Bingen and the Mice tower, Hildegard von Bingen

Lying where the Nahe flows into the Rhine, and exactly where the Rhine begins to break through the slate mountain range, Bingen has had a strategic importance. This started in Roman times after Caesar's Gallic wars (58-51 B.C.). The garrison built here secured military passageways. As the main axis road of the Hunsrück, the "Via Ausonia" connected the regions of Mainz (Moguntiacum) and Bingen (Binginium), with late antique imperial city of Trier (Augusta Treverorum). The "Ausonius Way", is named for the Roman poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius who travelled by coach over the Hunsrück from Mainz to Trier in the year 370 A.D., to assume duties as educator at the Court. He wrote the poem "Mosella" describing his impressions of his travels.

As the Rhine gained importance as a trade route and ship travel steadily increased, Bingen was able to make its strategic site pay off by the raising of taxes. The Mice tower was built for just this purpose as a toll tower on one of the small islands in the Rhine at Bingen. (Originally built in the 13th and 14th centuries, later revamped as a signal tower for travel through the Binger Loch.)

As Legend has it, the Archbishop of Mainz met his death here in a memorable way. The story goes as follows: The man who was known for his hard- heartedness towards the poor had begun to hoard grain, thereby plunging the people into a famine. Ironically, he received his just punishment in the form of a plague of mice. The hungry animals not only destroyed his grain, but they also followed him personally. He fled to the Mice Tower in fear, but the mice got up there and ate him. Unquestionably: dulce et decorum est pro iustitia mori. Vivant sequentes!

On the other side of the Nahe, across from Bingen, is the hillock Rupertsberg, where the Benedictine Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) —who was born in the region of Alzey and grew up on the Disibodenberg in the Nahe valley— founded her first convent. She is a remarkable woman who, as the first German woman mystic, has reached a high degree of popularity with her writings and music in recent times. Her works in the field of biology and medicine are just as distinguished. She collected and documented the flora of the Nahe region. In Hildegard von Bingen's "Physica", more than 250 types of plants are recorded and many folk cures and "natural" methods of treatment are described.