Tautenburg Castle Ruin @museum.de

There has been a castle on the top of this hill since the 12th century, towering above the town at 272 metres or 895 feet above sea level.

The builder of Tautenburg Castle is said to have been one Tuto von Hausen" or "Tuto von Tutinberc". The earliest reference to a castle was in a document from 1223. Shortly afterwards, Emperor Frederick the Second granted feudal tenure of the castle to the family of Schenk von Vargula. From then on, a collateral line of that influential dynasty adopted the name of the fiefdom. However, as the centuries passed, the Tautenburgs line lost much of its influence. Its last representative was Christian Schenk von Tautenburg, who died in August 1640.

140 years later, the once stately castle was demolished. The stone was used to build the revenue office in neighbouring Frauenpriessnitz. Only the pentagonal gate tower with its battlements remains. It’s visible from afar, essentially the landmark of the small community at the foot of the castle hill.

Over the years, the village of Tautenburg, with its population of barely 300 people, has hosted some distinguished visitors. In 1866, the German scientific instrument maker Carl Zeiss and his workforce celebrated the completion of their 1,000th microscope here.

In 1882, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the Russian-German writer and psychoanalyst Lou Salomé spent three weeks in the little woodland village. In the late 19th century, the future poet Joachim Ringelnatz regularly spent his school holidays here. During the final weeks of the Second World War, the very elderly writer Ricarda Huch found refuge here from the bombing raids. And at the end of the war, James Krüss, who went on to become a children's author, walked halfway across Germany and spent a week in Tautenburg at the house of a clergyman who had previously been the Heligoland island pastor.

Nationally, the village is also known for the Thuringian State Observatory Tautenburg, built in 1960. Proximity to the university observatory in Jena and the low levels of light pollution locally were the deciding factors when Tautenburg was selected as the location for the observatory and its two-metre reflecting telescope.

And now there is even an asteroid called Tautenburg. And for several years now, nine information pillars and a sun have added to the village’s core competencies in the field of astronomy. The Tautenburg Planet Trail is a roughly 8 kilometre circular route on which walkers can discover a lot of interesting facts about the planets, their names and their history – and that’s equivalent to five miles, in case you were wondering.