Böcking Baroque Villa
Where Goethe once battled the waves
“At times the storm swelled against the wind; at others, gusts that rebounded from the wind alternated with a furious howling. Wave after wave crashed over the boat; we felt soaked to the skin; the longer it went on, the more desperate our plight seemed. And so we were tossed to and fro in pitch darkness for a long time, until at last a light appeared in the distance, and with it, hope...”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe could scarcely have found more dramatic words when, decades later, he described his daring journey down the Moselle on 1 November 1792.The life-threatening adventure of the Weimar Privy Councillor bore no resemblance to the leisurely boat trip through the idyllic river valley that William Turner, the most famous English painter of his time, was to undertake just a few decades later.
Nor was it by any means one of his many educational journeys that took Goethe to the Moselle region; rather, the poet had, ‘to experience the thrill of battle first-hand’, as he himself put it, taken part in the ‘Campaign in France’, with which the Prussian army sought, during the so-called First Coalition War, to drive the spectre of the 1789 Revolution out of Paris once and for all. Yet the campaign ended in a catastrophic disaster following the Battle of Valmy: almost a third of the 60,000-strong army died of disease and exhaustion during the retreat. Despite the mortal danger Goethe exposed himself to during his adventurous escape in a rowing boat – compared with the tragic fate of the ordinary soldiers, the ‘Prince of Poets’ travelled in relative comfort from Trier to Koblenz.
The light that, according to Goethe’s recollection, appeared so hopefully in the distance halfway along the journey came from the little town of Trarbach on the Mosel, where they landed shortly afterwards. The house where the ‘Prince of Poets’ found a warm welcome from the wealthy merchant Ludwig Böcking following his life-threatening adventure can still be visited today. In addition to Goethe, later guests at the stately house— built around 1755 by the wealthy merchant and provincial treasurer Johann Adolf Böcking to the plans of the ducal chief architect Hauth of the Palatinate-Zweibrücken in the Trier Baroque style, which today houses a gem amongst the museums of the Moselle region.
The Middle Mosel Museum, housed in the Baroque Villa Böcking, still showcases the upper-class domestic culture of a wealthy patrician family from the 18th and 19th centuries, making it a truly unique feature of the museum scene in Rhineland-Palatinate.
The more than 20 exhibition rooms of the Baroque Villa Böcking house not only valuable furniture and works of art spanning three centuries, but also an extensive collection documenting the history of the town of Traben-Trarbach.
Text: © Dr Christof Krieger
