Abbot Gerhard is one of those figures who appear in a local pond name and then disappear back into the archive, and there is no need to invent a biography for him. What matters is the office. A Cistercian abbot was the head of a self-governing community of monks, elected by them, responsible for their souls and their accounts, and Maulbronn's abbots were notable managers, who took on the work of draining marshes, laying out ponds and building mills. A pond named for one of them is a small monument to the idea that holiness and good drainage could go together.
The Cistercians arrived in the Stromberg region in the twelfth century, bringing a way of working that had been developed in Burgundy and spread across Europe. They preferred remote valleys, because they wanted solitude, and they made them productive with hard work. Monks and lay brothers cleared forest, planted vineyards, kept bees and bred fish, and the monastery's wine was famous. The huge cellar, the Kelter, still stands, and the abbey was a model of rational estate management that influenced the surrounding countryside for centuries. After the Reformation, the monastery became a Protestant school, and that tradition continues in the seminary buildings, where the likes of Johannes Kepler and Hermann Hesse once studied.
The pond itself is a modest sheet of water in the woods a kilometre from town, reached by a path through beech and oak. It is a good place to see how the monks used the land, with the dam, the sluice and the channel still readable in the shape of the ground. A rest here, on a bench in the shade, is pleasant. In early morning, you may see a heron fishing in the shallows, and in spring, frogs make a surprising amount of noise.
For riders, the roads around Maulbronn are quiet and generally smooth, curving through woods, vineyards and fields. Fuel is available in Maulbronn, along with bakeries, cafés and inns serving Swabian food. If the weather is bad, the monastery itself is a fine place to spend an hour or two. A visit in May or in October is ideal, and in winter the forest paths are muddy or icy.