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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 9h

Immaculate drip from the 18th century canons of the Mainz cathedral.

Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Pretty sure there's a gene somehow now awakening in the DNA of many male American stars of the nineties, suddenly compelling them to play a WW2 general.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Today I learned about Paul Briscoe. His mother, a Nazi sympathiser (later convicted of wartime espionage), left him in Miltenberg, Bavaria during the Third Reich. He joined the Hitler Youth & participated in the pogroms. He considered it a great sin and spent his last years writing about it.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

If you visit Fulda in Germany, don't skip the Michaelskirche next to the Dom. It's far, far older than the baroque cathedral and was built to serve as the cemetery chapel for the monks of the monastery in the 9th century. The church is supposedly modeled on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Tradition says Bonifatius tried blocking a sword with a book - the Ragyndrudis Codex - the book, cut marks visible, is still in the Landesbibliothek Hesse, in Fulda.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Down a short flight of stairs in Fulda's baroque cathedral lies the tomb of Bonifatius, the apostle to the Germans. Over three decades he helped strengthen Christianity across what is today Germany, before being killed sometime around 754 by pagan Frisians near Dokkum in the modern Netherlands.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Michael Tracey. Look up what he's doing these days...

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Allow me to propose an idea. Stuchbery’s Law: The culture-war grifter must become ever more transgressive and absurd to remain an outlaw. But every escalation makes them less bankable, less influential and more marginal. Hate will eat itself.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Bring back tombstones with bloody great skulls, I say. (Jakobuskirche, Groß-Auheim, Hesse 🇩🇪)

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

For a truly striking mediaeval tower, you can't miss the Adolfsturm in Friedberg (Hesse), Germany. Built around 1347, and 58m tall, it was the most visible reminder that Burg Friedberg was *the* local power in the Wetterau region. It also held a dungeon beneath for prisoners.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Do I call the International Criminal Court?

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Yesterday I found a conjunction of laneways in the German town of Friedberg called 'Five-Finger Square'. I'm aware there's another in Frankfurt. Extremely fantasy-author adjacent. Hell, it's giving Pratchett.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Burg Friedberg, 25 minutes north of Hanau in the Wetterau region.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If you're wondering just how ridiculously fragmented the Holy Roman Empire could be, I walked across a former independent principality today. It was 300 metres wide. That was the longer axis.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

My favourite local Renaissance oddball comes from the village that I live in. Johannes de Ingadine was the priest of Steinheim, but before that, he was an in-demand astrologer and dabbler in the occult, writing some classic texts on palmreading and phrenology.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's not so much some coked up thug live streaming from your doorstep, whether it be Tommy, Tate or Tommo. It's the legions of utterly cooked followers, with a deeply troubling parasocial relationship, that are the real threat.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I've never been interested in claiming any of the credit for exposing Tommy Robinson's grifting years ago. What does bother me is wondering how much hurt & suffering could have been avoided if people had taken what was obvious then seriously, rather than waiting until the damage was done.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Why wasn't he recognised? Typical story - self-taught, without the connections required to defend his invention. Died at 40 of tuberculosis.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Alexander Graham Bell may have perfected the telephone, but Phillip Reis invented it. Here's his birthplace in Gelnhausen, Hesse. He may have also developed the roller skate we we know it. Fascinating bloke!

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

15th century. See previous skeet. Probably made in the area, or along the Rhine.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

It's been great to get back into exploration mode, and hopefully I'll be back to telling stories again soon.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The tapestries were almost lost, until they were found in a dark and dusty corner by the churchwarden in the 19th century. A few years ago funds were raised to repair damage to the tapestries two and house them in a climate-controlled container. (4/4)

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The second, from almost a century later, is devoted to the Virgin Mary and depicts her with a unicorn - a symbol of purity and virginity. (3/4)

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

One side depicts the passion of Jesus, and has been dated to the beginning of the century. (2/4)

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

If you visit the Marienkirche in Gelnhausen in Hessen, don't leave until you've opened the door to the right of the altar and entered the sacristy, where two little known treasures are stored - two 15th century tapestries... (1/4)

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The real-life, historical Faust would go on to be fired from a teaching position for sodomy, then allegedly blew himself up conducting alchemical experiments in an inn (also called Der Löwe) in Staufen in Breisgau. Goethe aside, where's the film of his life?

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Der Löwe in Gelnhausen, Hessen, is one of Germany’s oldest surviving inns. It was once the base of the real-life Dr Johannes Faust, who performed supposed magical feats there, until occult scholar & churchman Johannes Trithemius heard and alerted Faust’s creditors. Faust fled to the next town.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

That's because it might be the only bit left of a castle on the site. The found a burial of someone who gave every indication of having owned the place - that's maybe who Godobert is.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Tucked across a suburban street outside the walls of Gelnhausen in Hessen, is the Godobertuskapelle, a chapel which existed before Frederick Barbarossa turned up and made the city an imperial seat. That is to say, it's heading towards a millennia in age. These days, you can get married there.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Vale Tim Curry. He finally escaped to the one place not corrupted by capitalism.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Dude essentially becomes a child refugee, joins the fighting along the Rhine during the darkest years of the Thirty Years’ War and survives. Then he gets a desk job & eventually turns the most horrific time of his life into a hallucinatory acid trip through war, religious turmoil and human nature.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Gelnhausen, in Hessen, where I've been lurking lately, was the birthplace of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen. His response to the personal traumas of the Thirty Years' War was to write one of the most imaginative German novels ever written: The Adventurous Simplicissimus.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

You want to set up an apfelwein tavern, with a stable and a few sacks of straw to sleep on? Here's the spot.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Real estate hot tip, if you’re in the market in the Holy Roman Empire, circa 1200–1803. This is the narrowest point of the Via Regia and Hohe Straße - important roads connecting Frankfurt to Leipzig, and among medieval Germany’s most important trade routes. You can find it in Gelnhausen, Hessen.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The 'Hexenturm' in Gelnhausen, Hessen, held around forty local men and women accused of witchcraft from 1584 to 1633. Of particular note is Elizabeth Strupp, executed in 1599. Her insistence on only naming those already executed broke the chain of accusations, ending the first panic.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Wandering around the campus of Offenbach's design school yesterday, I found the Isenburger Schloss. The palace of the Counts of Isenburg was donated in 1787 to a messianic Jewish cult, led by Jacob Frank & daughter, Eva. The stories the locals told about what they thought was going on inside...

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I'll need your records from July 128AD to September 131AD.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Scratching an old itch: I'm taking commissions again - a piece or two a month on history, travel and culture, with a soupçon of social commentary. Bylines: @theguardian.com / @the-independent.com / @bylinetimes.bsky.social / @huffpost.com among others. Editors: My inbox is open. Reposts welcome.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Germany's oldest precisely-dated document, a receipt for unknown goods issued on what we'd recognise as April 5th, 130 CE. It was found in 1997, during excavations of a Roman vicus in Hanau, east of Frankfurt. Germany teaches you to hold on to every scrap of paper, but this is next level.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Yup, I live in Hanau. Many Ebbelwoi taverns near me.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Well played, Eintracht Frankfurt. The 'bembel' design of a traditional apfelwein jug has made its way onto the club's 26-27 trikot.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I used to be in a position where the only way I could support myself was to have an opinion and write about it. There were very lean times. Holes in my shoes times. Would rather have gone without a roof over my head than to punch down like this.

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Mike Stuchbery 💀🕯️ @mikestuchbery.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Because they've got a fucking disability, Kathleen.

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