Frankenstein — a name that conjures up spooky Gothic horror, a
lurching monster assembled out of spare corpse components.
It’s also
the name of a small castle ruin on a mountaintop overlooking
Once a
year, for three weekends around Halloween, it does fit the stereotype. Then
Burg Frankenstein is home to a well-publicized fright fest complete with ghouls
and goblins, or at least with actors playing these parts for the entertainment
of the paying guests.
The rest
of the year, however, it’s a popular place for area residents to hike, ride
mountain bikes, take Grandma for Sunday lunch or just sit on the restaurant
terrace and enjoy the view over the
The
tourists come, of course, sometimes by the busloads, and what they find is a
small castle ruin, partly “reconstructed” according to romantic 19th-century
notions, plus a small family chapel, and, in the warmer months of the year, a
small souvenir and snack stand where they can buy postcards.
Next to
the castle is a restaurant featuring traditional German fare and whose broad
terrace offers al-fresco diners fine views of the valley below.
Not much
else: no museum, no rides, no monsters.
The real
charm for people who live in the area is the mountain itself, properly called
the Schlossberg, but commonly referred to locally as merely the Frankenstein,
or the “Rock (that is, the hill) of the Franks.”
Densely
wooded, it is covered with winding trails, popular with families taking
afternoon walks or runners in training. It has also become something of a
mountain-bike
There is
a large parking lot outside the castle, and a free, well-maintained public
toilet next to the souvenir stand.
The
castle
Burg
Frankenstein is the northernmost of a chain of castles running along the
western edge of the Odenwald.
Like the
others, it is perched on a hill overlooking the Bergstrasse,
the old Roman Strata Montana, the “mountain road” linking the forts of the
Roman border Limes in the north and Ladenburg, near Heidelberg, in the south.
The
castle was founded in the early 13th century by the Frankenstein family of
knights. It was expanded and modernized in the 15th and 16th centuries, both to
withstand the new artillery and to accommodate the family, which had split into
two quarreling lines, although they continued to share the lodgings.
In
1660-61, the castle was sold to the Hessen-Darmstadt
royal house. The new owners turned it into a home for retired mercenaries, and
later in the century, it provided a refuge for local villagers, driven from
their homes by French king Louis XIV’s marauding
armies.
Obsolete
as a fortress, the castle itself was never besieged and destroyed, but rather
fell apart from neglect and — like so many other German castles — served as a
cheap source of building material for surrounding towns.
The ruin
became a romantic subject for
The
romantic restoration began in 1835, and the castle now belongs to the state of Hessen.
Link to monster?
Mary
Shelley, whose 1818 novel “Frankenstein,” or “The Modern Prometheus,” started
it all, claimed the name came to her in a dream. The main character was Swiss
and there is no link in the text to the area of the real Burg Frankenstein.
Shelley,
the wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, wrote the book
on a dare, so to speak, from her husband and their friend, George Gordon, Lord
Byron, while they were visiting Byron in
Dippel was a serious scientist, a chemist who developed industrial
dyes, but he lived in a time in which people were still being executed for
witchcraft, and scientific inquiry and experimentation were often viewed with
suspicion and even legal barriers. Anyone wanting to dissect cadavers, for
example, would have to resort to the crime of grave-robbing.
Local
rumor accused Dippel of collecting parts of fresh
corpses to prepare a secret potion that would grant immortality or even bring
the dead back to life. He died in 1734, supposedly after taking his own potion.
Link or
no, the theme of a scientist who tinkers with the secrets of life and suffers a
terrible retribution struck a chord in popular imagination, and the 1931 film
with Boris Karloff made the name Frankenstein
world-famous.
Getting there
Burg Frankenstein is just south of
@ From Autobahn 5, take the
Darmstadt-Eberstadt exit.
@ You will immediately come to a
T-intersection and traffic light. Turn right onto B-426.
@ Stay on this road through one
traffic light (at that intersection the castle will be visible high on the hill
to your front), and take the Burg Frankenstein exit.
@ The road will take you up the hill
to the visitors’ parking area.
@ For more
information about the castle visit www.burg-frankenstein.de.
(Juan Melendez is the webmaster for the