Inn “Zum Löwen”
Closing time
Historical novels can bring history to life. One example is “Nikel Güldenschlag, Roman eines Kirchheimbolander Stadtknechts” set in the late Middle Ages. It contains a tavern scene that could have been set in the “Löwen” in a similar way:
Nikel Güldenschlag was a reliable man. He scolded his superiors, at least at times: the actuary Banfried Zeller, the bailiff Faust von Stromberg and the counts of Nassau-Saarbrücken, the current lords of Kirchheim – he scolded everyone and everything, but he did his duty as a town servant.
And that meant ensuring peace and order, especially at nightfall. So on his way he passed Haloff Binkert’s inn for the second time and because there was a big racket to be heard, he knocked up the stairs with his halberd and looked into the beer parlor, where it was unusually loud tonight.
The fat Binkert made piercing eyes when Nikel entered, for he was a guest he liked to look at the hump of, because he was always ready to sweep out the parlor when a merry drinking companion struck his drinking buddy on the skull.
And today the rough journeyman was not needed at all; there were foreign travelers here today and they always dropped more guilders than the locals did the whole week.
“Is the watch over, Nikel?” Binkert asked as kindly as he could manage in his anger, and Nikel nodded.
Sitting at the large, long table was a ruddy-faced guy in shining armor, waving his big fists in front of the actuary Zeller sitting next to him. “God’s thunder, Mr. Actuary! Go ahead and drink your Saueramper here in Kirchheim, but you don’t know the black man like I do. He’s a hussy! What am I saying? – He’s a Satan, a savage, he’ll bite the nose out of your face before you can make the cross.”
“Sir Knight, that’s his bad joke! the actuary said. You are lodged here in the Leuthaus by order of the Lord Bailiff, because the Lords Philipp and Johann have ridden to their castle Tannenfels and can therefore offer you shelter and accommodation in the castle. But you are in good hands here with Haloff Binkert.”
The “Lords Philipp and Johann” also refer to Counts Philipp II and Johann von Nassau-Saarbrücken, who assumed joint rule over the Kirchheimbolanden estate in 1429. And “Tannenfels” is the medieval name for Dannenfels.
Revolution scene
In May and the first two weeks of June 1849, Kirchheimbolanden was full of irregulars. After all, the new constitution, which had been adopted for “all of Germany” in St. Paul’s Church in Frankfurt, had to be enforced.
It was not only the Prussian and Bavarian kings who were against it. However, a Freischärler is still sitting on the staircase wall with his snack of Weck, Worscht un Woi.
On June 14, however, it comes to the crunch. Prussian troops confront a group of irregulars in the Kirchheimboland castle garden. A female irregular is waving the black, red and gold flag.
Dr. Edeltraud Sießl [Standort 29] has thus expressed the full drama of the events of 1849.
You can find out more about these weeks in Kirchheimbolanden at the Museum im Stadtpalais [Standort 28] and the Freischaren-Stadt-Tour [Standorte 46-60].
