Koblenz: Ehrenbreitstein and the Deutsches Eck, 1937

Far below the fortress, paddle steamers lie at their moorings and a goods train rolls along the bank; a young man raises his binoculars towards the town, young hikers study a leaflet at the parapet, and women in summer dresses stand at the orientation table while a man in a peaked cap points out the bronze horseman of Wilhelm I on the point where the Moselle meets the Rhine. In the courtyard, small groups wander across the empty parade ground before the arcaded barracks.

Prussia built Ehrenbreitstein after 1815 to guard its new Rhine Province. Under the Versailles treaty the fortress lay in the demilitarised zone, and American troops held it until 1923; German soldiers returned only in March 1936. The monument, unveiled in 1897 before Wilhelm II, stood until American artillery struck it in 1945.