The German novelist Günter Grass (1927-2015) lived in a farmhouse near Lübeck for the last three decades of his life. He also maintained an office and ‘secretariat’ in the Glockengießerstraße (literally ‘bell-founder-street’) In the center of Lübeck, in the building that is now the Günter Grass House. Günter Grass was 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 …
The Thirty Years’ War, one of the longest and most devastating wars in European history, was finally ended in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia, which was negotiated and signed in the German cities of Münster and Osnabrück. This is one of several reasons why Osnabrück describes itself as the Friedensstadt, Read More …
Renchen is a quiet town of 4,472 people located in the Rhine Valley not far from the Black Forest. The nearest large city is Strasbourg, across the river on the French side of the border. Renchen’s main (in fact I would say only) claim to fame is that the great Read More …