The maiden of the Johannisberg

Attached to this hill is the widely known legend of an enchanted maiden said to have been the last scion of the knightly house of the Johannisberg. It was Elisabeth von Hunolstein.

As the people tell it, she was married to a lord of Wendel from Reims, and is therefore fairly generally known by the name Frau von Wendel. She left the castle of her fathers to follow her husband to France. The marriage was blessed with a little son, but it was not happy.

The noblewoman had to flee from her husband and returned to her native castle on the Johannisberg, where from then on she lived in strict, almost monastic seclusion. Not one inhabitant of the surrounding villages had the honour during that time of coming into closer contact with her.

The people came to know nothing of her but her sufferings and her good works, and in their eyes she stood there as a higher, holy being. Abandoned and cast off by her husband, her only comfort now was to relieve the distress of the unfortunate and to care for the sanctuary of Saint John near the castle, which under her charge flourished as never before.

Hidden as she had always lived, so she also died. She was buried up on the summit of the hill in the vault of her forefathers. Her grave is still pointed out, at the rear outer corner of the hill church on the side of the Scherr valley.

She had already lain buried several days when the people first learned the news of her death. They were inconsolable and would not believe it. And because nobody had known the sorely tried woman closely, and because after a hidden life she vanished so suddenly and mysteriously, the opinion soon spread that she had been enchanted. No, they cried, she has not died, she lives still.

That is the whole legend. A woman who lives so withdrawn that her death goes unnoticed is declared immortal by those very people. Not out of superstition, but because they refused to accept that she was gone.