September 10, 2012 Like a stone sentinal guarding the rolling hills of the Odenwald Forest, Auerbach Castle high above Bensheim-Auerbach has stood tall for more than 800 years. We visited this ruin on a warm September day while exploring ancestral Bensheim and Mannheim nearby. Auerbach Castle was built by Charlamagne and then rebuilt and enlarged […]
Tag Archives: genealogy
Mannheim, Germany
September 9, 2012 What do the world’s first automobile, the first bicycle and the first tractor have in common? Mannheim! All three were invented in this industrial town on the banks of the rivers Rhein and Neckar in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. Known as “Grid City” the bustling large town was built on the […]
A Visit to Stetten, Rheinland-Pfalz Part I
Just getting to the right Stetten for genealogist Virginia Packwood was a challenge. There are more than 20 villages in Germany with the name of “Stetten,” and finding the correct one related to her Merkel ancestry took some time and work, not to mention a couple of decades when she and her husband Bill were […]