Tannhauser, as the people of the Middle Ages called this German knight, knelt before the pope. He had committed a great sin: Upon entering the forest to appreciate its marvels, he discovered the Venusberg. Lady Minne, who was also called Lady Saelde or Frau Holde, presided over this mountain.14 Residing within the mountain were many heroes and singers, such as Tannhauser, who dwelled with the goddess Lady Minne lor seven years. Then doubts overcame his sense of salvation. He bade I .ady Minne farewell, and began his pilgrimage to Rome. In vain she beseeched him to remain with her, because she was his salvation. When Tannhauser tore himself loose, he did not hear the goddess call to him that he should not forget “to say good-bye to the old men.”
Scores of pilgrims had trekked to Rome on bleeding feet. As the bells tolled and choirs chanted, as candles flickered and monks sang, i he pope celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s massive cathedral. Both the i e pentant and near-dead stopped and stood humbly behind a column m ar the entrance. Though tears ran down the pontiff’s pale cheeks and his heart ached in his troubled breast, he was jubilant, because it was Christmas and thousands sang: Glory be unto God in heaven and pi ice on earth to those with whom he is well pleased! The pope then murmured a biblical text in Latin: Come unto me, those of you who .it < weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
As Tannhauser knelt before the pope, he stammered sobbingly:
I come to you, because I am weary, and heavy-laden. Refresh me!” I Inkling a dry branch in his hand, the pope then spoke a ghastly curse upon the pilgrim in the dust at his feet: “You dwelled in the mountain • I Venus—in hell. Be accursed! Just as the dry branch in my hand
ill never bloom again, in no way can you expect pardon and grace. It.iVc!”15
I" ,l accounts refer to the goddess as Venus. Frau or Lady Holda or Hoile is a well-i iimx ii figure in German folklore. Curiously, Otto Rahn doesn’t mention that “the origi-d ii line of Frau Hoile was perahta Hoile, which means “luminous spirit” or “lumi-lli in Im in.” See Alain de Benoist, Les traditions d’Europe (Paris: Le Labyrinthe, 1982).
hWH».|
II In n is .in obvious allegory between the sterile dry branch and the pope’s staff. I»m*.|
Then Tannhauser stood up abruptly. He regretted having cried on his knees before this man, a mortal like himself. Yes, so I see Tannhauser! Upright and strong, he stands in silence, because he feels the spirit of the German forest. Snow covers the meadows, ravens caw gently among falling snowflakes, the reddish sunset is obscured through a cloudy haze, and icicles hang on dark firs that are nearly buried by the snow. He trudges through the snow. He is not weighed down, but is instead happy because he is at home. He will never speak another word to the pope. He looks at the pope from a distance and then leaves to go north. For a long time, the pope shivers from the gaze until the Roman sun puts him at ease once again.
When Tannhauser reentered into marriage in Frau Holde’s mountain, like an old song, he blessed for eternity the sun, the moon, and his dear friends, which may have been the stars.Then he sat down with the old men whom he had foolishly left without offering any parting words. They were not angry with him, for they were wise and they had erred no less when they were young. Mistakes temper those who are of good and strong will—those who are pure. And the German fir, blessed by Tannhauser’s homecoming, wrapped itself still more deeply in Lady Minne’s blanket of snow and hummed itself a lullaby. Then Tannhauser fell asleep and dreamed about spring and the god of spring who was already on the way.
Saint and pope Gregory the Great once had a vision.1 Although Ignatius of Loyola would introduce his Spiritual Exercises nearly a thousand years later, the pontiff described in Latin all the blessed delights of the Christian heavenly kingdom just as the Jesuits would later portray them:
When the righteous watch the unrighteous in their agonies, their joy grows. The sight of the punishment of the condemned does not tarnish the light of great purity in the spirit of the righteous; because compassion is not greater with the wretched, the joy of the blessed cannot be reduced. What wonder, then, if the sight of the agonies of the unrighteous becomes nourishment for the joy of the righteous. As previously said, the joys of the blessed grow all the more as the misfortune of the condemned, which they escaped, increases under their very eyes!17
The Austrian poet Lenau depicted Pope Innocent III on a quiet night in the Vatican, as he knelt before a portrait of Christ and prayed aloud .liter he had permitted the extermination of the Albigenses.18 After he ilenced an entire world in such a way, did silence horrify him?
He raised his gaze to the image of God,
Whose love and tenderness frightened him.
While he thinks of what he did, of the bloodthirsty way
in which he led the world,
He looks intensely into the face in the image.
A moth blocks the light
And everything around him turns dark
And silent because he poses no more questions to the image. . .
Suddenly flames dart around him: the flames of Provence, which he li,jd prepared for a new caste. Those flames illuminate the cross upon the i host of his loyal followers, who swiftly carried out his orders when he declared the Albigensian crusade and who were promised eternal salva-i ion because they were “soldiers of Christ.”
The ruins collapse, the swords rattle,
And the wild fire crackles savagely.
He listens to how his name is cursed.
When this horrible vision assaults him,
He presses his conscience in his fist
And mumbles impassively: Amen! Amen!
' |< hcgory the Great. —Trans.]
‘ ”| Nikolaus Lenau was the now de plume of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von '■iirhlenau (1802-1850), Austi'in's chief lyrical poet.—Trans.]
The name of Pope Innocent III can be read as “the innocent one. " No pope belongs to Lucifer’s court.
As the dramatist Christian Dietrich Grabbe once wrote,2
Faust sat in his study on the Aventine Hill. It was night, and he searched for light. He looked toward Golgotha. Disappointed, he turned away because there was no light there. Around him there slept people who awaited their supposed salvation. “Well and good,” said Faust, “they were blessed, those drowsy souls who were weak enough to be dazzled by the illumination—an illumination that took the place of light and was blindly believed, because they hoped blindly. I, however, would rather bleed than suffer such agonies! I fled to you, Rome, to accept all mankind in me, because you are the broken mirror of our most comprehensive past. Gallant depictions of heroes sparkle in the gleam of the blood of nations and in the faces of simple people—faces that appear more often in the broken pieces of this mirror the more deeply one looks into it. You are the city where thousands of years merge into a single moment—popes in the capitol and the ivy pantheon from yesterday! All realms sank before you into dust. Why? Nobody knows, because you were not better than they. By your sword you achieved everything, and by your sword you fell in night and barbarism.”
How right you are, Faust. Perhaps you are more than merely a namesake of that Manichaean Faustus whom Augustine so ignobly fought. Would you rather bleed than suffer such agonies? Do so, because that is the destiny of all Germans, if we wish to achieve salvation.
Faust, I wonder what you would have said if you had been in Rome in 1536. What happened at that time could happen again today: In that year, a comet began to illuminate the Roman night sky. Out ol fear, people ducked under Rome’s roofs. The Holy Father consoled his worried sheep and banished the star as a demon. Yet nothing he did could make it go away, because a million cubits separated it from the 1 n rnal City. He failed; amusedly the comet wagged its tail of light and ■ >nl idently continued on its cosmic way. No doubt it was completely unaware of all the men, candles, bells, and choirs as well as the cursed li.pleasure of the pope. If the comet should return one day, the pope’s |< suit astronomers at the Vatican observatory will be there to observe H in a thousandfold magnification Ad majorem Dei gloriam.20 They i a ognize now that the earth’s orbit around the sun is in harmony with I uul. The orbit of the globe cannot be stopped—despite Rome!
laust, you most German of Germans, let us follow Tannhauser’s miple and visit those old men. We will learn more from them than in mi Rome, that broken mirror of a more comprehensive past. More
i Im11 two thousand years ago “old men” like Heraclitus and Pytheas hum Marseille knew that the earth circles around the sun. They taught llint we revolve around the sun in its service! A thousand years later, mother astronomer, the celebrated Claudius Ptolemy, said: “No, everything revolves around us!” Ptolemy’s doctrine pleased papal Rome,
Im h required that if each Christian did not want to fall into perdi-hnii, he or she must believe that “we are the center, and everything • > olves around us!” In time, though, some wise and courageous men appeared: Galileo and Copernicus. They said: “We revolve after all!” I'm iiuse of his heretical teachings, Galileo had to answer before a tri-l nii.il of the Inquisition. In 1613, as Christians in Germany were pre-
I mug the ghastly Thirty Years’ War in Christ’s name, a shoemaker
ii lined Jakob Bohme confided to his fellow man the secret of a crown ihid lies in midnight—the secret of Lucifer’s crown . . .
Come, Faust, let us leave Rome. Together we will search for the
II in “mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north.” They may !"■ proud there, but they are not vain as those in Rome are vain. And Hr. better to wait for a light bringer than for a light caller or a broken niiii'or dripping with blood. We must traverse hell to reach the light! A I .lust spoke:
It is!
I look for divinity
*"| hi llic greater glory of God. 7h/».s.|
And stand at the gates of hell. But still I can
Walk farther, plummet farther, be it also by flames. I must have a goal,
A final goal! There is a path to heaven,
Net it leads through hell, at least
For me!
So mote it be, I dare it!
A I ter a night on an overcrowded train, I dozed in the sun at the walls of Verona’s old fortress until the early afternoon. Then, in a fresh breeze Irom the north, I took a refreshing dip in the waters of the Adige, a river i hat descends from the Tyrolean mountains, and washed off Rome’s dust. Finally, I visited the beautiful city with its impressive amphitheater and several remarkable churches.
So I am in Bern, the place from which King Theodoric once ruled and attempted, in vain, to unify all Germanic peoples under his scepter. I Ic died in Raven, which later became Ravenna. Also buried with him were the Goths. Soon after his death, Catholics saw to it that the ashes id i his cursed heretic were thrown out of his tomb and scattered to the wind. Where has Dietrich von Bern’s soul gone?
In the age of the Crusades, when Crusaders returned to their homelands from afar, they brought back all kinds of tales. Many had not " turned directly from Palestine. From there they chose to visit other i unis and seas where fire-breathing mountains made a strong impres-»lon on them. Mount Etna seems to have been the most extraordinary of these regions—even more than the volcanic area around Naples—where it < I rail mountain can be found. According to Gervase of Tilbury, the > li.incellor of the kingdom of Arles, at Mount Etna King Arthur cured In. painful wounds, which opened year after year.21 The thirteenth-
i iilury German pilgrim Ludolf von Suchen, who also wrote a Life of h //s, called Mount Etna by the name Bel Mountain and believed it
r. (he entrance to hell. And Caesarius von Heisterbach reported that (Inisc who travel past Mount Etna in Sicily can clearly hear “how the
ii i ival of the condemned is announced by ghostly voices commanded ih I nd the fires. It is horrific to approach the area.”
Arthur was not alone: An illustrious cadre surrounded him, and, as hi.my chroniclers have claimed, among them was Theodoric the Great,
'|l .el v.isc of Tilbury (AD 1150-1228) was a lawyer, statesman, and writer. His major ml , Otia imperialia, which is also known as Liber de mirabilibus mundi or Solatia i'dl‘< i.iloris or Descriptio totius orhi, was a much read compilation of history, physics, <u.| geography in the Middle Ages. Leibniz was not impressed, calling it “a bagful of huilli.li old woman’s tales." 7hws.| that lifelong Arian heretic also known as Dietrich von Bern. Pilgrims to Palestine and zealous monks have consigned him to a realm of volcanic fire, but courageous heroes such as Dietrich must be laughing with gusto, for they did not have the slightest fear of hell! Instead of being damned to that flaming realm, they went to it of their own free will. Newly emboldened, they must have realized that eternal damnation to hell, a place of simmering heat and icy cold, sulfurous fumes, and Beelzebub and demons armed with the cruelest instruments of torture, does not exist at all! These heroes were special men, and their legacy was not lost in the late Middle Ages, which we are told were dark. As one of them frequently said: “I would rather be on Bel Mountain with kings and princes than in heaven, where there are only evil men and pious women, the blind, and the lame!” This medieval proverb impressed me.
In the Bible, the Prophet Isaiah gladly pronounced the following curse on Lucifer and his children in the name of his ghastly Lord of Hosts: “The Bel is afflicted!” One day, I will unravel the secret of the Old Testament’s Bel, the medieval Bel Mountain, and Lucibel (as the Albigenses called Lucifer), though I do not know if it will be sooner or later.
With King Arthur and Dietrich we return to DerWartburgkrieg, written anonymously around the turn of the thirteenth century. It recounts a contest of Minnesingers at Wartburg, the castle of Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia. In 1207, the year of the birth of St. Elizabeth, seven poets, including Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Walther von der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, struggled with the subject of life and death in a poetic contest. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was a constant risk of being accused of heresy, being hauled before a judge, and then being burned. As the Wartburg Minnesingers contended, the “wood chopper of Eisenach” awaited those who were defeated in order to hack off their heads. He must have been a magister of heretics. Each time one of the competing Minnesingers—especially Wolfram von Eschenbach—referred to delicate questions of faith, that Minnesinger stopped abruptly, as if frightened by his own courage. He probably had no desire to be killed by the axman.
Regarding the course of that famous lyrical clash, Wolfram von Eschenbach created such difficulties for Heinrich von Ofterdingen that Heinrich was obliged to summon Master Clingsor from Hungary, homeland of St. Elizabeth. (Master Clingsor was said to be in league with rhe devil, referred to in one of the handwritten originals as Nazarus, or Nazarene.) Wolfram ultimately overcame Clingsor. In one passage, Wolfram referred to a conversation between Dietrich von Bern and Laurin, the king of the elves in bygone times. Said Laurin to Dietrich: “You have fifty years yet to live, Dietrich. While you are a strong hero, death will nevertheless overcome you. But know, my brother, that the Herman lands where you are at home are able to give a life of one thousand years. You need to choose a mountain which is ablaze inside. Then lhe people would reckon that you are similar to an earthly god!”
Answered Dietrich, “King Laurin, this I want to do and I am glad io do it. Never will my mouth proclaim it to other people.” For his part, Wolfram von Eschenbach adds: “I will not betray how the Romans passed by such mountains in open hostility!”
Then Wolfram assails Clingsor in a harsh sonnet:
Master Clingsor, there was a king who is called Arthur. Can you name another king who resembles him? Continue to listen to me: Arthur lived in a mountain. His court was inhabited by noble knights who amused themselves with manly meals and pure drink. They lacked neither armor, garb, nor steed. Play actors also tarried there. From this mountain, Arthur sent champions with a glad message to Christian lands. The same message announced a bell, and as this bell began to toll, Arthur’s courtiers, even the most artful, fell silent abruptly. The courtier’s joy came to an end. Do you finally understand me, Master Clingsor? No? Then you cannot also know whom Arthur dispatched as a warrior to Christian lands and who rings the bell so loudly. You must guess for yourself. I can name the warrior for you, his name is .. . Lohengrin!
I ohengrin belonged to the family of the Grail King: Parzival was his lather and Anfortas, who carried the crown of the Grail before them, was his great-uncle. In Parzival, Wolfram declares that Anfortas suf-Icrs from an incurable wound because he had courted “illicit love” and in so doing had offended the highest law of the Gral knighthood. As ardently as he might have wished death at this point, he could not die. There was only one way to heal the ailing king: Without any knowledge of the nature of the Gral and its secrets, a noble knight must find on his own the castle of Muntsalvaetsche and there ask the redeeming question. Parzival, Lohengrin’s father, became this redeemer. The suffering of King Arthur and the suffering of Anfortas are the same! Likewise, the mountain where Arthur reigned over his circle of illustrious courtiers and the Grail Mountain are one and the same. Lohengrin sailed from this mountain to the people on his swan boat. From which direction did he come? From the west, where Montsegur lies? From Bel Mountain in Sicily or the Grail mountain near Naples? From the East? Or from the “mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north”?
In the year 1183, a church council took place in Verona. Debated were the means necessary to fight the neo-Arian and neo-Manichaean heresies, and conclusions were adopted: A half millennium after his death, in the city of Dietrich von Bern, an Arian, it was decided to exter minate the Cathars to the last man or woman. Before the Goths arrived, the Lombards had already found a home on the south slopes of the Alps and on the plains of the Po. They were also Arians, who were considered heretics.
Ahead of schedule, for only a few hours I am in Merano, as this town is now called. Nothing holds me here. The Tyrol is overrun with tourists and patients at health spas from all nations. I have seen Trauttmansdorff ( astle and also the Tappeinerweg and the botanical gardens—yet these
i an be seen in other southern Tyrolean cities, but those parks are more beautiful and cozier. On the piazza, where some Jews were reading I lebrew newspapers, I spotted someone who was a well-known member of the German Zentrum Party and who fled when it became too hot for Inm to remain on German soil.22
In the Middle Ages, the people of Meran were once praised in a fable > tiled Duke of MeraniaN The legend recounts how Berchther, the duke of Meran who later raised the young Frankish hero Wolfdietrich, advised the lonely king Rother to marry and proposed as a suitable wife the Byzantine
• mperor’s daughter, Princess Oda. Berchther’s seven sons volunteered to journey to Constantinople to ask for Oda’s hand, but the emperor cast l hem into a dungeon suddenly when he learned the true nature of their
• 11.1nd. They were rescued by the harp and sonnet of King Rother, who passed himself off as Dietrich von Bern. I will come back to this story a liltle later. It is clear that I will certainly not find the Claugestian stone in Meran.24 Legend says that old Duke Berchther, King Rother’s white-h.iired tutor, wore it as a luminous crest on his helmet, and that “even at midnight, the stone shone bright as day.” Alexander the Great had found
ii in a country that, he told, “never has seen a Christian person.” Indeed, hie Claugestian, I will have to search for the stone elsewhere!
Among the descendants of the legendary dukes of Merania was "| Zentrum was a Catholic party that formed the nucleus of the Christian Democrats after ' m id War II. It played a key role in helping the Nazis assume dictatorial power in the lliiiiI years of the Weimar Republic: Former Zentrum member Franz von Papen arranged Im Hitler to become Reichskanzler in 1933. Shortly thereafter, when the Zentrum it nnuided and received assurances from Hitler that he would respect Roman Catholi-i iin, i hey voted with the Nazis in the Reichstag to give Adolf Hitler dictatorial power for li'iu years in the so-called Ermachtigungsgesetz, the Enabling Act. —Trans.] "|l<i '.lined from H. A. Guerber’s 1895 work Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages. ^Trnns. |
”|( liiugestian stone, or lapsis exillis, is yet another name for the Gral. —Trans.\ Gertrude von Andechs-Merania, wife of the king Andrew II of Hungary and mother of St. Elizabeth.3 As I recently read in an essay published in a south Tyrol newspaper, “Gertrude has left a wicked legacy in Hungarian history: Because of her pride and preference for her foreign-born relatives who abused her confidence and despoiled Hungary in every way, the queen was assassinated at the age of twenty-eight. When her mother was murdered, little six-year-old Elizabeth was no longer in Hungary.” Elizabeth was born in 1207, when the famous Der Wartburgkrieg contest took place. One of the contending Minnesingers was Master Clingsor, who was summoned from Hungary to compete in the contest. As other legends say, and as I also found in my good Catholic Tyrolean newspaper, it was Clingsor who “focused the attention of the indebted and splendor-loving Thuringian landgrave upon the recently born Hungarian king’s daughter, Elizabeth.”
As a consequence, a delegation from Thuringia visited the Hungarian royal court when the little princess was no more than four years old to win her hand for the landgrave’s firstborn son, Hermann. In this way, at the age of four, Elizabeth became engaged to be married to the heir to the Thuringian throne. According to the customs of the period, the child arrived at the court of her future father-in-law with a fabulous treasure. A solid silver cradle and bathtub—whose weight was no less than two hundred pounds of fine silver—formed part of this fabulous dowry. Destiny soon intervened when the bridegroom, Landgrave Hermann, died. Those family members of the Thuringian court who were still hostile to the Hungarian alliance wanted to send little Elizabeth back to Hungary. If this were the case, they would also have been obliged to return the dowry, which had been squandered. As a consequence, without giving her any time to reconsider, Elizabeth was reengaged to the landgrave’s second son, Ludwig. To highlight the distinguished origins of the eleven-year-old Hungarian king’s daughter and because the princess was being treated like a Cinderella at the Thuringian court, Clingsor, who was still in attendance, composed the Hunnish Hungarian royal legend—the earliest lyrical poem of Hungarian prehistory.
At fourteen, the princess was married to a bridegroom who was seven years her senior. Landgrave Ludwig led an affectionate and pious life with his little sister, as he called his wife. In fact, Ludwig was admired as a saint, although he was never canonized. The marriage of Ludwig and the princess was blessed with four children. In her nineteenth year, a unique figure entered the life of the landgravine: Grand Inquisitor Konrad von Marburg, a Dominican monk, was called the scourge of ( iermany by his contemporaries because of his irreproachable religiosity and severity—and he always pushed Elizabeth toward asceticism. As her personal confessor, Konrad demanded from Elizabeth absolute obedience, which included financial matters. To this end, he placed the landgravine under such strict discipline that to her relatives she soon came across as an utterly foolish woman, and her reputation soon fell into disrepute. Oddly, she insisted upon providing charity that bordered on ha vid profligacy—she turned her entire paternal inheritance into money and she even gave away the proceeds from selling the silver cradle and i ill cred her own clothes to beggars.
It is surprising that Elizabeth could somehow turn her entire inheritance, even the famous silver cradle, into money. I thought that all her dowry had been squandered by the Thuringians. No matter. Let us continue reading to the bitter end the newspaper article, which, as I noted, i not heretical. Because it is written in an incomprehensible manner, I have made some stylistic changes:
After six years of marriage, Elizabeth’s husband died suddenly while en route to a Crusade. From then on, her life at the Wartburg court became pure martyrdom. Her mother and brothers-in-law persecuted her and her children. The proud Arpad [the Arpad dynasty of King Andreas, Elizabeth’s father, was a branch of the first ruling family of Hungary] found accommodations in the stable of a kind-hearted farmer. When news filtered through to the Hungarian royal court that her father-in-law wanted to place her under even I ighter discipline, her father decided to bring her home. Yet because she wanted to protect her firstborn son’s rights to the Thuringian throne, she could not leave the country. The hard lot of the refugee princess became embarrassing to her family. It was thus agreed that a hospital should be built for Elizabeth in Marburg-am-Lahn. As its prioress, she dedicated herself from then on to the care of lepers. At the same time, she entered into the recently created Franciscan order as a tertiary and lived only for a few years, though this time was dedicated to public welfare. She was barely twenty-four years old when she exchanged this earthly vale of tears for the heavenly kingdom. During her life there were already miracles that were attributed to her. In particular, those who experienced her three rose miracles did the most to burnish her legend.
As a small child still in her father’s court, she was seized by the passion of charity. In her apron she always carried the table scraps out to the beggars. Her father forbade her to come into contact with these beggars, probably in view of the contagious nature of leprosy. Despite this prohibition, however, she could not master her passion, and one day, she brought bread to the beggars. When her father noticed that she was saving something in her apron, he took her to task, whereupon the small girl invented a white lie: She said that she had roses in her apron. What’s more, when she undid her apron at her father’s command, through God’s special grace, it was filled to the brim with roses.
The second rose miracle occurred shortly after the death of her first bridegroom. She decided at that time to dedicate the rest of her life exclusively to the memory of her divine bridegroom, and as a token of this covenant, from then on, she wore a rose garland in her hair. [The author of the newspaper article apparently did not dare to say the word rosary.] When her father’s envoys arrived at Wartburg and told her that it was her father’s wish that she should become the bride of Landgrave Ludwig, she took the rose garland from her head and threw it into the river in her distress. The roses suddenly multiplied, and soon the whole surface of the water glowed in the rosy sheen of a sea of blooms.
The third rose miracle occurred during her married life. Unselfishly, she cared for lepers, and because she could not find a sickbed for one of the ailing, she put him in her own bed. When her husband returned home, he took her to task for harboring a strange man in her bedchamber. Despite the holiest feelings of loyalty to her marriage, she was not able to utter a word. Her husband tore the cover off the bed and saw the Savior himself on the cushions in the midst of flowering roses, whereupon Ludwig knelt down before her and begged her forgiveness.
Although we know well the traditional sworn statements from the landgravine’s four handmaidens (among them a Jutta or a Judith who had been with Elizabeth since the princess was five years old) confirming die veracity of these miracles, in reality they meant nothing and confirm only that the deceased had visions. It is important to repeat these famous rose miracles for any religiously inclined people, who should take them lor what they are worth. Let us continue, however, with the newspaper article:
Immediately after Elizabeth’s death, at her grave there occurred several healing miracles which prompted her former father-in-law—who, shortly thereafter, was slain by some members of the nobility—to urge the Roman pope to canonize his daughter-in-law. The canonization, which took place in 1235, when Elizabeth’s father was still alive, helped him greatly in his constant quarrel with the Roman curia: It could not proceed with severity against the father of a saint of the Roman Church. Within that same year, there began the building of a church in her honor—the first high-Gothic cathedral in Germany. In Budapest, the Rudasbad was established in her honor and a hospital was named after her. Soon after her death, the story of her life was compiled by Konrad von Marburg, Caesarius von Heisterbach, and Dietrich von Thiiringen.
Of the earthly inheritance of the Arpad princess, the only remains are a staff carved from the simple wooden bed of the saint and fashioned in gold. It is preserved in Hungary in the safe deposit of the archbishop’s high church at Esztergom.
Two other staves were taken from Elizabeth’s bedstead as relics, but I will tell that part of the story as soon as I am in my homeland again. St. I lizabeth is “a comfort and a treasure of the often poor Hessian land” and also is alleged to have been Tannhauser’s beloved lady.
I have now lived for weeks on a mountain meadow lying high up in the Dolomites. We must be at the beginning of autumn; snowflakes are glid ing down, and a white blanket now covers the fragrant gentian, arnica (whose extract can bring relief to some illnesses), and alpine roses. Poised between what is below and all that is above and bounded by rising gran ite walls, this alpine pasture exists in its own magical world.
Hidden by the magnificent heights, my meadow may be far from the world, but it is not by any means unworldly. Although it is not bound to what is generally accepted as the world, the pasture is now very much attached to me: Reaching it requires taking a steep footpath past bold, cantilevered mountains. Foaming torrents often drench the trail, as if to hinder the union between the abysmal depths and the towering peaks. The path climbs relentlessly past precipitous walls and the torrents of a waterfall. Finally, only moss-draped silver firs obscure the view of alpine pasture. When I followed the trail for the first time, I could only guess at the altitude to which it rose because the fog, seething and cold, enveloped everything. Then I arrived up here, and I stayed.
Three times I have been as far as Bolzano, where I bought crude shoes and even cruder clothes. It takes about four hours to get there. Time and again I climbed into the ravine below the meadow, over uprooted trunks and mossy boulders and past bright red agaric mushrooms as the unbelievably steep path, made for hunters, leads from this spot. Tree trunks rise up in the middle of the lane because no storm could break them. Sunlight finds it hard to penetrate the darkness of the ravine. On days when the light does not reach the bottom, I like to climb into the dark. Quite often, I strike out on the path that leads from the meadow toward the peak. Red cranberries hide themselves in the vast stretches of heather along the way, as the path winds through a forest of dark, Swiss stone pines. Now and then, it is possible to spot the gleam of the distant snowfields of the Adamell Mountains between their tattered branches. In one place, the path curves around a water trough for livestock and thirsty forest birds. At long last, I arrive, looking toward heaven past the elongated towers of Rose Garden Peak as it stands alone, with that intangible nobility that is revealed only on the lonely summits of great mountains—a nobility of which I always wish to be part.
1 will never forget this evening. I stood in front of my hut and watched die sun set. The bells of a forest chapel on another slope tolled, announcing the passing of the day. All of it was part of a dreamy life near that wonderful Rose Garden Peak, whose rock glowed red like the costliest mses. Sometimes it flamed, as if a fire burned within it and as if the log that enveloped the peak was a smoke trail. As I watched, I thought it bout the old songs, which recall a miraculous event on the mountain: I lie dwarf king Laurin is said to have once cultivated an exquisite rose garden here, during a time when mankind was better. Wonderful aro-iii.is floated on the breeze from myriad flower cups, and thousands of bu ds were jubilant for the Creator’s reward by day and by night. It happened, however, that wicked people kidnapped the dwarf king and took him to their city, where they forced him to perform as their juggler and ji'Nter. Soon thereafter, Laurin was able to free himself from his chains ,iiid secretly return home to his paradisal realm. To stop an unworthy mt ruder from again gaining entrance to his garden, Laurin spanned the path leading to it with a silk thread. A man who has strong arms may not have the strength to tear apart a spiderweb-thin thread. A man may he rich, yet he never can buy the view of Rose Garden Peak. And a man may be well read, but there is no book that can describe Laurin’s won-ih i land. I reflected on this in front of my meadow hut.
Overhead, the night had finally come and the moon had followed, h aving its rays on the rock. The day had gone, and in my mind a beauti-lul song composed by Brahms presided over the cool night that had set in like death. The mountain was no longer before me. For me, the great-i'st of Laurin’s wonders is the knowledge of day and night, which is also I lie understanding of life and death. Oh, how we should learn from him! People sigh and say they do not need to learn. It is still possible to gain admission to Laurin’s magical kingdom despite the silk thread—but only lor those who are knights or children or poets!
On the ancient Tyrolean Troj de Reses, the Rose Path, which leads Irom the Rarer Pass through the Tierser Valley to the north, a warrior from the retinue of Dietrich von Bern is said to have once ridden. He med in vain to find an entrance to Laurin’s realm. Whenever he believed lie had reached the goal, insurmountable cliffs rose up before him. Then lie saw a ravine, and he descended into it. In the vicinity of a brook he heard the breathtaking songs of countless birds. He stopped and listened.
He saw a woman, who was tending lambs in a sunny meadow. Would the small birds always sing, he asked her? The woman answered that she had not heard them for a long time, but now the mill could finally be found and people could now be brought back to health. The knight asked what the mill was for, and the woman responded: It was enchanted and had stood still for many years. In former times it belonged to King Laurin and was operated by dwarfs who milled flour there and gave it to the poor. They had become possessive, however, and one of them had thrown a dwarf into the water because he didn’t produce enough flour. Since then, the mill had stood still and would not move until the birds begin to sing again. The mill, deep in the ravine, was called Rose Mill because it was overgrown with rose hedges.
The knight hurried into the forest to search for the mill, and he found it. Moss ran riot on the roof, the timbered walls were blackened with age, and the wheel did not turn. The roses were so thick that anyone who did not know about it would have passed by without a glance. The knight tried in vain to open the door. The lock would not give way. Then he spotted a small window.
From the back of his horse he looked though the panes. In the miller’s room seven dwarfs lay asleep. The knight called out and pounded on the door in vain. From there he rode back to the meadow and lay down to rest. The next morning, he clambered above the forest ravine, and there stood three rosebushes. The knight broke a rose from the first bush. An ell then called from the bush: “Bring me a rose from the good old time!”
“I would do it gladly,” said the knight, “but how do I find it?” Grumbling, the elf disappeared. The knight walked to the second bush. He broke off a flower. Again an elf appeared, asked the same question, complained, and disappeared. When the knight broke a rose from the third bush, a third elf asked: “Why do you pound on our door?”
The knight answered, “I want to enter King Laurin’s rose garden because I am searching for the May Bride!”
“Only a child or a singer may enter the rose garden. If you can recite a beautiful song, the way is open to you.”
The knight responded: “That I can do!”
“So come with me,” the elf said, before picking hedge roses and descending into the ravine. The knight followed hint. When they reached
I lie mill, the door sprang open by itself. The dwarfs were still sleeping. The elf stroked them with the roses and called: “Wake up, you sleepy-heads; the young roses bloom!”
The dwarfs rose and rubbed their eyes and the mill began to grind.
Then the elf directed the knight into the cellar of the mill. From there .1 passageway led into the mountain, ending in the brightest light. With delighted eyes, the knight looked at King Laurin’s garden of Paradise with multicolored flower beds, laughing groves, and parading roses. He also saw the silk thread, which spanned everything.
“Now begin your song,” said the elf.
The knight sang of love and May, and the rose Paradise opened itself unto him forever. The knight had entered eternity.
There is another, no less wondrous Tyrolean legend: A princess brought the rose of memory to her bridegroom’s homeland. Questioning i he essence of the rose, the bride answered that it typified the memory of a time when there was no hate and no murder and everything was beautiful and good. Centuries passed. In that time, a large garden had developed from that single rose, covering the mountain until crimson shone all over the land. In the rose garden, Laurin ruled as king. He was the bridegroom to whom the May Bride had brought the rose of memory. Finally, lie locked the rose realm, but children once found a mysterious key while playing and so went into the garden. Was that key a Dietrich?26
Memory is love.
The pinnacles of Rose Garden Peak glow. The night fills the “chimneys” of the Schlern, as it does the other beautiful mountains. Snow fills i lie Runsen. A golden sunbeam, the last for today, shines on the slope nl the Vogelweiderhof. There, Minnesinger Walther von der Vogelweide, who so gladly sang a merry Tandaradei, beheld the light of the world. As a son of the Tyrol, he surely knew the fairy tale of the rose garden, the rose mill, and the singing birds. He also knew of the importance of searching lor blessed and divinely inspired love, for he sang:
Love is neither man nor wife,
It has no soul or body;
\l)ietrich in German means “skeleton key.”—Ed.]
Your essence remains to be invented. It cannot be compared
And yet you can never reach
God’s grace without it.
Into false hearts she never goes,
It only belongs to noble ones.
For Walther von der Vogelweide, love was spirit and the key to the realm of God!
Bolzano mountain climbers came to arrange a climbing tour with me. They accepted me as one of their own and remained until late into the night. I read to them from my diary and taught them some new songs of my homeland. I, however, received the greatest benefit: I have heard a popular song in Tyrol; therefore I count this dear fraternity of mountain climbers among Lucifer’s courtiers:
And I once had,
So God wills it,
The last fall:
I would begin as always,
Leaving and climbing
The last mountain.
Whether ice or stone
Or some falls pain us,
We are the princes of this world
And just want to be up there!
Woe unto you mountaineers, your striving for God was cursed in Isaiah. You are rebels! You shall no longer climb the cliffs to see the glory of the world, which is far more wonderful than seeing it in musty rooms and dark churches! If you do, the Lord of Hosts will let you fall from the ice and stone, and you will plummet from the mountains into the depths. You will fall from heaven as did Lucifer, the prince of this world, who also wanted to be up high. Do you believe that Jehovah, in whose service the bells of your Tyrolean cathedrals and churches and chapels toll from the early morning to the late evening, and his gatekeeper St. Peter, who lived on the Palestinian Sea of Galilee but never in the land of Tyrol, will allow you into heaven to be received into Abraham’s fold? They abandoned you to hell! Go confidently there at any time, whether or not you have found death in the mountains, in the rose garden, where people of your kind have so gladly gone! Lucifer’s courtiers, to whom you belong, are to be found there. To enter this Luciferian realm, which is not heaven, you do not need that key that represents Jehovah and Jesus Christ’s governor in Rome, who sits on the holy throne occupied by Peter. To unlock the gates to Lucifer’s realm, you need a Dietrich, a “skeleton key.” To partake in rose magic, we must secretly unlock the gates to this wonderland. Otherwise, even the thief’s key could be stolen. In lower Germany, a Dietrich is also called a Peterschen.4 Before St. Peter and his servants, nothing is safe.
,6[Pope Gregory I (AD 540-604), who was later canonized, was also known as Gregorius Dialogus. —Trans.]
’’[Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836), an influential German dramatist, was strongly influenced by Shakespeare. These passages are from Don Juan und Faust, a drama from 1828. —Trans.]
[Gertrude of Merania (AD 1185-1213) was murdered by Hungarian noblemen who were jealous of her favoritism. Her sister Agnes of Merania, a famous beauty, married King Philippe-Auguste of France. —Trans.]
11 .ittle Peter. —Trans.]