Station: [10] The Hauff Memorial on Lichtenstein Peak


Hauff:
At the foot of Lichtenstein rock, at a depth of probably three hundred fathoms, a gentle valley spread out, confined by wooded heights and with a swift woodland stream cutting through it. Three pleasant villages lay down below.
The eye, gazing down into this valley, might equally be peering down from heaven on to the earth. As the gaze travels up from the deep valley to the forested heights, it encounters picturesquely clustered rocks and the mountains of the Alb. Beyond the ridge towers Achalm Castle, obstructing the nearby view. But sweeping past the walls of Achalm to right and left, the gaze proceeds farther into the landscape.
Lichtenstein peak is so close to the clouds that it soars above Württemberg. The view of even the depths of the lowland is free and uninterrupted. When the morning sun casts its oblique rays across Württemberg, the view is delightful. Then, these magnificent pastures spread out like a multi-coloured carpet; beginning with dark green, with the rich brown of the mountains. All the colours and shades are part of this wonderful fabric that finally, in pale blue, merges with the rosy dawn.
 
Such a distance, from Lichtenstein to Asperg, and such a landscape in between! This is no plain, the land is not flat. Knolls and hills aplenty ripple up and down, and the eye skips from hill to hill, each with broad valleys and rivers in its folds, and ever on towards the distant horizon.