Andy's Germany Adventure: Day 16 - On the Tilman trail

Tuesday 25 January 2011
Erzhausen, near Darmstadt, Hessen
3,530 km (2,200 miles) travelled

My quest today was to find Northern renaissance wood carvings by Tilman Riemenschneider and his contemporaries around 1500. To do so, I made a foray back into Franconian Bavaria on a round-about route to Darmstadt. Around 1500, carvings were mainly made for churches, so it is to a church that I first headed: St Jakobskirche (St James' Church) in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Rothenburg is a medaeval town rather similar to Nuremberg, Meissen, and Weimar. If you have been following this blog, you will have got the hang of medaeval German towns by now, but here (below) are a few photos anyway that I managed to capture before a heavy snow blizzard set in. As the church was closed for lunch, I took the opportunity to get a Fränkisches Schäufele (slow cooked shoulder of pork with red cabbage and dumplings) before taking a look.

St James' church is famous for the Holy Blood Altar by Riemenschneider (1499-1505), which is magnificent; but the church has several other impressive masterpieces including St Francis' Altar (1465-1513, attributed to Riemenschneider and Schwarz), St Mary's Altar (about 1520 by an unknown master), the High Altar (1466 by unnamed masters), several paintings, stained glass and stone sculptures. Having seen lots of altar pieces in museums over the last couple of weeks, it makes a big difference to see some in their original position in a church that is still in use. You don't have to be interested in art or religion to pick up the skill of the craftsmen and the spiritual sincerity of the works.

In the afternoon I drove on to Würzburg in the hope of catching the Mainfränkisches Museum before it closed. I didn't (it closes at 4pm in winter), which is a pity because they have a room full of Riemenschneiders and a couple of Cranachs as well as a lot of other fine and applied arts. I will definitely have to come back to Würzburg; the museum is situated in an enormous castle (Festung Marienberg) on top of a hill overlooking the river, so is worth seeing for itself - preferably on a day when it is not snowing quite so hard!

Finally, I completed my journey to Erzhausen. There was heavy snow on the hills crossing from Bavaria into Hessen, but as soon as I descended to a lower altitude the roads were suddenly quite clear and I arrvived in time to spend an evening with a friend in Darmstadt. Darmstadt is home to the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) where I worked in the 1980s - but that's quite a different story.

I now have only two days left on this trip to Germany, but I intend to get the best out of every hour and visit four more major galleries before I head home. Keep following this blog to find out whether I make them all.