“When the motion detector beeps, I never know who’s coming up the stairs – it’s always a surprise,” says Blanca Knodel. After all, it takes a few minutes for those who caused the beep to arrive at the top, because exactly 134 steps lead up the 58-meter-high tower and directly to their apartment door. The 71-year-old is the latest in a long line of tower guards who have been keeping watch on the Blue Tower of Bad Wimpfen in northern Baden-Württemberg since the Thirty Years’ War, and she is Germany’s only tower keeper to live right next to her workplace.
Today there are only a few towers left in Germany, for example in Münster or Annaberg-Buchholz. While their job used to be to warn of danger, today they are a kind of tourist attraction.
It’s quite possible that the panting visitors also have one or two shopping bags in their hands, because if the weekly bulky shopping gets too heavy, Knodel places the bags at the bottom of the door with a note saying “Please bring it up with you”.
At the top there is a glass of watchtower sparkling wine as a reward for the visitor. This was not the case for a good five years, because the tower remained hidden under tarpaulins and was extensively restored: Blanca Knodel, who moved here in 1996, has only lived in the tower since September 6, 2022 and welcomes curious visitors.
They come for the fantastic view from the battlements (for which you climb another 37 steps) and for the history. The Blue Tower, built around 1170, was once part of an imperial palace owned by Barbarossa and his descendants, and the Staufer emperors were guests 22 times. After a major fire at the beginning of the 14th century, only a few buildings and facades survived in the village, including the Blue Tower.
But not only Barbarossa left his mark in the small town near Heilbronn. At the beginning of the 14th century, Wimpfen (at that time still without a “spa”) became a free imperial city, and the small settlement flourished. Many of the town’s crooked half-timbered houses date from this period.
It is a miracle that they are still preserved, because Wimpfen was overrun or besieged more than 80 times by the various warring factions of the Thirty Years’ War between 1618 and 1648. Not even every tenth resident survived, and the city sank into abject poverty.
Only when it was possible in 1817 to extract the long-known salt deposits as brine did the tide turn: Wimpfen became a health resort, and from 1930 it was even allowed to adorn itself with “Bad” before its name. Politically and industrially, however, it remained so insignificant that it was not bombed during World War II.
In all this turmoil, the Blue Tower stood steadfast. Which in itself is a small miracle, because it is anchored just two meters into the ground – actually not enough. “The question is not whether it falls, but in which direction,” joke the Bad Wimpfener for decades. The fact that he still doesn’t show any inclination to lean in any direction makes her take this physical anomaly calmly.
Lightning strikes, on the other hand, were dangerous for the tower, most recently in 1984. Over the centuries, it has also been repeatedly rebuilt and strengthened – and often inappropriately: over the centuries, the structure simply became too heavy.
In 2017, the city therefore decided to comprehensively refurbish the tower. During this time, Blanca Knodel went “five years into exile”, as she says, in an apartment a few meters away from the tower – but not at the top. Thanks to the work, which cost more than six million euros, it is now freshly renovated and waiting for guests.
For Blanca Knodel, being a watchman is much more than just a job: “In the mid-eighties, after years in Spain and Canada, I came back to Bad Wimpfen and stood in for the watchman when he was ill. And then I knew: If it goes down, then I’ll go up there.” In 1996 the time had come.
She raised her three children here on 53 square meters, in a cleverly planned apartment with alcoves and bunk beds, even a whirlpool and a piano weighing four hundredweight. The latter caused a moment of shock for the freight forwarders when Knodel jokingly called out to the porters who had arrived at the top, “But that’s the wrong piano”.
In any case, she wants to hold out until 2036, when she would be 85 and the oldest tower warden in history. Until then, she will continue to welcome guests in German, English and Spanish – and some of them keep coming back because a chat with Blanca Knodel and a glass of Türmerinnen sparkling wine at sunset are always worth the 134 steps.
The Blue Tower is open all year round, Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Mondays. Admission: three euros, discount for children and spa guests (badwimpfen.de)
