The Tafelsbrunnen (Table Fountain) between Speyer and Berghausen was once a popular excursion destination for the people of Speyer. Much has changed over the years, however. However, one must gratefully acknowledge that the fountain itself is in good condition. A roof with seating provides a welcome place to rest.
The distinguished Speyer field name researcher, high school professor Dr. Engelhardt, was able to prove that the Tafelsbrunnen was called the St. Afra Fountain in the Middle Ages – a chapel in honor of St. Ulrich and St. Afra once stood nearby (the field name "behind St. Ulrich" recalls this) – and was first mentioned in a document in 1295 (for more information, see Engelhardt: Historical Memories). A pious legend tells of the spring: St. Afra was the first person to call it a "Table Fountain." Servatius (Bishop of Tongeren between 348 and 384), "when he was tormented by burning thirst in the Speyer March, made the sign of the cross with his finger on the ground, whereupon a living spring bubbled from the ground, which never dried up from then on" (according to Joh. Geissel). The Speyer historian Wilhelm Eysengrein (1564), who first reported this legend (without, however, citing a source, as is his custom), did not specify a specific location, and so, since there had been no spring in the Speyer area in recent times other than the Tafelsbrunnen, St. Servatius was associated with him. The discovery of a Roman coin is noteworthy: "Found in 1894 near the Tafelsbrunnen." The coin bears the inscription: "Sabina Augusta Hadriani Augusti." It was thus minted in honor of Empress Sabina, Hadrian's wife (117-138).
In a lecture Dr. Engelhardt gave in 1911 on Speyer's field names, he stated, among other things, about the Tafelsbrunnen (Table Fountain): "The naming after St. Afra served only to suppress the memory of the pagan goddess who sheltered the souls of small children here until the stork delivered them to the happy wife." Dr. Engelhardt apparently later abandoned this opinion. Be that as it may, the people of Speyer claim that the stork brings newborn children to the Tafelsbrunnen pond—it lies below the spring and is fed by it.