Castles of the Rhine

Robert R. Taylor is a professor of history at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, where he has been active in the architecture conservation movement. He is the author of The Word in Stone: The Role of Architecture in the National Socialist Ideology and Hohenzollern Berlin: Construction and Reconstruction.

``[W]hen studying the great German river [the Rhine], one can escape neither poetry nor politics. The need to assert and defend political power created the original Rhenish castles [and] ... much later ... when these fortresses had fallen into ruin and lost all apparent political or military value, nineteenth-century poets were enraptured by the landscape and mythology of both the Rhine and its wrecked citadels.'' -- from the author's Introduction

• Table of Contents for The Castles of the Rhine: Recreating the Middle Ages in Modern Germany by Robert R. Taylor List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction Part One: Foundations Political and Economic Power on the Middle Rhine Romanticism and Nationalism on the Middle Rhine Monuments and Documents on the Middle Rhine Part Two: Vindicating the Old Regime The Holy Alliance in Stone Hohenzollern Dreams King of the Rhineland The Hohenzollerns at the Hunt The âCartridge Princeâ and His Consort Part Three: Buttressing the Status Quo A Justification of Aristocratic Privilege The Fulfilment of Bourgeois Ambition Part Four: Defending the Reich Symbols of German Unity Monument to German Glory Part Five: Securing the Past for the Future To Entertain, Enlighten, and Exploit the Traveller To Study the German Past To Teach the Young and the Ignorant Part Six: Conclusion âCan Stones Speak?â Appendices Glossary of Architectural Terms Used Medieval Fantasies Hohenzollern Castle Projects Outside the Rhineland Notes Select Bibliography Index