I had not intended to visit Weissenburg, but I met some Germans on holiday at the Pappenheim castle who urged me to go. The site of the fort, seen in the map below, was found in the 1890s. The therme was a different issue!
The story of the therme, or Roman bath, is as follows. In the mid-1970s, a plan was developed to buy some farmland on the edge of then-growing Weissenburg in order to build an apartment complex. As the construction crews began to excavate they encountered the remains of building foundations in 1977. What they stumbled upon was the fortified outpost (castell) of Biriciana. This outpost guarded the frontier near the Altmuhle River and also served as a frontier trading post, or link, between the Roman Empire and the so-called "barbarian" Germans to the north.
Right, the reconstructed main gate of the castell.
These photos were taken in 2005.
What is fascinating about Biriciana is HOW it disappeared. What many don't realize is that the Germans outside of the Roman Empire were Christianized around 200 AD. While they held to the Arian form of Christianity, they in many ways embodied a hard-core element of Christian believers. Moreover, the Roman Empire had cut its own throat with its massive state welfare system and exobiant taxes that were destroying the middle class. Eventually the taxes became so onerous that many middle class craftsmen and small businessmen fled the empire for.... the German tribes! The Germans welcomed them with open arms, even as their own lazy bums, looking for a government welfare check, migrated to the Roman Empire. In large measure the two cultures became topsy turvy. Rome, professing Christianity externally, espoused libertine sex and a massive welfare state that plundered the middle class for the sake of buying off the support of organized mobs. Germany, the so-called "barbarians," were more Christian than Rome, and the German armies that eventually consumed the Roman empire were largely composed of the sons of Roman emigres, while the armies trying to defend Rome were largely composed of the sons of welfare seekers from Germany. In essence, the middle class of Rome fled the extreme taxes of the Empire for a land of real freedom where they could ply their trades without their wealth being confiscated. What was left in Rome was either unable, or more importantly, unwilling to defend what Rome had become. In the process, places like Biriciana were consumed by the German troops. These locations, with their baths and openly touted homosexuality, were seen as severely offensive to the more pious Germans, who proceded to destroy these places down to the very foundations and then heap soil over them to wipe their memory clean from the earth. The final dagger thrust that ended the Roman empire was therefore delivered by the sons of Romans who were disgusted with what Rome had become.
Above left and left, two views of how the therme was designed. Pillars on the ground were topped by a stone floor. Heat was forced around the pillars and natural convection heated the floors and the room above. This was a form of early central heating. The materials seen are authentic, dating back to about 300 AD.
Below, an excavated section that shows one of the heating ducts to force the hot air under the floors.
Left, one of the actual baths. A floor would have been installed and hot air would have heated the floor and kept the water hot as it was pushed in by a series of pipes from a central heating location. An ingenius system!
Left, a good view of the stone floor placed over the pillars where the hot air circulated.
The therme was originally built by Roman legionaires as they set up camps to guard the frontier. It was actually located a different location away from the main camp, probably to keep any polluted water from filtering into the camp's wells.
