the death of her husband, would turn her back on court life, heal the poor and found hospitals, to become in the eyes of the Church of St. Elizabeth. In 1521, Luther was excommunicated. He refused to retract before Emperor Charles V, Emperor of the Holy German Empire and King of Spain, as well as before the Pope. Martin Luther supported the idea that he was subject to the authority of his conscience and that of the Bible, and not to ecclesiastical authority. These revolutionary ideas, the initiators of the Reformation, forced him to go into exile here in the castle of Frederick III, his friend, a great elector of Saxony, under the name of "Junker Jörg", the knight George. Luther then devoted himself to the work of his life: the translation of the Bible into German. Thanks to him, the book was thus "popularized", its reading was accessible to the common man. This translation was essential to make German a lingua franca, at a time when each region practiced its own dialect.

From the middle of the 16th century the Wartburg was abandoned and fell into ruins. It was only at the end of the 18th century that the elites of the time, then in full enthusiasm for the rediscovery of the German medieval past, revisited the prestigious past of this picturesque ruin. The patron duke of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach invited Goethe to Eisenach, who went to Wartburg in 1777 and conceived the project to transform it into a museum. The first Wartburg Festival, now anthological, took place in 1817. This year the students founded the Burschenschaft there... From 1853 onwards, the reconstruction of the castle in neomedieval style was undertaken, in homage to all the national legends that ran through it. Contemporaries were eager to rediscover their national past and they did not lack inspiration for these reconstructions... They rediscovered in particular the legends of the troubadours tournaments (Minnesänger), the most famous of which is located at the Wartburg. This is the myth that Richard Wagner used for his opera Tannhäuser. The architectural ensemble is very impressive. In the oldest part, half-timbered, you can see the room where Luther worked. In the part rebuilt on the medieval foundations, we can see the original and "neo" elements married with the skill that the romantic-national generations put into it. Some pieces are dedicated to legends, one to Saint Elizabeth, another to the troubadour tournament. We can go up to the tower and have a great view of Eisenach. On a hill opposite, above the city, you can see the monument dedicated to the students of the Burschenschaft. The national construction carried out through the castle itself (this synthesis of national myths into a single monument is rare), difficult for the Germans to accept since the tragic drift of Nazism, is treated with criticism and caution during the guided tours. We will explain to you the elements of the construction of national myths and their relationship to historical reality with all the appropriate analytical discourse.