Worms - The Nibelung Capital

Gateway to  into Worms from Across the Rhine

Lying just outside Hessen, on the west bank of the Rhine, the city of Worms is not technically part of the Odenwald; however, it should still be on the itinerary of anyone wishing to learn more about the area's vibrant history.  Worms, as the old capital of the Kingdom of Burgundy, is the beating heart of the Nibelung lands, a primary focal point of the Siegfried legend, which permeates the Odenwald region. 

History

The Celts and Romans

Roman Statue of Neptune
in Cathedral

The city of Worms, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is one of the oldest cities in Germany, having existed since Celtic times, and it is the only city in Germany to be included in the Most Ancient European Towns Network. During the Celtic era, the city was called Borbetomagus, which possibly meant “water meadow”. The city was later taken from the Celts by the Germanic Vangiones, and then in 14 BC, by the Romans under the command of Drusus, who fortified the city and stationed a small garrison there.

The city grew under Roman occupation and became a small town with a regular street layout, a forum and temples to the major Roman gods: Mars, Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. The town not only developed its own industry, with local potters working in the south quarter, but it also benefited from trade with other parts of the Roman Empire, including Hispania Baetica on the Iberian Peninsula. Today, you can see artifacts from the time of the Romans in the city archaeological museum, including one of the largest collections of Roman glass in Europe. 

The Kingdom of the Burgundians

Siegfried's Well

In the late third century, the Burgundians and other Vandal tribes moved west towards the Roman frontiers along the eastern side of the Rhine river and began attacking the Romans. The Burgundians were either a Germanic or Vandal tribe who lived in the area of modern Poland during the time of the Roman Empire, though it is thought that prior to living in Poland, they may have come from mainland Scandinavia, possibly by way of the Baltic Island of Bornholm before finding their way to the Odenwald.

The Greek historian, Zosimos, reports that the Burgundians were defeated by the emperor Probus in 278. Later the Roman official, Claudius Mamertinus, mentioned them, along with the Alemanni, as people who lived in the Agri Decumates, an area that roughly corresponds to today’s Odenwald. The two tribes would, at times, fight both the Romans and each other, and in 369/70, the Burgundians helped Emperor Valentinian I in his fight against the Alemanni. 

By the early 5th century, some of the Burgundians had migrated westward across the Rhine and had settled as foederati in the Roman province of Germania Secunda. Their status as foederati meant that the Romans provided certain benefits in exchange for the tribes’ military assistance. This status allowed the Burgundians to become quite powerful, and they soon had influence with the Roman administration. 

Kaiser's Portal at the Cathedral
Legend says it's the site of the infamous
fight between Brunhild and Kiemhild

In 411, the Burgundian king, Gunther (also known as Gundahar), together with the the king of the Alans, Goar, set up a puppet Roman emperor named Jovinus. Jovinus was only able to keep his position for two years, but during that time, under the pretext of imperial authority, Gunther was able to establish a Burgundian kingdom on the west side of the Rhine between the Lauter and Nahe Rivers. The capital of the kingdom was present day Worms. The area was later officially awarded to the Burgundians by Emperor Honorius as part of a truce. 

Despite their status as foederati, the Burgundians continued to raid the Roman territory of upper Gallia Belgica, and in 436 the Romans called for help from Hun mercenaries under the rule of Attila the Hun in order to oust the Burgundians. Gundahar and a majority of the Burgundian tribe were killed in the fighting, and the Burgundian Kingdom, along with its capital of Worms was destroyed. The Nibelung saga is based on this period of Burgundian history.

Medieval Worms

Worms has been the seat of a bishopric since Roman times; however, it was during the time of the Frankish Empire, under Charlemagne, that it became an important administrative center, where the emperor built one of the many palaces he sprinkled throughout his growing empire. The duties of Charlemagne’s bishops were not just limited to the spiritual realm, as they were also responsible for the administration of the city and surrounding territory. This sphere of influence continued up until the high middle ages when the city became officially Protestant during the Reformation. 

After the decline of the Carolingian Empire (which included the rule of Charlemagne), the Duchy of Franconia emerged in the early 10th century. The duchy was also known as the Salian dynasty and was founded by Werner of Worms and his son, Duke Conrad the Red of Lorraine. Worms was an important Franconian administrative center; however, it began to receive some degree of autonomy under Emperor Henry III and later became an Imperial Free City, subject to no authority except that of the emperor. 

Beginning in 1489, free cities were given a voice in the assemblies of the Holy Roman Empire. The assemblies were called “Diets” and some of the most famous were held at Worms, the most important being the 1521 Diet of Worms in which the reformist, Martin Luther, was declared a heretic. He came before the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, to answer accusations of heresy at the bishop’s palace, which, until 1689, stood just next to St. Peter’s Cathedral in what is now the Heyshof Garden. 

During the Thirty Years War, Swedish troops invaded Worms and held it from 1632 to 1635, a time that brought not only the hardship of occupation, but also an outbreak of the plague.  

The Modern Era

One of the most devastating events to have occurred in Worms was in 1689 during the Nine Years War. The French king, Louis XIV, seeking to enlarge his territory, decided to invade the Rhineland; putting him into conflict with, among others, the Holy Roman Empire. Though the war is considered by some as the first global war, the land around the Rhine, including Worms, saw some of the heaviest fighting and suffered tremendously.  

The city was again occupied by the French in 1792 shortly after France declared war on Prussia and Austria in that same year, and by 1801 it had been annexed into the First French Empire and secularized, a fate shared by many “Germanic” possessions west of the Rhine. Worms remained French until after the defeat of Napoleon, at which point it was given to the Grand Duchy of Hessen at the Congress of Vienna.

World War II once again brought destruction and turmoil to Worms, unparalleled since the Nine Years War in the 17th century. Worms was considered a strategic stronghold because of its position on the Rhine and those defending the city fought tenaciously. The city, therefore, suffered much devastation, particularly during RAF bombings in February and March of 1945. It is estimated that almost 40% of the city was destroyed and over 200 citizens were killed in both the bombings and subsequent invasion by the American Army a short time after the bombings.

After the war, Worms, like so many other similarly-affected cities began to rebuild. The cathedral, which had been damaged by fire, was repaired and the buildings in the downtown area were replaced by new construction in the post-modern style. Additionally, the city, excluding those parts on the eastern side of the Rhine, became part of the newly-formed state of Rhineland-Palatinate. 

Today, Worms is a thriving city with a population of approximately 82,000 people. It boasts a variety of cultural activities, sporting events, festivals and activities for all ages. 

Sites of Interest

St. Peter’s Cathedral

No visit to Worms would be complete without a visit to St. Peter’s Cathedral, which has dominated the city skyline since its construction in the 12th and 13th centuries. The cathedral stands on the highest hill in Worms, a place that has been occupied since Celtic times, and was the location of a Roman forum and temple to Minerva. In 600 A.D., Queen Brunhilda of Austrasia and her successor, Dagobert I, had a church built on top of the Roman ruins and this was the predecessor of the cathedral we have today.

South Side of the Cathedral
Ato 01 -, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25148545

Bishop Buchard of Worms began the layout of a new cathedral on the site in the 11th century; however, much of the building was damaged and rebuilt over time, with only the foundations of the west tower and the choir to the north surviving until the 12th century, when building took place on the late Romanesque structure that you see now. The cathedral continued to be enlarged and embellished into the 15th century with the addition of chapels, a south portal and stone reliefs, among others. 

Like the city surrounding it, the cathedral was not immune to the changing political landscape of the area. During the Thirty Years War, the cathedral was used for Protestant services during the city’s occupation by Swedish troops. French forces attempted to demolish the cathedral with a bomb in the Nine Years War, resulting in it incurring much fire damage. The building was later sacked by French troops during the Revolutionary Wars, at which time it was used as a stable and tavern. During World War Two, the cathedral again suffered damage due to bombing, but luckily only parts of the exterior and the roof were affected, the interior remaining largely unscathed. 

Other Churches

Church of Holy Trinity

Other churches of note in Worms include the Reformation Church of the Holy Trinity, which is the largest Protestant church in Worms. This large baroque church was built between 1709 - 1725 and 1955 - 1959.  

St. Paul’s Church, built by Bishop Buchard in 1016 on the site of an earlier Salian ducal castle, was originally in the Romanesque style and had three aisles, a Romanesque choir and octagonal dome. It also housed a Dominican monastic order until French secularization in the latter part of the 18th century. St. Paul’s  suffered throughout the years as a result of the city’s political turmoil and was almost completely destroyed in the Nine Years War. It was rebuilt with Baroque architectural features in 1717, but was again almost reduced to rubble in the bombing campaigns of World War II.

The church has undergone many changes that reflected the political turmoil in the city, serving at times as a storage facility, a hay barn and, and a museum.  Today, the house is not only a place of holy worship, but it again (since the 1920s) houses a monastic order of Dominican monks.

St Andrew’s Collegiate Church was first founded before 1000 as a mountain monastery outside the city; however, Bishop Burchard had the church moved to Worms in 1020. Despite the poor quality of the building material, the Romanesque church stood relatively unscathed until the French invasions during the Nine Years War, when it was burned down.  

St. Andrews Church 

The church was rebuilt in 1761, but another French incursion, this time during the revolutionary wars, brought more changes with the French push towards secularization. The windows in the basement of the church were knocked out to create wide arches to provide access for the Worms fire brigade and city hearse, which were both housed in the church at that time.  

The church was again heavily damaged in World War Two, but was restored by 1953. Unfortunately, engineers identified significant cracks in the masonry caused by subsidence, putting the entire central nave in danger of collapsing. Major works were completed on the church, financed in part by donations from the German Foundation for Monument Protection, and, today, the church houses the Worms City Museum and continues to be restored bit-by-bit. 

St Martin’s Church is Worm’s smallest church and one of its oldest, with archaeological evidence and a dedication pointing to its existence as far back as the 8th century. Part of the structure from that time still exists in the north wall of the nave. According to a legend, St. Martin of Tours was held as a prisoner in the dungeon beneath the church. St. Martin’s is the oldest Lutheran church in southwest Germany, and Martin Luther stayed and preached in the church during the famous 1521 Diet of Worms. Like so many structures in the city, the church was destroyed and rebuilt as a result of the Nine Years War and World War Two.

Church of Our Lady (Liebfrauenkirche) is significant for several reasons, one being that it lends its name to the infamous Liebfraumilch semi-sweet white wine that is sold mostly as export. The wine originally came from the vineyards surrounding the church; however, now the name is applied to wine from the regions of Rhine-Hessen, Palatinate, the Rhine Gorge and the Nahe. The church is also the only church on the Rhine between the major cathedrals of Strasbourg and Cologne to be built in the purely Gothic style, and it is the only surviving Gothic church in Worms.

Luther Monument 

As is appropriate, Worms is the site of the largest monument to Martin Luther and the reformation in the world. The monument is in the form of an 1868 stone and bronze, rectangular structure that poses Martin Luther as the central figure, standing above other important people who played a part in the reformation, as well as, personifications of the locations central to the reformation story. 

The Luther Monument

The monument was the brainchild of a grammar school teacher and school dean; however, the artist Ernst Rietschel designed the work, which allows visitors to walk onto the structure, among the figures portrayed there. Rietschel was able to complete the statues of Luther and Wyclif before his death in 1860, after which, three of his students completed the work.  The inauguration of the monument was attended by the then Prussian king, who would later become Kaiser Wilhelm I.  

Rashi Shul Synagogue, Jewish Quarter and Jewish Cemetery

The Jewish Cemetary

Like Mainz and Cologne, Worms has one of Germany’s oldest Jewish communities. Though some scholars assume that the community is much older, the first written evidence of Jews living in Worms is through a document which states that Jews from the city attended a fair in Cologne around the year 1000.  

Located in the city’s old Jewish Quarter, the Rashi Shul synagogue is considered the oldest synagogue in Germany. The first structure to be built on the site of the synagogue was constructed in 1034, but it, like its Christian counterparts, suffered damage or was destroyed and rebuilt over the centuries, dependent upon the political climate of the time. The synagogue was first destroyed in the crusade of 1096 and was rebuilt in the Romanesque style in 1175. The pogroms of 1345 and 1615 resulted in severe damage, and the building was later damaged by fire during the Nine Years War. 

During the Reichspogromnacht (formerly referred to as Kristallnacht) in 1938, the synagogue, like so many in Germany, was reduced to rubble. It was rebuilt, again, in 1961, using many of the original stones. Even today, the synagogue remains a target for those intent on destroying the last vestiges of the Jewish community in Worms. In 2010, arsonists fire-bombed the building, though fortunately, it suffered no substantial damage. The town’s Jewish museum is housed in the Rashi House next to the synagogue.

The Heiliger Sand Jewish Cemetery is one of the oldest and largest surviving Jewish cemeteries in Europe, with the oldest datable tombstone being from the mid-11th century. There are over 2,500 graves in both the older and newer parts of the cemetery. 

Nibelung Museum

Worms is the Nibelung City, once capital of the Burgundian Kingdom, and you can’t visit the town without bumping into vestiges of the old Germanic saga. To help visitors and residents better understand the legend and the part that it has played in history, the city opened a museum dedicated to the Nibelung Saga in 2001.  Here you can take an audiovisual tour which summarizes the legend, explains the differences between the Germanic and Scandinavian versions of the tale and shows how elements of the saga were used in the recent past to further nationalistic ambitions.

History buffs, architectural enthusiast and cultural fans can all find something to keep them entertained in Worms. Don't scratch it off your list because it's a bit outside the Odenwald; instead take a drive just over the Rhine and enjoy a day wandering its many streets and alleys, breathing in the history of times gone by. 

Sources

"Mehr Zur Stadtgeschichte." Mehr Zur Stadtgeschichte Stadt Worms. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2018.

"Sacred Destinations." Worms Synagogue - Worms, Germany. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Apr. 2018.

"Worms Luther Monument." Lutherdenkmal Luther Worms. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Apr. 2018.