Set in a serene landscape in the south-western Steigerwald in Middle Franconia, Bavaria, Frankenberg Castle crowns the Herrschaftsberg. With its medieval towers, flanked by steep vineyards, the castle rises above a gently rolling hilly landscape. In addition to a 30-hectare wine-growing area, which makes Frankenberg one of the largest wineries in the region, the 130-hectare castle grounds include forests, arable land, orchards, and the Meierei, a historical dairy farm at the foot of the hill. With a history going back to at least 1254 and the rule of the renowned knight dynasty of von Hutten for more than 250 years, the monument is a substantial testimony to Franconian chivalric life.
The Frankenberg estate stood at the centre of 16th and 17th century religious conflicts. The religious border separating Protestant from Catholic lands still today runs through the estate. With Ulrich von Hutten as the noble family’s most notable member, Frankenberg makes the spirit of the Reformation, Renaissance humanist ideals and German culture tangible. Ulrich was a poet, scholar, and publisher, and the first imperial knight, but later made a name for himself as an avid reformer, and friend and ally to Martin Luther. From then on, he zealously opposed both the Pope and the Emperor and thus contributed significantly to the religious denominational schism.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.