The Rhine by Ben Coates

Author:Ben Coates [Ben Coates]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2018-07-19T16:00:00+00:00

8

The Romantic Rhine

Koblenz to Rüdesheim

FOR A MAN who had been dead for nearly a hundred and thirty years, Kaiser Wilhelm looked in surprisingly good health. Wearing a plumed helmet and sitting high on a prancing horse, he commanded a sweeping view over the Rhine in Koblenz, staring sternly across the water towards the mighty fortress on the opposite bank. In front of him, at the base of the statue, a small crowd of sightseers took selfies and posed for photographs on the steps, as tour boats on the river slowed to get a better look. The only one who wasn’t impressed was my dog, Blackie – who, following a complex series of dog-sitting failures and train transfers, had joined me for a few days walking and boating along the river. She sniffed the granite, peered up at the Kaiser and his horse, and carefully peed on the stones.

Rounding the front of the statue, it quickly became apparent why it had been built where it had. A row of flagpoles led to a sharply pointed spit of land which jutted out into the grey water like the bow of a battleship: the Deutsches Eck or ‘German Corner’, where the Rhine met the Moselle at a great Y-shaped junction. As well as being an important river confluence, the corner was also roughly the point where the industrialised lower Rhine gave way to the picturesque ‘Romantic Rhine’ of tourism, cliché and legend. North of Koblenz, the channel was littered with factories, harbours and staid modern architecture, but for a long stretch to the south there were almost no bridges and few modern buildings, and the river looked largely as it would have a century previously; lined with castles, churches and forests. It was here more than perhaps anywhere else that the Rhine became a true symbol of Germany; the legendary lifeblood of the country.

With the dog trotting contentedly behind me, I walked along the river, passing tourist booths selling T-shirts and fishermen casting long lines into the current. In many ways, Koblenz was another archetypal Rhine city; a smallish place with a charming old centre and a dreary modern shopping zone, all neatly hemmed in by low hills and water. I suspected most non-Germans would struggle to locate it on a map, but it was attractive, and had a sense of historic grandeur which made you feel you might bump into a pope or an emperor around every corner.

Like so many other cities in the region, Koblenz had often found itself at the crossroads of history: as a major Roman trading centre, as a Frankish royal seat, as the capital of the Prussian Rhine Province, and as the scene of heavy fighting during the Second World War. By the twenty-first century it had become best known as the gateway to the castle-filled middle Rhine, but was also a significant commercial centre; home to companies shipping car parts, paper, beer and petrol up and down the Rhine, and along the Moselle into Luxembourg and Belgium.

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