The International Office of the University of Wuppertal invites you to visit the Drachenfels and take a tour of the Rhine.
Date: Sunday, October 15, 2023, from 10.00 Uhr am all day
Meeting point:
Milias – Coffee to go
corner Burgstr.13/Kirchstr. 10
42103 Wuppertal
The excursion leads to the Rhine in Königswinter near Bonn and combines a visit to Drachenburg Castle in the Siebengebirge high above the Rhine Valley with a boat trip on the Rhine to Remagen.
- Travel from Wuppertal to Königswinter by train
- With the Drachenfelsbahn to Drachenburg Castle
- Guided tour of Drachenburg Castle with audio guide (duration approx. 1 hour)
- By Drachenfelsbahn back to Königswinter
- From Königswinter to Remagen by ship of the Bonner Personen Schiffahrt e.G. on the Rhine
- Food Festival Remagen with live music (from approx. 16.00 hrs)
- Return from Remagen to Wuppertal by train
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Organisational information
Registration until 10.10.2023 at the latest by telephone +49 (0)177-9244955 and at the Student Service Centre (SSC) at the main entrance of Campus Grifflenberg, Building G, Room G.08.16
Monday 09.00 – 12.00
Tuesday 10.00 – 12.00
Thursday 09.00 – 12.00 h and 14.00 – 16.00 h
The personal contribution of 15.00 Euro must be paid in cash and appropriately at the registration. Included is a lunchbox from Milias coffee Wuppertal: Sesame kringle, oriental pita or root bread with different toppings (meat or cheese or vegan) and salad and vegetables/ A small bottle of orange juice, apple-juice or water/Pastel de nata
Registration can also be made at the I.S.T.
Please remember to bring food and drink and suitable clothing for this full-day excursion. There is no accident liability insurance for the activity provided by the Bergische Universität Wuppertal.
Should the event not be able to take place, the own amount paid will be refunded. In case of cancellation less than one week before the event date, or in case of no-show, no refund will be made.
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Drachenfels
The Drachenfels castle ruins in the Siebengebirge are the remains of a high castle at 321 m above sea level, which was begun in 1138 by Archbishop Arnold I of Cologne and bought and completed in 1149 by Gerhard von Are, provost of the St. Cassius monastery in Bonn. It stands on the Drachenfels mountain of the same name. The last burgrave was Heinrich von Drachenfels und Olbrück from 1526.
During the Thirty Years’ War, Drachenburg Castle once again became the scene of battle. In autumn 1632, the Swedes under General Baudissin captured the castle, but only a short time later they had to give way to Spanish troops. In 1634 the castle was destroyed. The lord of Drachenfels lived at Gudenau Castle and had little or no interest in preserving the residential buildings and let it fall into disrepair.
The castle and the hilltop of Drachenfels are made of valuable trachyte, which was mainly used for building churches in the Middle Ages. The outer façade of Cologne Cathedral consisted only of Drachenfels trachyte until construction ceased around 1528. The lords of the castle of Drachenfels took advantage of the treasure they were sitting on and sold part of their land to the Cologne cathedral builders.
Today, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia owns the castle ruins, while the slopes of the mountain belong to the Verschönerungsverein für das Siebengebirge.
Drachenburg Castle
Drachenburg Castle was built in record time from 1882 to 1884 in the Historicist style (mainly Neo-Early Gothic on the exterior and Neo-Renaissance on the interior) as a prestigious residence and magnificent villa for the Parisian financial expert Stephan von Sarter, who, however, hardly ever lived in the castle.
Coming from a petty bourgeois background, Sarter had made a meteoric career as a stock market speculator on the Paris stock exchange and had become wealthy as a shareholder in the Suez Canal and Panama Canal. In 1881, he was able to have himself raised to the rank of baron by means of a generous donation. From then on, he belonged to high society as Baron Stephan von Sarter. For the construction of a villa befitting his status, Sarter did not choose his adopted home of Paris, but the much-visited Drachenfels within sight of his native city of Bonn.
After his death, the castle underwent several changes of use.
In 1986 Schloss Drachenburg, which in cultural-historical terms falls within the context of the castle renaissance of the Rhine Romantic period, was placed under a preservation order and in 1990 became the property of the North Rhine-Westphalia Foundation for Nature Conservation, Heritage and Cultural Preservation.
From 1995 to 2010, it was restored to its original state and developed into a kind of Wilhelminian museum with a focus on contemporary living culture. The restoration companies Bachmann & Wille and Bauhütte Quedlinburg won the Peter Parler Prize in 2011 for the reconstruction of the entrance staircase. The interiors as well as the wall paintings and historicist stained glass windows were reconstructed as far as possible in the original design. The castle park was included in the European Garden Heritage Network as an outstanding example of the genre.
The outer castle houses the museum on the history of nature conservation in Germany.
Detailed information about Drachenburg Castle can be found here.
Detailed information about the Drachenfelsbahn can be found here.
The rapturous, romanticised view of the landscape and culture of the Middle Rhine Valley between Mainz and Cologne reached a peak around 1900 and found expression in all genres of art: from literature and music to painting and architecture. Rhine Romanticism was inspired by the wild nature of the narrow river valley and the region’s cultural and historical heritage, with its legends of the Nibelungen and the Loreley, as well as its numerous medieval towns, castles and palaces. To this day, this magic of the region continues to work its magic in Rhine tourism.
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Photo: Colourbox.de