Nuremberg (Germany) -- Description and travel; Nuremberg (Germany) -- History
A merchant complained that he had given his host a purse of 200
silver marks to keep, but the host denied having received them. The
Emperor thereupon summoned the landlord and several citizens. They
all came, naturally enough, in their best clothes. The landlord, in
particular, wore a costly cap, which, as he stood before the
Emperor, he twisted nervously in his hand. Rudolph took it from him
and, putting it on, exclaimed that it would become even an Emperor.
Then he went into the next room--apparently forgetting all about
the cap. The landlord meanwhile was detained. The Emperor sent the
cap to the landlord's wife, with a request in her husband's name
that she should give the bearer that sack of money she knew about.
The ruse succeeded, and whilst the landlord was emphatically
asserting his innocence to the Emperor, the sack of money was
produced to confound him. The wretch had to atone for his crime by
the payment of a heavy fine.
One other record of Kaiser Rudolph's presence at Nuremberg we have. It
is illustrative of the violence of those times. In 1289 a grand
tournament was held in honour of the King. In the course of it Krafft
von Hohenlohe had the misfortune to run his spear through the neck of
Duke Ludwig von Baiern, and the latter died of the wound. In consequence
of this mischance such strife arose between the followers of the Duke
and those of the Kaiser that the Council had to take measures for the
defence of the town. They barred the streets with chains and garrisoned
the Rathaus as well as the towers and walls. Luckily the quarrel was
smoothed over and no further disturbance took place.
[Illustration: NASSAUER HAUS]
A few years later Graf Adolph von Nassau succeeded Rudolph. Once in
1293 and twice in 1294 he held his court in Nuremberg and ratified all
the privileges of the town. To him and to his race legend ascribes a
great share in the building of the Lorenzkirche. "But," says Dr Reicke,
"there is as little ground for this assertion as for the unfounded
belief that the Schlüsselfelderische Stiftungshaus, so called because it
belonged to the institution founded by Hans Karl Schlüsselfelder who
died in 1709, and now known as the Nassauerhaus, was once in the
possession of the Counts of Nassau." This house which stands at the
corner of the Carolinenstrasse was built, according to Essenheim, at the
beginning of the fifteenth century. According to the earliest existing
records it belonged, with the house to the west of it, to a branch of
the Haller family, long since extinct. The figure on the well at the
east end of this house, which represents King Adolph of Nassau, belongs
to the year 1824. To-day the crypt of the house has been turned into a
Weinhaus, and there, in a vaulted cellar wreathed with yew, the
diligent oenophilist will be rewarded by the discovery of some rare
vintages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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