The city of Stuttgart is spread across valleys, parks, and hills, some of them covered in vineyards, and this surprises visitors who associate the German city as being the “cradle of the automobile.” It’s not an unwarranted surprise. Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Daimer, Bosch, Dinkelacker, among others, all have their headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany’s sixth largest city. The town is also known for its Schneeball pastry, Jewish history, and grizzly medieval crime museum.

For our purposes, however, we point out “Nachtwaechterbrunnen,” a sculptural fountain topped with a statue. It is this statue (In English, it is translated into, “The Night Watchman”) that draws our attention.

Centuries ago, watchmen made their rounds while their villages slept. Their jobs were to light lamps, but especially to check for fires, a deadly threat to towns during medieval times when buildings were made largely of straw, wattle and daub, cob and wood. They sang a song on the hour to remind townsfolk to take precautions against fire, and they carried both a horn to sound the alarm, and a hellebarde, or hooked spear. As important as the job was, it was regarded as a lowly occupation, above only a gravedigger and executioner, and because the watchman was a creature of the night, he was viewed by some with nefarious superstition.

At the feet of this bronze watchman is what most Schnauzer fanciers believe is a Standard Schnauzer. Because it is dated 1620, it’s thought that the piece underscores the antiquity of the breed. This date is likely inaccurate since the sculptor, Adolf Fremd, was born in 1853, and the lower structure created by Heinrich Halbhuber came in 1900.

This in no way diminishes the breed’s ancient roots:  A portrait of a Standard Schnauzer appears several times in the works of Albrecht Durer between the years of 1492 and 1504. These images predate the first appearance of the word, “Schnauzer” which came in 1842 in dog literature (a topic for another day), but the images of the dog’s breed are clear in those old paintings and etchings.

Are we certain that any night watchman was accompanied by a Schnauzer? No, but neither can it be said that a night watchman was never accompanied by a Schnauzer. Since it’s known with certainty that Schnauzer-like dogs performed household and farm duties in Germany since the Middle Ages, we like the odds that one did this sort of work, too.

As aside, this lovely sculpture was nearly destroyed in the war.