Schloss Jägersberg

In the second half of the sixteenth century, John III, Count of Nassau-Saarbrücken constructed the first castle in Neunkirchen: a quadrangular building with a tower on each corner.

[2] The palace was primarily used for hunting and festivities, such as the six-day party in honor of the wedding of Prince Louis and Princess Wilhelmine of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.

He writes about his visit to Neunkirchen in his book Dichtung und Wahrheit: Nevertheless, some pleasant adventures, and a surprising firework at nightfall, not far from Neukirch, interested us young fellows almost more than these important experiences.

For as a few nights before, on the banks of the Saar, shining clouds of glow-worms hovered around us, betwixt rock and thicket; so now the spark-spitting forges played their sprightly firework towards us.

We passed, in the depth of night, the smelting-houses situated in the bottom of the valley, and were delighted with the strange half -gloom of these dens of plank, which are but dimly lighted by a little opening in the glowing furnace.

The noise of the water, and of the bellows driven by it; the fearful whizzing and shrieking of the blast of air, which, raging into the smelted ore, stuns the hearing and confuses the senses, — drove us away, at last, to turn into Neukirch, which is built up against the mountain.

Here, surrounded by mountains, over a forest-grown, dark soil, which seemed yet darker in contrast with the clear horizon of a summer night, with the glowing, starry vault above me, I sat for a long time by myself on the deserted spot, and thought I never had felt such a solitude.

How sweetly, then, was I surprised by the distant sound of a couple of French horns, which at once, like the fragrance of balsam, enlivened the peaceful atmosphere.

Then there awakened within me the image of a lovely being, which had retired into the background before the motley objects of these travelling-days, but which now unveiled itself more and more, and drove me from the spot back to my quarters, where I made preparations to set off as early as possible.