Kassel |
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Home Lowenburg Castle Schloss Wilhelmshöhe Palace The Ball House built by Napoleon's Brother Jerome The Karlsaue Park The Orangery The Marble Baths Napoleon's Plundering of the Kassel Art Treasures The Restoration of the Electorate of Hesse (Hessen) after the Defeat of Napoleon in 1813 The Grimm Brothers Museum |
Since the reunification of Germany, Kassel (spelled Cassel until the 1930's) once again finds itself at in the heart of Germany. The city spreads out on either side of the gently flowing Fulda river, in a natural basin surrounded by the Habichtswald forest, the Reinhaldswalds forest, and the Kaufungerwald forest, with one end of the broad valley closed off by a steep hill. From the vibrant city center, an avenue runs several kilometers straight as a rod through upmarket residential suburbs and into the Hohes Gras recreational area on a large hillside in the Habichtswald forest. Halfway up this rampart stands the huge and somber palace of the Landgrave, the Schloss Wilhelmshöhe. Below its staring windows, a broad swath is caught in a straight line through the town and across the entire valley. Above the palace rise, along the same axis, terrace gardens that compose one of Europe's loveliest parks and which culminate in a 180 foot high octagonal stone pedestal, the highest point for miles and miles around, surmounted by a colossal statue of Hercules with his club. In its time this figure of Hercules which dominated the landscape, was a symbol of the brutal absolute power wielded by the rulers of Hessen over their citizens. Among the centralized enlightened autocracies of 18th century Germany, with their splendid geometrical palaces and parks, dominating unfree cities of residence (Residenzstädte) - Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Stuttgart, and Kassel - Kassel had the most brutal ruler. Today however this statue of Hercules is the emblem of the city. The quality of the air in this hillside park has long been appreciated, among others by Bismarck's personal physician, who said that in Wilhelmshöhe every breath was "worth a thaler." Ever since the days of the Landgrave, Kassel has had a special affinity for the arts. The Ottoneum, commissioned by the Kassel royal court in 1604-05, was Germany's first permanent theater building. It is now the city's natural history museum. The Fridericianum on Friedrichsplatz square, now the venue for Documenta, the internationally renowned quinquennial exhibition of contemporary art, was the first public museum in continental Europe. Only a few minutes walk away is the Hessen State Museum (Hessisches Landesmuseum) with its historical and ethnological collections. In the Orangery the instruments of the astronomical cabinets are on display, recalling the first European Observatory, which was established in 1558. Many traces are still to be found of the Huguenots who came to Kassel at the end of the 17th century, and for whom Landgrave Karl had a new district specially built. At its center stands today the octagonal Karlskirche church. The Huguenots and the Waldensians who had been expelled from the alpine valleys of Savoy did not just settling Kassel, but founded numerous new towns and villages across northern Hesse (Hessen). On a trip to the green countryside at the northernmost tip of the state, it is worth making a detour to the Huguenot villages of Kelze, Carlsdorf, Friedrichsdorf, Hombressen, Hümme, Beberbeck and Schöneberg scattered around the town of Hofgeismar. The distinctive half timbered buildings of this former county seat owe their appearance to carpenters from further along the Diemel River in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), who applied their artistic carving skills to oak and beech trunks from the nearby Reinhardswald forest. Bad Karlshafen, Hesse's northernmost town, is solidly middle-class but stylish. The beautifully planned baroque town, designed as an inland port, where the Diemel River flows into the Weser River, was founded in 1699, likewise by Landgrave Karl. The German Huguenot Museum (Deutsches Hugenotten Museum) housed in a former cigar factory opposite the town hall, as a permanent exhibition dedicated to the trials and tribulations of the Huguenots, persecuted for their religion in France, and the story of how they settled in Hesse (Hessen). Home |