For six-and-a-half years, from January 2007 to July 2013, the German town of Gelnhausen described itself as “The Heart of Europe” because it was the geographical mid-point of the European Union, as calculated by the French National Institute of Geographical Information in Saint-Mandé, near Paris. At the beginning of the Read More …
This small street near St. Mary’s Church, the Pfarrgasse, was well-known in the Middle Ages as the narrowest point on the trade route between Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig, a distance of 133 leagues (or 400 km as we would say today). For this reason, the width of this street Read More …
The most distressing place in Gelnhausen is the Jewish Cemetery, with gravestones from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. There were Jews living in Gelnhausen as early as 1242, but as in many other German towns (such as Bacharach on the Rhine) they were massacred in 1348-49 during the Black Read More …
The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) had already begun when Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen was born in this house around 1621 or 1622. At that time the house was already some 450 years old, since it already existed in the twelfth century when Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa founded Gelnhausen and Read More …
As an experiment I recently asked half a dozen German adults (who happened to be in the same room with me) who invented the telephone. One didn’t know, but the others said it was Alexander Graham Bell — thus confirming my suspicion that the German school system isn’t what it Read More …
The German town of Gelnhausen was founded in the twelfth century by the Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa, who built one of his many castles here. Gelnhausen now advertises itself as “The Barbarossa City” and has restored the castle to the extent that you can visit without fearing that beams or Read More …
Another prominent feature of Gelnhausen is the “White Villa” or Burckhardt House, which like St. Mary’s Church is visible from many places up and down the Kinzig Valley. Until 2008 the White Villa belonged to the Burckhardthaus Society, an organization affiliated with the Protestant church which held educational meetings and Read More …
Gelnhausen as I remember it from the 1970s was an automotive nightmare, with huge creeping traffic jams extending the entire length of the city and then coming together in front of the U.S. Army caserne at an intersection where left turns were necessary but practically impossible. So we all breathed Read More …
For nearly half a century after the Second World War, units of the American Army were stationed in Gelnhausen, Germany, at Coleman Caserne. The last American troops left the installation around 1992. When I rode by in the summer of 2010 the old buildings were still standing empty, though parts Read More …