The "Wirtshaus an der Lahn" is a currently unmanaged inn on the banks of the Lahn in Dausenau and allegedly the scene of the legendary innkeeper verses
The "Wirtshaus an der Lahn" is a currently unmanaged inn on the banks of the Lahn in Dausenau and allegedly the scene of the legendary innkeeper verses. It is located in an old half-timbered house directly on the banks of the Lahn. Well protected by the largely preserved historical town wall of Dausenau, it offered skippers and wagoners a safe place to stop for the night. Evidence of troop hospitality from the Thirty Years War testifies to the more than 350-year-old history of this house. Goethe also passed this inn more than half a dozen times on his travels between 1774 and 1815, and it is said that the following happened here: Goethe sat at the table and drank spritzer, and was ridiculed by the gentlemen sitting at the neighbouring table.
Goethe then scribbled the following verse on the tabletop, which could still be read under a glass plate until 1935:
"Water alone makes you mute. that's what the fish in the stream show.
Wine alone makes you stupid, see the gentlemen at the table.
Since I want neither of them to be, I drink water with wine.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)