able has been called since time out of mind “at the iron hand.” This designation is common as applied to the places where the Romans fortified fords and passes. The presence of the Romans in these parts is testified by a fortified encampment at a short distance off, and also by the fact of abundance of their coins having been found. But the masonry of the square tower appears also to speak for itself. It is built in the style that Vitruvius calls the “ars rustica,” in which the outer blocks of stone are left rough outside, though smoothed and fitted accurately at the places of junction with each other. The pipes or canals, also, in the middle wall of rubble, about a foot square, denote Roman work. These are supposed to have ventilated the vault of the cellar, and to have communicated with air-holes close under the door on the third storey. Even those who are inclined to think that this tower was not Roman, agree that it must have been built by the early Germans in imitation of a Roman structure, long before the rest of the castle, which belongs to the exterior system of fortification of the later middle ages. The name Kalsmunt itself is supposed by many learned authorities to betoken a Roman occupation, as being a corruption of “calvus mons.” This appellation occurs elsewhere where traces of the Romans are found; for instance Kalw in Wurtemberg, the Kalmutt mountain between Edenkoben and Neustadt in the Palatinate, and also the hill Kalmuth near Wertheim on the Main. And this view is supported by such names as the “Villa Calmunt,” or “Calmont,” existing in old French records. The same corruption of a Latin into a German word is found in the numerous names of places, in which the forms “weiler,” “weil,” “wil,” “weiher,” occur, being corruptions of “villa.” This theory, however, has found opponents, who derive the name from the German word “kahl,” which means, as “calvus” does, “bald,” or “bare,” and “mund,” which in old German means “force,” or “defence.” Kahl is either derived from “calvus,” or has a common origin. We may easily suppose that the neighbourhood of this imperial fortification, with its resident governor, was an extreme discomfort to the free town of Wetzlar, as well as an occasional protection, and that the burghers were not sorry when it was suffered to fall to ruin. Wetzlar formed a league, in 1236, with the other free towns of the Wetteran for mutual protection, to take effect expressly during the imperial elections. But Wetzlar suffered most of them through the feuds of the nobles, as it was the most outlying; and although the burghers became valiant warriors, their trade was stunted from this cause for many hundred years. Nor did it escape the ravages of the Thirty Years’ War, when political enmities were aggravated by theological hatred. The year 1646 was a fearful one for Wetzlar, when the Swedish General Wrangel formed a camp in its neighbourhood, in order to wait for the French General Turenne, with a view of a combined attack on the Imperialists, who had fortified themselves in Friedburg. Other misfortunes came on the town in the course of the century—viz., a great flood in 1643, and a fire which destroyed seventy houses in the Lahngasse. In the year 1687 lightning struck the town and burnt fifty houses and twenty granaries; the anniversary of this event was afterwards kept as a fast. In the Seven Years’ War the French felled and burnt for their camp fires a fine wood that stood in the Kuhmarkt. But towards the end of the seventeenth century a new source of prosperity developed itself in the town through the Imperial High Court holding its sittings there. It was opened solemnly on the 15th May, 1693, by the Elector of Treves. Not far from the Oberthor of Wetzlar a path leads to a narrow pretty little dell, called the Kaisersgrund. Here, it was said, was burnt alive an impostor named Tilo Kolup, who gave himself out as the Emperor Frederick II., resuscitated. He was taken by Rudolph of Hapsburg, and executed at Wetzlar, in the year 1286.
The village of Garbenheim, amongst other pleasant places in the neighbourhood of Wetzlar, deserves notice as having been a favourite resort of Goëthe. It is mentioned by him in the “Sorrows of Werther,” under the name of Wahlheim:
“The position of the place on a hill is very interesting, and if one ascends by the footway to the village, one overlooks the whole valley at once. A good landlady who is obliging and cheerful in her old age, provides wine, beer, coffee; and what surpasses all else, is a pair of lime trees, which cover with their wide-spreading boughs the little space before the church, which is surrounded with peasants’ houses, barns and bartons. I have scarcely ever lighted on a little spot so friendly or so homelike, and I have my table and chair brought there out of the inn, drink my coffee there, and read my Homer.”
The spot before the church is still there, with its little houses and courts, but the two lindens with the spreading branches are gone. Many years since there died in one of the smallest houses a widow of ninety years old. She had known Goëthe and Jerusalem, and made much of her knowledge. She used to show visitors a glass out of which Goëthe drank milk, and a rustic chair which she had placed for him, as well as for Jerusalem, under the limes. She bequeathed the glass to her daughter, and the chair to her son, with the old cottage. She had twelve children, and is the young woman of whom Goëthe speaks in the ninth letter, praising her obliging manner and that placidity of temperament which doubtless conduced to her longevity.
Garbenheim now possesses a large inn with a spacious garden at the end of the village. It was formerly a seat of the Proctor of the Imperial Court. In the time when “Werther’s Sorrows” were the rage, the owner put up a mound with an urn to the memory of Jerusalem. A Russian general, in 1813, appropriated the urn and carried it off to St. Petersburg. Visitors are sometimes shown the mound as the grave of Werther, while to others—or, it may be, to the same at a different time—a spot is indicated by the cicerone as having the same interest, in the churchyard at Wetzlar. It is supposed that Jerusalem’s real grave is never shown, but that he was buried in a sort of trench, which was filled with rubbish after a great fire, towards the end of the last century. The unfortunate manner of his death was likely enough to condemn him to obscurity in the grave.
G. C. Swayne.
