Apfelweibla - Bamberg, BY-DE
N 49° 53.321 E 010° 53.125
32U E 635429 N 5527958
The Apfelweibla (Franconian: Apfelweibchen) is a brass door knob depicting an elderly woman in Bamberg's old town.
Waymark Code: WM13AGM
Location: Bayern, Germany
Date Posted: 10/26/2020
Views: 14
The original is now in Bamberg's Historical Museum. A replica has been attached to the original location, the entrance door to Haus Eisgrube 14.
The doorknob is so famous because the poet and theater director E. T. A. Hoffmann describes it in his story The golden pot, written in Dresden in 1813. E. T. A. Hoffmann often visited his friend (and later publisher) Carl Friedrich Kunz (1785–1849) in this house.
In the story, the student Anselmus knocks over an old apple trader's basket. He runs away and only stops at the end of an avenue under an elderberry bush. By chance he met the registrar Heerbrand, who found him a job with the secret archivist Lindhorst. When he wants to start his first day of work there, the old apple woman appears in the door knocker and he faints from shock:
“There he stood now and looked at the big beautiful bronze door knocker; but when he was about to grab the door knocker at the last stroke of the tower clock at the Kreuzkirche, which shook the air with a mighty sound, the metal face twisted into a grinning smile in the disgusting play of blue-glowing rays of light. Oh! it was the apple woman from the Black Gate! "
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