The Innkeeper on the Mountain

The emperor held court at the Rotenberg in Swabia with his princess and his armed retainers. So it happened that the princess fell in love with a vassal, and he carried her away. They hid themselves until the emperor had gone, then built a small house at the foot of the mountain and kept an inn — a wirtschaft — where travellers could eat and lodge.

The emperor, back in Aachen, could never learn where his child had gone. No one had betrayed her. Years passed. The princess bore the name “Wirtin am Berg”, the hostess of the mountain, and was recognised by no one.

When after many a year the emperor came again to the same region, he by chance turned in at the inn of the host on the mountain. The daughter’s heart trembled, but she kept herself unknown. In secret she resolved to wait upon him. For the evening meal she prepared the emperor’s favourite dish, which he had long missed, and which no one else knew how to prepare just as she did.

The emperor ate and instantly recognised the taste. His old heart ached, and he thought with new grief of the lost daughter, and reasoned: she must be here, only she can have prepared this dish so. He cried out, loud in the inn’s parlour: “Ah, where is my dear daughter?”

Then the wrongdoers fell at his feet in love, begging that he might forgive them, and it went just as with Charlemagne and Eginhard and Emma, of whom the same legend is told: the emperor rejoiced that he had found his daughter alive, and forgave them. He then bestowed the whole Rotenberg upon his son-in-law, raised him to a high count, but ordered that he should bear the name “Wirt am Berg” forever.

Then the innkeeper on the mountain built upon the summit a stately fortress, and became the founder of the Württemberg lineage. His descendants became dukes and later kings, and the House of Württemberg ruled over Swabia for more than seven centuries — all begun at the foot of a mountain, with a humble inn and a favourite dish.