Weimar

Today, we're off to Erfurt, where we'll spend the weekend. Erfurt is the capital of the state of Thuringia, which so happens to be the state in which my maternal grandfather lived. That's not why we chose to visit here though. Erfurt is another old city that came highly recommended by the smart volunteers on the Germany forum at trip advisor, as well as being interesting historically and aesthetically. Remember those half-timbered houses I liked so much in Franken? Well they're here, too. I was told it has an exceedingly pretty Altstadt, and it does. Of note is the Kramerbrücke, built in the 1100s, that to this day houses shops and homes on either side. When I get the time, I'll dump a lot more pictures on Facebook.

Short history, feel free to skip if you're tired of me rambling, or you know all of this. Erfurt comes into the records in 742, when the English Benedictine, Saint Boniface established a diocese here. Another example of the English Christianizing the Germanic people, as we saw on our last trip to Austria and Bavaria. The city is on the Via Regina, that vital east-west trade route across Europe, which contributed to its wealth. Erfurt was a member of the Hanseatic League, which I tend to associate with northern and coastal Germany, but I imagine other inland trading cities/towns were in the League as well. During the Holy Roman Empire, Erfurt was under the power of the Electorate of Mainz (and yes, Mainz itself is clear across the country on the Rhine, but the HRE was that way), and had significant town rights. At some point in the early 1800s, it passed to Prussia, and then, as with most other places in Europe, it was overrun and taken by Napoleon.

The University of Erfurt was founded in 1379, the oldest university in what today is modern day Germany. This is the university Martin Luther was attending when he decided to become a monk. He entered the Augustinian Cloister right here in town. Other intellectual luminaries associated with Erfurt: the mystic and philospher Meister Eckhart, and the sociologist Max Weber, best known by me as the author of “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” which I had to read in my historiography class back in college.

Like Leipzig, there are intriguing (to me) musical associations here. Johann Pachelbel was the organist at the Predigerkirche from 1678-1690. Several members of the Bach family lived here, including the parents of JS Bach. The church were his parents married is still standing.

I'm going to cut this short, giving more detail (sorry) when we actually do the sightseeing, after one last bit of information. Topf and Sons, the company that provided the crematoria to the Nazis, was located in Erfurt. You can visit the site of their headquarters, and we're going back and forth on that. We'll see.Read more