Gröning barrel

The construction of this giant wine cask was commissioned by Duke Heinrich Julius of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1564-1613), the Protestant bishop of Halberstadt Abbey (Saxony-Anhalt). He was a patron of the arts, had magnificent buildings erected and tried to increase the prosperity of his country by opening up new mines and draining swampland. It is said that he introduced the potato to Germany in 1597. The occasion for the construction was the lost bet of a bishop from the Rhineland. The barrel was completed by the cooper Michael Werner from Landau in 1594. He had also carpentered the first Heidelberg bar rel (where an even larger barrel stands today). Such giant wine barrels were the result of a competition that broke out in the 16th century between the Electors of the Palatinate and the Electors of Saxony for possession of the largest wine barrel and were thus purely prestige objects.

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Gröning barrel

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