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Updated: June 2, 2025
The progress of the story is, however, extremely interesting; the whole spacious and varied scene of medieval life is there, and as Tieck and Wackenroder discovered Nuremberg, and Brentano the Rhine, so Arnim may be said to have shown in its full activity the Ghibelline city of Waiblingen.
It is, to be sure, a Romantic Waiblingen, and not the real city, as Arnim himself was afterward forced to admit with some disappointment when he actually saw it. But as Arnim portrays it, it rises to typical value without losing any of its poetic individuality. It is the city of the Hohenstaufens, the last stand of medievalism against the encroachment of a new civilization.
During the siege, it is said that his followers shouted "Welf" as a war-cry, while the besiegers shouted "Waiblings," Waiblingen being the birthplace of Frederick, duke of Swabia, brother of Conrad. These names, corrupted into Guelphs and Ghibellines by the Italians, were afterwards attached to the two great parties, the supporters, respectively, of the popes and the emperors.
Camp shifts about, and Crown-Prince in it: to Heidelberg, to Waiblingen, Weinheim; close to Mainz at one time: but it is not worth following: nor in Friedrich's own Letters, or in other documents, is there, on the best examination, anything considerable to be gleaned respecting his procedures there.
The Waiblingen faction elected as emperor of Germany Conrad the Crusader, in whom began the Hohenstaufen dynasty, so named from the Swabian family seat on the lofty Staufen hill rising from the Rems River. From this event dates the strife of the Welfs and Waiblingens, who in Italy became known as Guelfs and Ghibellines.
To this must all opinions come; no thought can enter there, which shall not be wedded to the fixed idea. There it remains, and grows. It is like the watchman's wife, in the tower of Waiblingen, who grew to such a size, that she could not get down the narrow stair-case; and, when her husband died, his successor was forced to marry the fat widow in the tower."
The Welfs were a noble family whose ancestry could be traced back to the days of Charlemagne. The Waiblingers derived their name from the town of Waiblingen, which belonged to the Hohenstaufen family, of which the Emperor Conrad was a representative.
Lothair died in 1138. His son-in-law, the Wolf or Welf nobleman, Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria, whom Lothair had nominated as his successor, was opposed by the Swabian faction also known as the Waiblingen faction from the Franconian village in which the Swabian duke Frederick was born.
There is, for instance, Waiblingen, a very ordinary-looking wayside station, yet what memories does that name recall! Memories of Hohenstaufen Emperors, Fredericks and Conrads, down to the last and luckless Conradin, memories of faction fights between the city republics of Italy, within the walls of those cities, between Guelph and Ghibelline, Welf and Waiblingen.
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