On the tour to Neuschwanstein Castle, I talk about the Knights of Schwangau and how they built several castles in the area. Possibly the earliest of the Schwangau Knights’ constructions was atop a high cliff above a narrow gorge and overlooking the ridgeline where they would soon build the first Hohenschwangau castle.
There, sometime around the 10th century, they built a tower, six meters square and of unknown height. At the top of the tower, they put two piles of wood and jars of oil—what all to make a fire with. It was part of an early-warning system of signal towers that ran throughout the County of Tyrol, which comprised this section of the Alps.
In case of any threat, they would light the fire. One pile was dry wood, the other damp. If at night, the dry-wood fire made a bright light that could be seen for a great distance in the darkness. In daylight, the damp wood made a smoky fire.
Today, there remain several stone courses, showing through moss. Grass grows from cracks between them. This appears to be the tower’s northwest corner. To the right, off the photo, similar though smaller stones mix with turf and tree roots for about six meters along the edge of the cliff.
Before Ludwig II built Neuschwanstein, he had made a topographic plan of the area. Atop the hill next to the bridge, there is marked “Sylphentürm.” Türm, in German, is the word for tower. Sylphen is the plural of sylph. The word sylph, which came into the English language, had only been invented three hundred years before by a German philosopher who intended it to mean an air fairy.1
During Ludwig’s time, there remained still a good portion of the wall, visible from the Hohenschwangau ruins. We imagine that, when the mist rises from the Pöllat River to fill the gorge, the tower on cliff’s edge might appear as though it hangs in the air.
I learned about the existence of the tower and its ruins from an article “Die vergessen Türme” (The Forgotten Towers), which appears in the local weekly paper Kreisbote, December 2017.2 It is part of a series of forty historical articles that ran in the Kreisbote from October 2015 through January 2023. The series’ author is Magnus Peresson, a local architect and historian. In the article, Peresson tells about two other local signal towers from the Tyrolian system: One he calls Siebeler. For the other, he gives no name. Neither has any more stones showing.
You can see these thousand-year-old ruins after the autumn leaves are fallen, through the winter, and into early spring before the trees are in full leaf. Just as you arrive at the top of the hill before Marienbrücke, look to the highest point. [This photo taken April 16, 2025.]
Caution: Should one ignore the signs in German, showing falling stick figures surrounded by red exclamation points, and cross the barbwire, a few steps take you five meters up to the stones. One step beyond takes you 140 meters down to gorge bottom. Lebensgefahr is German for Danger to Life!
Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, commonly known as Paracelsus (1493-1541), was a philosopher of the German Renaissance. He was also a physician and alchemist. In A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits, Paracelsus conceives four types of fairies, one for each of the elements: gnomes (earth), salamanders (fire), undines (water), and sylphs (air). ↩︎
Driving north from Füssen on Highway 16 toward Marktoberdorf, an oddity catches the eye. Beside the road sits a village chapel, terracotta roof and white painted facade angled off the main street. While the walls are plumb with the world, its onion-dome steeple leans away from the street.
At first the mind must work out whether it’s the walls or the steeple not right. A trick is played by the painted clock face and the corner street sign. The first aligns with the walls below, the second with the steeple above.
Chapel of Saints Magnus and Wendelin, Steinbach, Stötten am Auerberg.
I think there must be a story behind that, so I go searching. The village is Steinbach, part of the municipality of Stötten am Auerberg. In a document listing local monuments, the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation labels the building at Hauptstrasse 9 as a “Catholic Chapel of Saints Magnus and Wendelin.” The following text, translated, describes the chapel’s construction:
“Hall building with gable roof, recessed choir with semicircular apse, hipped spire and gable turret protruding over console with octagonal bell story and onion dome, 1726 probably according to plans by Johann Georg Fischer, using parts of a previous building from 1658/60; with furnishings. Refurbished.”
Johann Georg Fischer (b. 1673, Oberdorf; d. 1747, Füssen) was a stonemason and builder. Many works in Füssen and throughout the region are attributed to him.
The chapel’s description makes no mention of the canted steeple. But now I am waylaid by the saints to whom the chapel is dedicated. St. Magnus is widely known in these parts as founder of St. Mang’s Abbey in Füssen and slayer of the Rosshaupten dragon. But who is this Wendelin?
I discovered that Wendelin is a legendary figure. By that, I mean that we know of him only through legends. The first written accounts of the saint’s life were recorded eight hundred years after his death. The earliest known source is the 15th-century Vita Sancti Wendelini, reputedly written by monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Tholey in Saarland, five hours drive northwest of here.
The most often cited source is Reverend Francis X. Weninger’s 1877 Lives of the Saints1. I have compiled this account of Wendelin’s life from that and various other sources. This author confesses the sin of embellishment.
Wendel: wanderer, pilgrim (Old High German). -in: a diminutive suffix.
The story is set in the sixth century. This is after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, before the Holy Roman Empire, during the time of the Franks before Charlemagne.
Wendelin was born into a royal house of Ireland or Scotland, depending on the legend. Scholarship suggests it was more likely Ireland, which the Romans had called Scotia. At the time, various kingdoms struggled against each other for domination of the island.
Statue of St. Wendelin, Basilica of the Fourteen Saints, Bad Staffelstein, Bavaria. Photo Courtesy of Reinhold Möller.
The young prince learned to read and to fight with a sword. Wendelin might have enjoyed all the luxuries afforded the royalty of sixth-century Ireland, but he was a pious youth. He studied scripture and always kept his prayers.
Upon coming of age, he put down the sword and lay aside his crown. He renounced all wealth and heritage and, dressed in simple traveler’s garb, ran away from home to make a pilgrimage to Rome.
He went through France, visiting all the holy sites in that country. In Rome, the young man received the Pope’s blessing and visited the apostles’ tombs. Pilgrimage complete, he traveled north from Rome and came to the Westrich district, in the Diocese of Trier, which today straddles the French-German border. Trier, sometimes called Trèves, is Germany’s oldest city.
Wendelin came to a village, which was named for Baso, the lord of the local manor house. Outside the village, on a low hill beside a small river, he built a crude hut from tree branches. He rested on a bed of leaves. In this simple dwelling, he withdrew into a hermetic life.
Now, the legend goes, Wendelin one day went into the village to beg for his bread. The lord, driving by in a carriage, saw the young man begging bread among the peasants and admonished him. “A strong young lad should work for his bread,” said Baso. “Go and guard my pigs while I go to town.”
Wendelin went to guard the pigs. All the sheep came to him. On Baso’s return, he discovered Wendelin, guarding the pigs amid a flock of sheep.
Over the bleating sheep, Baso shouted to Wendelin, “It seems, lad, you are made to be a shepherd. Lead the flock into the green pastures where the sheep may graze on fresh grass.”
Wendelin took up a crook and led the flock into the pastures and, so, became a shepherd. He led the sheep far across the countryside, where the sheep always grazed in fresh pastures. While the sheep grazed, Wendelin sat in meditation or studying a scripture book, which he always carried.
Each day, he went farther and farther into the hills, and each day he returned with the flock safely to the fold. The sheep were well fed. They fell never to injury nor to sickness. The ewes gave much milk, and the rams were healthy and vital. Lord Baso was pleased with the new shepherd.
One day, while riding horseback far out in the country, Baso came upon Wendelin and the flock of sheep. The lord admonished the shepherd. “You have brought the flock much too far. You will arrive at the fold long after nightfall, and the sheep will be weary.”
Baso was surprised when, in the afternoon, he trotted the horse through the manor gate and found Wendelin perched on a hillock above the fold. The sheep drank at the water trough.
Baso cried out, “It’s a miracle! You have brought the flock far over hill and dale and back to the fold in less time than my horse has carried me the same distance.”
Dismounting the horse, Baso approached Wendelin. He bowed his head before the young man. “You must leave off herding sheep, lad. The Lord our God must have greater plans for you.”
Baso offered him a great sum of money so that he might spend his days in prayer and meditation without begging for food. But Wendelin accepted only his due wages and returned to the hut on the hillside above the river.
Wendelin often took long walks, wandering through fields and woods and far into the hills, where he would meditate and read from the scripture book. When he encountered peasants in their homes or travelers on the road, he witnessed to them. He told them of the blessing of Christ, and so converted many pagans to the faith.
When their cattle were stricken with disease, peasants sought the hermit’s help, and he cured the animals. And when the people were sick, they came to him, and he cured them as well.
Other aspirants came to Wendelin. By his humble aspect and devout practice, Wendelin inspired these novices to lay aside temporal things and seek eternal rewards. There grew up around Wendelin a monastic community.
Then, a pestilence spread throughout the region. The folk of the village beseeched Wendelin to pray that the village be spared. Wendelin kept vigil. For twelve days and nights, he prayed and meditated without rest or sleep. In the twelfth night, he fell, exhausted, into the bed of leaves. Though the pestilence raged throughout the countryside, taking many lives, the village was spared.
In those days, the Bishop of Trier was Magnerich. Magnerich ordered the establishment of an abbey in the nearby town of Tholey. Having heard the story of the hermit who saved the village, he called Wendelin to become the abbot.
Wishing not to give up his hermetic life, Wendelin refused. But Baso came to him and said, “This is the greater plan the Lord our God has for you, lad. As once you were a herder of sheep, now you must be a herder of men.”
So Wendelin went to Tholey and became the abbey’s first abbot. He served as abbot for twenty years before he died. The monks built a tomb in the floor of the abbey church and, during a prayerful ceremony, placed his body within the tomb and covered it with a stone slab.
The next morning, the monks discovered Wendelin’s body atop the stone slab. Taking this as a sign, the monks placed the body in a mule cart and let the mule have its lead. The mule pulled the cart to the site of Wendelin’s old hut on the hillside above the river. There, the monks built another tomb, this one made of stones dragged from the river, and there they reinterred the body.
Peasants came often to the hillside tomb to pray for healing for themselves and for their loved ones and for their animals. Many of these prayers were answered. Word spread, and the faithful began to make pilgrimages to Wendelin’s tomb. After some years, a chapel was built over the tomb. A village grew up around the chapel, and after Wendelin was canonized, the village became known as Sankt Wendel.
Saint Wendelin (b. 554, Scotland; d. 617, Sankt Wendel) is reputedly the first abbot of Tholey Abbey in 597. Patron saint of country folk and herdsmen, Wendelin is venerated today in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The saint’s feast day is celebrated, depending on the regional liturgical calendar, either on October 16, 20, 21, or, as in the Diocese of Trier, on October 22. In art, he is depicted as a young man or a bearded man with a shepherd’s bag and staff. He often carries a book and feeds lambs. Crown and sword lay at his feet.
Two documentary films have been made about Wendelin, both in German and by Barbara Wackernagel-Jacobs for carpe diem Film & TV Produktion:
Wendelin Weltweit: Auf den Spuren eines Heiligen (Wendelin Worldwide: In the Footsteps of a Saint). Directed by Barbara Wackernagel-Jacobs. Saarbrücken, Germany: carpe diem, 2017. Documentary, 72 minutes (11-min trailer).
I mentioned in “Farnese Hercules” that Comino copied Glykon’s copy of Hercules at rest. Glykon’s copy, made from Lysippus’s bronze original, now resides at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. After exploring the excavated remains of a 1st-century Roman city buried by volcanic eruption, I made a quick jaunt up the coast to see Glykon’s work for myself.
In the early 3rd century, Roman Emperor Septimus Severus began construction on a large bath complex in Rome. After his death, his son and successor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus completed the baths, which took the son’s nickname Caracalla. A great many sculptures decorated the Baths of Caracalla. Up to eight thousand people a day enjoyed the heated water, free for public use, for three centuries.
The Western Roman Empire fell by the end of the 5th century. During a siege of Rome in 537, the Ostrogoths severed the city’s water supply. The baths, far from the city’s still populated area, were abandoned. The bath building was further destroyed in an earthquake 300 years later.
By the 16th century, the former baths had been used as a quarry, vineyards, gardens, and a burial ground. In 1545, Pope Paul III Farnese needed stone for an urban palace he was constructing nearby. He hoped also to recover a few artifacts for his burgeoning collection of ancient art. Excavators recovered so many objects—Glykon’s Hercules among them—the Pope created a museum to house them all.
The Pope’s collection would be handed down to his grandson. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese also collected artwork. In addition to much received through inheritance, he collected other works and was a patron to contemporary artists. What became known as the Farnese Collection now includes statues, paintings, coins and medals, manuscripts and illuminations, and engraved gems.
Most of the collection is found today in Naples: the paintings at the Museo di Capodimonte, the sculptures at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
The Farnese Hercules in the gardens at the Château de Sceaux (left) was made from a mold of Glykon’s copy (right) in 2010. It misses a few appendages. Glykon’s reveals the hero in all his glory.
Top-front of the rock upon which the club rests, the signature reads: “Glykon the Athenian made this.”
Magnus of Füssen, missionary and dragon slayer, died in the mid-8th century. When his uncorrupted corpse was discovered a hundred years later, the cleric was canonized and St. Mang’s Abbey founded. The abbey was home to a community of Benedictine monks for a thousand years, until it was dissolved in the German mediatisation at the end of the Holy Roman Empire.
I am happy to announce that, in addition to tours to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles, I now also guide private tours at the Füssen Town Museum. Contact me for booking details.
Today, the former abbey houses the town’s administrative center, its library, and museum. Exhibits in the Füssen Town Museum reveal the history of the abbey and of the town, beginning with the town’s establishment, in the 1st century, as an important trade center situated on the Lech river and the Roman road Via Claudia Augusta. Displays of lutes, violins, and organs showcase Füssen’s importance as an instrument-making center of Europe throughout the medieval period, and a series of expositions and annotated photographs documents its entry into the industrial age.
On the museum tour, we explore the exhibits and the building itself, which is as much a historical artifact as the antiquities exposed within it. We delve into the excavated ruins of the monastery cloister. We discover its library and refectory; we marvel at the stucco sculptures and frescoes in the lavish Emperor’s Hall, and in the 17th-century St. Anne’s Chapel, we look upon the oldest existing Danse Macabre in Bavaria.
Last year, in an article reproduced from DONJON LANDS, I recount a local legend that tells how to find the dungeons under Neuschwanstein Castle. The legend suggests that the wintertime sun, coming in at a low angle, shines into “a cavernous portal of unknown depth.”
I imagined the scene from the bridge at noon on the hibernal solstice: Sunlight streaming between mountain peaks to penetrate an otherwise hidden passage neath the castle. A glimpse of writhing tentacles or some scaled horror of the underworld.
Come winter, I thought to be able to confirm the legend. Winter in Bavaria, though, is cold and snowy. So, the bridge is closed for much of the season. Furthermore, clouds often shroud the sun, diffusing its light to a blue-gray glow.
On December 21, 2024, the sun rose into a bright cerulean Bavarian sky. Freezing temperatures brought snow and ice in the previous week, closing the bridge for the coming days.
The photo above, taken at 12:20 p.m.—two hours after the solstice—shows the castle in the mountain’s shadow. The photo below was taken from the bridge two months prior, October 25 at 10:16 a.m. Already the castle’s nether regions are obscured.
If the earth tilts back toward the sun at the same rate it titled away, we won’t see any legendary entrance below the castle until well after February. So much for the legend.
