The Emperor Asleep in the Mountain
Deep inside a German mountain, an emperor sits asleep at a stone table, his beard growing through it, waiting for the day he's needed.
What was reported
The emperor Frederick Barbarossa drowned while on crusade in 1190, but legend said he never really died. He sleeps in a cave beneath the Kyffhäuser hills, sitting at a stone table, and his red beard has grown so long it has wound around the table, or grown right through it.
Every hundred years, the story goes, he wakes and asks whether the ravens are still circling the mountain. If they are, he sleeps another hundred years. When they're gone, he'll come out to restore the empire's glory.
Explanations offered
Sleeping-hero legends are told across Europe, of King Arthur in Britain, Holger the Dane in Denmark and others. The Kyffhäuser story became a German national symbol in the 19th century, and a giant monument of Barbarossa waking was built on the hill. Beneath it is the Barbarossa Cave, a real cave visitors can enter.
- When
- Legend since the Middle Ages
- Where
- Kyffhäuser hills, Thuringia, Germany
- Witnesses
- German tradition
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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