Introduction

My Romantic Rhine Images: Imagekind

In October, 2007, my wife, Karen, and I took a Peter Deilmann cruise on the MV Casanova along the Rhine-Main-Danube Waterway. We commenced at Amsterdam and ended at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest. One afternoon we travelled the Romantic Rhine (also known as the Middle Rhine, Heroic Rhine, Rhine Gorge and Rhine Valley). The day was dull and misty, so it was hard to obtain crisp photos. To further aggravate the situation, I was taking photos on a moving boat with a hand-held Fuji Finepix Z1. When I arrived home and examined the images, I found them to be somewhat uninspiring. Using my experience with PhotoShop, I post-processed the pictures and uploaded them to flickr. They looked a lot better. Over the past six months, I’ve also worked on them with a number of other filters to give them a painterly feel. They have been posted for sale on Imagekind, and I will re-post them to flickr. The following commentary is meant to place the images in perspective. But first, it is important to understand a bit about the Romantic Rhine.

The Romantic Rhine is a sixty-five kilometer stretch of water between Bingen and Koblenz that is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since the Rhine formed the eastern boundary of Roman Gaul, the French often claimed it as an eastern boundary. To the Merovingian and Carolingian rulers, it was part of a central passageway between Western Europe and Italy. In 870 AD, it became the transportation axis of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Romantic Rhine features many castles which provide a glimpse of Germany’s military and romantic past. They were created by powerful rulers as both defensive works and customs houses, and most of the construction was carried out by serfs. Tolls were exacted along the Rhine from 800 AD to 1800 AD. Secular and ecclesiastical lords, who held lands from the Holy Roman Emperor, could collect tolls as long as they held imperial authorization. Issues concerning the establishment of toll stations included satisfying local power structures, deciding number and locations of stations, determining distance between stations, building custom station defenses and establishing allowable fees. Tolls could be paid in silver or in-kind.

Robber barons, who charged higher-than-allowed tolls, and who operated without imperial authority, first appeared in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They were most brazen during a disruptive interregnum (1254-1273) between the end of Hohenstaufen rule and the beginning of Habsburg rule. These Rhine lords seized ships and cargoes, and even engaged in kidnapping for ransom. The Rheinischer Bund (Rhine League), which consisted of nobility, knights, churchmen and Rhine towns, sought to restore law and order. Commencing in 1254 AD, the league destroyed robber baron strongholds and hanged the offenders. The league’s methods were continued by Emperor Rudolf of Hapsburg and his successors, who effectively ended the outlawry. Although robber barons reappeared during the Hundred Year’s War in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, their operations were never as extensive as during the interregnum.

Both French advances during the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) and the campaigns of Louis XIV in the Nine Years War(1689-99)stripped Germany of its Rhine dominance. In the late eighteenth century, French Revolutionary forces further consolidated France’s gains, and Napoleon captured northwestern Germany as well as the Elbe and Neisse rivers during the early nineteenth century. There was a backlash of German nationalism expressed by E.M. Arndt, who in 1813 wrote, "The Rhine is Germany's river, not its boundary." But after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna ceded Alsace to France, thus ensuring France possessed a Rhine presence.

Goethe's journey down the Rhine in 1774 effectively marks the beginning of German Romanticism when Rhine castles underwent significant restorations, most of which included strong Gothic Revival elements. Also during this period, European gentry, artists and writers undertook grand tours to work, to visit the spas and to soak up local wines and lore.

Under Emperor Napoleon III, France again tried to seize Rhine lands, but after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, France lost both its Rhine bid and Alsace. She regained Alsace after World War I.

After World War II there was a move toward economic and political union of the Rhine states.

The Romantic Rhine possesses its own special micro climate which fosters wine-growing, and Riesling is the area’s most famous offering. The river runs through steep hillsides with densely forested tops, and is narrow with serpentine turns. The Lorelei, which is a huge slate rock, is located at the river’s most constricted and dangerous section. Picturesque towns, constrained by hillsides and the river, exhibit architecture ranging from early medieval times to the present.

Just a note before we start: Information on specific people, places, movements, wars, diplomacy, geography, history and institutions is readily available in online, and I have posted links to numerous websites in the last section of this blog. Also, people interested in Rhine legends should consult the following works that are also available online. There are often several versions of each tale.

1. Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine, by Lewis Spence (Project Gutenberg or Internet Sacred Text Archive)
2. Legends of the Rhine (c1895), by Hélène Adeline Guerber (American Libraries Internet Archive)
3. Legends of the Rhine and of the Low Countries, by Thomas Colley Grattan (Google Books)
4. The Rhine from Cologne to Mainz, by Joseph Snowe (Google Books)
5. Legends of the Rhine, by William Ruland (Kellscraft.com) (http://www.kellscraft.com/LegendsRhine/legendsrhinecontents.html

Now, let’s examine the sites one by one, starting with the Maus Türm at Bingen.