I prowl through the streets of my city and find myself before a door. This door I've been avoiding in the last ten years, as the plague. Especially on Saturdays. This door is open and there is a Plate mounted thereon. On this plate is in no uncertain terms: "Every Saturday at 12.00 clock tower tour!" Space, exclamation mark. Normally I find in such a typographic nonsense forever, and a matching biting comment section. Not so today. Today is a special day: It's raining. It is Saturday, 11:57 clock! I have almost 20 years, almost bestial fear of heights. And I go up there now!
Wait a minute! What was that moment? Not with the time. I refer to the appendix after the the "... I go up there now."
The Collegiate Church in New Town has two huge sandstone towers. The south tower measured from the base to the top 56 meters, the north tower is still only 8 feet higher. Why the towers really such a different size? Originally, the two have always been more or less identical, and up to about 38 meters in height located, walk platforms, they are the still. You would be well above the 38 meter limit, if had not been there the towers of New Town. The long-lived as many centuries of municipal employees in the roof of the south tower and watched over the city and region. Whether approaching French armies or angry fire, escaped them because of their exposed situation in any home. But life in the attic a bell tower was anything but comfortable, and not the payment of the towers well. The City Council therefore decided in 1730 that it was necessary to build a house watchman. passed by the recognition of the need to conduct more than nine years, and it was in 1739 removed the roof of the south tower and replaced by a two-story baroque house. So it came to the different height of the towers and the city of Neustadt to the distinctive emblem of their unequal twin towers.
The space behind the door is already full. Among other things, I notice a large group of hikers whose intonation strange to me seems familiar. Rhinelander! I agree with them. The Rhinelander also feels more comfortable in exile in the pack. They are also accompanied by a lady that I find appealing spontaneously. Another sign to me is striking. This reminds the visitors on behalf of the presbytery, not to smoke. It further points out that it is difficult and dangerous to commit the towers. Thank you! This I have needed now! What dangers may lurk there for me? Bats, which are obtained with irrem me giggle from behind and push down somewhere? Thrust bats in the belfry - the thing is done at least since the cartoon of MGM. Or is it even rotten wooden steps, the exact the moment you finish more than five hundred years of existence, since I run it? A classic film, almost a cinematic archetype. Known from dozens of adventure and horror films. Stone stairs collapse if struck by lightning? Such a thing did I in the "Highlander" already seen. However, since the Kyrgyz Kurgan has previously been beaten with his sword the architecture mellow. This can probably be ruled out here. Insane, murderous Kirghiz today I have not seen any, certainly not those with Zweihänderschwertern. Storm we have none. Maybe even jumping around a hunchbacked bell-ringer at the gargoyles and throws with sandstone blocks to account for his to force beloved Esmeralda asylum? Perhaps there is also the possibility of impotence, which leaves me at the moment the greatest danger of overcome and throw underhand? Oh what the heck. The fact that the road is hard, I have never doubted anyway, and the risks can not be so bad, since otherwise, the city long ago banned the tower tours. Since I have now by well!
was arduous life of the towers in the old days. They had every drop of water from the fountain and get dragged up. In 1900 a water line was laid in but because of low water pressure only Neustadt to the ground floor. For the fourth floor of the tower, water pressure is then submitted in 1925, for the first time, there was now in a washing tower site and a toilet. Until then, had the sewage will also be brought down in buckets. The course has not held by any watchman. Imagine: In the winter, every day several times to bring a bucket of feces all the steps down. They've lived up there with his wife and children. And at a time when a couple with three children was not yet considered as a large family. Since so many towers could not resist the temptation to discard the brown liquid on the church roof. The presbytery was less nicely. Or firewood. Drag once a Winter firewood on a church tower. Then you know but for sheer sweat no more, whether it the burning furnace ever need it. Even if your much-strong crowd of children crying from the cold!
Tower guide explains the various bright-eyed tourists significant superlatives of the collegiate church, as we rise with alarming speed to be gaining momentum. At the base of two meters thick walls, concrete spiral staircase of 1928 that created a domestic company with a then very new procedure, the Emperor bell, largest Gußstahlglocke the world swings in a deep "it" with 14 tons, the second heaviest bell Germany .... and, and, and. Much more exciting I find the many anecdotes about the towers, with which she spices up their statements. While I listen to these stories, I take my co-tower to climb a little more closely. I see there flashed under the rain jacket is not just an elongated metallic object? Or the man as in the penumbra: is the only bent a little, or does that makes a hump? What was a shadow, who is just scurried through the wooden structure. And we should not prefer the old wooden stairs use gradually, rather than all together? With foreboding in my stomach I climb the last steps.
The salary of the tower guard was bad, her duties were varied and demanding. So had the tower clock wound, where signals for opening and closing of gates and vineyards and fire departments be guided to the fire. In order to control their constant vigilance was required of them that night acknowledged the chime of the bell with a hammer blow to this very bell. This meant that every hour out of bed and two tower levels go downward. The tower next to the towers house four floors, you can imagine how much is a tower floor and how many steps equal that. Then through the roof of the Church in the North Tower there is a tower floor up with the big hammer and a blow on the bell. Then again all the way back. An orderly and healthy night's sleep was unthinkable there. And what about ... how shall I say ... Family life? After all, it has brought one of the towers to the remarkable group of children of 13 (!) Offspring. Just to make this clear: this is a complete football team with two reserves. Or the crew of an Olympic rowing eight with coxswain and coach boat and three technicians. And when disturbed at night! Or maybe because of? Whatever the case: At some point one of the towers (maybe his wife) came up with the idea of a wire rope from the window of to tension towers apartment in a window of the north tower, from where there the bell chamber to it with the hammer of the bell to connect. From now on, closing with the night running around because of the receipt shock could easily be made from the bed. The deep notch in the sandstone of the window in the north tower still shows this smart guard tower (or his wife). The reward for all the drudgery, however, was sparse, like a family, let alone to feed a nascent football team was simply impossible. So had all towers a secondary profession. The elector personally to them the exclusive right was granted, public aufzuspielen music. They did, of course, not in vain. Those who could not play was allowed to sell that right to other musicians. As is usual to make ends meet.
meantime, we have arrived in the apartment towers. Our guide tells us that the railing of the platform in 1794 dismantled by French revolutionary troops and taken to the then still French Landau. It is still used today at the local abbey church tower - a nerve! End of the 50 years of the twentieth century, ie about 160 years later, finally someone with the idea to make an attempt to Landauer call to return the railing. In the long run is indeed for the families no watchman state: so without railing in 38 meters height. The course went into the pants. The Landauer had become so accustomed to the railing, you come out not wanted to. Can we indeed understand somehow, because it is a very nice railing. So I needed a new being built. This was then mounted in 1963 with much fanfare, and since then protects towers, Türmerin, children, cats and visitors from falling down.
I can not tell you how grateful I am of the art locksmith baker from Neustadt am sure at this moment. In the meantime I stand high above the square on rain-wet, slippery, and especially narrow wooden planks. Only 110 cm low railing prevents me from a room filling and bloody end to sit on the roof of the car sales of the nice fish dealer, where I always enjoy shopping on Saturdays.
Even the French Revolutionary troops, I am deeply indebted. The original was stolen, that is a few centimeters lower than what I now protected. "Vive la France Vive la Revolution!" I would like to shout out to the market place, but my throat is dry and I get out a word. Despite the cloudy, rainy and cool weather to me the sweat runs down in streams. I can hardly hold the camera, so I attached them to me by the neck as a precaution. No one is surprised, for I have in the run to anyone who wanted to know - and anyone who would not know it - about my fear of heights. Lo and behold, I was not the only one. With no further! I would rather not shake the feeling that I'm here in a kind Akrophobie support group. I turned up the ISO sensitivity of the camera. I will come in the shorter exposure times and the tremor does not fall on Sun Be that as it may, the prospect of my new town is spectacular! Terrific, one might say! Even my old apartment in the Kunigundenstraße I can see. The Hurra-atoms in my brain mix with the whole adrenaline panic about the rise, and that makes me very wuschig. Probably better if I go in again. Otherwise, I might even get the idea I could fly.
In the chronicles of the city to read again and again like this, have mentioned that in earlier times, the tower guards, and tower servants or prong nesting, out of the tower, a loose life of debauchery are. What should we imagine less, is left to the imagination of the reader. Clearly, however, that the watchman, who were mostly musicians, were warned on a regular basis, not late to play music at night. I can understand. I hear at night, sometimes even quite a little louder music. At some point I get this also determines trouble. Also, some of the watchman in its duty to strike at night, the bells have not always taken very seriously. What now? First they are too loud, they're too quiet again ... And that lousy with your payment. Moreover, even the aforementioned feces provided on the church roof for discord in the city administration.
We rise again from the tower down and make it a little detour into the bell chamber of the North Tower. As is the really big bells. The toughest challenge is the Kaiser bell. Alone, the clapper weighs about three times as much as my bike. To chime the bell is struck but only with a mechanically operated hammer. This has the advantage that will kill you as not tourists visit during the tour from 14 tons to and fro herpendelnden cast steel. And you can, if you want it to make after striking the bell still reverberating, and enjoy the vibrations. An amazing feeling!
In 1755 Joseph Haynes was appointed to the watchman. He had come as a traveling musician to Neustadt and had at first as a journeyman on his predecessor started. He founded a dynasty towers, which finally brought peace to the rafters of the church. The Haynes family hired from now for the next 215 years all the interior and towers, to Henry Haynes, the last guard tower of New Town. He had been admitted in the spring of 1970 because of serious illness to the hospital. When he realized that he would not survive this illness, he asked to be brought back to the towers to house, in which he in 1891 had seen the light of day and where he had lived his whole life. Paramedics, firefighters and his daughter Linda met him this request on 21 March 1970. When his daughter finally 25 March for an unusual time, the emperor knew the bell rang Neustadter that their last watchman had died.
Leaving the tower, I talk briefly with one of the hikers. With "Rhinelander" I was not too bad. The group has traveled from Bonn. Although not originally come from there, but who more than a decade spent in the Rhineland, where this belongs in the rule. Not matter what religion, language, skin color or nationality of the newcomers belong. "You will be assimilated -.! Resistance is futile Prost and Alaaf" We are, after the Rhineland of Germany Borg Quadrant.
The nice lady who accompanied the group that I have found a week later, coincidentally, is a hostess in Neustadter restaurant. I sometimes go to breakfast there on Sundays. It is immediately occurred to me known, I could not assign, because I am grumpy in the morning for breakfast rather than the reading of Murder busy to pay attention as to my surroundings. Maybe I'm going out in the near future and once in the evening there. Where will I go but certainly again is hopefully clear that the tower has not seen me for the last time. The next summit takes place in good weather!
PS: Mix
