Donkey Path at the Wartburg
What would you do without running water?
This morning the plumber came to disconnect the water pipes in my kitchen. I won’t be able to use the sink, garbage disposal, dishwasher, and washing machine until the new kitchen is installed. Each workman involved in the project has told me that, considering how much preparatory work I have already done, the job will be finished in about two days. (Hysteria has me in its grip as I actually put those words in writing.) Two days. That should not present too much of a problem, after all, our house is large and we can work around not having a kitchen. My husband H.I. and son Steffen have already moved the kitchen table to the second floor guest room (right next to the bathroom and the only available water supply). The coffee maker and a couple of mugs have a found a spot on the card table so we don’t even have to miss our morning dose of caffeine. Dinner? We’ll eat out!
While all of this sounds wonderful in theory, reality set in after I tried umpteen times to wash my hands at the kitchen sink and poured half a glass of juice into the non-existing drain. Maybe this whole undertaking will not be quite as easy as I thought after all. I don’t know about you, but I grew up in a cold-water flat and it poses no problem for me (when I’m in Germany), but when I am here in the U.S. I expect the hot water to flow out of my faucets! Lamenting and moaning to H.I. about my cruel predicament does not fall on particularly fertile ground. He shrugs and declares, “I was perfectly satisfied with the old kitchen.” Humph! No sympathy to be found there.
While skulking around in the temporary kitchen/guest room a small tentacle of memory was beginning to worm it’s way to the surface of my conscious mind. What was it I was trying to remember? Ah, yes, of course! Last summer in Germany, my cousins and I took a day trip to Eisenach to visit the Wartburg, the fortification where Martin Luther attended school as a youngster. Later, after he was excommunicated by Pope Leo X and Emperor Karl V, Luther was in protective custody on there during 1521/22. At this juncture you may well puzzle about the connection Martin Luther and my kitchen sink. Actually, there is none, except that he happened to be the cause of our visit.
As we toured the fortress, our guide made a comment which made my ears perk up. She told us that the Wartburg never had its own water supply. In fact, running spring water was not available until 1885, when the construction of water pipes began. The first bottle of the precious liquid was given to the castle inhabitants on the evening of December 8, 1886. The water was (and still is) piped in from the Ruhlaer highlands and traversed a distance of thirteen kilometers before reaching the castle. What did the residents do about drinking water during the first eight hundred years of the Wartburg’s existence? Well, those knights of yester-year managed to solve the problem in a very ingenious way.
In the castle yard workmen fashioned a cistern which was designed to catch rainwater from the surrounding roofs and funnel it into the repository. However, the water collected in this manner was only fit to be used for the animals’ needs or putting out fires. The daily drinking- and cooking water was brought to the Wartburg on the backs of donkeys! According to the Wartburg chronicles, evidence of water carriers can be traced back to 1487.
Even though this scheme worked extremely well while peace prevailed, times of siege were another story altogether and the knights worked out the water problem in a different manner by adding a gravel filtration system to the cistern. The water collected from the roofs flowed through long wooden eaves into a gravel layer in the cistern where it seeped through to a lower chamber. The clear, cleaned water was then collected with buckets. Needless to say, the quality of that “drinking water” was not comparable to the spring water carried up the mountain by the donkeys. Fortunately, the inhabitants of the Wartburg were not plagued by sieges very often.
Without donkeys and their drivers life in the fortress would have been hard indeed. According to the old records, the donkey drivers were well appreciated by their lords since the household could not function without them. This was especially true when the sovereign in residence was entertaining. During those times, the donkeys and drivers worked particularly hard because the “run” down the mountain for food and water had to be made more than once a day. I can vouch for the fact that trekking to the Wartburg is not an easy task. It seems to go straight up. At least, that’s what I thought when we climbed it last summer.
The last in a long line of donkey caretakers at the fortress was Andreas Laufer (1788–1861), known to all as “der alte Andreas” (The Old Andreas). He had his own little Stube (chamber)in the Innenhofgebäude (Inner Courtyard) and generally did not interact with the rest of the Wartburg personnel. The story goes that in the evening, when his room turned chilly, he would sometimes join the soldiers in their heated quarters and spend the night. This annoyed the soldiers because Andreas was someone “… whose beard hung on his face like moss on the trunk of a tamarack and his unkempt hair looked like matted forest grass. The color of his often mended coat defied description and he wore a hat of felt which long ago had lost all shape and form.”
The era of water carrying donkeys came to an end when Andreas died but the animals are still very much part of the scenery at the Wartburg. The only difference is that today they carry children up to the fortress rather than water and food. As for me, I’ll stop complaining about not having any water in my kitchen for a while. At least my faucets will spew forth hot and cold liquid again in the foreseeable future (I hope).
