Langenburg castle - it actually
looks like a fortress - is in the center of my box of Wibele,
a kind of cookie made only in the little town at the foot of the castle.
Queen Victoria liked to give boxes of it as Christmas presents. The cookie
has a nice vanilla taste.
Langenburg is an hour or two east of Stuttgart, and has
been one of seven castles in the Hohenlohe family - this area of Germany
is called the Hohenlohe - since the twelfth century. Prince Friedrich of
Hohenlohe-Waldenburg, the cousin of the resident princess, is a painting
companion of my brother - he lives in Castle Waldenburg, up the road a piece
- and they have had two-man exhibits, one in New York. Prince Friedrich
has a sure, loose style, to me reminiscent of Cézanne, especially
in the colors.
My brother has been a landscape painter, graphic designer
and cartoonist for many years in Gnadental ("Valley of Grace"),
where his wife was born, near Schwäbisch Hall, Germany. Schwäbisch
Hall - "Hall" is related to "halide," salt - was wealthy
and famous in the middle ages for its salt mines, and was a Reichsstadt,
a free city, answerable only to the Holy Roman Emperor because of its wealth.
Smart guy.
© 1998 Harry Finley. It is illegal to
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