[I had once more assumed the directorship of the University of Notre Dame Foreign Studies Program in Innsbruck for the two year period 1982-84. My wife and I flew on August 1, 1982 from Chicago to Frankfurt. There we took a rental car and drove along the “Romantische Strasse” (Romantic Road) - Würzburg, Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber, Dinkelsbühl - to Innsbruck, where we settled down for the next two years.]
[August 5], 1982
Tilman Riemenschneider (1460-1531)
On our way from Würzburg to Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber, we stopped at Creglingen to see the nearby “Herrgottskirche” (Chapel of Our Lord) with its famous altarpiece dedicated to the Virgin Mary carved by Tilman Riemenschneider. We met there not only pilgrims to the St. Mary’s shrine and a masterpiece of late Gothic art, but even more so people, who were clinging to a long gone German past and groping for something to hold on to with such deeply-moved devotion I had never seen before.