Heidelberg, City of Famous People

No, that's not an official nickname for Heidelberg, but a lot of famous people visited or studied in Heidelberg, such as Gustav Kirchoff (famous to electrical engineers for his circuit laws), Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain), Robert Bunsen (he of Bunsen burner fame), Hermann von Helmholtz (I don't remember what he's famous for, but I remember hearing his name in science class - you don't forget an awesome name like Helmholtz), and Robert Schumann (composer).

Anyway, RISE (the program that gave me this internship) held a conference in Heidelberg for all the students who got internships. The basic theme was "We gave you this opportunity to come to Germany this summer, so now we're going to talk to you about why you should study and/or work in Germany." Fair enough.


On the last day there, we got a walking tour of the city. I took pictures.

This is the Student Prison. Students at the University of Heidelberg did not fall under city jurisdiction; they fell under the university's jurisdiction. So the university got to arrest, try, and punish students for crimes. The punishment would be a couple days in the Student Prison, located on the top floor of the caretaker's house. (The cells used to be in the basement, but after a flood, in which several forgotten inmates spent the weekend in neck-high water, the cells were moved to the top floor.) Apparently, a night in the prison eventually became a badge of honor, something every student wanted to do. So a student would throw a rock at a gas lamp, and get himself caught. The caretaker would come by the student's residence, to take him to the prison. If that day wasn't convenient for the student, he could reschedule. The student would be followed on his way to the prison by a procession of students, singing songs and lamenting (all tongue-in-cheek) for the student. The student was allowed visitors, and would actually charge tourists to come up and see the cell. The money went towards the purchase of beer, and students apparently held parties up there. Mark Twain actually wrote about the Heidelberg Student Prison in his book A Tramp Abroad.

Here's the sign on the Church of the Jesuits. I couldn't get a good picture of the church.

So I stole one from the internet. Our tour guide was just full of stories, so here's another one. At the back of the church, there was a seminary. When Schumann was studying in Heidelberg, however, it was being used as an asylum. Schumann was staying in a room between the church and the asylum. Supposedly, he wrote a letter to his mother, saying: I don't know how I'm supposed to get any studying done. The bells are always ringing. And when they're not ringing, they're celebrating mass. And when there's no mass, the lunatics are raising hell. I can't take it. I don't know whether I should become crazy or Catholic. (Note: I'm pretty sure the tour guide was paraphrasing when he told the story. And I'm paraphrasing what he said. So I guess that makes it para-paraphrasing?)

Here's a random street in Heidelberg. Sorry, no story here.

We then climbed up to see this castle. (No, I didn't take this picture.)

Here's a house we saw on the way up. Apparently, students can live in here.

View of Heidelberg from the castle.

Different view. From same castle.

It's a looong way down.

The guy on the right is Frederick V, a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire. This means that in addition to controlling Palatine (the historical region that Heidelberg is in), he was also one of the few people who elected the Holy Roman Emperor. He married Elizabeth Stuart, the granddaughter of Mary Queen of Scots, and daughter of King James I of England. Elizabeth was not impressed when she arrived in Heidelberg, so to cheer her up, Frederick built a Shakespeare-style theater for her in this tower, which used to house cannons. He also built her a garden.

Another part of the castle. You can kind of tell from this picture that the castle was not all built at the same time. Different sections were added on over the course of 200 years.

The castle had a dry moat. They used to catch wild animals and trap them in here, for the nobles to "hunt." I put that word in quotes, because what they would do is stand on those planks you see, wait for the animal to get close, and shoot them practically point-blank. Real honorable, Germans.

The Elizabeth Gate. Frederick had it built overnight for his wife Elizabeth's birthday.

Look closely, you can see lizards and other creatures engraved on the gate. For each animal Elizabeth was able to find, she would get a kiss from Frederick. Men, take a lesson from Frederick. He was quite the charmer.

Look closely. The lion on the left is holding an orb, and the one on the right has a sword. So what's the symbology there? I don't remember. I do remember a story about that blank spot in the middle though. There used to be a silver coat-of-arms there. When the French conquered Heidelberg, they stole the coat-of-arms, melted it down, and used the silver to make 100 coins that said "Heidelberg is destroyed" on them.

Here's another section of the castle. I don't remember when it was built.

More of the castle, and our tour guide. He was pretty cool.

This is a ridiculously huge vat of wine, and the spiral staircase necessary to climb to the top of it. It's not the largest in the world, but the only one that can be proved to have held over 200,000 liters of wine. Legend has it that only one man ever drank it's entire contents over the course of his life. This man went by the name of Perqueo (pronounced pear-kay-o). He was an Italian dwarf who was a court jester. He got his name because whenever someone asked him if he wanted a glass of wine, he'd say "Per que no?" which means "Why not?"

This is the ceiling. Wine was poured into the vat from this hole.

And pumped up to the floor above through this pipe. Wine consumption was quite exorbitant in those days. People thought water was unhealthy, so they never drank it. It was associated with disease, because diseases were often spread through water supply. So people drank wine and beer. Perqueo, that Italian dwarf I mentioned earlier, reportedly died when he wasn't feeling well, and someone offered him a glass of water. It was the first glass of pure water he'd ever had. He dropped dead.

Noticing the liver problems that his subjects were unsurprisingly suffering from, one of the prince-electors in Heidelberg started a temperance society to limit the consumption of alcohol. He made it mandatory for everyone to join. Members were only allowed to drink 7 liters of wine per day. (That's 1.85 gallons!) Beer was not considered to be an alcoholic drink, so there were no limits on it. 

Here's our tour group outside the castle.

Okay, I didn't get a ton of pictures in Heidelberg, but I did remember a lot of cool stories, so I hope that makes up for it. Look for my Cologne and Frankfurt posts soon. Tchüs!