Ensisheim

What is written in Micah 5:2 in the Old Testament about Bethlehem could be said about Ensisheim:

"But you, Ensisheim in Alsace, though you are small among the cities of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation, you will become the administrative capital of Further Austria (Vorderösterreich). Your origins are from of old, from ancient times."

Ensisheim around 1650

Ensisheim was first mentioned in a document in 768 under the name Engisehaim.

In Merian's Topographia Germania, Alsace 1663, it is written that after the death of the Landgraves of Ensisheim around the beginning of the 13th century, the town and castle, together with the landscape of Upper Alsace, came under the hegemony of the Counts of Habsburg.

The Habsburg or Habichtsburg (hawk castle) in Aargau

The Habsburgs took their name from a fortress built in the Aargau* in the 1020s. 

 *present-day Switzerland

Rudolf's monument on the square in front of the church by night

In the second half of the 13th century, King Rudolf I, previously Count Rudolf IV of Habsburg, built a "royal castle" in Ensisheim.

 
In 1510, the city became the seat of the administration of Further Austria (Vorlande), i.e., Alsace, Breisgau, Aargau, and Lake Constance.

On November 15 and 16, 2024, Ensisheim hosted a colloquium on the question, "Why did Ensisheim become a central place for the Habsburgs in the region?" In a future blog, Red Baron will attempt to answer this query.

The museum piece.
Note the meteorite's impact on a field outside Ensisheim in the background.
Click to enlarge.

One event has burned itself into people's memories. In Merians Topographia, we read, "1492 on November 7, a stone or dumpling weighing 280 pounds, a foot high, and the same color as iron ore fell from the clouds with a thunderclap."

Sebastian Brant wrote a poem: Since one counts fifteen hundred years on St. Florence's day, it was ninety and two at noon there was an enormous thunderclap a stone of three hundredweight fell in a field before Ensisheim.

King Maximilian ordered the "symbol of God" to be taken to the church and kept there. When he visited the site 14 days later, he did not know that he had inspected the first historically documented meteorite in Europe while it was still almost warm. Today, the meteorite is kept in the city museum in the historic Palais de la Régence.

Maximilian's press spokeswoman announces the King's visit.
He is surrounded by his bodyguards.

The children of the elementary school Jean Rasser at Ensisheim took Maximilian's visit to delight the colloquium participants with a performance, Retour au temps des Habsbourg.

The King is at the table with his attendants and looks graciously at his subjects.

They are entertaining the King performing ...

... and singing

Stay tuned for a blog about the colloquium proper.

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