The inhabitants of course have different tricks to live a decent life in spite of this rule, basically by ignoring it completely and leaving it up to artists and tourists to admire the castle and its tastefully built empty ruin walls.
Obviously not everyone who goes to the castle is a foreigner. I recently went to see a performance in the court-yard, and got to sit next to someone, who most definitely didn't look Japanese. He much more looked like someone like Hans from Braunschweig. I was even the more certain about this, as Hans happens to be one of my close colleagues, and he had bought the ticket for me.
The Student Beggar is an operetta by Millöcker, that was written 1881, a year which you can turn upside down without changing it. As the performance started, the sun was still shining on the castle walls through the mighty trees. People were emptying their beers. (5 mark deposit on the glass, so don't break it!) And I was breathing heavily, as I had run the 300 odd steps up to the castle, after having been stuck in a picturesque German traffic jam.
In the beginning of the play, the main character is a prince from Karlsburg, who comes to just Heidelberg to study for one year, a duration that may not be sufficient for writing a thesis, but on the other hand, it's not sufficient for any other serious study either, unless you're a noble prince. The first day the prince joins a social student union, gets drunk, falls in love with a bar-maid, is called back to Karlsburg, because his father is ill, and promises the bar-maid to return some day. She says she believes him. Both of them know that the only reason those lines made it into the spectacle is because they are blunt lies.
At this stage I was getting more and more curious as to when that beggar would start begging. To give me time to think about this, there was an interval, and everyone rushed to the bar to get their 5 marks and another beer. Waiting for my second beer I checked my ticket. Reading the title once more, but slowly, made me realise that the beggar might never appear, because this was The Student Prince by Romberg, not the The Student Beggar by Millöcker. That explained why the hero had so many servants he had to conceal things from all the time. Not a common problem to beggars, I had thought to myself, but not being an expert on the subject, I hadn't bothered to discuss it with Hans.
Hans then went on to explain the complicated relation between students and beer at German universities in the late 19th century, a piece of information I may find vital some day, so I will not reveal this secret five letter word, starting like "dry" but rhyming on "ink". Hans then went on to ask me if I had understood much of the spectacle, because, it being played for tourists and in English, he hadn't quite got the plot. Considering that I hadn't even understood which operetta it was, I truthfully answered "no".
The scene after the interval is the castle of Karlsburg, where the prince, who now is king, goes around and misses the bar-maid. He is supposed to marry a noble lady instead, but doesn't seem to appreciate the advantage of not marrying a simple bar-maid with the play's only American accent, but a noble lady with an Polish accent. Suddenly he realises, that he actually could go back to Heidelberg, as promised, something which never struck him before. He goes back, drinks some beer, sings some student songs, visits the bar-maid, who says
"I've waited for you all those years, and now you're going to marry someone else."
"Yes", he says, and the play is over.
11 August 1998
by Magnus Lewan