Moyseturm - the legendary Mouse Tower, where the evil bishops were devoured by rodents. This miniature tower near Bingen is shrouded in dark stories from the Middle Ages.
"And in the windows, and in the doors, and through the walls, they pour in thousands, And from the ceiling, and through the floor, Right and left, back and front, inside and outside, above and below, and all at once they run to the bishop." “They have sharpened their teeth on stones, and now they are choosing the bones of the bishop; They gnawed on flesh from all sides, because they were sent to judge him."
According to legend …,
… Bishop Hatto II, Archbishop of Mainz, was a cruel and selfish ruler, responsible for both collecting tolls on the Rhine and distributing food. When famine struck Germany, the townspeople pleaded with the archbishop for more food from the warehouse. In response, he invited them all to come to the warehouse and take all the food they could carry. But as soon as the townspeople were inside the warehouse, he barricaded the doors and set fire to the place, noting to his conspirators that their cries of pain were comparable to the screams of rats.
That evening, the archbishop returned to his mansion to feast in peace and celebrate his solution to the famine. Waking up the next morning, he found that his portrait had been eaten by rats. Then word came that a flock of rats had gone down to a local farm and then to a warehouse and ate everything in sight. When he looked out of his window, he saw an army of rats heading straight for him and ran to his tower, where he barricaded himself for the night. He was awakened by the screams of his cat: "He was getting more and more frightened, screaming madly with fear of the army of approaching rats." Rats jumped into the water, swimming towards his island tower and gnawed at the stone walls. At the end of this fictional story, a cruel man is devoured by rats.
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In fact, the Mouse Tower (in German "Mauseturm") is one of the many toll stations on the Rhine River built in the Middle Ages to collect taxes as part of a complex extortion scheme. The name "Mauseturm" is a distortion of the original name "Mausheturm", which means "toll tower". Those who ran the towers were widely hated for abuse of office and receiving unauthorized charges from passing ships, and were even accused of outright piracy, kidnapping, and stealing entire ships.
Tower Moyseturm (German Mäuseturm), which adorns the island of Binger, on the Rhine River near the city of Bingen, can be called a place of real pilgrimage for tourists. The neo-Gothic structure, covered with white paint, is of interest not only for its architectural forms. The history of the tower and its name are shrouded in legends, sometimes terrible.
In 1215, the Bolanden brothers built the customs castle Ehrenfels (German Burg Ehrenfels) on the right bank of the Rhine. The view of the river from the walls of the fortress complex in the direction of the north was limited, so a watchtower was built on Binger Island. According to one of the legends, its name comes from the German verb "mûsen", which means "look around, look for a way out." Half a century later, Ehrenfels Castle became the possession of the archbishops of Mainz, who repeatedly modernized the strategically important fortress and kept the treasures of the cathedral in it.
Although there is no literal truth in the legend, Archbishop Hatto II was a real person who became the anti-hero of the legend by chance. Many of the motifs in the legend are common to German folklore and art, where the mouse is often a symbol of the soul. Other places across Europe have similar stories, especially when the picturesque tower is surrounded by water.
The popularity of such stories speaks of close relationships between humans and swarms of hungry rodents in the Middle Ages, as well as fears of hunger. The tower is located near the cities of Bingen am Rhein and Rüdesheim am Rhein. The tower is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley.