During a visit in 1652, Duke Eberhard III von Württemberg presented Hohentwiel Fortress with the gift of a guest book, which he himself opened with the sentence "Everything with God". In the time that followed up to 1800 over 900 entries were made.
While many of the writers asked for God's blessing, praised their current location or penned curses and crude maxims, a substantial number deal with the custom of carrying stones. According to this tradition invented by Duke Ulrich in the 16th century, each guest of the fortress must carry at least forty pounds of stones up to Hohentwiel. He/she then received a welcome drink at the castle in payment:
"Ich hab getragen gar nicht schwer,
Hergegen gesoffen desto mehr"
"I've carried really not a lot,
but drunk have I all the more"
(Freiherr von Ow, 12.4.1697)
"Stein tragen ist fast eine Plag,
Drum gieng dem Corpus juris mit der Klag
49 Pfund in der Schwer,
Truckten mich empfindlich sehr"
"Carrying stone is nearly a plague,
Thus went this legal person with the lament
a weight of 49 pounds,
pressed me quite severely"
(Groom of the Chamber Johann Georg Friedrich Pistor)
Many a visitor to Hohentwiel was overcome by poetic imagination. A large number of poems witness the literary associations evoked by this famous place:
(Thoughts at the Belvedere of the Tower of Hohentwiel)
Euch grüß ich, Uferfächer
Des Bodensees, entzückt,
Wie einen Freudenbecher
Hat Euch Natur geschmückt.
Gleich Hesperiden blühend,
Lacht Euer Zauberkreis,
Im Schmelz der Farben glühend
Die Stirn im Gletschereis.
(...) Hoch über den Gewässern
Steht´auf getürmten Kranz
Von alten stolzen Schlössern
Erlosch´ner Zeiten Glanz.
Du Hohentwiel, vor allen,
Sinnbild der Heldenkraft,
Pflegst einst in Hadwigs Hallen
Gesang und Wissenschaft.
Und liegst du auch begraben
In deiner Ahnengruft,
Frau Herzogin von Schwaben, -
Wie ewiger Rosenduft
Umweht´s mit reicher Welle
Heut´jeden, der sich naht
Der waldumschlossnen Stelle,
Die einst dein Fuß betrat.
(G.Gagg)
(Political and philosophical thoughts while feeding the chickens)
caused the lawyer and political prisoner Johann Jakob Moser to write the following:
"Feeding the chickens is in and of itself an act which can be performed by even the lowest farmer or the poorest maid. But a statesman thinks differently when doing so, a philosopher thinks differently than a smart or stupid farmer or maid. (...)
As soon as I stretch my head out of the window, the chickens receive me with their concert, and I certainly enjoy this natural, unstudied music rewarded with a small bit of bread more than many a great lord plagued by State crickets enjoys the greatest concerts placed in the newspapers. (...)
Uninvited and against the basic laws of this feeding constitution, a goose appeared, undoubtedly against time and circumstances to profit from its superior strength to the disadvantage of the chickens. Meanwhile, several chickens stood together and attacked as a group the goose, which then took to its heels. (...)"
"It was nearly a thousand years ago. The world knew neither of gunpowder nor of the art of printing.
Over the Hegau lay a gloomy, leaden sky, but nothing of the familiar darkness which lay over the entire Middle Ages could be perceived. From Lake Constance the mist rocks over the ream and covers the land and its people. (...)
Above it towers the dome of the high Twiel with its "Klingstein" teeth in the air. Those precipitous, picturesque mountain peaks in the valley, which was once flooded by the surging tide like the basin of the sea, stand as stone memorials to the prehistory of our old Mother Earth. (...)"