Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
At the geographical center of the European Union lies the small city of Gelnhausen,
which traces its history back to the legendary 12th-century emperor Barbarossa.
He built the city here, at a place where several trade routes met,
because the Spessart and the Büdingen Woods
forced travellers going east through a narrow bottleneck.
Barbarossa also built a small palace outside the city walls
to serve as administrative offices for his surrounding estates.
It even served three times as a venue for the Imperial Diet.
Being outside the city walls the palace attracted a small village,
which, until as late as 1895, had its own town hall.
The Witches’ Tower was part of Gelnhausen’s defences,
and was built in the 1470s where it could protect the route to the palace.
It was called “Witches’ Tower” by the locals
after the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries,
when it used to imprison, torture and execute
at least 54 people suspected of witchcraft.
Some of the old gates still surround the old city:
a challenge to modern urban planning.
The Wooden Gate is in two parts:
an outer gate and an inner gate.
The wooden panels on the inside of the inner gate were to keep costs down.
This is the birthplace of the famous author Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen.
His “Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch”
is regarded as the finest German novel of the seventeenth century.
Also born in Gelnhausen was Philipp Reis,
who solved the problem of how to convey voice through electric wires,
leading to the invention of the telephone.
His bust is in the Lower Market Place;
as that name suggests, this is one of two market places in Gelnhausen,
hinting at its earlier wealth and importance.
The Upper Market Place is a short distance away,
and is the location of the town hall.
St Peter’s Catholic Church is once more used for worship:
“once more”, because it was secularised after the Reformation
and used as a storehouse, a military hospital and a cigar factory.
It was built within sight of St Mary’s,
which belonged to the Selbold Monastery until 1543.
When, in a little house just across the road,
a document was signed handing the church over to the city,
it became Lutheran.
This was a peaceful process,
so the church was spared the attentions of the Iconoclasts,
who would otherwise have vandalised and plundered it.
But while both churches date from around the 13th century,
hidden away in a residential area
is the Godobertus Chapel, which pre-dates Gelnhausen itself
and is still in use today.
For a while, Gelnhausen even had its own mint, in this house.
And between it and the next, something you don’t get to see very often:
this is a firewall of a very literal kind.
The most important trade route passing through Gelnhausen
was a section of the Via Regia, the King’s Highway,
between the trading cities of Frankfurt and Leipzig,
transporting cloth, wood, honey and wax,
as well as armies.
This was the narrowest section of the entire route.
Measuring rods the width of this street were kept in Frankfurt and Leipzig,
to ensure merchants didn’t overload their wagons.
Today, this place is still an important link between the two cities,
but modes of transport have become faster and more modern.
Gelnhausen’s most recent claim to fame
is that one of the GIs stationed here in the 1960s
went on to greater things.
His name was Colin Powell.