The city of Heidelberg was mentioned here the other day. The father of a friend who had spent some time there as a young man learning German, used to talk often and fondly of it. "Never mind The Student Prince and all that operetta stuff" he would say, it's (or was) a beautiful relaxing place to be. He remembered the castle ruins perched well above the city and the river Neckar, where, in his time, open-air theatre was the norm during the summer months. Some climate to be able to carry that through. The castle yard allowed huge casts to be on stage and even horsemen. There is one famous passage in a play by Goethe, the giant of German literature, that is Goetz von Berlichingen, which was eagerly awaited by the knowing audience. Goetz is, for some reason, besieged in his castle. The leader of a troop of horsemen shouts out to him to surrender. Goetz's tells him "You can lick my backside", and audiences who have been probably familiar with the incident from schooldays never failed to roar with laughter. And what other city, our friend's father would ask, has a road like one above the river, which is known as The Philosophers' Way.
City of beauty, set among wooded hills, city of learning, for its university was even in the 1930s nearly 600 years old. (The actual 600th anniversary was in 1986.) An anthology of writings about Heidelberg has poems, essays, reminiscences from every notable name: Goethe and all the classical figures, Mark Twain, Ernst Junger, author of the most famous German World War One novel, "Storm of Steel". He wrote of the city: "worthy of our shedding of blood and dying." There is a touching poem from Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, better known to most of us as "Sissi" and even Mr Joseph Goebbels is there. Patrick Leigh Fermor whose books, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water recount his pre-war walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, reminds us that as well as being a city of learning, Heidelberg is also a city of pubs. A young fellow with a rucksack arrived in Heidelberg on a snowy night just before the New Year. "I clumped into an entrancing haven of oak beams and carvings and alcoves and changing floor levels. A jungle of impediments encrusted the interior - mugs and bottles and glasses and antlers - the innocent accumulation of years, no stage props of forced conviviality." Host and hostess insisted that he stay over New Year's Eve with them as their guest. The hostess even had his clothes laundered, the first time since London. Get those books. Penguin.