The Kaiser Pfalz Goslar

This is the 11th Century Imperial Palace of the Holy Roman Emperors at Goslar.  The Kaiser House seen here was the favourite residence of the Salian Emperors and it was here that Henry IV as born, he also received here the letter from Pope Gregory VII that started the Investiture Controversy.  It was also the scene of Frederick Barbarossa begging Henry the Lion Duke of Brunswick for troops.

The Collegiate Church on the other side of the green fell down from the 16th to the early 19th Centuries and was demolished in 1819.  The Imperial Palace was about to follow when in 1868 the scheme to repair and reconstruct the building, as a symbol of a revived and vigorous German Empire.  The murals inside feature Charlemagne, Barbarossa and centrally an apotheosis of Wilhelm I and his son the future Emperor Ferdinand who married Queen Victoria's eldest daughter Victoria.

Featured here in front of the Palace are two statues from the 19th Century work:  one is the Emperor Barbarossa, the other is the Emperor Wilhelm I.  The reasons for the revival of the Kaiser Saal and the new statures and the link of the Second Reeich with the Salian dynasty is obvious.op