Inside the Castle 3

　　We climbed up inside the castle and looked out from the window. The first picture shows the scenery at that time. The view from the castle was wonderful, but I guessed how hard people had worked to carry the necessities of life up there. They must have utilized horses, donkeys and/or something like that.
　　I took a picture of the wall of the castle from one of the windows. Can you imagine where we were? We ascended up to the higher level of the castle. The next picture is of us in a storage room, where old weapons were exhibited. You can see an old cannon behind us. The next picture shows the base of the castle. It was built on a big rock. The last picture is of an emblem that was attached to the wall over the entrance, which was a deer. It must have been a kind of god to the people who lived in the castle.

(Vocabulary from comments)
test  評価［判断］基準
Profits are the ultimate test of a company's success.  利益は企業の成功度を示す最も重要な判断基準だ．
intrusive  立ち入った, でしゃばりな

Comments

[KUMO]

Thank you, Mr/Ms. Gerrit Ulrichs.

I understand what the deer means.

By the way, judging from the suffix of your e-mail address, do you live in Germany? I'm thinking of visiting Germany again. I've been to Freiburg twice and I'd like to see around the northern Germany next time.

[Gerrit Ulrichs]

The deer is not a god, it is a crest. It stands symbolically for the family or clan that owned the castle and the land around for a certain period of time. The deer is the crest of the Hohenzollern and the hind the crest of the Tierstein (which is exactly the one locatetd above the entrance). On other places inside the castle you find crests of eagles that come from the Staufer era. The hunting trophies of deers are simply explained by the fact that on the one hand the deer is a symbol for the crest and on the other hand that deers are the calssical prey in western Europe and hunting of deers was the aristocracies privilege what is one of the reasons you find a lot of hunting references in European heraldry.
I hope my test is not intrusive.