See under Gröninger Fass.
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 acted as a patron of the arts, had magnificent buildings erected and attempted to increase the prosperity of his country by opening up new mines and draining marshland. He is said to have introduced the potato to Germany in 1597. The reason for the construction was the lost bet of a bishop from the Rhineland. The barrel was finished by the cooper Michael Werner from Landau in 1594. He had also made the first Heidelberg cask (where today there is an even larger cask). Such giant wine barrels are the result of a...