Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1886 — The Tower of Ulm Cathedral. [ARTICLE]

The Tower of Ulm Cathedral.

Flush with the main wall of the church uprises the tower, an elegant mass of late decorated gothic, in which is carried out to greater completeness the idea developed by Master Erwin, at Strasburg, of pilaster strips before the deeper lying windows, thus effectuating in the tower the idea started in the porch. In this tower, which is easily ascended, and which commands an extensive view of the surrounding plains and the Swabian Alps, hang a large number of bells, all bearing names indicative of their purpose. Some have long been silent, among them one named the “wine bell,” once rung nightly at 10 o’clock for the purpose of fetching the male population home from the tavern. On the top is a quaint Latin inscription commemorating the foolhardiness of the Emperor Maximilian, a lover, it would seem, of foolhardy deeds—for Innspruck has a cognate tale to tell—who, ascending this tower in 1492, leaped upon the parapet, and balancing himself on one leg, swung round the other in mid air; a truly royal form of recreation. In the tower, too, is kept a typical “Ulmhead,” the largest tobacco pipe ever made, excepting always her Majesty’s in Si. Catherne’s docks. Tradition telleth that a student from Tubingen once smoked it empty after a steady pull of nine hours. Tradition telleth not how the student felt afterward. On the roof of the nave sits the image of a huge sparrow, known as the "Ulmer-spatz,” a figure that has sat here from time immemorial as a mementp to the Ulmers of the stupidity of their forefathers, who needed a bird to show them that a beam carried crosswise could not enter into a narrow gate.