Sonneberg, the world toy city in Thuringia

18 July 2023 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  14 minutes

German Toy Museum © Störfix/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

German Toy Museum © Störfix/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

Sonneberg in Thuringia, Germany, is the seat of the Sonneberg district. It is in the Franconian south of Thuringia, neighboring its Upper Franconian twin town Neustadt bei Coburg. Sonneberg became known as the “world toy city”, and is home to the German Toy Museum and the Sonneberg observatory, founded in 1925. The Thuringian Slate Mountains border the city, with the Franconian Forest to the east.   read more…

Portrait: Johann Sebastian Bach, a German composer and musician

21 June 2023 | Author/Destination: | Category: Portrait Reading Time:  8 minutes

Johann Sebastian Bach in 1746 by Elias Gottlob Haussmann © jsbach.net

Johann Sebastian Bach in 1746 by Elias Gottlob Haussmann © jsbach.net

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schübler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.   read more…

Greiz in Thuringia

4 March 2023 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  4 minutes

© Steffen Loewe/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Steffen Loewe/cc-by-sa-4.0

Greiz is a town in the state of Thuringia, Germany, and is the capital of the district of Greiz. Greiz is situated in eastern Thuringia, 40 kilometres (25 mi) east of state capital Erfurt, on the river White Elster.   read more…

Portrait: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, national poet and naturalist

24 March 2021 | Author/Destination: | Category: Portrait Reading Time:  7 minutes

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by Joseph Karl Stieler in 1828

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by Joseph Karl Stieler in 1828

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic, and amateur artist. His works include: four novels; epic and lyric poetry; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; and treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is considered to be the greatest German literary figure of the modern era.   read more…

The Kyffhäuser Monument

6 April 2018 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  8 minutes

© Burghof Kyffhäuser/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Burghof Kyffhäuser/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Kyffhäuser Monument (German: Kyffhäuserdenkmal), also known as Barbarossa Monument (Barbarossadenkmal), is an Emperor William monument within the Kyffhäuser mountain range in Thuringia. It was erected in 1890–96 at the site of medieval Kyffhausen Castle near Bad Frankenhausen. The Kyffhäuser Monument is the third-largest monument in Germany, after the Monument to the Battle of the Nations (Völkerschlachtdenkmal) commemorating the 1813 Battle of Leipzig and the Emperor William Monument at Porta Westfalica, both of which also were designed by architect Bruno Schmitz (1858–1916).   read more…

Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar

29 March 2017 | Author/Destination: | Category: General, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  9 minutes

© Rudolf Klein/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

© Rudolf Klein/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

The Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar houses a major collection of German literature and historical documents. The library contains 1,000,000 books, 2,000 medieval and early modern manuscripts, 600 ancestral registers, 10,000 maps, and 4,000 musical scripts. The research library today has approximately 850,000 volumes with collection emphasis on the German literature. Among its special collections is an important Shakespeare collection of approximately 10,000 volumes, as well as a 16th-century Bible connected to Martin Luther. Today, the library is a public research library for literature and art history. One of the library’s most famous patrons was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who worked there from 1797 to 1832. The library also includes the world’s largest Faust collection. The Duchess’s significant 13,000-volume music collection is also available in the library.   read more…

The university town of Jena

27 March 2015 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  8 minutes

Wagnergasse © Hamster 3

Wagnergasse © Hamster 3

Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.   read more…

The east Thuringian Skat and residence town of Altenburg

7 February 2015 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

Orangery and teahouse © Lucas Friese/cc-by-sa-3.0

Orangery and teahouse © Lucas Friese/cc-by-sa-3.0

Altenburg is a city in Thuringia, located 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Leipzig, 90 kilometres (56 miles) west of Dresden and 100 kilometres (62 miles) east of Erfurt. It is the capital of the Altenburger Land district and part of a polycentric old-industrial textile and metal production region between Gera, Zwickau and Chemnitz with more than 1 million inhabitants, while the city itself has a population of 33,000.   read more…

The half-timbered and university town of Schmalkalden

12 November 2012 | Author/Destination: | Category: General Reading Time:  5 minutes

Timber-framed houses on Salzbrücke © TOMMES-WIKI

Timber-framed houses on Salzbrücke © TOMMES-WIKI

Schmalkalden is a town in the Schmalkalden-Meiningen district, in the southwestern portion of Thuringia state in Germany. It is situated on the southern slope of the Thuringian Forest at the Schmalkalde river, a tributary to the Werra. The town has a population of 20,000.   read more…

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