Date(s): 2010. Photos by Aymar. 1 - 20 of 20 Total. 1147 Visits.
1 Helfenberg, Gaisberg'sches Schloss April 15th 1945. Everyone did want to bag a castle before it was over. Riding the thermals for what it was worth. If you are marooned in Genellan. (A reference is to a saber-toothed vermin. Attracted to any camp fire like moths.) The last days were also fateful for Löwenstein (township). A defiant name could have been reason enough. (No better explanation has so far been forwarded.) - The lot of the homeless nobles should have bearable. They could always have moved back to their ancestral vineyard dacha. 9 foot thick ashlar walls are enduring. Some minor sprucing up should have sufficed. Starting with a fir branch made lean-to.
Slightly less elevated subject matter: the flimsy plastic lids of battery bays never last. You can obviously try a band-aid treatment (adventure literature, GI tape). Aggravating factor, the contact points are incorporated into the lids. Simultaneous pushing and holding duty (think car grade shock absorbers held in check by a hairpin latch). Not that the...
2 Helfenberg, Gaisbergsches Schloss The gatepost that endured. Wreathed in Shrubby Cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa Arbuscula).
3 Helfenberg In keeping with the 'Lion Mountains' theme: a 'roar' of motorcycles. Would not like to be point man. The flashy hand signals look okay but the time out for studying the map will quickly erode your charisma. Also slightly embarrassing if the thing that looked like a King's Highway on the map turns out to be a rutted country lane overgrown with weeds.
4 Helfenberg, Schlossberg A melange of cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus), field poppy, quitch and wheat. Tentatively, the natural looking enhanced field fringe. Blue Curls (Phacelia tanacetifolia), Mehico introduced, are missing. No publicity board was spotted.
5 Helfenberg, Schlossberg An eruption of sorrel (Rumex), but which one. Water dock by the heart shaped, mildly aerodynamic valves of the seed nuts (jester bells), fiddle dock by the willowy leaves. Safe statement, pie plant related. The pedigree is nearly a guaranty for oxalic acids.
6 Helfenberg It is a vineyard rather than a public parking lot if the hatch is left open.
7 Helfenberg, the eponymous ruin
8 Helfenberg, the eponymous ruin the cube on the summit
9 Helfenberg, the eponymous ruin The remaining keep (keep cum great hall). The mid 13th century castle was destroyed in the 30 Years Wars. Some halfhearted reconstruction. The downtown residence had a higher priority.
10 Helfenberg, the eponymous ruin I would describe it as three segmented barn arch. Most keeps did come with more defensible portals. The goat horn will be a Gaisberg reference (canting arms). The Gaisbergs acquired the manor in the 18th century.
11 Helfenberg, the eponymous ruin
12 Helfenberg, the eponymous ruin It looks like facing window seats for fairies (ordinary mortals would need a trampoline to get there) but the suggestive ledges will have been flush with the floor when all the planking was in place. > Floor corbels with wooden superstructure. That still does not completely explain the peculiar shape.
13 Helfenberg, Schloss Wildeck Corn chamomile or something reasonably close (Scentless Mayweed). Needle leaved to reduce evaporation. (I did not even try to stitch these two focal points together.) - Toponymy: I do not know if the name Schlossberg refers to this castle or to the Helfenberg ruin. Just a stone throw away. Rephrased, suitable hilltops were quickly becoming scarce during the castle building boom years.
14 Helfenberg, Schloss Wildeckonly The tower reportedly survived an artillery bombardment in 1945. Cannot come up with any details. Most likely just for good measure. (Sniping from a freestanding tower would not make too much sense. Not against tanks. The first target anyone would zero in. You could just as well hoist a flag. Related Tarot wisdom (lots of smashed towers): the upright object which is traversed to most easiest will always collapse first.) - Speaking of putative defensive structures, the whole Bottwartal was once fenced off from the North by a 'Great Wall' (roughly 20 miles of ditched landscape, the aptly named 'Landgraben'). The fencing off started under Count Ulrich V (not to be mistaken with the later duke Ulrich.) Before the Pavlovian reaction sets in (as in Qin and Hadrian): part of an elaborate custom clearance system. The challenge, how to tax transit traffic. Port Authority solution, funnel everything through three permitted gates (one was in Lauffen, the Neckar trade route pr...
15 Helfenberg, Schloss Wildeck The present tower is a 17th century compromise (comfy but imposing). It rest on much older foundations. Given the Bottwartal entourage most likely 13th century. It is unclear to what degree debris was recycled. (Well dressed ashlars are conspicuous by absence. That does not prove too much. The rubble used for wall fillings is always less coveted.)
16 Helfenberg, Schloss Wildeck the view should be great
17 Helfenberg, Schloss Wildeck tentatively, the janitor quarters
18 Helfenberg, Schloss Wildeck Eastern approach. (If the remoteness is too much: the valley on Abstatt side is dominated by the R&D center of Bosch. Airport look minus the runways.)
19 Helfenberg, Schloss Wildeck The sightseeing stops at the gate. The last private owner sold everything, lock stock and vineyard, to the local government in 1939. The estate is still run for a profit.
20 Helfenberg, Schloss Wildeck Castanea sativa A small grove of sweet chestnuts. Vineyard related since time immemorial. First rate stake wood. Also similar climatic requirements.
Taxonomic wisdom: Beech, Hazel and Edible Chestnuts are Fugales. Horse chestnut on the other hand is in the order Sapinales, family: Hippocastanaceae. Different sub-class even. Dicots can hardly be any more unrelated. Visual clue, selfsame wiry-hirsute look of beechnuts and marrons (the unhusked package). Semantic counter alignment, the edible chestnut with her spiked conkers. The rest of the checklist: the staminate spike (textbook: catkins), shown here, versus the showy racemes of the horse chestnut. The buds of the female flowers, not yet open, can be spotted in the leaf axils. Should be similar in appearance to hazel (the tiny coral reefs of February). Not that all hazels are dioecious. Takes some coaxing. The toothed leaves of sweet chestnut (the filed, out of Africa version of beech leaves) have likewise little in common with the...
