THE BERLINER DOM AND WARTBURG CASTLE
My passion for genealogy began in the mid 1970's and has continued to this day allowing me to research my German and Polish ancestors. During those 46+ years I have been able to visit Germany four different times. Those visits were historical, enjoyable and worth every minute. I would love to be able to go back again some day.
One thing I learned when visiting Germany was that the Germans love to walk and are much more adept at that than we are here in the US. They walk everywhere and I mean everywhere!
On my trip in 1993 I visited my brother and his family who were living in Hanau, Germany where my brother was stationed with the US Army. We traveled across Germany and into Poland, visiting 16 of the villages of our ancestors that I had uncovered to that date.
On one of our days in Eisenach my brother wanted to take me to the Wartburg Castle. As Lutherans we knew that the Wartburg is famous as it was the place where Martin Luther translated the New Testament of the Bible into German. My brother and his family had been there before but they wanted me to experience the visit as well.
The Wartburg is a castle originally built in the Middle Ages. It is situated on a precipice of 1,350 feet to the southwest of and overlooking the town of Eisenach in the state of Thuringia, Germany.
I was excited to visit this castle but what my brother did not tell me was that there were many steps and steep inclines to get to the top all outside! Steps and steep inclines were not in my comfort zone but I set off with my brother and his 10 year old daughter. I was amazed to see elderly German people, many with canes, marching along up the stairs passing me by with no obvious strain. There are resting benches along the way and I was stopping at each one. I thought we would never get to the top. My 10 year old niece was quite amused!
Once there it was well worth the struggle but oh those steps! Going down was so much easier. Obviously the significance of visiting these sites is the experience of seeing the site in its original condition. If only they had heard of elevators!!
This photo from 1817, in the public domain, shows a good example of the steps needed to get to the Wartburg:
In 2008 I again visited Germany, this time to visit cousins in Berlin. This was an exciting visit as I had connected with these cousins back in 1999 and had confirmed that their Kolberg grandfather and my mother's Kolberg grandfather were indeed brothers thus adding a 6th Kolberg brother to my ancestral family. I was there for 3 weeks and, again, walking was a daily occurrence.
The day they took me to see the Berliner Dom reminded me of the visit to the Wartburg Castle some 15 years earlier.
The Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) is a monumental German Evangelical church and contains in the basement the dynastic tombs of the House of Hohenzollern. It is located in central Berlin. The Dome's organ has over 7000 pipes and is a masterpiece to see and is one of the largest in Germany.
Again, what I did not realize, was that a visit to the Dom requires climbing 270 STEPS to the top where one stands outside viewing all of Berlin below. As before on my trip to The Wartburg, Germans of all ages were sprinting up to the top without a care. My host cousin, then 78 years old himself, could easily keep up with the rest but he was gracious in allowing me to stagger behind. Eventually we reached the top where the view was amazing:
Martin Luther in the Dom:
Germany is indeed a place of many historical landmarks that connect me to my ancestors. Hopefully with my genealogical research I am memoralizing them with honor and dignity.
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