Obernburg

Alms Tower in Obernburg am Main

Posted by James

Last week I posted a bit about the start of our trip to Lower Franconia. This week I want to talk about Obernburg,  the little town in which we stayed. Obernburg has a long and quite interesting history, starting in Roman times and running through the Middle Ages to the present. At the head of the post last week I had a picture of the town gate, technically called the Clock Tower, for the fine gravity-driven clock that still works near the top. Obernburg was a walled town during the Middle Ages but unlike its more famous cousin Rothenburg ob der Tauber the wall was opened during the 19th century. Here you can see a part of the wall that's still standing leading back from the Clock Tower:

You can see the so-called Pocket Tower ("Taeschenturm") the smallest of Obernburg's six towers at the end of the alley. Above at the head of the post is the Alms Tower, which was built in the 2nd half of the 14th century and remodeled in the 1st half of the 16th century. We didn't manage to get any pictures of the other 3 towers, the Witches Tower ("Hexenturm"), the Round Tower, and the Stork's Nest, but you can check them out here (German).

Many of the houses in Obernburg are fackwork, wooden beams with either lime and straw filling or stone. The beams typically form a pattern on the outside of the house. Below you can see one that was build in 1480:

 

That was 12 years before Columbus came to America.

 Some of the shops have iron signs indicating what they sold:

This sign is for a butcher shop.

But Obernburg's history is considerably older. In 83 AD, the Romans built a fort, technically called a Castrum, on the site of Obernburg. The fort was overrun by the Germanic invasion in 259, but was rebuilt and strengthened later. The fort was staffed by soldiers from Aquitaine, the region of France on the Atlantic coast in the southwestern part of the country against the Spanish border. When the Obernburg fort was rebuilt, the Romans built a chain of forts running along the Main river, and turning into the Oldenwald around Woerth, where Renate grew up. These forts were called the Limes and were connected by a paved road suitable for goods transport. On one side of the border (the Main river here) were the wild German tribes, in which warriors lounged around all day while the woman, children, and old people did all the work. On the other, were the hard working Roman troops and civilians who were there to make money off of cross border trade. Occasionally, the Germanic warriors probably traveled over to the other side of the border, to the civilized Romans where they probably drank and raised hell. The Roman troops, called beneficiarii, had the difficult task of keeping the peace and often they probably ended up dead, like the sheriff in a town in the Old West.

We visited the Roman museum in Obernburg, and saw a collection of stones dedicated to the Roman god Jupiter in thanks, which the beneficiarii offered regularly every six months .... if they were still alive:

Hundreds of these stones were found in Obernburg. Sometimes Jupiter got an even fancier offering, like this column outside the museum, unfortunately only a replica because the original was taken to Munich:

There are so many Roman artifacts buried under Obernburg, that every time an old building is torn down and a new building is put up, the archeologists have to spend three months sifting through the dirt if the foundations are re-dug. Here's a picture of a construction site on the main street. You can see the little white tags where the archeologists marked the ground along the sides of the foundation hole to indicate that something of interest continues off the foundation site:

 

Finally, we visited the Annakapella (Chapel of St. Anne), a beautiful Baroque chapel which lies next to a cemetery, dedicated to St. Anne. The area was a hotbed of activity, as town residents were busy sprucing up the grave sites after the long winter, for Mother's Day, which was the next day. I couldn't resist taking this picture of St. Anne on the inside of the chapel:

If you look closely, you can see she has two eyes on her left hand. St. Anne was reputed to help people with eye problems. The statue reminded me of one of my favorite Tibetan painting subjects, which has a small eye in each of his one thousand hands.