Stauferstele

Stauferstele stands in front of the Evangelical Lutheran St Paul’s Church in Dinkelsbühl’s historic old town. The octagonal monument rises two and a half metres above its base and measures eighty centimetres across opposite faces. Jura travertine from Pappenheim in the Altmühltal gives the stone a solid, pale presence beside the church. A golden band crowns the structure, recalling the octagonal imperial crown.

Four sections shape the monument: base, shaft, middle piece and crown. Inscriptions cover four of its eight faces, with each text accompanied by a coat of arms. They connect Dinkelsbühl with the Staufer dynasty, whose rulers included Roman-German kings and emperors of the High Middle Ages. Friedrich I Barbarossa appears among them as the first emperor from the House of Hohenstaufen and the founder of Dinkelsbühl on Staufer family land.

The carved history also recalls the city’s first documented mention and its later standing as a free imperial city. Markus Wolf designed this form for a wider network of Staufer monuments across Germany, France, Austria, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. The eight-sided silhouette echoes Castel del Monte, the fortress associated with Friedrich II in southern Italy. Look closely at the upper band and the coats of arms: they turn historical connections into details you can read around the stone.