Heidelberg castle, begun in the 14th Century, was majestic once, I’m sure.
But it was burned repeatedly during Heidelberg’s 10 centuries, as German, French and Swedes battled through wars of succession and religion.
Over centuries, rebuilding started and stopped, resulting in a melange of architectural styles emerging among the ruins. Fire from lightning strikes in the 16th and 18th centuries ended the rebuilding, and the ruins were left to weeds and vines.
At the start of the 19th Century, artists found the scene charming. The castle, bridge and Old Town showed up in Romantic-era painting of Rottman and William Turner and publishing of Goethe and Hölderlin.
It was the Romantic era, and tourists began to flock there. Something about the conflict between man’s fruitless attempt to assert control and nature’s re-emerging triumphant. All nestled in a river valley between two mountains.
The castle took its biggest hit towards the end of the 17th century. The French exploded mines with nearly 30,000 pounds of powder, blasting the vaults and other key parts into the moat. The city remembers. Each September, the castle walls glow red during the Schloßbeleuchtung (castle lighting) ceremony.
Now Heidelberg has been a tourist magnet for centuries. Credit the river, massive stone bridge, cobblestone and red-roofed Old Town, centuries-old university and above it all — brooding like some ancient gargoyle — the castle ruins.
The Student Prince
But I’m here because of the “Prince.” In the castle courtyard, my dad and I experienced genuine theater in the round in a live, sundown production of the American musical “The Student Prince.” That was the 1970s, and I wanted to find the “stage” again and somehow make sure that special evening actually happened.
Hauptstrasse (Main Street)
You can walk the 40 minutes from the main train station to the Old Town and the castle. The mile-long Hauptstrasse (Main Street), which sort of parallels the river, is one of the longest shopping streets in Europe.
But 20 minutes of the jostling hustle and you’ll begin to appreciate why so many students use the Plöck, a narrow street that runs a block over. Unless the street is being torn up for a new layer of asphalt. Then it looks like this (right).
Old Bridge
About the time you reach Old Town, you’ll be two blocks south of the sandstone Alte Brücke (Old Bridge). The Romans founded the arched bridge on three stone pillars in the First Century CE. This is the ninth bridge on the spot.
The twin-pillared gate at the south end was part of the city fortification.
The river (Neckar) flows north, of course, dumping into the Rhine about 10 miles away. If you cruise the river, heading toward the castle, you’ll come upon Heidelberg sitting mostly on the southern shore on your right. It nestles between two big hills — the Königsstuhl on the right and the Heilegenberg on the left.
The castle is partway up the Königsstuhl. Heiligenberg plays host to the scenic path Philosophenweg (Philosopher’s Way), so-named, I guess, because lots of philosophy students hiked it, maybe with their profs?
High winds and flashing skies short-circuited my return to the Philosophenweg. I missed its monasteries, spectacular lookouts, vineyards — and Nazi amphitheater for 15,000 used for trials and celebrations.
Old town
In Old Town, cobblestone streets and squares plus red gabled roofs produce a Medieval feel. Look up, and the castle seems to peek through at the end of a street or out from the hillside.
The cathedral is the center of many an old German town. Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and you can feel it as you’re part of it.
University
Then you’re at the university, right below the castle.
Heidelberg is all about Romanticism (with a capital “R”), the leading intellectual current in Germany during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Most of us associate Romanticism with the later branch (“Heidelberg Romanticism”), in which mind and rationality of the Enlightenment clashed with the natural, irrational and supernatural.
Town and gown are hard to separate today, as the university has been here since the 1400s. Now visitors are a way of life, about 12 million a year in a town of maybe 170,000. Last time I saw the numbers, 80% of the town worked in some field related to tourism.
The University square is still, except for crowds of tourists. Classes haven’t begun.
The world-reknowned university, maybe Germany’s most prestigious, and its library are thought to be the oldest in Germany. Over the centuries, the university became a haven for poets and intellectuals. Today, the university invites study in law, philosophy, languages, economics and social sciences.
Its teachers and students include Hegel, Hannah Arendt, Max Weber, W.E.B. DuBois, Erich Fromm, composer Robert Schumann, authors Somerset Maugham and my favorite, German jurist Bernhard Schlink (“The Reader”). Even heart surgeon Michael DeBakey. The graduate list includes one German president, Helmut Kohl, and 56 Nobel laureates.
Heidelberg’s almost 40,000 students, about one in four of the people who make a home here, give the town a young feel, critical for a visiting 25-year-old 50 years ago.
You can mix with the students at the Mensa (student canteen), the Marstallcafe. The 16th Century former armory on the river offers food and drink at student prices next to a beer garden. It’s been called the most beautiful university canteen in the country.
If you’re trying to practice the language, the custom of sharing tables works for you. At the hours you want to be there, it’s going to be crowded and you’ll be elbow-to-elbow with students who got there first.
Much as it’s fun to think of the town as Romantic, the university is world reknowned for the sciences. The immediate vicinity includes an anti-cancer biology lab and four Max Planck institutes — for medical research, astronomy, nuclear physics and law.
And no charge for tuition. German universities are funded primarily from state budgets. Unless you’re from outside the EU. Under new rules, you’d pay about $3,000 a year.
Castle courtyard
Your way up to the castle can be a cobblestone footpath or a funicular ride.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that the castle is only partway up the Königsstuhl (King’s Chair) mountain.
The effects of restoration seem to be on display throughout the castle. When ramparts and battlements are fully formed again and the stone is light and clean, what happens to the mystique of the gloomy ruins hunching over the Old Town?
This looks like the courtyard where the “Prince” played.
A royal carriage rolled out from castle stock, lights glowed from windows in walls like this one and theater-goers looked on from seats in the cobblestone yard.
In the ultra-romaticized Romantic Heidelberg of the musical, the playboy prince of a small German kingdom goes to university incognito and falls in love with a local girl. In the fourth act, he has to choose between love and duty.
During the Heidelberg Castle Festival, the grounds play host to musicals and classic performances of the Heidelberg Philharmonic. But I haven’t seen any mention of the “Prince” for decades.
The castle, university and old town seem to need a background score that includes “Golden Days,” “The Drinking Song,” “Gaudeamus” and “Deep in My Heart, Dear.” I sit at a cafe in the Old Town, sip a glass of wine and hear it.
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