BINGEN MOUSE TOWER
The Bingen Mouse Tower was built as a defense and watchtower and was intended to reinforce the customs barrier system at Ehrenfels Castle.
Like so many things, it was destroyed in the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648).
From 1856 to 1858, the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV had it rebuilt in the neo-Gothic style according to the plans of the Cologne cathedral builder Ernst Friedrich Zwirner and the architect Friedrich Albert Cremer.
According to legend, the cold-hearted Archbishop of Mainz Hatto II had the tower built in the 10th century when there was a great famine in the country. He gave the starving population access to his full granaries. When the people continued to beg, he is said to have locked them in a barn, which he then had his henchmen set on fire. He is said to have commented on the screams of pain of the people being burned alive with the words “Can you hear the grain mice whistling?” According to legend, mice then came running from everywhere and swarmed through Hatto's chambers. Out of fear, his servants ran away and Hatto himself fled in a boat down the Rhine to the tower, where he thought he was safe. However, the mice followed him across the Rhine and ate Hatto, who was trapped in the tower, alive. This is how the starving people were avenged.