Today’s Monday Mysteries post answers the question: What’s the story behind the little door in the wall of the Tübingen castle?

The Tübingen castle is a huge fortress-style castle that towers over Tübingen. It’s not very fairy-tale castle like, IMHO: everything about the architecture is fairly massive. It’s got huge arches, huge wooden windows, huge stone carvings, etc.

Everything is big except for a fairly narrow door that sits in the wall of the castle next to the main entrance (click on the image to see it larger):

Entrance to Tübingen Castle with the Gatekeeper’s little entrance on left

It turns out that this little door was the night entrance to the castle controlled by the gatekeeper, who was housed with his family in the living quarters to the left of the little door. It must have been a rather nice “room with a view” perk to be a gatekeeper, since that tower looks out over the valley south of Tübingen. It makes sense that the gatekeeper would need a room with a view, of course, to keep an eye on the people wanting to get into the castle, be they friend or foe.

The romantic in me imagines that back in the day there could have been a moat that filled the deep ditch that still surrounds the castle. It’s all grassy now, though, not filled with water. In fact, though, they say that there was no water-filled moat there at all.

What there was, was a bear pit.

Hmm, who would have thought. That does seem like just as good a deterrent as a moat.

Now the permanent stone bridge that you can see in the photo leading to that big arched entrance is a modern innovation.  Back in the days of the bear pit, there was not one but two drawbridges over the pit, one leading to the little door, and one leading to the big archway/gate.

After the University took over the castle back in the 1700s, the gatekeeper and his family lived in that apartment to the left of the door,  controlling  when the doors/gates to the castle were opened and closed. If a professor came by after the gates were closed, he would knock on the gatekeeper’s little door.  If the professor knew the secret knock, the gatekeeper would know the answer to “who goes there”, and let him into the castle. If he didn’t know the secret knock, well … perhaps the bears had visitors when that happened.

Well, OK, I’m not sure the bears were still there when the professors were needing to get in and out of the castle, actually. But still … one would think there was still something in that ditch to deter any rambunctious university students hankering to sneak in to castle at night, right? 😉

There’s currently no gatekeeper at the castle, of course. When I asked a couple of locals about the gatekeeper’s apartment, they said well the door is there, but the rooms in the apartment are empty since no one lives there now.

Except … take a look at those windows in the area to the left of the little door, which is the side where the gatekeeper’s apartment was. You can’t see into those windows because they have curtains covering them. Curtains, on an abandoned apartment?

Plus, down below in that grassy area at the base of the castle where the bears used to roam, Chris spotted a couple of lawn chairs set up like a patio, and a goldfish pond, next to a small, clearly non-professional, little vegetable garden. But a usually reliable local informant swears she’s never heard of anyone living in that space at the castle. The property is still owned by the University, and the building houses a museum, plus banquet and meeting rooms that are used for special events.

But if the old watchtower apartment is really vacant and nobody lives there, then it must be the ghosts of the gatekeepers that are still keeping a tidy house. Perhaps they are still enjoying their view from an apartment that is the best-kept secret in Tübingen.

After all, that makes more sense than it being the ghost of the bears who set up the modern patio and the garden below.

*****

P.S. In case you missed it last week, here’s another link to the Monday Mysteries series”opening” and “closing” credits.