CLAIM TO FAME

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 578, 8 July 1933, Page 3

CLAIM TO FAME

TINY GERMAN CITY'S TWO UNIQUEi DISTIN CTIO'N'S. Stol'berg, a tiny city in the Harz, with the Stolberg Palace, scene of the recent wedding of Prince Wolff-Hein-rich zu Stolberg-Stolberg and Frau- ! lein Irma Erfert, daughter of the ; director of a savings bank in a small German city, is little known outside Germany, but it possesses two unique distinctions. One finds here the largest collections of funeral sermons in the world, comprising 20,000 volumes (of eulogies delivered .in the seventeenth and eighteenth eenturies, and on the outskirts of the city stands on the Josephshohe, at an elevation of 1886 feet, the ■worlds biggest cross, erected' more than 100 years ago, in the form of an observation tower 1241 feet high. More than 1000 years ago, the Princes of Stolberg built a castle here, and many treasures were brought together in its wide rooms and halls in the course of the eenturies. In front of the entrance to the castle stands a guard in historic costume, with white neek-ruff, and wearing on his breast a shield with the cognizance of the Stolberg-Stolberg, a stag. Of the ancestors of the present Prince Wolff-Heinrich, Juliana von Stolberg is best known, for she was the mother of William the Silent of Orange, who, in the second half of the sixteenth century, led the uprdsing of the Netherlands against the Spanish. The ancient city of Stolberg is in tself a veritable treasure casket. One finds here a great number of the characteristic framework houses of Middle Germany with daringly steep gables, oriels, hand-carved beams in the jutting upper storeys, anda wealth of further hand-carved ornamentation. The visitor to Stolberg is shown the house in which Thomas Hunzer, one of the leaders in the Peasants' War of ' the sixteenth century, was born. In the Hotel Eberbalt is the black, lea-ther-upholstered chair used by the poet, Otto Erich Hartldben, when he was for nine months an associate judge of the district court. His story of "The Hospitable Pastor" was written and is-laid here. Many painters have found motives in Stolberg, among them the romanticist, Ludwig Richter, and the landscape painter, Richard Thierbach. Stolberg zwieback, sausage, and turnery ware are widely known.