House of the Knight (Heidelberg)
The Haus zum Ritter is the oldest surviving house in Heidelberg .
history
The Hotel zum Ritter was built in 1592 by the cloth merchant Carolus (Charles) Belier, who had fled the Habsburg town of Valenciennes because of his Protestant faith and settled in the Electoral Palatinate . The Renaissance building, which is now a listed building, is located in the middle of Heidelberg's old town , directly opposite the Church of the Holy Spirit . It is the only town house that survived the great fire of 1693 during the War of the Palatinate Succession because it was the only one built from stone.
It has only received its current function as a hotel in the recent past, although it was used as an inn 300 years ago.
The Latin lettering under the gable says: Persta invicta, Venus (translation: “Always stay undefeated, beauty”).
Two more inscriptions that Victor Hugo already knew are:
- Si Iehova non aedificet domum, frustra laborant aedificantes eam. (Translation: "If Jehovah did not build the house, his builders worked in vain." ( Ps 127 : 1 ESV ))
At the top are three raised words:
- Solos. Deodorant. Gloria. (Translation: "God alone [be] glory")
Victor Hugo and the Knight's House
The "House of the Knight Saint George" particularly impressed the French poet Victor Hugo during his stay in Heidelberg in 1838 because it had survived all catastrophes. Otherwise Hugo prefers to visit ruins. But the Haus zum Ritter, built in 1595, was the only building that escaped the fires of 1635, 1689 and 1693:
“Here in Heidelberg, in this city, in this valley, in the midst of these ruins, life is appealing to a thoughtful person. I feel that I would not leave this country again if you were there, dear Louis, if I had all my friends here and if the summer lasted a little longer.
In the morning I go and first (excuse me for an extremely daring expression, which, however, reflects my thoughts), to give my mind a breakfast, past the house of the knight Saint George. It really is an adorable building. Imagine three floors with narrow windows supporting a triangular pediment with wide, curly volutes; On all three floors, two turrets with wonderfully decorated roofs protrude on the street side; and finally the whole red sandstone facade is sometimes teasing, sometimes strictly hewn, chiseled, worked with a chisel and decorated with gilded arabesques, medallions and busts from top to bottom. When the poet who built this house was finished with the construction, he wrote the following inscription in gold letters in the center of the front:
'Praestat invicta Venus' (priority of the undefeated Venus).
That was in 1595. Twenty-five years later, in 1620, the Thirty Years' War began with the battle on White Mountain near Prague, which lasted until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. During this long Iliad, of which Achilles was Gustav-Adolf, Heidelberg was besieged, captured, recaptured four times, shot at twice and finally burned down in 1635. There was only one house that escaped this conflagration: that of 1595. All the others that were built without the blessing of the Lord burned down from the floor to the gable.
After the peace treaty, the Count Palatine Karl-Ludwig, who had been called the Solomon of Germany, returned from England and began to rebuild the city. Salomon was followed by Heliogabal, Count Karl-Ludwig was followed by Count Karl, then the Palatinate line of Wittelsbach-Simmern was replaced by the Palatinate-Neuburg branch, and the Thirty Years War was followed by the Palatinate War of Succession. And in 1689 a man, whose name is used to scare children in Heidelberg today, Lieutenant General Melac, an officer in the armies of the King of France, laid the Palatinate city in ruins, so that only a heap of rubble remained. Only one house survived the devastation: that of 1595.
The reconstruction of Heidelberg began again. Four years later, in 1693, the French returned; the soldiers of Ludwig XIV desecrated the imperial graves in Speyer and the graves of the count palatine in Heidelberg.
Marshal von Lorges had a fire set on the four corners of the Palatinate Palace; the conflagration was terrible, all of Heidelberg was on fire. As the vortex of fire and smoke that enveloped the city slowly subsided, one saw a house, a single standing house in the pile of ashes.
It was again, it was the house from 1595 as always.
Today the crimson, golden damascene, always virginal, intact and proud facade, which alone is worthy, rises up in the midst of the accumulation of insignificant white houses that Heidelberg currently consists of to be called the castle in one breath, in all majesty over the city and makes its triumphant inscription glitter in the sun, so that every morning when I pass there I can read that Jehovah was the Builder and Jehovah the Savior. "
literature
- State Office for Monument Preservation Baden-Württemberg (Ed.), Melanie Mertens (Ed.): Stadtkreis Heidelberg. (= Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany , cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg , Volume II.5.1.) Thorbecke-Verlag, Ostfildern 2013, ISBN 978-3-7995-0426-3 , p. 271 f.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Victor Hugo: Heidelberg. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3797308256
Coordinates: 49 ° 24 ′ 43 " N , 8 ° 42 ′ 33" E