Brocken - Literary Mentions

Literary Mentions

• Goethe described the Brocken in his Faust, first published in 1808, as the center of revelry for witches on Walpurgisnacht (April 30; the eve of St Walpurga's Day).

Now to the Brocken the witches ride;

The stubble is gold and the corn is green;

There is the carnival crew to be seen,

And Squire Urianus will come to preside.

So over the valleys our company floats,

With witches a-farting on stinking old goats.

Goethe may have gained inspiration from two rock formations on the mountain's summit, the Teufelskanzel (Devil's Pulpit) and the Hexenaltar (Witches' Altar).

• Another famous visitor on the Brocken, author Heinrich Heine, wrote the book Harzreise ("A Harz Journey") published in 1826. He says:

The mountain somehow appears so Germanically stoical, so understanding, so tolerant, just because it affords a view so high and wide and clear. And should such mountain open its giant eyes, it may well see more than we, who like dwarfs just trample on it, staring from stupid eyes.

The summit register entry Many stones, tired bones, prospect: none, Heinrich Heine ("Viele Steine, müde Beine, Aussicht keine, Heinrich Heine") is a popular, though unsourced phrase related to the weary ascent and the mostly foggy conditions.

• The teacher Heinrich Pröhle collected the Brockensagen tales and legends as well as the etymology of the geographic names in the Harz. He carefully examined the Teufelskanzel and the Hexenaltar, mentioned above.
• Slothrop and Geli Tripping experience the famous Brocken Spectre in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow, as the Mittelbau-Dora labour camp in the Harz mountains north of Nordhausen from 1943 was the home of the V-2 rocket production. In David Foster Wallace's Pynchon-influenced Infinite Jest the characters Remy Marathe and Hugh Steeply also experience the Brocken spectre on a ridge in the desert outside Tucson.