Götz von Berlichingen, the knight with the iron hand, was born at Jagsthausen castle in about 1480, and he would probably be amused to know that he is best remembered today for a rude phrase. In Goethe's play about him, Götz tells an imperial messenger exactly what the emperor can do, a line that every German knows. The castle still stands in the village, now a hotel, and in summer the Burgfestspiele, an open-air theatre festival, stages the play in the castle courtyard. Long before Götz, the Romans were here too: a fort stood at Jagsthausen on the line of the Upper Germanic Limes, and in the hills around, a series of watchtowers, numbered by archaeologists as WP 9/2 to 9/13, kept watch along the frontier.
The Limes in this region is remarkable for one thing: between Walldürn and Welzheim, it ran in an almost perfectly straight line for about eighty kilometres, regardless of hills, valleys and rivers, a feat of Roman surveying that still astonishes. The towers were placed so that they could see each other and pass signals, and today, the sites are mostly marked by small mounds, foundations or reconstructions in the woods and fields. The World Heritage site includes the whole line from the Rhine to the Danube.
The landscape is the Hohenlohe region, a plateau of fields, woods and small villages cut by the deep, winding valleys of the Jagst and the Kocher. The roads along the valleys follow the rivers in long, gentle curves past mills, castles and vineyards, and the roads that climb out of the valleys onto the plateau offer short, twisty sections with good surfaces. It is a popular area with motorcyclists, especially at weekends, but traffic is generally light. The towns of Schöntal, with its baroque monastery, and Langenburg, with its castle above the Jagst, are well worth a detour.
Forchtenberg, about six kilometres away, has fuel and shops, and Jagsthausen has a few inns and cafés. The food of Hohenlohe is hearty: try Maultaschen, large stuffed pasta squares, Schäufele, roast pork shoulder, and Spätzle with plenty of sauce, washed down with a local beer or a glass of wine from the Kocher valley.