The Seven Sisters of Schönburg

Burg Schönburg stands on a steep ridge high above the Rhine and the old town of Oberwesel. Its name means "beautiful castle," and the Rhine legend of the Seven Sisters explains why. It is also the tale told by the boatmen about the line of jagged rocks that break the surface of the river below the castle when the water is low.

Long ago, the lord of Schönburg had seven daughters, and each was more beautiful than the last. He had longed for a son to carry on his name, and when none came, his disappointment weighed on him until he died. His sister, who had raised the girls like a mother, followed him soon after, and the seven sisters were left alone in the great castle with its lands and forests.

With no one left to guide them, the sisters grew proud and wild. They rode out to hunt with falcons like men, and they were as skilled as any knight. Word of their beauty spread far along the Rhine, and suitors came from every direction. The sisters welcomed them with smiles and teasing glances, let them hope, and then laughed at them and sent them away. Every heart they won was broken in turn, and the sisters thought it a fine game.

At last, a great feast was held at the castle, and two knights, each in love with a different sister, quarreled so fiercely that they drew their swords. An older guest, appalled by the scene, declared that the sisters must choose husbands and end the quarrels once and for all. The sisters agreed, to everyone's surprise, and promised to give their answer the next morning.

The suitors gathered in the castle hall at dawn, each one hopeful. But the sisters were not there. A maid told them the maidens were waiting by the river, so the knights hurried down the hill and found all seven sisters in a boat on the Rhine, in their finest clothes. The eldest sister rose and spoke for them all. They would never marry any of the knights, she said, for they valued their freedom too dearly. They were sailing downriver to visit a relative, and there they would find more suitors to tease and mock. Then the seven sisters laughed, and the boat pulled away from the shore.

The laughter did not last. A sudden storm swept over the river, the sky turned black, and the waves rose around the boat. The sisters' laughter turned to screams as the boat tipped over, and the Rhine swallowed them and their boat before anyone on the shore could help. When the storm passed, seven rocks stood out of the water where they had sunk. They are still there, and the boatmen call them the Seven Maidens, a warning to proud and hard-hearted young women.

Other versions of the legend add their own details. In one, the sisters did not run away on their own, but seven young men arrived by boat to carry them off, and as the party sailed away, a storm and eerie, hellish music dragged them into the river. In another, the sisters drew lots to decide which knight would marry which sister, and when the knights arrived to claim their brides, they found only straw dummies dressed in the sisters' clothes, while the real sisters had escaped by boat. And, according to the boatmen, the maidens turned to stone can be set free if a powerful person were ever to pull the rocks from the Rhine and use them to build a chapel.

The writer Karl Simrock suggested the legend may have a real origin, in seven beautiful countesses of the Arnstein family who were once known along the Rhine. Whatever its source, the story has been told on the Rhine for centuries, and visitors to Oberwesel can still look down from the castle and wonder which of the rocks is the proud eldest sister.