A small brass doorknob on a residential side street in the upper town, easy to walk past if you do not know it is there. Cast in the early nineteenth century in the form of a grimacing apple-seller (Apfelweibla in local dialect), it commemorates a character from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story 'Der Goldne Topf'. The knob is now polished mirror-bright by generations of hands rubbing it for luck. Eisgrube 14, ten minutes' walk from the cathedral.
Apfelweibla
An ornate brass doorknob memorialising a Hoffmann short story
A story
E.T.A. Hoffmann's story 'Der Goldne Topf' features an old apple-seller whom the hero meets at a city gate. The brass doorknob on Eisgrube 14 — a cackling old woman with a basket of apples — was modelled on the character and is now one of the most rubbed-for-luck objects in town.