Museum's maquette of 18th century Bischofsheim (the pre industrialization look, not the Taubertal was ever too much affected). Foreground, the multi arched Tauber bridge, toll bar included. Three focal points, the market square with the narrow gabled houses (where space was at premium), the Kurmainzer Schloss with Turmstürmer (the former administrative center which presently houses the museum) and the spiritual center, the Martinskirche. (There were also some hospices.)

The Sebastian Chapel from 1474. The tympanum shows some kind of vetting. Summer school or something more sinister. (Just hold your score sheet upside down. Sometimes you will get away with it.) - The judgment motive is probably appropriate. The ground floor of the chapel served as charnel house (suspect that it was more some kind of a morgue, not much room for bone bins). Some Bubonic Plague aftershocks. Codename: arrows from the sky.

Arthur Machen, rooted in the Romantic tradition, did work the medieval material into a Lovecraft worthy tale. (Approximately: the Spirit Bowmen of Agincourt.) Personal opinion: withering machine gun fire would have sufficed as explanation. I do not know if the scoop was directly Langemark inspired (flashback: how to make the most of an ill conveived banzai charge of the other side). Technically: Some plot progression. At first it will be wounds without arrows and then it will be death without visible wounds. Some other discrepancies. Nobody...

With quarrels and fleches. Could be worse. At least there is somebody in charge. Some props have been removed. Most sculptors improvise when it comes to sundials, Daiquiri sticks and pincushions. Holds also for Greek statues of flying kites. - The reddish sandstone is very much in evidence in all the monuments of the region, sacral or temporal. Twin born from the selfsame quarry, something like that. Possibly Keuper.

Stained glass window of the upper floor chapel. As so often a 20th century replacement. Original stained glass windows are rare. A Holy Supper (fire motive) in the opposite window balances the actinic blue colors of the adoration theme. - With some technical reservations: at the focal center of a laterna magica round up. Some omnivision aspects.

The Neogothic Martinskirche (early 20th century). It is not as hopeless as it may sound. In Intel terms: Riemenschneider inside (so you can find it without making too much of a nuisance of yourself). - Zoom in: With spider webs and stalks of grass it is dew drops, with auxiliary spires and pinnacles it is crockets.

Westering sun. The business end, choir, is in opposition. An impeccably whitewashed house does 'ram' the starboard side of the nave from this vantage point. It did look marginally better after I curtailed it evenly on both sides. Whatever you can save of the underlying symmetry.

General tie in, unity of throne and alter. The one thing which might disappoint the unprepared visitor in Versailles is the motel lay out (I was never in Versailles but the scale model in Ludwigsburg should do as a proxy). More a unity of drive in and Absolutism. Even the throne rooms (queen suite, king suite) are basically just rooms wedged in somewhere in endless corridors (terraced office space). All the de luxe furniture cannot hide that fact. The overall dorsal symmetry, West wing, East wing, has become just so much trompe-l'œil. Churches, even early 20th Gothic facsimiles, never did depart that much from the basilica blueprint. They certainly did never go into excessive partitioning. The ce...

Looks like some kind of flag day. Out on a limb (usual caveat, open to revision): 12th century Bischofsheim did join the free imperial city club, however briefly. The Staufer were liberal enough with their township charters. The red and white in the town flag (townships as fiefs) will date back to that time. Bischofsheim was in the end reabsorbed into the feudal mainstream (it just amounted to a lower place in the pyramid). A common enough fate (Markgröningen). Incidentally, the respective positions were somewhat reversed in Northern Italy where the Popes were most often the sponsors of the municipal freedom fighting. - The spoked wheel is from the historic flag of Kurmainz. Field [gules] with, as charge, a flying space station [or]. Not sure about the Däniken touch. Just hope I got the tinctures right.

There you live peacefully in the 13th century and then you open your front door and see this. - The channel did once feed the moat around the Kurmainzer castle. Usual freeloaders (undershot waterwheels). No detectable current. Suspect some closed sluice gates.

Better late than never. Outdoor exhibit. I do not know what is so remarkable about a Republican state within a Republican nation (Weimar). The reverse would have made for a far more interesting situation. The emigrants who had left the country in droves after 1849 never came back.

Immodest John (technically: quillons centered). - Somebody forgot to spray paint the fork lifters. - The forester jacket foreshadows the coloring of the 18th century infantry greatcoat of the Kurmainz army.

A vanitas vanitatum plaque. The spelling is rather hard on the eyes (they should dry (try) that with traffic sihns). Particular Julius Zehnder wisdom: only houses built with a higher permit (probably recourse loan related) will endure (think children and sand castles).

Hipshot picture. The showcased building is not a Baroque church but the office of the wine merchant Bögner. This particular company headquarter dates from 1746. The artwork looks politically correct for the time. Saints riding on a lower strata of caryatids (could also be part time globe carriers). The ground floor windows are well secured. (Ribbed wine decanter shape, one half of it.)

The memorial of the battle of 1866 was inaugurated at the first anniversary of the battle (24th of July,1867). - King Karl (heavy smoker, liberal) will have addressed the gathering. (The wainscoted reenactment hour. Probably a limited amount of escapism. Nothing in the Neuschwanstein class. Tentatively, consolation castles. The new order was accommodating.)

The corner faces (previous picture) are reserved for officers. Rank has its privileges. By quick count: the number of deaths does not agree with the previously given figure. 239 dead, but that will have been the toll for the whole war (for Württemberg). The names of not yet incorporated suburbs are added in some cases to the place of birth. - The feathers are absent in subsequent Franco Prussian and Grand War monuments. Unique feature as far as I can tell.

Not directly related: One of the unintended consequences of industrialization were the shrinking distances. In medieval time you could safely use the same place name every 20 or 30 miles. Limited possibilities for equivocation. How many miles are you willing to walk for a quick corner store purchase. Minor exception, postal services. The problem is still far from fixed (the dreaded administrative lag, if it was good enough for your great grandfather). Most traffic signs (the modern version of Indian blankets) are rather ...

The picture shows the Roman Catholic memorial service from 1890. The Armada building was already in progress at the time. - Source, Archivbilder, Tauberfränkische Heimatfreunde, ISBN : 978-3-89702-895-1. The book picture is of much better quality.

Memorial service from 1966. The region still hosts a substantial amount of Bundeswehr. Faded Cold War script: Somebody had to protect the bank towers of Frankfurt. Somewhat resigned: why an army at all if the threat of an external expropriation, the only reason why it was allegedly set up in the first place, has long since evaporated (even as the hard currency).

Amateur formatted pdf, whatever you can lump together. As far as I can make it out: Anno Domini 1631, .. (name, place?).. Ave Maria pray for.. (more names). Particular parsing problem: the ghost of a missing conjunction. Praise and a request for intercessory prayer. Hail Mary and while we are at it please do not forget... Nothing more specific. Whatever would be most propitious for the particular circumstances. Maybe a threatened livelihood. Possibly just a blank.

Another battle site. The Tauber bridges seems to have attracted their fair share of attention on that fateful 24th of July 1866. Oldenburg (a Prussian ally) trounced the troops of the Grand Duchy of Baden (like Württemberg an Austrian ally) at this location. There is just a small plaque. The presence of a Nepomuk made apparently no difference. (Did not detect any 'micro cratering'. Cosmetic surgery can obviously do wonders.) - It is somewhat difficult to assess troop moral on the Baden side. Not to put too fine a point on it, a Prussian army saved Grand Duke's Leopold's bacon in 1849. The Republican Bundestruppen were routed. Baden was under marshal law (or something reasonably close) until 1851. All officers were carefully screened for anti-Republican leanings (the latter was a must). Not sure how to sum up the officer profile: beholden ma non troppo? 20% of the population emigrated (which they might have done anyhow). The Bavarians, still held up in Würzburg, might have fought ...

The dedication dates form 1765 - From the ideological archives: Nepomuk may have been built up as the RC answer to Huss. Civil disobedience award of the year (sainthood just means that you had to be already dead). The details of the bridge drowning, some SJ scripting, are contested. Nepomuk apparently could not swim (or, more likely, was already 5th degree damaged at the time, fettered for good measures, who knows). Nepomuk was decommissioned in 1961 according to Czech sources. 'Rescinded' sanctification should mean something along that line. Authentication error. In street jargon, no longer political correct. (The Catholic Encyclopedia knows nothing of this. The corpus may be hopelessly outdated despite some recent footnotes, 2010 stamp.)

You were supposed to cross this bridge in Indian file (literally, no abreast walking). The fine for a violation was a hefty 3 Marks. Those Prussians did know how to make their presence felt. In fairness, the particular traffic code made some sense. The bridge is rather narrow.

Undated anecdote, the battle of Tauberbischofsheim timeline would however fit: A Prussian officer and his local driver (liaison officer) cannot pass a road hogging hay wagon. The officer swears. The farmer answers with the Swabian greeting (the trope with the lowered trousers and the flexible tongue). Outraged officer (I actually harbor some sympathies for the unappreciated party): Did you hear what he said. What shall we do (understood, you are the local customs expert). - The driver, pensively: I would not take him up on his offer. - There exists probably a big pool of face saving anecdotes somewhere. As for this particular situation: a flame arrow might have been an appropriate response. One s...

Busch, a 19th century cartoonist, domiciled in the Hanoverian region, makes fun of the cause the 'particularists' in this broadsheet. The particular technique is called zoomorphism. Aesop something. Basically it shows a 'particularist' (it only becomes a secessionist after a unification) who has put his faith in a French intervention (the one remaining hope after the string of Bismarck victories in 1864 and 1866). With intentional hyperbole, Isaiah 36:6 : Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; on which if a man lean, it will enter his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. Support for Napoleon III was actually not that strong. Busch was not above some deliberate muckraking. In present parlance, more an auto determination issue. I make out the date as 1870 (the signed, second to last panel). - The 'housekeeper' makes no secret for which side she roots. Either that or she is deaf mute asking for a pair of scissors. - Peer revi...