Thursday, May 19, 2011

another castle

Fifteen miles down the Elbe from Dresden is Meissen, with the Schloss Albrechtsburg (NOT ...berg), Germany's oldest castle (they claim).  Quite impressive.  Biked there today the long way, for a total of about 40 miles.  Toured the castle and cathedral, but didn't go to the porcelain factory.

Saw a wonderful sign within the castle area, just across from the side of the castle cathedral:  "Historical Prison, with building permits, for lease or sale."  I want to put in an offer, and when they ask what I plan to do with it, say "Keep prisoners there, of course."

I'm calling time on my last quiz.  No entries, no winners.  Constance probably thought it was too easy.  It was.  Google could solve it for you in .00017 seconds.  The answer is (a), Eisenberg.  The extra credit part was harder, and I was hoping someone could find the real answer and tell me, so I could confirm my theory:  note the year, 1934, when the name of the town was changed from Eisenberg to Moritzburg (to match the name of the major landmark there, I said).  Seems obvious to me that the Nazis decided to do this because Eisenberg sounded too Jewish to them.  But I didn't find any evidence to confirm the idea.  I still think it's right.

3 comments:

  1. Well this is a little late, but here it goes.
    You can look this up on the german wikipedia, but i don't know if it's available in english.
    While "Eisenberg" might sound jewish, it is not. "Eisenberg" means it is a place where people found Iron Ore (Eisen = Iron, berg = mountain, eastern Germany has lots of Iron Ore. The area is called "Erzgebirge" what means Iron Ore Mountains. The town name first was "Ysenberc" what changed gradually over time into "Eisenberg" (both are pronounced pretty much the same)
    "Ysenberc" also was the name of the founder of this town and the name of his castle, "Eisenberg" in this form was first mentioned in 1294.
    "Moritzburg" is a castle and Knights Manor close by, Town/City laws changed in Germany in around 1838 and because of this "Eisenberg" and "Moritzburg" came together as One community. This community received the double name "Eisenberg-Moritzburg". All this happened before 1900.
    I guess because "Moritzburg" was bigger and had a knights Manor, they just left off the "Eisenberg" part to make things easier.

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  3. here's the link by the way
    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenberg_(Moritzburg)

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