Eisenach, Germany

Eisenach is a town in the Wartburg district in western Thuringia and, with around 42,000 inhabitants (2020), the sixth largest municipality in Thuringia. It is one of the so-called Luther cities. The medium-sized town was an independent town from 1998 to June 30, 2021 and is now the first large district town in Thuringia. It is also the center of western Thuringia and the adjacent north-eastern Hessian areas. In spatial planning, the city occupies the position of a middle center with partial functions of a regional center and is assigned to the planning region of southwest Thuringia. Eisenach is on the Hörsel on the northern edge of the Thuringian Forest.

Eisenach is known for the Wartburg above the town, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage and was the seat of the Landgraves of Thuringia in the Middle Ages. It was there that Martin Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German in the fall of 1521. In 1817 the Wartburg Festival took place there, one of the most important events of the Vormärz. Eisenach has been a university town since February 2017, and the town is unofficially nicknamed Wartburgstadt.

The composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685.

Industrialization began in Eisenach in the second half of the 19th century. In 1896 the vehicle factory in Eisenach was founded, which belonged to BMW from 1928 and later built the Wartburg as the Automobile Works in Eisenach. The tradition of automobile construction was continued after 1990 by Adam Opel AG. The factories of the automotive industry such as Opel and Bosch now employ over 4000 people, which makes Eisenach an industrial center in Thuringia.

 

Destinations

Cultural institutions

The Eisenach Theater was inaugurated in 1879. After an eventful history, it was elevated to the Thuringian State Theater Eisenach in 1952 by the then Thuringian state government. An important part of the theater is the Eisenach State Orchestra, founded in 1919 as a municipal orchestra. It was rebuilt after the end of the Second World War in 1946 with expelled members of the Silesian Philharmonic Breslau and musicians from the former Eisenach City Orchestra and received its current name in 1952. In addition to the Landeskapelle, the Tanztheater Eisenach has been part of the ensemble since 2004 and the Junges Theater Eisenach since 2005.

The Theater am Markt, founded in 2008 as a voluntary independent theater, developed from the Theater Education Center at the Landestheater Eisenach after its dissolution.

Exhibitions and concerts are held regularly in the historic foyer, which made Eisenach’s rise to a spa town possible in 1906 – an open music pavilion on the edge of the Kartausgarten, which was built as an English-style park at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to an industrial museum, the industrial monument Alte Mälzerei also houses a theater and the Lippmann+Rau music archive, which was maintained until 2009 by the Jazzklub Eisenach e. V. was looked after.

Eisenach traditionally has a rich choral landscape, and the Bachchor Eisenach is one of the choirs that are also known nationally. The majority of the choirs in the city and the surrounding Wartburg district are organized in the Wartburgsängerkreis.

In the so-called stork tower, the historical theater Im Kerker is the smallest venue in the city.

Eisenach has a cinema with the listed Capitol film theater, the last of four former sound film cinemas in Eisenach.

Since 2007, exhibitions of contemporary art have been held in the former exhibition pavilion of the Eisenach automobile plant, today's ART pavilion, in Wartburgallee. The pavilion was built in 1967 and was used until 1994 as an exhibition space for motor vehicles built in Eisenach. It has been under monument protection since 2013.

 

Events

Every year on the weekend before Laetare, one of the largest spring festivals in Germany takes place in Eisenach with the summer prize. The highlight is the parade that takes place on Saturday, at the end of which Ms. Sunna and Mr. Winter engage in the traditional argument.

During the Christmas season, the traditional Christmas market on the Wartburg and the Christmas market on the Eisenach market square with around 50 exhibitors are among the tourist attractions.

In the years 2005 to 2007, with a view to the Luther Decade from 2008 to 2017, Luther – The Festival took place at the end of August. The organizing Luther Association e. V. as the main organizer strives to develop this event as a medieval festival with new themes and offers. The Eisenach Telemann Days have been held every two years since 1982 in honor of the composer Georg Philipp Telemann. In spring, the city is one of the venues for the Thuringian Bach Festival.

The Alte Mälzerei has been a household name as a venue for jazz music since the 1990s, and open-air concerts take place in the lobby (reggae nights).

Since reunification, Eisenach has been the permanent meeting place of the German fraternity. The Burschentag always takes place in the week after Pentecost.

The Motorsport Club Eisenach e. V. is the organizer of the Wartburg Rally, a road race around the city of Eisenach, which takes place every summer. For classic car fans, Thuringia tours and veterans' meetings take place regularly in spring and summer.

 

Castles and Palaces

Wartburg Castle

 

The city's landmark is the Wartburg World Heritage Site.

In addition, there were numerous castles on the mountains around the old town, of which only field names and sparse remains as archaeological monuments are reminiscent, in particular the Metilstein, the Eisenacher Burg, the Frauenburg, the Burgstelle Rudolfstein and the Malittenburg. Within the walls of the old town were aristocratic city castles, including what is probably the oldest secular building in the city, known as the Hellgrevenhof and the Lussenhof am Frauenberg. The landgrave's Steinhof as a city residence immediately south of the Georgenkirche was followed by the ducal residence castle at the same place, of which the castle brewery, the well cellar, the residence house and the Creutznacher house still exist. The former moated castle Klemme served as a stronghold and later as a garrison.

The preserved palaces and palace-like buildings in the city center include the Eisenach City Palace, Fischbach Palace, Palais Bechtolsheim, Landhaus Pflugensberg and the Hohe Sonne hunting lodge, which is in urgent need of renovation. In the districts are the Berteroda Castle, the Neuenhof Castle, in Stedtfeld the Boyneburgksche Lower Castle, small remains of the Upper Castle, the Steinstock defense tower and a Boyneburgksche country villa. The Stedtfeld moated castle was razed after the Thirty Years' War. The buildings of the moated castle in Madelungen with the associated estate have also disappeared. In Hötzelsroda there was an earth wall known as a ski jump, an aristocratic castle in the local area and in the Dürrerhof district the Dürrerhof manor with a landscape park, which was demolished in the 1950s.

 

Sacred buildings

Evangelical Lutheran Churches
The Georgenkirche, built around 1180, is the wedding church of Saint Elisabeth and the baptismal church of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Nikolaikirche was built in the Romanesque style shortly after 1160 and restored in the neo-Romanesque style in the 19th century. Until the Reformation, the church was the parish church of the Benedictine monastery of St. Nikolai.

According to legend, the Annenkirche was built by Elisabeth von Thuringia as a house of prayer, the inscription above the archway "Hospital zu St. Annen - donated by St. Elisabeth 1226" is supposed to prove this. In fact, the former chapel fell victim to a fire in 1342, and the new building was destroyed in 1525 during the Peasants' War. The Annenkirche was completely rebuilt between 1634 and 1639, and the inscription probably dates from that time. In the 18th century the church was used as a garrison church, from 1874 to 1954 as a church of the deaconess house foundation.

The Clemens chapel was first mentioned in a document in 1295. The Wartha half-timbered church, built in 1586, is the oldest and smallest half-timbered church in Thuringia.

The most recent church building is the Elijah Chapel in Altstadtstraße, which was completed in 2005. It serves as a place of prayer on the workshop premises of the Diakonie-Verbund Eisenach.

Catholic Churches
The parish church of the Catholic community of St. Elisabeth Eisenach is the St. Elisabeth Church. It was built in neo-Gothic style between 1886 and 1888 based on the model of the Elisabeth Church in Marburg. In the years 2000 to 2002 an extensive exterior and interior renovation took place.

Not far from the old cemetery is the profaned Kreuzkirche, which was built in 1692 from the remains of the Mariendom in Eisenach.

The Preacherkirche is located on the site of a former Dominican monastery. Its construction began shortly after Elizabeth's canonization and it was consecrated around 1240. Today the church houses the permanent exhibition Medieval Art in Thuringia, which is part of the Thuringian Museum.

Synagogue
There was already a synagogue on the property at Karlstraße 23 in the Middle Ages. Between 1883 and 1885 the New Synagogue was built on today's Karl-Marx-Strasse and inaugurated on January 8, 1885. The building was completely destroyed by arson during the November pogroms of 1938 and demolished shortly afterwards. The synagogue monument, handed over on September 21, 1947, commemorates the events, the base of which was made of stones from the New Synagogue.

 

Listed buildings

Monument ensembles
The two largest ensembles of monuments in the city in terms of area are the Eisenach old town monument and the southern quarter monument.

The construction of the 2.84 kilometer long city wall began in 1130. There were a total of 22 towers, five of which were city gates, of which only the Nikolaitor survives today.

Individual monuments
The Eisenach town hall on the market square was built in 1508 in late Gothic style as a wine cellar and was given its current Renaissance form during the renovation in 1564. In 1596 it was elected the new town hall after the old town hall near the Georgenkirche had become too small. After the great city fire in 1636 it was rebuilt and in 1638 it received its characteristic stair tower.

The Georgsbrunnen has been on the market square for more than 450 years and has been moved several times. The gilded fountain statue was created by Hans Leonhard in 1549. The city palace is also located on the market square. It was built in several sections from 1742 under Duke Ernst August by Gottfried Heinrich Krohne. Three of the original four wings are still preserved today. The south wing on the market was created as a residential wing incorporating existing town houses, the north wing houses richly decorated rooms with stucco work by the Kassel master J. M. Brühl and paintings by the Austrian painter Josef Michael Daysinger, the stables are on the ground floor of the west wing.

The building at Karlstraße 1 was built around 1560. During the city fire of 1636 it remained intact. The court pharmacy founded in 1585 was located here from 1771 to 1948.[84] In 1900 the old timber framework was uncovered and a gable was erected over the entrance. Further conversions took place in 1936. The Hof-Apotheke was renamed the Rats-Apotheke in 1948 and is still in the building today.

The Reutervilla is located in the south of the city not far from the driveway to the Wartburg. It was built according to plans by the poet Fritz Reuter in the years 1866 to 1868 by the German architect Ludwig Bohnstedt in the neoclassical style as the poet's residence. Today the villa houses the Reuter-Wagner-Museum and a branch of the registry office.

In the east of the city, the monument to the fraternity of the German fraternity rises up on the Göpelskuppe. The 33 meter high monument was inaugurated in 1902.

The Eisenach Theater was built in the classical style on behalf of the Eisenach banker and manufacturer Julius von Eichel-Streiber according to designs by the Leipzig architect Karl Weichardt and was handed over to the city of Eisenach on January 1, 1879. The building offers space for 501 spectators.

On Johannisplatz in the city center is probably the narrowest inhabited half-timbered house in Germany. It is 2.05 meters wide and 8.50 meters high and has two floors. The house is estimated to be well over 250 years old.

In 1539, the Eisenach merchant and councilman Conrad Creutznacher built a representative residential and commercial building on the market, the Creutznacher Haus. When Duke Johann Ernst expanded his residence on the Esplanade at the end of the 16th century, he included the house in the palace complex. The building, which was renovated between 2003 and 2005, is one of the few surviving Renaissance buildings in the city and today houses the tourist information, among other things.

The Sophienbad, one of the oldest art nouveau baths in Germany, was opened in 1899 by the grand duchess of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach. It is used differently today, but is protected as a whole.

The foyer on the edge of the Kartausgarten was inaugurated in 1906, below the Hotel Fürstenhof, as a drinking and foyer and is reminiscent of the time when Eisenach was a summer resort and spa town.

The deaconesses' house in the city center and the southern wing of today's St. George's Clinic in the north of the city are examples of early 20th-century healthcare.

 

Parks

The history of the approximately 3.8 hectare Carthusian garden goes back to the 14th century, when Carthusian monks laid out a monastery garden there around 1390. Around 1700 it was elevated to a princely pleasure and kitchen garden, and at the end of the 18th century Johann Georg Sckell transformed it into a landscape garden. From 1845 this was looked after by the Eisenach court gardener Hermann Jäger. The facility has been in municipal hands since 1942. In addition to the classical gardener's house with a tea room, the foyer is also located on the site.

About 400 meters east of the city center is the 26.7 hectare city park. Between 1841 and 1844, the area on the Goldberg was redesigned into a landscape garden by Eduard Petzold on behalf of the Eichel family. In the years 1890 to 1892, the Villa Pflugensberg, later used as the regional church office, was built there, a castle-like building in the neo-Gothic style. The Bismarck monument in the entrance area of the city park was demolished in 1963.

In the district of Hötzelsroda is the landscape park Dürrerhof, also designed by Eduard Petzold, with the Hötzelsroda war cemetery created after the Second World War.

The Old Cemetery is located above the Eisenacher Markt at the foot of the Schlossberg. It was created in 1599 on behalf of Duke Johann Ernst. Numerous members of the Bach family of musicians are buried in the cemetery, and the adjacent Kreuzkirche houses the archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia.

Between the Wartburg and the western old town is the Roesesches Hölzchen landscape park, created around 1800 by the Eisenach merchant Christian Friedrich Roese, with the Metilstein in the center. Here you can also find the legendary rock formations Monk and Nun, which Goethe once inspired to draw.

In the Mariental there is the artificially created Prinzenteich with gondola operation, swans and carp stock. It received its name in the 19th century in honor of the two sons of the Duchess of Orleans, who stayed in Eisenach with their children from 1848 to 1858.

The main cemetery was laid out in the north of the city in 1896.

In the Dresdner Straße there is a geological garden with rock samples from all over Germany.

 

Museums

Eisenach is the birthplace of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. The Bachhaus on Frauenplan, which is considered the birthplace of the composer, is dedicated to him and his family.

The Luther House, run as a museum by the then Thuringian State Church (today: Evangelical Church in Central Germany) since 1956, commemorates the reformer Martin Luther. In the house, which is one of the oldest half-timbered houses in Thuringia, Martin Luther is said to have lived with the wealthy Cotta family from 1498 to 1501. From 2013 to 2015, the Lutherhaus was extensively renovated, expanded with an extension and equipped with a new permanent exhibition ("Luther and the Bible").

The city palace houses the Thuringian Museum, founded in 1899. This also includes the exhibition areas in the Preacherkirche, the tea room in the Kartausgarten and the Reutervilla. The arts and crafts collection moved to the City Palace in 1931. In addition to the collection of Thuringian porcelain, there are also works of painting from the second half of the 19th century and of expressive realism as well as city history. The Predigerkirche houses the collection of medieval carvings, the most comprehensive of its kind in Thuringia. In the Reutervilla, the former living quarters of the Low German poet Fritz Reuter, is the Reuter-Wagner-Museum with the most extensive collection about the composer Richard Wagner after Bayreuth.

The Automobile Museum was founded in 1967. It was initially located in what is now the KUNST pavilion on the edge of the Kartausgarten, which was specially built for this purpose. In 1998, on the occasion of the anniversary of 100 years of automobile manufacture in Eisenach, the symbolic foundation stone for the new exhibition automobile world eisenach was laid on the site of the former automobile factory Eisenach (AWE). Since 2005, the exhibition, which shows BMW, EMW, Dixi and Wartburg vehicles, for example, has been located in the former AWE administration building O2, a listed building. In the immediate vicinity of this is the former main gate of the AWE, which is also listed.

The Goldener Löwe memorial, a former inn at the southern end of Marienstraße, commemorates the founding of the SDAP (later SPD) on August 8, 1869 and August Bebel.

Since June 2010 the Sparkasse Museum has been located in the administration building at Rennbahn 6 of the Wartburg Sparkasse.

A non-public collection on Eisenach's criminal history with historical uniforms, technical equipment for surveillance by the Stasi, and testimonies from agent activities in Eisenach during the Cold War is located in the Eisenach police station.

 

Industrial monuments

In the north-east of the city is the old malthouse, a largely unique industrial monument. It was built in 1873 by Adam Heintz as a malt and malt coffee factory. Particularly noteworthy is the almost completely preserved machine park, some of which dates back to the founding years and was fully functional again after restoration in 1993/1994.

The foundation stone for the Eisenach brewery was laid in 1828, when the 244 authorized brewers in the city built a 100 meter deep rock cellar for beer storage. In 1874, ten citizens of Eisenach founded a club brewery, which became the Eisenach stock brewery in 1886. The brewhouse built in 1911 is still considered a landmark of the brewery.

At the turn of the 19th/20th century At the end of the 19th century, Eisenach's main station was built with the Fürstenbahnhof on the right.

The only partially preserved industrial buildings in Eisenach include the old slaughterhouse and the Eisenach gas works. The former cigar factory at Fischweide 1 was left in ruins for a long time and has since been demolished.

 

Monuments, memorial stones and plaques

Numerous commemorative stones and plaques commemorate historically important events and personalities in the city's history.

In the immediate vicinity of the Bach House is the Bach monument, which the city dedicated to the composer who was born in Eisenach on September 28, 1884. The design comes from Adolf von Donndorf, it was executed by Hermann Howaldt.

The Luther monument, also designed by Adolf von Donndorf, is located on Karlsplatz in the center of the city. A third monument designed by Donndorf, the Bismarck monument erected in 1903 at the entrance to the city park, was removed by 1963.

The Black Fountain on Georgenstrasse commemorates a tragic accident in which 68 people died when three wagons loaded with gunpowder and ammunition exploded.

In honor of the dead of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, the Wingolf Association inaugurated the Wingolf Memorial in 1899, which was later also dedicated to the dead of both world wars. It is integrated into an imposing staircase that leads from the city center over the Pfarrberg to the southern quarter.

Opposite the Wartburg driveway, the Carl Alexander Monument was dedicated in 1909 to commemorate the Grand Duke's friendship with Eduard Mittenzwey. It was executed by the Eisenach sculptor Hermann Hosaeus. Further along the road, below the Wartburg, you will come across the Cranach monument to the Wartburg captain and founder of the Reuter-Wagner Museum, Hans Lucas von Cranach.

The memorial for the victims of the Kapp putsch is located on Frankfurter Strasse, commemorating the killing of five unarmed citizens in Eisenach.

On Karlsplatz, in front of the mother house of the Diakoniestiftung Eisenach, stands the Doctors' Memorial, a memorial created in 1926 for the German doctors who died in the First World War in fulfillment of their service. It was restored in 1997 and the dedication extended to "...the (medical) victims of war, terror and tyranny".

An armored rider, symbolizing the dragon slayer St. Georg, is on the Jakobsplan. It was created by Erich Windbichler in 1939 and originally stood in front of the officers' mess of the barracks complex on Ludendorffwall (today: Ernst-Thälmann-Straße) in the north of the city. The memorial stands for the tradition of the heavy Silesian cavalrymen from Sagan, the "predecessors" of the Eisenach Panzer Regiment II. In 1999 the memorial was restored.

The monument to the history of the German labor movement in Wartburgallee is now a listed relic of the GDR era.

Several memorials, commemorative stones and plaques commemorate the victims of both world wars and the crimes of the Third Reich and the Holocaust; this also includes around 100 stumbling blocks and the memorial to the “Dejudaization Institute” unveiled in 2019. The "Götterdämmerung" Bismarck Tower, built on the Wartenberg in 1902 based on a design by Wilhelm Kreis, was blown up in 1963.

 

Getting here

By plane
The nearest airport is in Erfurt, about 65km away. Only charter planes take off and land in Erfurt, so Leipzig Halle Airport or Frankfurt am Main Airport, which are about the same distance from Eisenach, are also possible.

By train
Eisenach train station is an ICE and IC stop for trains in the direction of Leipzig/Halle/Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Kassel/Ruhr area. Ideally, the journey from Frankfurt takes 1:45 hours, from Leipzig it is 1:12 hours with the fastest connection.

Regional trains come from Bebra, Erfurt and Meiningen.

By bus
Flixbus drives to Eisenach daily from Berlin/Erfurt and Düsseldorf/Marburg. Another connection, which is operated several times a week, connects Kassel in Chemnitz/Prague with a stop in Eisenach. The long-distance bus stop is at Uferstrasse 40, about 500m from the train station.

On the street
Eisenach is on the A 4, Bad Hersfeld - Dresden. There are three exits: Eisenach-Weststadt, Eisenach-Mitte, Eisenach-Oststadt; the city can be reached after a few kilometers from everyone.

By boat
Neither the Hörsel nor the Werra, which flows past to the west, are navigable.

 

Getting around

At Karlsplatz there are still remains of the tram tracks today (as of 2021), but a tram has not been running here for a long time. The city center can also be easily explored on foot, so that you don't have to rely on public transport. Parking is also possible in the city center, but not for free.

 

Shopping

The main shopping street is Karlstrasse, which starts right at the old town hall on the market square. There you will find the classic branches or small shops. More shops can be found in the side streets. The typical tourist souvenirs can be found in the Bachhaus: from busts to chocolates and liqueurs, everything to do with Johann Sebastian Bach can be found there.

1 PEP Prima shopping park, Neue Wiese 1, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 (0)3691 890176. Open: Mon – Fri 9 a.m. – 8 p.m., Sat 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
2 Forum Eisenach, Bleichrasen 41, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 (0)3643 8674409. Open: Mon – Sat 7 a.m. – 10 p.m.

 

Eat

Cheap
Mobile grills in the pedestrian zone - the well-known Thuringian Rostbratwurst is offered here (price: €2.80 in September 2021)
Many small kebab and Asian snack bars with seats
1 The totally crazy potato house, Sophienstraße 44, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 3691 721568, fax: +49 3691 721568, e-mail: wir@kartoffelhaus-eisenach.de. Quaint restaurant, lovingly furnished. A beer garden is also available.

Medium
2 Pizzeria/Trattoria La Grappa, Frauenburg 8-10, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 3691 733860. Small restaurant with terrace and seating under trees. Very tasty Italian dishes.
3 Ristorante Michelangelo, Karlsplatz 21, 99817 Eisenach (downtown). Phone: +49 3691 734081, email: michelangelo.eisenach@googlemail.com. Italian restaurant with good menu and excellent service. Very nice courtyard and more outdoor spaces.
4 Cafe Toccata, Markt 2, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 3691 21 75 88, fax: +49 3691 88 35 25. Open: Mon – Fri from 9 a.m., Sat + Sun from 10 a.m., until 10 p.m.

Upscale
5 Turmschänke wine restaurant, Karlsplatz 28, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 3691 213533, Fax: +49 3691 888812. Open: Mon – Sat from 6 p.m., Sun is a day off.
6 Delphi, Theaterplatz 8, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 3691 215260, email: info@delphi-eisenach.de. Greek and Mediterranean dishes. Open: daily 11.30 a.m. – 2.30 p.m. + 5.30 p.m. – midnight.
7 Steakhouse zum Ritter, Rittergasse 3, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 3691 743388, fax: +49 3691 743389, e-mail: info@steakhaus-zum-ritter.de. The steakhouse is located in the center of Eisenach am Frauenberg, right next to the well-known Bachhaus. Open: Mon – Sun 11:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. + 5:30 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
8 Baron wine restaurant, Karlsplatz 13, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 (0)3691 2453240, email: info@baron-eisenach.de . Modern restaurant and wine bar with Mediterranean and international cuisine, 120 wines and a terrace. Open: Mon-Sat from 5 p.m. (holidays from 11:30 a.m.).
9 Restaurant Heimat, Markt 10, 99817 Eisenach (right next to Lutherhaus & Markt). Tel.: (0)3691 2454134, email: kontakt@restaurantheimat.de . Thuringian and German cuisine, including vegetarian and vegan dishes. Open: Mon-Sun 11:00 - 22:00. Accepted payment methods: Cash, Visa, Master, EC.

 

Nightlife

Spitz, Alexanderstr. 28, 99817 Eisenach. Email: info@spitz-eisenach.de.
Stage slaughterhouse Eisenach, Langensalzaer Straße 43, 99817 Eisenach. Email: mail@schlachthof-eisenach.de. Performances by various local bands.
Edison Bar, Markt 10, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +4936912454134

 

Hotels

When staying overnight in Eisenach, it should be noted that a tourist tax of €6 per night and person is due, which must be paid when paying for the hotel room.

Cheap
1 Eisenach Youth Hostel, Mariental 24, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 3691 743259.
2 "Am Storchenturm" inn, Georgenstrasse 43a, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 3691 733263, fax: (0)3691 733265, email: info@gasthof-am-storchenturm.de. Price: single room from €23, double room from €36.
3 Hotel Klostergarten, Am Klosterholz 23, 98817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 3691 785166, email: info@hotel-klostergarten.de. Price: Single room from €45, double room from €65.
4 Gate to the Rennsteig, Unterstrasse 2-4, 99817 Eisenach-Hörschel. Phone: +49 36928 92699, fax: +49 36928 92690, email: info@rennsteig-beginn.de. The associated inn has the following opening times: daily from 11:00 a.m., Tuesday is a day off. Feature: pension. Price: Single room from €35, double room from €60.
5 Landhotel "Zur Gute Quelle", Hörscheler Str. 14, 99817 Eisenach-Neuenhof. Phone: +49 36928 90375, fax: +49 36928 96715, email: info@landhotel-gute-quelle.de. The associated dining room has the following opening times: Tues – Sat 5 p.m. – 11 p.m., Sun 12 p.m. – 2 p.m. + 4 p.m. Price: Single room from €39, double room from €55.
6 Pension am Rennsteig, Eisenacher Weg 19, 99817 Eisenach-Neuenhof. Phone: +49 36928 90455, fax: +49 36928 96762, email: info@pension-am-rennsteig.de. Feature: pension. Price: Single room from €30, double room from €40 (in each case without breakfast plus city tax!).

Medium
7 Ibis Hotel Eisenach, Am Grundbach 1, 99819 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 36920 82100, Fax: +49 36920 82299. Breakfast is from 4 a.m. to 12 p.m. Small snacks can also be ordered around the clock in the adjoining bistro. Price: SR from €49.
8 Hotel Klostergarten, Am Klosterholz 23, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 3691 785166, fax: +49 3691 785148, email: info@hotel-klostergarten.de. Available daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Price: Single room from €45, double room from €65.
9 Hotel Haus Hainstein, Am Hainstein 16, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 3691 2420, fax: +49 3691 242109, email: haushainstein@t-online.de. In the associated restaurant "Lutherstube" there are both national cuisine and Thuringian specialties. Price: SR from 60€, double room from 86€.
10 Hotel "An der Linde", Zum Wehr 2, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 36920 81133, email: info@hotel-anderlinde.de. There is also a restaurant and a beer garden. Price: SR €45, DR €64.
11 Hostel / Pension Alte Brauerei, Wartburgallee 25a, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +493691238030, fax: +493691238033, e-mail: info@hostel-pension-eisenach.de. Hostel with breakfast, located in the building or on the site of an old brewery. Price: from €45 (SR) / €50 (DBL) / night.

Upscale
12 Glockenhof, Grimmelgasse 4, 99817 Eisenach (near the Bachhaus). Tel.: +49 3691 23 40, fax: +49 3691234131, e-mail: info@glockenhof.de. Price: €88 per night in a double room.
13 Steigenberger Hotel 'Thüringer Hof', Karlsplatz 11, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 3691 280, fax: +49 3691 28190. The history of the hotel goes back to the 16th century, 4 stars, 127 rooms, downtown; At Karlsplatz. Price: Single room from €79, double room from €90.
14 Hotel auf der Wartburg, Auf der Wartburg 2, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 3691 797223, fax: +49 3691 797200, e-mail: info@wartburghotel.de. Hotel directly on the Wartburg, 5 stars, 35 rooms, different arrangements possible.
15 Hotel "Haus Hainstein", Am Hainstein 16, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 3691 2420, fax: +49 3691 242109, email: haushainstein@t-online.de. Price: Single room from €60, double room from €86.
16 Land- und Golfhotel Alte Fliegerschule, Am Weinberg 1/Nessetalstrasse, 99817 Eisenach/Stockhausen. Phone: +49 36 91 8680, fax: +49 3691 868200, email: info@landhotel-eisenach.de. The hotel also offers several restaurants. Price: Single room from €59, double room from €79.
17 CITY HOTEL, Bahnhofstrasse 25, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 3691 2098-0, fax: +49 3691 2098-120, email: info@cityhotel-eisenach.de. Price: single room from €57, double room from €79.
18 Luther Hotel Eisenacher Hof, Katharinenstrasse 11-13, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 3691 2939-0, fax: +49 3691 293926, e-mail: info@eisenacherhof.de. The adjoining experience restaurant has the following opening hours: Mon – Sat from 5 p.m., Sun 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. + from 6 p.m., Sat also 12 p.m. – 2 p.m. Price: Single room from €69, double room from €89.
19 Suites MITTE (Apart-Hotel Eisenach, ​Apart-Hotel in the center of Eisenach), Kleine Löbergasse 2. Tel.: +49 36 91 7 41 43 70, email: info@suites-mitte.de . Apart-hotel, eight bright suites with a south-facing balcony for 1-4 people each with an extra bedroom. Oak floorboards, box spring beds, design furniture, floor-level showers, kitchenette. Check-in: 3 p.m. Check-out: 11:00 a.m. Price: from €53.00 p.p. (with an occupancy of 2 people per apartment).
20 Kaiserhof, Wartburgallee 2. Tel.: +49 36 91 8 88 90, email: info@kaiserhof-eisenach.de. Since 1897, new furnishings in the style of that time (candle lamps in the corridors, etc.) Check-in: 3 p.m. Check-out: 11:00 a.m. Price: from approx. €85 p.p.

 

Security

1 Eisenach Police Station, Ernst-Thälmann-Strasse 78, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 (0)3691 2610.
2 Eisenach Police Station, Nordplatz 1B, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 (0)3691 734786.

 

Health

Hospitals

1 St. Georg Klinikum, Mühlhäuser Str. 94-95, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 (0)3691 6980, Fax: +49 (0)3691 6987100.

 

Pharmacies

2 Stadt-Apotheke, Karlstrasse 52, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 (0)3691 203034, fax: +49 (0)3691 75194, e-mail: info@stadtapo-eisenach.de. Open: Mon - Fri 8 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sat 8.30 a.m. - 1 p.m.
3 Pharmacy at the Nikolaitor, Bahnhofstrasse 6, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 (0)3691 8893970, fax: +49 (0)3691 88939797, email: info@Apotheke-am-Nikolaitor.de. Open: Mon - Fri 8 a.m. - 6.30 p.m., Sat 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
4 Georgen-Apotheke Am Bahnhof, Bahnhofstrasse 21, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 (0)3691 214613, fax: +49 (0)3691 732608, email: bahnhof@georgenapotheke.de. Open: Mon - Fri 8 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sat 9 a.m. - 12 p.m.
5 Wartburg Pharmacy, Nordplatz 23, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 (0)3691 89840, fax: +49 (0)3691 898489, email: info@wartburgapo.de. Open: Mon - Fri 8 a.m. - 7 p.m., Sat 8 a.m. - 1 p.m.
6 Annen Pharmacy, August-Bebel-Strasse 1, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 (0)3691 71324, fax: +49 (0)3691 882936, email: mail@annen-apotheke-eisenach.de. Open: Mon - Fri 8 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sat 9 a.m. - 12.30 p.m.
7 Pharmacy am Frauenberg, Frauenberg 9, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 (0)3691 743880, fax: +49 (0)3691 743881, e-mail: info@frauenberg.de. Open: Mon - Fri 8 a.m. - 6.30 p.m., Sat 8.30 a.m. - 12.30 p.m.
8 Pharmacy Alte Spinnerei, Bleichrasen 41, 99817 Eisenach. Tel.: +49 (0)3691 721576, fax: +49 (0)3691 721577, e-mail: info@apotheke-alte-spinnerei.de. Open: Mon - Fri 8.30 a.m. - 7 p.m., Sat 9 a.m. - 2 p.m.

 

Practical hints

Tourist information, Markt 24, 99817 Eisenach. Phone: +49 (0)3691 79230, email: info@eisenach.info. Open: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. (weekdays until 6 p.m.).
Deutsche Post main branch, Markt 3, 99817 Eisenach. Open: Mon - Fri 9 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sat 9 a.m. - 12 p.m.
ATMs: The ATM of the Sparkasse can be found in the numerous Sparkasse buildings in the city, for example on the market. There is a machine in the Commerzbank building on Johannisplatz for customers of the Cash Group.
Public toilet: There is a huge modern public toilet on the Johannisplatz.

 

Geography

The heart of Eisenach lies in the Hörsel valley, which flows into the Werra on the right-hand side in the Hörschel district. The lowest point of the entire urban area is not far north of the Hörschel district at about 196 m above sea level in the Werra valley. The lowest point of Eisenach's old town is at the former Nadeltor on Goethestrasse.

In the south and southwest, the Thuringian Forest rises steeply to over 400 m above sea level. There the Rennsteig between the Hohe Sonne and the Vachaer Stein forms the southern border of the city area. At 460 m above sea level is a rocky outcrop on the Weinstrasse on the Kleiner Drachenstein, the highest point in the Eisenach urban area. Between the Hohe Sonne and the city are the Drachenschlucht and the Landgrafenschlucht. The cursed Jungfernloch, a rock cave, is located in the mountains of the southern city area, as is the fraternity monument and the Wartburg. Also south of the city area, the federal highway 84 crosses the Rennsteig am Vachaer Stein, the pass is at 368 m above sea level.

To the east of Eisenach stretches the Hörseltal and the Hörselberge mountains to the north, which, according to legend, are said to be the home of Mother Holle. North of the Hörselberge runs the valley of the Nesse, which flows into the Hörsel at the Eisenacher Petersberg.

North of Eisenach, an extensive plateau extends to the edge of the Hainich with the Eisenach districts of Hötzelsroda, Neukirchen, Madelungen and Berteroda.

West of Eisenach, near Stedtfeld, the Hörseltal narrows to a width of a few hundred meters. At the Thuringian Gate near Hörschel, the Hörsel flows into the Werra and there the Rennsteig begins as a ridge path in the Thuringian Forest; the districts of Göringen, Wartha and Neuenhof lie south of the Rennsteig in the Werra valley.

 

Natural space

Due to its location on the border of two natural areas, Eisenach is one of the so-called gate cities. It mediates between the Werrabergland and the Hörselberge, two escarpment landscapes shaped by the shell limestone in the north and the north-western Thuringian Forest in the south, which is shaped by the sandstones and conglomerates of the Oberrotliegend. In the northwest, the urban area of Eisenach has a share in the Gerstungen-Creuzburger Werraaue. The peripheral mountains of the Thuringian Forest south of the Neuenhof district are in the north of the Bad Liebenstein Zechstein belt. This location on the edge of several natural areas favored the development of the medieval town of Eisenach as a market for the raw materials wood and stone and the products derived from them, as well as for agricultural products. The location on an important pass road over the Thuringian Forest was also beneficial for urban development.

 

Neighboring communities

The communities of Krauthausen and Amt Creuzburg border on the city area in the north. To the east of the city are the communities of Hörselberg-Hainich and Wutha-Farnroda. This is followed by the town of Ruhla in the south-east and the municipality of Gerstungen in the south and south-west. While all of these neighboring communities are in the Thuringian Wartburg district, the urban area borders in the west on Herleshausen in the Hessian Werra-Meißner district.

 

Expansion and structure of the urban area

The Eisenach urban area covers an area of 103.85 km². Of this, 7.44 km² are built-up areas, 6.10 km² are traffic areas, 45.39 km² are agricultural areas and 1.12 km² are commercial and industrial areas. Due to its location in the Thuringian Forest, the forested area of 37.52 km² takes up around a third of the city area.

Eisenach consists of the core town and the districts of Berteroda, Hötzelsroda, Madelungen, Neuenhof, Hörschel, Neukirchen, Stedtfeld, Stockhausen, Stregda, Wartha and Göringen.

The districts have district constitutions, Neuenhof and Hörschel as well as Wartha and Göringen each have a common district constitution.

 

Climate

The precipitation totals are between 781 and 959 mm per year, the average is 831 mm (national average: 837 mm). In most of the urban area, the values are between 800 and 850 mm, only in the floodplains of Werra and Hörsel are they below 800 mm. With 850 to 900 mm per year, the highest amounts of precipitation are reached in the north and south of the city area.

The annual mean temperature in the city is 7.6 to 9.0 °C and thus corresponds to the Thuringian state average. The average annual sunshine duration is 1423 to 1444 hours per year. The prevailing wind direction in open areas is west-southwest.

 

Natural reserve

The urban area has a share in the landscape protection area of the Thuringian Forest and the Thuringian Forest Nature Park. In the north-west it touches the nature park Eichsfeld-Hainich-Werratal. Large parts of the forests with gorges nature reserve between Wartburg and Hohe Sonne are located in the south of the city area between the outskirts and the Rennsteig. There are the extensive mixed deciduous forests and important geotopes typical of the Northwestern Thuringian Forest natural area.

Among 15 protected landscape components, area natural monuments and natural monuments there are two regionally and nationally important bat roosts.

 

Geology, geomorphology

The part of the urban area in the northwestern Thuringian Forest is formed in the near-surface geological subsoil of the Eisenach succession of the Oberrotliegend (Saxon). The layers of the Wartburg conglomerate in the east are followed by unstructured siltstones, the so-called schist clays, and the gritty succession of the main conglomerate in the west. The eroding streams cut through the silicate-bound and thus hard conglomerates and sandstones like gorges and carved out the numerous high ledges of rock which, like the gorges, characterize the landscape. Larger gorges are the Drachenschlucht and the Landgrafenschlucht. Significant rocks are below the Wartburg, at the Teufelskanzel and at the Mädelstein.

The northern slopes of the Hörsel valley and the layered areas adjoining to the north are shaped by the layered rocks of the middle and upper shell limestone and the lower Keuper. The layer surfaces can also be covered by loess loam. The geological strata of the Werra Uplands in the Eisenach area are divided into several strata by several Hercynian faults. The geological layers are mostly tilted against each other along the fracture edges. A rib of shell limestone, for example, forms the up to 20 meter high rocks of the Michelskuppe within the northern part of the city. Large areas of clay and marlstone from the Lower Jurassic have also come to light on the fault lines southwest of the Stregda district and around the Eisenach cemetery. The extreme west of the urban area is characterized by the Leine sequence and the Werra-to-Stassfurt sequence of the Zechstein. Limestone and dolomite dominate there, but also anhydrite and gypsum. The Kupferschieferbank and reef limestone are exposed, for example, at the fraternity monument. An outcrop of rocks from the Tertiary has been preserved in a so-called geological window at Hörschel train station. It is a basalt dike in the Hörschelberg that was created during the Rhön volcanism. The valley floodplains of Hörsel and Werra are filled with floodplain sediments, mostly loose valley sands, which were deposited there by the rivers in the more recent geological past. They are the largest flat areas in the city of Eisenach and are important as industrial locations. The old town of Eisenach was built on periglacial debris, i.e. debris that was formed during the Vistula glaciation on the northern edge of the Thuringian Forest.

 

Flora and vegetation

The potential natural vegetation at almost all locations in the city of Eisenach is beech forest. The spectrum ranges from limestone and orchid beech forests to grove beech forests on the Rotliegend conglomerates of the northwestern Thuringian Forest. Alder-ash brook forests and willow-ash riparian forests have naturally developed in the floodplains. The natural vegetation of the gorges consists of maple-ash gorge forests. Dry oak forests may have developed at extreme locations on rocky crests and on ridges over conglomerate and sandstone. On steep southern slopes, for example on the Petersberg in the east of the city, it is difficult for the trees to grow up because of the steepness and the dryness of the locations. In places there are species-rich dry bushes and grasses. Sloe and hawthorn species are common, but rarer species such as barberry, privet, buckthorn and juniper are also present. There is also an endemic species on the slopes of the Petersberg, the Eisenach whitebeam.

In many places, the current vegetation differs significantly from the potentially natural one. The forests are forested. Tree species that are not appropriate to the site, such as Norway spruce, Scots pine and black pine, were introduced or used for afforestation of eroded slopes. Large areas, especially in the north and east of the urban area, are subject to intensive agricultural use and are dominated by cultivated plants. Plant species associated with field flora such as poppies or odorless chamomile can at best gain a foothold there. In the area of the former military training area on the Wartenberg in the north of the city area, extensive, semi-natural, species-rich nutrient-poor grassland (borse grassland) has arisen through grazing with sheep. In places, gentian-schiller grass can also be found there. The forests in the Thuringian Forest conservation area in the southern part of the city are particularly natural. They also contain floristic specialties such as the two-flowered violet. Common beech and pedunculate oak form stocks there and in some places reach their natural age. Old and particularly tall specimens of common ash and sycamore have grown in the numerous ravine and scree forests. Extensive wetlands are located in western Eisenach between the Thuringian Forest and the automobile factory. There are reed areas, a lake, streams, alluvial forests, canary grass reed beds, damp tall herb meadows and wet meadows closely interlinked. Old trees, including several black alders, characterize the area as well as the transition to near-natural deciduous forests interspersed with rocks.

 

History

4th millennium BC to 1150

The oldest traces of settlement go back about 5500 years. At the Eisenach brickworks west of the Mühlhäuser Chaussee, traces of the linear ceramics were found. They lived in rectangular post houses. Other archaeological finds from the area of the former clay pits indicate that agriculture and animal husbandry were also practiced here. In the 2nd millennium B.C. Celts settled in the Eisenach area.

Late 1st millennium BC The Germanic Hermundurs settled in the region around 300 BC, their and the Celtic settlements were on the rivers near Hörschel, Stregda, Stockhausen and Sättelstädt. The Thuringian Museum in Eisenach houses the artefacts from these excavations.

Until 531, the settlement area belonged to the Kingdom of Thuringia. In older research it was assumed that the Thuringians ("Toringi") appearing in the sources in late antiquity partly emerged from Hermundur groups, but this is now disputed. After the Thuringian Empire was smashed by the Franks, Franconian settlers are said to have settled on the banks of the Hörsel near the Petersberg in the 8th century. This settlement is considered to be the origin of today's town of Eisenach.

According to legend, Ludwig the Springer had the Wartburg built in 1067. At that time, the Ludowinger family, to which the count descended, tried to consolidate and expand its territorial power by building castles. The Wartburg was first mentioned in a document in 1080 by the Saxon chronicler Bruno von Merseburg. The name Eisenach first appeared in a written source in 1150, when a knight Berthold de Isenacha was about to be buried.

 

From the Civitas to the main residence of the Landgraves of Thuringia (until the mid-13th century)

Eisenach was first mentioned in a document in the 1180s as a landgrave's civitas near an existing village on the Petersberg. The town of Eisenach goes back to three (customs) legally separate market settlements: the Saturday market (today Karlsplatz), the Wednesday market (on Frauenplan) and the Monday market on today's market square. The city's location at the crossroads of long-distance trade routes enabled the rapid development of trade and commerce, which was protected by the Eisenach city wall, which had been built since the second half of the 12th century. The Nikolaitor, one of the oldest city gates in Thuringia, is a reminder of this fortification in addition to preserved sections of the wall and remains of the tower.

In addition to the right to construct the city fortifications, Eisenach received (restricted) administrative rights, the right to hold markets and collect taxes, a city coat of arms and the right to mint coins as characteristics of the city's development. The streets running parallel and at right angles, the placement of the churches and the layout of the craftsmen's quarters all point to a planned development of the city.

At the end of the 12th century, the Wartburg became the main residence of the Landgraves of Thuringia. Eisenach occupied a central position within the Ludowingian dominion, it was a link between the Hessian and Thuringian parts of the region. The court of Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia was considered the center of minstrelsy and poetry in the empire. In 1206 the legendary singers' war is said to have taken place at the Wartburg.

From 1211, Elisabeth of Thuringia lived in the Wartburg as the wife of Landgrave Ludwig IV. She appeared in Eisenach as a benefactor and donated, among other things, a hospital in which she devoted herself to the poor, sick and lepers. After the death of Ludwig IV, Elisabeth left the Wartburg in 1228 and was inherited by Pope Gregory IX in 1235. canonized. Ludwig's successor, Heinrich Raspe, founded the preacher's monastery in Eisenach in her honor. In 1246, Heinrich Raspe confirmed the rights and freedoms of the city of Eisenach. In 1247 he died at the Wartburg and was buried in Eisenach.

 

War of Succession, Wettin Rule, City Law (mid-13th century to late 14th century)

With Heinrich's death, the Ludowinger family died out, which led to the Thuringian-Hessian War of Succession between Hermann I's grandson, the Meissen Margrave Heinrich the Illustrious, to whom Heinrich Raspe had promised eventual enfeoffment in the event of his death in 1243, and Sophie von Brabant, a daughter of Ludwig IV. led. After the end of the war (1264) Eisenach fell to Heinrich the Illustrious of Wettin. As a direct result of this war, the areas known as the Landgraviate of Hesse and other parts of the dominion were lost.

Eisenach had already received a municipal statute under Heinrich Raspe, which is only indirectly handed down in the handhold of 1283. At the same time, the city was elevated to the rank of Oberhof. Thus, all towns of the Landgraviate formed a municipal law family. They had to adopt the Eisenach legal principles and to conform to them. In 1286 Landgrave Albrecht gave the town the right to elect two mayors. A paved road (“the stone path”) in Eisenach was first mentioned in a document in 1293.

In 1306 the city tried in vain to gain the status of an imperial city. The fight against the Wettin town lords led to the destruction of Klemme Castle and the defense towers of the Marienkirche. After an unsuccessful siege of the Wartburg, Eisenach surrendered to the Landgrave Friedrich the Freidigen in 1308. As reparations, the townspeople had to rebuild the destroyed Klemme Castle and the towers of the Marienkirche.

In the years 1333 to 1362, the Eisenach City Volunteers were written down, a collection of local laws drawn up by the Eisenach Council. In 1387, the priest and town clerk Johannes Rothe wrote the now-lost Eisenach law books as chain books, which served as the basis for the law book written by Johannes Purgold at the beginning of the 16th century. It was also Johannes Rothe who wrote the Thuringian State Chronicle based on the Chronica Thuringorum written around 1395 by Dominican monks from the Preacherkloster in Eisenach.

For entertainment, mystery plays or moralities with a religious background were performed in the city of Eisenach. Landgrave Friedrich der Freidige is said to have gotten so excited during the Eisenach performance of The Play of the Five Wise and Five Foolish Maidens in 1321 that he suffered a physical and mental collapse and lived in mental derangement until his death.

Jews probably settled in Eisenach as early as the 12th century. The first reference to a possible Jewish community around 1235 is the mention of Jechiel ben Jakob from Eisenach, author of a synagogue poem and two lamentations. It is proven that Samuel ben Jakob corresponded with Meir von Rothenburg on religious questions in the 13th century. At the end of the century, the Jews are said to have lived in the Judengasse, which was severely damaged in a city fire in 1342, and later in the Loeberstrasse. From the years 1293 and 1323 other names have been handed down. In 1283 the city law contained provisions relating to Jewish residents. During the plague from 1348 there were attacks on Jews, after 1411 they were expelled from the city. In 1510 they were allowed to trade for a few years, but not to settle in Eisenach.

 

Great city fire, plague, political and economic decline (from 1342)

In 1342 a great fire in the city destroyed almost all of the city's buildings; with the town hall on the market, the municipal documents were burned. In 1349 the city was hit by the first plague epidemic, another one in 1393 claimed 3000 victims in the city.

In 1406, with the death of Landgrave Balthasar, Eisenach lost the court and the landgrave's administration and thus its status as a landgrave's residence. This eventually led to the city's economic decline. When the landgrave's possessions were divided up in 1445, Eisenach fell to Wilhelm III, who had the Eisenach mint closed around 1450. After the death of Wilhelm III. Eisenach fell to the Ernestine family during the division of Leipzig in 1485.

 

Reformation, Luther's stay, Peasants' War (16th century)

Martin Luther came to Eisenach for the first time in 1498 as a Latin student. On May 2, 1521, he preached in the Georgenkirche on the return journey from the Diet of Worms. After he had been banned from the Reich, he was housed in the Wartburg as “Junker Jörg” the following day and thus hidden from possible pursuers. He stayed there until March 1, 1522 and translated the New Testament from the original Greek into German; it was published in September 1522 (“September Testament”).

With the arrival of the preacher Jacob Strauss from Basel, which was noted for 1523, the usury dispute in Eisenach began – a conflict that quickly grew in severity despite the personal intervention of Luther and Melanchton – as a result of which the citizens of Eisenach initially refused to pay interest on financial transactions. As a result, residents tumultuously attacked the existing ecclesiastical institutions, almost all churches and monasteries were severely devastated or burned down.

On May 7, 1525, the Werrahaufen, a horde of rebellious peasants in the German Peasants' War, arrived in front of the city to obtain support from the city authorities and the population. The city commandant managed to lure most of the unsuspecting leaders into the city, whereupon they were immediately arrested and executed after a show trial in the market. A cross in the pavement in front of the church still reminds us of this today. 17 sympathizers from the Eisenach population shared this fate weeks later, after Elector John the Steadfast had regained control of the situation.

In 1528 Eisenach became a Protestant in the course of the Reformation, with Justus Menius as the first superintendent. The Anabaptist movement was widespread in Thuringia at the time, and one of the most important supporters in Eisenach was Fritz Erbe. He was captured in 1533 and imprisoned in the stork tower for seven years. In 1540 he was moved to the dungeon in the south tower of the Wartburg, where he died in 1548.

 

Again residence city (1596), city fires (1617, 1636), plague (1626), witch trials

In the 1550s, Hanns Leonhardt, as master builder and architect, built numerous magnificent town houses in the Renaissance style; the former wine cellar, today the town hall, the St. George fountain on the market square and the Luther House have been preserved. Such a prestigious city center made it easier for Johann Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Eisenach, to move his residence from Marksuhl to Eisenach in 1596. Devastating city fires in 1617 and 1636, the tribulations of the Thirty Years' War and the plague that was brought in in 1626 severely damaged the city and slowed down the economic boom again.

Eisenach and today's districts of Madelungen, Neukirchen and Stregda were affected by witch hunts from 1615 to 1681. Eight women and one man were involved in witch trials, four were executed, two women resisted torture and did not confess, but like the man were expelled from the country.

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach on March 21, 1685 and baptized in the Georgenkirche. His father Johann Ambrosius Bach was head of the Rattrumpetererei. In Eisenach, the baroque composers Johann Pachelbel and Johann Christoph Bach worked as organists and Georg Philipp Telemann as court conductor.

 

Saxe-Weimar (1741), city of culture

Eisenach became a residence town, until 1757 with a princely court, and in the 18th century more and more a cultural town. The city palace built on the market square between 1742 and 1751 is the architectural symbol of this new heyday. In 1741 the Duchy of Saxe-Eisenach fell to Ernst August I of Saxe-Weimar on the death of Duke Wilhelm Heinrich. In 1777, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stayed at the Wartburg for the first time at the invitation of Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

In the circles of Julie von Bechtolsheim, Goethe's "little soul" and Wieland's "Psyche", the most respected spirits of the time met at the Jakobsplan: in addition to Goethe and Wieland, the Eisenach philosopher Christian Schreiber, Friederike von Schardt, Charlotte von Stein's sister-in-law, Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Duke August of Gotha, Grand Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and his wife, Carl Friedrich, the then reigning Grand Duke of Weimar and his wife, Maria Pavlovna, Duke Bernhard of Weimar, Moritz August von Thümmel, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Johann Friedrich Rochlitz, Karl von Müffling, General Wilhelm von Dörnberg, Count Johann von Thielmann, Aaron Burr, the Vice President of the United States of America, August von Kotzebue, Count Otto von Loeben, Johann Benjamin Erhard, and Count Dorotheus Ludwig von Keller and many others. There was what Madame de Staël once said: "All truly educated people are countrymen".

 

Napoleon, war damage, typhoid epidemic (1807 to 1814)

In 1807, Napoleon I rested in the city. A tragic accident occurred on September 1, 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars: a gunpowder explosion on a French ammunition transport through the middle of Eisenach killed 70 people and severely damaged the town. The Black Fountain on Georgenstrasse, erected in 1817, is a reminder of this and was given its current appearance on its centenary. The retreat of the defeated French army claimed countless victims, as a result of which a typhoid epidemic broke out in the city. During the 1814 campaign, the Russian Tsar Alexander I stayed briefly in Eisenach.

 

Wartburg festival, industrialization, spa town (19th century)

In October 1817, on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig, around 500 students and professors met for the first Wartburg Festival to commemorate 300 years of the Reformation and to demand a unified and free Germany. Another Wartburg Festival followed in 1848. Since 1850, the Wingolf Association has celebrated its Wartburg Festival in Eisenach every two years. The physicist and social reformer Ernst Abbe was born in Eisenach in 1840.

Economically, structurally and culturally, the city developed much faster after 1800 than before. In 1817 a school for midwives opened in Fleischgasse (today Lutherstrasse). A centralization of midwifery education that "physicians and state theorists alike welcomed." The merchants Eichel, Pfennig and Streiber founded the first industrial companies; Spinning mills, white lead and paint factories were established, and the worsted yarn spinning mill was the first large-scale operation. The tanning trade was also important. The traffic routes emanating from Eisenach were developed as comfortable roads and created the connection to the Eisenacher Oberland in the Rhön, a part of the area of the secularized Fulda Abbey that was granted by the Congress of Vienna.

The Biedermeier period favored the creation of landscape parks; merchant Christian Friedrich Roese laid out a forest park on the still bare Metilstein. At the same time, the gardens on the Pflugensberg and on the Spicke, the Kartausgarten, the Clemdagarten and Pfennigsgarten were created. The founding of the Grand Ducal-Saxon Forestry School by the forester Gottlob König in 1830 continued this trend. The first restaurants and places of entertainment sprang up around the city, and the first coffee houses and ballrooms in the city. In the social salons typical of the time, in Eisenach the Clemda Society for the "educated classes", higher officials, entrepreneurs, officers, but also the landed gentry met for cultural discussions, music and entertainment.

In 1820, the architect Johann Wilhelm Sältzer built a brick factory in Eisenach, which his son Eduard Sältzer later expanded and which, with the introduction of the Hoffmann ring kiln, set standards for the economical production of the building material that was urgently needed in Thuringia in the Wilhelminian era. In 1847 it was connected to the Thuringian Railway to Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar, Halle and Leipzig in the east. The route was extended to Bebra in Hesse in 1849, so that there were rail connections to Frankfurt am Main and Kassel. The Werra Railway was the last railway line to be opened in 1858, leading to the Main via Meiningen and Coburg. The Schwebda–Wartha railway to Eschwege, which opened in 1907 and was closed in 1969, began west of Eisenach in what is now Wartha.

In 1859 the German National Association was founded in Gasthof Fantasie. August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) in the Goldener Löwe inn in 1869 and wrote their Eisenach program. In the further development up to 1890 it became the SPD. The economic development of the city led to the foundation of further factories around 1870, the Demmer brothers stove factory, the Hermann Berger shoe last factory, the August Saeltzer art pottery, the Arzberger, Schöpff & Co. paint factory, the Wilk & Oehring window factory, the Eisenach Stein & Co. monastery brick factory. and in 1873 the Petersberger brewery in Eisenach, owned by the businessman Albert Erbslöh, which later became the Aktien-Brauerei Eisenach and now exists as Wartburg Brauerei Eisenach GmbH.

In 1896 the vehicle factory in Eisenach was founded, which marked the beginning of the Eisenach automotive industry. To supply the city, a (light) gas station was built in 1862, a waterworks in 1874, the post and telegraph office in 1887 and the city slaughterhouse and power station in 1892. This made it possible to operate the Eisenach electric tram from 1897. Numerous banks and insurance companies set up branches in the city center around 1900, and in 1905 a branch of the Reichsbank was established in the north of the city centre.

An infantry garrison had existed in Eisenach since 1822, and the number of troops was estimated at 165 in 1831. At the instigation of the city administration, construction of the municipal barracks on Hospitalstrasse began in 1869. The 2nd Battalion of the 5th Thuringian Infantry Regiment No. 94 was stationed there from 1871 to 1914.

In 1899 the memorial to the Wingolf Association was completed, in 1902 the fraternity memorial was inaugurated, in 1904 today's main station, in 1906 the Volkshaus Stern and in 1907 the Bachhaus. In 1908 the first movie theater was opened and in 1913 a zoo was created on the Wartenberg. Eisenach became a conference and congress town around 1900. On January 19, 1901, the Association of German Motor Vehicle Manufacturers was founded in the Hotel Kaiserhof with the participation of the director of the vehicle factory in Eisenach, Gustav Ehrhardt. The Kurbad-Eisenach-Gesellschaft was founded in 1905, numerous hotels and guesthouses, the lobby, a casino, baths, parks and sanatoriums were built. The Kurbad-Gesellschaft acquired the rights to use the mineral water spring at Wilhelmsglücksbrunn, known as the Grand Duchess Karolinen Spring, and had a water pipe laid from this to the foyer, where the spa was opened on July 8, 1906 in Eisenach’s southern town. With the First World War, spa operations in Eisenach largely came to a standstill.

 

Second Jewish community (from 1804)

With permission for the Thuringian court factor Michael Rothschild in 1804, a modest Jewish immigration began. In the 1820s, more families came from the rural communities, the surrounding "Jewish villages" Lengsfeld, Gehaus, Herleshausen, Nesselröden, Geisa. However, it was only at the beginning of the 1860s that a small community was founded, which had 72 members in 1864, and by 1877 there were already 287. Around 1864, Jacob Heidungsfeld was employed as the first teacher in the Jewish community, and he also worked as a cantor until his death in 1897 . The Jewish religious school was founded in 1865, and a mikveh set up in 1868 (Clemensstrasse 5).

Eisenach was from 1846 to 1876 under Rabbi Dr. Mendel Hess and from 1912 the seat of the state rabbinate of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, which included the communities of Apolda, Aschenhausen, Eisenach, Gehaus, Geisa, Jena, Ilmenau, Stadtlengsfeld, Vacha and Weimar. From 1898 to 1930 Dr. Josef Wiesen Rabbi, from 1912 in Eisenach. He died in November 1942 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

The Jews of Eisenach were initially active in the livestock, cloth and millinery trade, then in fur, leather and agricultural products, wool, wood and manufactured goods. In 1877 there were two Jewish lawyers, a doctor, an editor, an insurance agent, two bankers, etc. Renowned shops were the Löwenstein women's fashion shop, the Dreyfuss men's fashion shop, but also industrial companies such as the Weinstein drum factory. In 1904 the congregation had the highest number of members with 430, in 1906 it only had 386 members.

 

Between the World Wars

After World War I, the city's population had grown to 40,000 in 1919. In the newly created residential areas of the suburbs and north of the railway line, four-storey houses were therefore preferred. The living conditions in the villa colonies Mariental, Predigerberg, Karthäuserhöhe and Marienhöhe in the southern part of the city were significantly more luxurious. The reestablishment of the Jewish community in Eisenach, which was made up in part of business people from Stadtlengsfeld and the Eisenacher Oberland, was also linked to the economic upswing. The center of the Eisenach Israelite community was the synagogue built in 1885 on what was then Wörthstrasse (today: Karl-Marx-Strasse). It was set on fire and destroyed on November 9, 1938 during the Kristallnacht pogrom night. During the First World War, 23 Jewish soldiers from Eisenach died.

The 2nd Replacement Battalion 167 was transferred from Eisenach to Kassel in 1917 and in November the replacement battalion of the Landwehr Infantry Regiment No. 83 from Eschwege was taken over. The Panzer Regiment II, which had been transferred from Silesia to Eisenach, moved into the newly built barracks on Ludendorffwall (today Ernst-Thälmann-Straße) in October 1935. A memorial for those who died in March at the entrance to Frankfurter Strasse commemorates a bloody military operation on March 18, 1920 during the Kapp Putsch, in which five Eisenach workers died. From 1920 to 1940, Eisenach was the center of Guida Diehl's new territory movement. The organization and the Neuland publishing house were based in the Neulandhaus; the city was the annual scene of the Neulandtag. In 1920 the newly founded Thuringian state church took up residence in Eisenach.

 

Nazism and World War II

On January 30, 1933, the NSDAP took power. First, the city experienced a strong economic impulse. Housing estates (Am Klosterholz, Kirschberg), two schools, the building of the Thuringian State Bank on Karlstrasse and the publishing house of the Thuringian Daily Post, the mother house of the deaconess on Karlsplatz and a forest stage were built. Armaments factories, large barracks and an Air Force flying school were built as part of the rearmament. In 1935 the city became the location of the 2nd Panzer Regiment of the 1st Panzer Division. A camp for the Reich Labor Service was set up at Siebenborn.

In 1920 and 1924, various Jewish shops were daubed with paint by schoolchildren, and in 1923 and 1925 the windows of the synagogue were smashed. From 1933, the Jews of Eisenach were increasingly disenfranchised, as they were everywhere in the German Reich. From 1938 more and more Jewish citizens had to leave their homeland. During the pogrom night of November 9, 1938, the synagogue on Wörthstrasse was destroyed, and Jewish shops and private homes were looted and vandalized. Commemorative plaques in the station building and on Karl-Marx-Straße as well as around 50 stumbling blocks commemorate these incidents. On May 6, 1939, eleven regional evangelical churches founded the Institute for Research and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life in the Wartburg, which from then on had its headquarters at Bornstraße 11. The institute's work aimed to "liberate" Christianity from all Jewish influences and thus create a "species-appropriate" faith. In September 1941, the 145 Jews still living in the city were interned in the house at Goethestraße 48 and deported from there to Belzec and Theresienstadt in 1942. Few of them survived.

In 1940 the first prisoners of war and women and men from the countries occupied by Germany came to the city and were forced to do forced labor, especially in the BMW municipal works and in the BMW aircraft engine works. The largest groups were 2154 Ukrainians, 1314 Russians and 390 Belarusians. The forced laborers also worked in the surrounding towns. A memorial in the Erlengräben (district of Mosbach, municipality of Wutha-Farnroda) commemorates 455 victims. 1040 Soviet prisoners of war and 102 civilian prisoners who died are commemorated in the Soviet Cemetery of Honor on the Wartenberg.

In 1941, Eisenach was connected to the Reichsautobahn network, from the east route 80 was provisionally completed up to the Eisenach-West exit. For this purpose, construction work has been taking place in the north of the city area since 1936, including the construction of the Karolinental Bridge and the motorway maintenance depot, which is now a listed building.

During World War II, from February 1944 to February 1945, the city was the target of seven Allied air raids, mostly by the United States Army Air Forces. 170 heavy bombers dropped more than 400 tons of bombs on Eisenach. The automobile factory and its surroundings as well as the historic city center, especially in the area of the market square, Lutherstrasse and Frauenplan, were particularly affected. At the end of the war, 2,000 homes in Eisenach were damaged or uninhabitable, and two-thirds of the car factory had been destroyed. The archive vault and the stables of the residence as well as the council scales, which were later removed, also lay in ruins. The old residence, the old castle, the Creutznacher house, the town hall, the Luther house and the Bach house were badly damaged. Numerous other buildings suffered minor to moderate damage from bombs or artillery fire, such as the Annen, Georgen, Kreuz, Nikolai and Prediger churches, the bell tower, the New Residence and the Wartburg. Most of the damaged buildings were restored after the war ended. About 370 civilians died in the air raids, including low-flying aircraft and artillery shelling, prior to the occupation.

 

American crew

The western suburbs of Hörschel and Neuenhof, along with the neighboring town of Creuzburg, were taken by American units on April 1, 1945. The German combat commander von Eisenach refused to surrender and ordered unconditional resistance. In the days that followed, the Americans advanced further north of the city towards Gotha. On April 6, from 2 a.m. until dawn, Eisenach's city center was occupied by artillery fire, which resulted in additional building losses due to unextinguished fires. As a result, the combat commander's office left and the troops of the German Wehrmacht surrendered. In the morning hours of April 6, Mayor Rudolf Lotz, who had been inaugurated two days earlier, handed the city over to American troops.

The balance of destruction in World War II was four damaged bridges, 55 public buildings (21 total loss), 6742 apartments (1870 total loss) and 231 utility buildings, factories, depots and technical facilities (84 total loss). Seven bombardments alone targeted the BMW site on the northern edge of downtown and the outside area on the Wartenberg. Over 17,000 foreigners, including 14,089 Italians, were forced laborers or prisoners of war in barrack camps, ruins and emergency shelters on the outskirts of the city. The Eisenach death register contains the data of about 2,000 Soviet citizens and many hundreds of victims from other European countries.

Mayor Lotz was retained in office by the American city commander until May 7, 1945, and was then replaced. Ernst Fresdorf, a Rhinelander and long-time mayor of Cologne, who happened to be present in Eisenach, was appointed the new mayor. The demolition of the city, the railway operation and the reopening of production facilities began while the Americans were still there.

 

Soviet occupation

With the contractual handover of Thuringia to the Red Army on July 1, 1945, Fresdorf had to agree to extensive personnel reviews, he himself was relieved of his office on July 25, 1945. From July 27, the SPD politician Karl Hermann took over the duties of the mayor.

After the end of the war, four transit camps (one for each zone of occupation) were set up in Eisenach as quarantine camps for prisoners of war, forced laborers and expellees. By September 1946, around 450,000 people were registered and cared for in Eisenach.

On a former courthouse on Theaterplatz there is a plaque with the inscription: "In memory of the victims of violence and injustice 1945-1989. In memory of 33 Eisenach youths aged 13-21: arrested in 1945, convicted in 1946 and 9 of them executed. You are unforgettable.” The young people were accused of werewolf activities. Five of those sentenced to long terms of imprisonment died in Soviet special camps, the survivors returned from camp detention in 1950/51.

 

GDR

Location near the border, district town and industrial location, population decline

After the inner-German border was closed in 1952, today's western districts were in the five-kilometer exclusion zone, which could only be entered with state permission. Overall, the location near the border had a negative impact on urban development, so the previously close economic and social ties to Northeast Hesse broke off, the population fell from 53,000 in 1939 to 48,000 in 1988. In 1950 Eisenach lost its status as an independent city and became part of it of the district of Eisenach, which was divided in 1952. The city came to the reduced district of Eisenach in the district of Erfurt. The Wartha/Herleshausen border crossing was set up west of the city. At least one person was shot by the border troops in 1964 for attempting to flee the republic in the border area near what is now Wartha and Göringen.

On June 17, 1953, 6,000 workers at the Eisenach Motor Works (EMW) went on strike. In particular, they called for a lowering of labor standards. Soviet troops moved in and the occupying power declared a state of emergency.

In 1955 the Wartburg Stadium was built and from 1965 the sports center in Katzenaue. A GDR performance center for fencing was located in Wartburgstadt. In 1962 the Bismarck Tower on the Wartenberg was blown up.

The triple jubilee celebrated in 1967 - 900 years of Wartburg, 450 years of Reformation and 150 years of the fraternity meeting - was the reason for the GDR leadership to present Eisenach as a model socialist city. An extensive cultural program and urban redevelopment limited to the area around the sights were approved. The cityscape was beautified by the redesign of green spaces (Bahnhofstrasse, Wartburgallee) and facade renovations. A modern city marketing with tourism information was initiated, the first Intershops in Eisenach for the sale of Western articles were established in two hotels. The Wartburg Pavilion was built to present the Eisenach automotive tradition. In the years that followed, the Eisenach parish received two new buildings in the outskirts of Hofferbertaue and Eisenach-Nord, financed by West German church districts, as a guest gift. Several scientific conferences with international participation took place in the city in 1966 and 1967. The planned city partnerships with Denain in France and Pesaro in Italy were prohibited.

The traditional summer prize, the song festival around the Wartburg, the fountain festival and the foyer festival were the most important cultural events over the course of the year in the GDR era.

 

Automobile production, demolition of old town areas

The Wartburgstadt was an important industrial location in the GDR, the largest companies were the VEB Automobilwerk Eisenach (AWE), the Kombinat Fahrzeugelektrik Ruhla (FER), with its headquarters in Eisenach and Ruhla, the VEB Elektroschaltgeräte Eisenach, the VEB Elektrotechnik Eisenach and the VEB Bakery factory in Eisenach. The focus was on vehicle construction: in 1956 the first Wartburg rolled off the production line in Eisenach. The annual increase in production figures reached 42,700 cars in 1971 and the highest annual production of 74,000 cars in 1985. Since the 1970s, the lack of skilled workers in industry and the latent housing shortage have been problematic for the further development of the city. Planning for the first prefabricated housing estates began as early as 1972, after a housing estate close to the city of the Arbeiterwohnungsbaugenossenschaft (AWG) had already been built on Ernst-Thälmann-Strasse in the north-west of the city.

With the demolition of old town quarters, space was created for industrial housing construction from 1975, in the same year the construction of the inner-city residential area Goethestraße with around 750 apartments began, from 1976 to 1978 a further 460 apartments were built in the Petersberg residential area and from 1978 to 1985 were built in the residential area Eisenach-Nord 3745 residential units for around 12,000 residents. By connecting these residential areas to the district heating networks that were created at the same time, it was possible to reduce the level of pollutants in the air we breathe. In a balance sheet for 1986, 5,325 remotely heated homes were reported. In 1975, the Eisenach tramway that had opened in 1897 was discontinued and replaced by articulated buses. The high volume of traffic at the change of shift and the fact that the apartments were still mostly heated by stoves often led to smog alarms in the inner city, and illnesses caused by respiratory problems increased steadily. This environmental pollution has also been mentioned in the Eisenach daily press since the mid-1980s. In addition to the political situation, the feared loss of other large parts of the historic old town and the increasing environmental pollution were the main reasons for the growing resentment and resistance of the Eisenach population.

 

Turning time

On October 11, 1989, thousands of concerned people from Eisenach gathered for the first time in the Georgenkirche for a prayer for peace. On October 23 and 30, the church also served as a podium for the meetings of representatives of the Thuringian state church and the Eisenach opposition and citizens' movement that was being formed. Twelve representatives of integrity from all walks of life were appointed to the "Eisenach Citizens' Committee". A demonstration march through the old town of Eisenach concluded the event. On the night of November 9, the rush to the border crossing points near Wartha-Herleshausen began. For months, Eisenach became the stage of the wave of travel to the old federal states that was now beginning, numerous radio and television stations reported live from the city and district area.

The first major demonstration after the opening of the border took place on November 19: artists and around 8,000 citizens demanded the end of the SED rule in the GDR. The representatives of the citizens' committee met with representatives of the city and district administration as well as the SED for initial consultations on December 2nd. December on. The first offices of the citizens' movement and the newly founded parties (SDP, Neues Forum and Demokratischer Aufbruch) were made available in the administration building of the Eisenach District Council. The "round table" was formed for the first time on December 20 in the offices of the Eisenach Superintendent on Pfarrberg, with Superintendent Hans Herbst leading the talks. On January 27, 1990, a large rally registered by the SPD took place on the market square in Eisenach, at which Willy Brandt spoke to the people of Eisenach. All parties used the following weeks to prepare for the Volkskammer elections on March 18, 1990. Numerous prominent federal and state politicians also turned up in Eisenach for this purpose. Contrary to expectations, the “Alliance for Germany” led by the CDU also won this election in Eisenach with a clear majority. On April 20th, the council of the district of Eisenach met for its last meeting, the representatives of the Eisenach Citizens' Committee ceased their work on April 27th. With the local elections on May 6, 1990, the CDU in Eisenach won a clear majority in the city and district of Eisenach. In mid-May, the leading representatives of the parties represented in parliament (CDU, SPD, FDP, Democratic Awakening and the “Hofferbertaue Citizens’ Initiative”, which is important in Eisenach), agreed to form a grand coalition.

On May 31, 1990, Eisenach's first freely elected city council since 1933 met for the first time, to which 59 city councilors from ten political parties and groups belonged. He voted out Hans-Peter Brodhun as the new mayor and the city council that existed under GDR law.

 

Post-reunification period, independent city, large district town

After reunification, the population continued to fall, but the economic conditions in Eisenach were better than in other parts of the new federal states. Automaker Opel started production at a new car plant in Eisenach in 1992 after the Eisenach car plant closed in 1991. In 1994, as part of the Thuringian district reform, the districts of Eisenach and Bad Salzungen merged to form the Wartburg district with headquarters in Bad Salzungen and Eisenach. The head office of the district administrator has been in Bad Salzungen since July 1994, where a new district office was built and moved into in 1997. In 1998 Eisenach (again) became an independent city. The sole seat of the Wartburg district then passed to Bad Salzungen.

As part of a trip to Germany on May 14, 1998, the then President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, visited the city together with the then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Work on the Tor zur Stadt urban development complex has been underway since October 2005, and there have been plans for the site of the former paint factory since the early 1990s. The focus is on the redesign of the station suburbs, including urban planning measures, remediation of contaminated sites and aspects of traffic management. The latter remained largely unchanged after the redesign of the ZOB (central bus station) in 2017 on Müllerstrasse. From now on, the city bus lines will also run at the site of the former regional bus station. In 2020, the gateway to the city was built as a retail park with a multi-storey car park and contributes to the structural unity of Bahnhofstrasse. As a result of the neglect of empty houses in the inner city area, it is not uncommon for them to be demolished, for example on Johannisplatz. On May 25, 2009, the city was awarded the title of Place of Diversity by the federal government.

On November 4, 2011, right-wing terrorists Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt were found dead after a successful bank robbery in a mobile home in the Stregda district. Through this de facto self-disclosure, their terror cell National Socialist Underground suddenly became known and triggered years of coming to terms with their murders and attacks with twelve investigative committees and a court case. The circumstances of her death and the subsequent work of the authorities have not been fully clarified and have occupied the investigative committee of the Thuringian state parliament since 2015. Eisenach is one of the largest remaining strongholds of the right-wing extremist NPD, which in the city with results of around 10 percent on a par with the more moderate AfD.

In 2015, Eisenach was awarded the honorary title of "European City of Reformation" by the Community of Evangelical Churches in Europe.

Due to the city's ongoing budget deficit, efforts have been underway since 2012 to give up the freedom of a district and reintegrate Eisenach into the Wartburg district. In 2016, the city applied to the state government to give up its freedom of district and to be able to return to the Wartburg district. The red-red-green state government initially included this concern in the planned regional reform. After the planned second district reform in Thuringia was canceled in November 2017, the city and the district drew up a joint contract, on the basis of which the integration into the district should take place. This "contract for the future", which the district council of the Wartburg district approved with a large majority in August 2018, formed the basis for the draft law for the voluntary reorganization of the district of Wartburg district and the independent city of Eisenach. However, the Eisenach city council voted 16 to 16 against the "Future Contract", which meant that the Thuringian state parliament could not pass the law. The city council of Eisenach already expressed concerns about the project at the beginning of November 2018, among other things because Eisenach was not intended to be a district town and could not become financially viable in the long term by giving up the district freedom. Finally, on March 12, 2019, the city council unanimously approved a merger. On September 12, 2019, the state parliament confirmed this by law. For this purpose, the city of Eisenach will receive a total of €16.5 million from the Free State of Thuringia for 2022 to 2026. The merger took place on July 1, 2021, and the transfer of tasks on January 1, 2022. With the merger, Eisenach was given the title of major district town, which is intended for all independent towns that can be incorporated into a district but are not designated as the district seat become.

 

Coat of arms

Coat of arms of the city of Eisenach Blazon: "In blue, the silver full figure of St. George in mail armor and cloak; in the right hand a flagged spear, whose three-pronged silver pennant shows a red high cross, the left hand holding a golden palm branch, supported on a silver shield with a red cross in paws. The shield figure is accompanied on the right by a silver paw cross.”
Justification for the coat of arms: The city coat of arms with St. George goes back to the oldest city seal from the end of the 13th century. Landgrave Ludwig der Springer, the son of the founder of Eisenach, worshiped the saint, had the Georgenkirche built on the market square and chose him as the patron saint for himself and his town.
incorporations
On October 1, 1922, Fischbach, Eichrodt, Wutha, Stockhausen, Trenkelhof, Stregda, Mittelshof, Dürrerhof and Ramsborn were incorporated. Stedtfeld followed on October 1, 1923. On September 30, 1924, Eichrodt, Wutha, Stockhausen, Stregda, Mittelshof, Dürrerhof and Stedtfeld became independent again.

On July 1, 1994, the community of Hötzelsroda, the community of Lerchenberg near Eisenach with the districts of Stregda, Madelungen, Neukirchen and Berteroda, the community of Neuenhof/Hörschel, the community of Stedtfeld, the community of Stockhausen and the community of Wartha-Göringen were incorporated.

 

Population development

Eisenach was already one of the larger cities in Thuringia in the Middle Ages. It is estimated that the city had 4500 inhabitants in the mid-16th century, 5500 in the mid-17th century and 6500 in the early 18th century. According to a census in the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach from 1791, the city of Eisenach had 8,214 inhabitants. Even in the early modern period, the population increased continuously, so that at the beginning of industrialization around 1850, around 10,000 people were already living in Eisenach. Nevertheless, the strongest population growth took place later than in most other cities in Thuringia, namely only in the period between 1895 and 1914, when mechanical and vehicle construction in particular ensured a high degree of industrialization. The population doubled between 1850 and 1890 and again from 1890 to the First World War, when the city already had 40,000 inhabitants. In the period between the world wars another 10,000 inhabitants were added because the automobile industry was developing well. Shortly after the Second World War, the number of inhabitants reached its historic high of around 52,000 due to refugees. In GDR times, Eisenach did not continue to grow due to its disadvantageous location directly on the inner-German border. Between 1945 and 1989, the number of inhabitants even fell by around 4,000 people. After reunification, the population began to decline rapidly, but this was slowed down in the mid-1990s due to improved economic conditions. Since then, Eisenach's population has been shrinking only slowly. In her 2009 publication Who, where, how many? - Population in Germany 2030", in which the Bertelsmann Foundation provides data on the development of the number of inhabitants for all municipalities in Germany with more than 5000 inhabitants, a decline in the population between 2009 and 2030 by 7.5 percent (3220 people) is predicted for Eisenach.

 

Religions

Eisenach was already a center of religious life in Germany under the Thuringian landgraves. Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia lived and worked here, and her husband, Landgrave Ludwig IV (the saint) also promoted the religious life of the city to the best of his ability. The first Jewish community settled in Eisenach under these landgraves. Until the Reformation, the Catholic Archdiocese of Mainz was responsible for Eisenach. The most important religious orders were represented in the city with monasteries and term farms.

Eisenach was and is a center of the Reformation. From 1921 to the end of 2008, the city was the seat of the regional bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia. The new regional bishop of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany has had his seat in Magdeburg since the merger of the Thuringian regional church and the Evangelical Church of the Church Province of Saxony in 2009. The bishop and the regional church office had their seat in the Villa Pflugensberg above the city center.

The regional synod of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (EKM) approved the formation of the Eisenach-Erfurt provost district on January 1, 2013. The regional bishop will be based in Eisenach. The provost responsible for the region, Reinhard Werneburg, was elected at the Gera conference of the state synod on March 18, 2012.

Many citizens of Eisenach are non-denominational today.

In addition to the two large Christian parishes, there are other religious communities in Eisenach, namely Baptists (Julius-Lippold-Straße), Seventh-day Adventists (Obere Predigergasse), Methodists (Goethestraße), New Apostolic Church (Uferstraße) and Jehovah's Witnesses (Am Wiesengrund ).

The rooms of the regional church community in Eisenach are located in Barfusserstrasse.

There is also a Muslim community in Eisenach, which is part of the German-speaking Islamic Cultural Center in Eisenach e. V. has organized and operates a prayer room.

The Jewish community in Eisenach was systematically wiped out with the destruction of the synagogue in 1938 and the deportation of the Eisenach citizens of Jewish faith until 1942. The memorial book of the Federal Archives for the victims of the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany (1933-1945) lists 212 Jewish residents of Eisenach who were deported and mostly murdered.

 

Politics

(Lord) Mayor
In 1286, Landgrave Albrecht II granted the city the right to elect two mayors. In the Middle Ages, members of influential patrician families such as Hellgreve or Cotta held this office. With the introduction of a new town ordinance in 1813, the office of mayor and his powers were newly regulated; the first incumbent to rule according to the new rules was the Eisenach councilor Friedrich Günther Beyer. A Lord Mayor was first elected in 1847, and August Roese held the office as “Lord Mayor for life”. Between 1950 and 1994 the city was again represented by a mayor. Katja Wolf (Die Linke), who has been in office since 2012, won the 2018 mayoral election with 7,859 votes (58%) in the runoff on April 29, 2018 and thus remained the city’s mayor.

Town twinning
Eisenach has six sister cities:
There have been historical connections with the Hessian university town of Marburg for more than 800 years in connection with Elisabeth of Thuringia. For this reason, the Marburg City Council decided in 1986 to revive the connection between the two cities, which was ratified on June 10, 1988 in the Wartburg Palace.
Relations with Sedan in France date back to 1972. Even before reunification, a state-organized youth exchange took place between the former district of Erfurt and Sedan. On May 25, 1991, the agreement on a town twinning was signed.
Located in Waverly (Iowa, USA), the German Lutheran College was founded in 1879 and was later named Wartburg College. For this reason, a town twinning has linked Eisenach and Waverly since November 28, 1992.
A company that was also active in Eisenach as a supplier to the automotive industry after reunification resulted in the conclusion of a town twinning with the Danish town of Skanderborg in 1993, which was renewed on the occasion of the 15th anniversary with a contract dated October 6, 2008.
As early as the early 1990s, children from the Belarusian city of Mogilev, who were affected by the Chernobyl disaster, stayed in Eisenach several times at the invitation of the Diakonisches Werk. That was the trigger for the town twinning signed on December 12, 1996 with Mahiljou/Mogilev.
Sárospatak in Hungary is believed to be the birthplace of Saint Elizabeth. Every year at Pentecost, a big festival is celebrated there to commemorate the farewell to Erzsébet, who was only four years old. In Thuringia's Elizabeth Year 2007, on the occasion of the 800th birthday of St. Elizabeth, the first contacts between the two cities were made, which were contractually sealed on November 19, 2008 in the Elizabeth Church in Sárospatak with a town twinning.

 

Public facilities

Eisenach has a district court, which belongs to the district of the district court of Meiningen, as well as the labor court in Eisenach, which belongs to the district of the regional labor court in Erfurt.

The municipal facilities include the Eisenach City Library with a current stock of around 70,000 printed works and digital media as well as around 3500 mostly historical books on Thuringian-Saxon history.

In the rear building of the city palace is the city archive with city files, files of the incorporated villages and official books from the 16th century to 1990. The collections also include a significant part of the former Carl Alexander Library and the partial estate of the family of the writer Walter Flex.

The merger of the Christian Hospital in Eisenach with the Wartburg Clinic in 2002 resulted in the St. Georg Clinic in Eisenach.

 

Education and Science

In Eisenach there are four state elementary schools, three regular schools (Wartburg School, Geschwister-Scholl-School, Goethe School), two state high schools (Ernst-Abbe-Gymnasium and Elisabeth-Gymnasium) and the state support center Pestalozzi School (as of the 2017/18 school year). At the beginning of the 2013/2014 school year, the city's first community school was set up on the site of the Oststadtschule. In addition to the state schools, there are the Evangelical elementary school and the Martin-Luther-Gymnasium in the city as educational institutions sponsored by the Evangelical Church in Central Germany, a Waldorf school and the Johannes Falk special school for the mentally handicapped sponsored by the Diakonie-Verbund Eisenach.

The Gera-Eisenach Cooperative State University (until 2016 Eisenach Vocational Academy), the Ludwig Erhard Vocational School Center and the Eisenach Technology and Vocational Training Center are available as inter-company training facilities.

One municipal and several private music schools serve to promote young musicians. The municipal adult education center is located at Schmelzerstraße 19.

The Gera-Eisenach Cooperative State University offers dual courses of study in the fields of business and technology on the Eisenach campus.

 

Sports

In 2015, there were 46 sports clubs in Eisenach with 6,918 members.

The handball club ThSV Eisenach played in the 2015/16 season in the Handball Bundesliga. The previous venue in the Werner-Aßmann-Halle belongs to the sports and leisure center An der Katzenaue and offers space for 3140 spectators. However, the sports hall built in 1979 and modernized after 1990 no longer complies with the regulations of the Handball Bundesliga, so preparations are underway for the replacement building with 4000 seats at a location in downtown Eisenach.

The highest-class football clubs in Eisenach are FC Eisenach in the sixth-class Thuringia league and FSV Eintracht Eisenach in the women's division of Thuringia. The Wartburg Stadium, which opened in 1955, is the city's largest stadium and home of FC Eisenach. The predecessor club of FC Eisenach, BSG Motor Eisenach, played between 1954 and 1983 for a total of 12 years in the DDR-Liga, the second highest league of the German Football Association. In the all-time table of the GDR league, the club occupies 54th place. The handball division of the BSG was GDR champion in field handball in 1958.

Eisenach is the starting point of the Supermarathon, the longest running route of the GutsMuths Rennsteiglauf at 72.7 kilometers.

The Motorsport Club Eisenach e. V. is the organizer of the Wartburg Rally, which takes place every summer, a road race as part of the German Rally Championship.

Since 2005, Eisenach has been the destination of the biennial Flèche Allemagne, a brevet-style rally for long-distance cyclists. Eisenach was a stage of the Deutschland Tour 2019.

The Wartburg Open was a tennis tournament that took place annually in Eisenach from 1993 to 2002. It was part of the ATP Challenger Tour and was played outdoors on sand at the TC Blau-Weiß Eisenach in Eisenach's Johannistal.

The city has five municipal sports halls, 13 school sports halls, the An der Katzenaue sports center with the Werner-Aßmann-Halle and around a dozen sports fields in the city area.

 

Economy and Infrastructure

In 2016, Eisenach, within the city limits, had a gross domestic product (GDP) of €1.7 billion. In the same year, GDP per capita was €40,821 (Thuringia: €27,674; Germany: €38,180) and thus above the Thuringian and national average. There are around 29,100 employed people in the city in 2017. The unemployment rate was 6.2% in December 2018 and thus above the Thuringian average of 5.2%.

 

Industry

vehicle industry
Automobiles have been designed and built in Eisenach since 1898. In the plant founded by the entrepreneur Heinrich Ehrhardt as a vehicle factory in Eisenach, production included the Dixi from 1904, before the plant was taken over by BMW in 1928, which meant their entry into vehicle construction. Motorcycles were manufactured during World War II, for use in the army, and through the mid 1950's. BMW also manufactured aircraft engines between 1937 and 1945 at the BMW Flugmotorenfabrik Eisenach am Dürrerhof, which was completely dismantled after the end of the war. In the days of the GDR, the city was the site of the Automobilwerk Eisenach (AWE), which manufactured the Wartburg car. The production site of Opel Eisenach GmbH, a subsidiary of Adam Opel AG, has been located on the western outskirts of the city since 1992; In the 1990s, BMW set up a new factory in the immediate vicinity of Eisenach in the Deubachshof industrial park (Krauthausen municipality, Wartburg district), which specializes in the production of large press tools.

Since 2003, Bell Equipment dump trucks have been assembled in our own factory in Eisenach.

 

Establishments and companies

The industrial companies based in Eisenach focus on automotive construction and the supplier industry, metal processing and logistics. In 2003 there were 102 industrial companies with around 8000 employees. With 133 industrial jobs per 1000 inhabitants, Eisenach is well above the national average. The monthly average of productivity in 2003 was just under 27,000 euros per employee, the export ratio of the Eisenach economy is 14 percent. In 2010, 2008 commercial and industrial companies were registered in Eisenach.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Robert Bosch GmbH founded the subsidiary Robert Bosch Fahrzeugelektrik Eisenach GmbH on the Wartenberg, where it employs 1,650 people. Truck-Lite Europe GmbH, which today belongs to the Penske International Group, emerged from the traditional company Fahrzeugelektrik Ruhla (FER) and is based in the industrial park in the Stockhausen district. In the transport, logistics and service sector, Panopa Logistik GmbH & Co KG, Piepenbrock dienstleistungen GmbH & Co KG and Hörseltalbahn GmbH should be mentioned, among others.

 

Renewable energy

Wind turbines have been in operation on the northern outskirts of the city near Neukirchen and Stockhausen since around 1998. As one of the first Thuringian cities, the city supports a citizen solar park for the generation of electrical energy from regenerative sources, which went into operation in 2008 on the site of the former Eisenach gas works.

 

Agriculture

Since 1998, the proportion of employees in agriculture and forestry who are subject to social security contributions in Eisenach has fallen by 94.3%. It is currently (as of June 30, 2011) 0.3% (= 60 employees). In 2011, Eisenach's farms managed an area of 4502 ha, which corresponds to 0.5% of the agricultural area in Thuringia. Agricultural employment is concentrated in the rural districts of Neukirchen, Madelungen, Hötzelsroda, Neuenhof and Göringen.

 

Tourism

Tourism is very important for the city and the surrounding area. In addition to the classic travel destinations of Wartburg, Bachhaus, Lutherhaus and Rennsteig, the founding of the Hainich National Park north of the city enabled a further increase in visitor numbers. The Eisenach–Budapest mountain hiking trail begins at the Wartburg.

Eisenach is a city in the countryside, forest covers large parts of the southern city area and is used for forestry. In the outskirts of the city, riding stables and adventure farms, for example in the districts of Gefilde, Trenkelhof and Madelung, as well as canoe and bicycle tourism along the Werra have gained a certain importance.

 

Traffic

Rail

Eisenach is located at the junction of the Thuringian Railway (Halle-Gerstungen-Bebra) and the Werra Railway (Eisenach-Eisfeld). Eisenach train station is an ICE and IC stop and belongs to the third-highest price category of DB Station&Service. Other train stops in the city are Eisenach West, Eisenach-Opelwerk and Hörschel as well as the depots in Eisenach-Stedtfeld (shared station with the HTB) and Wartha (Werra). The depot in Eisenach, which was formerly operated and closed by Deutsche Bahn AG, is being continued by a private railway company.

 

Street

Highways
The historically most important road through Eisenach is the Via regia, which led from Frankfurt via Erfurt and Leipzig to Russia. Today this road is traced by the B 84 to the west and the L 3007 to the east.

Since 2010, Eisenach has only been touched by the federal autobahn 4, which has been rerouted further north. The original A 4 route between the former Wutha-Farnroda and Eisenach-West junctions is now being used as a bypass to relieve inner-city traffic and connect to the new Eisenach-West motorway junction, about one kilometer west of the Ramsborn district. The Eisenach Ost(-stadt), Eisenach Mitte and Eisenach West(-stadt) junctions were retained. Another autobahn near Eisenach is the federal autobahn 44, which is to connect Eisenach to the Ruhr area via Kassel. The connection to the BAB 4 will take place about 15 kilometers west of Eisenach at the Wommen triangle.

The federal highway 7, which has ended at the BAB 4 junction Eisenach-West since 2010, connects Eisenach with Kassel. The section of the B 7 from Eisenach-West through the city center via Wutha-Farnroda to Sättelstädt was downgraded to state road 3007 when the BAB 4 was relocated north. The B19 federal highway begins at the BAB 4 junction in Eisenach-West and runs along the former autobahn route, which is now used as a motor road, to Eisenach Oststadt and further south through the city area, through the Thuringian Forest to Meiningen. As a connection to Bad Langensalza in the north-east and to the BAB-4 junction at Eisenach Ost near Grossenlupnitz as well as to Vacha and Fulda in the south-west, the federal highway 84 crosses the city area. The federal highway 88 begins at the former BAB-4 exit Eisenach-Ost (B 19/84 Eisenach-Oststadt) and connects Eisenach with Ilmenau in the southeast. Important state roads lead to Mühlhausen in the north and to Herleshausen and Gerstungen in the west.

 

Inner-city and stationary traffic

Due to the overlapping interests of commuter and individual traffic, stationary traffic and the needs of tourism-related traffic, a traffic and parking space concept was developed in 1994 and updated in 2003, 2007 and 2020.

The city now has an automated parking guidance system for the southern part of the city, which is interlinked with the Wartburg, as well as three inner-city car parks.

 

Public transport

From 1897 to 1975, Eisenach had a tram network that first connected the southern district and later also the north, east and west of the city area with the city center.

At Easter 1913, on the private initiative of a locksmith, the bus service was opened on the bus lines from the train station to Wartburg and from the train station to the Hohe Sonne and Wilhelmsthaler See, and immediately attracted great interest. The buses purchased in Berlin were fitted with improved brakes and new paintwork. In 1918, the Deutsche Reichspost took over the lucrative bus business in Eisenach and established connections to all towns in the district.

Today there are 14 city bus lines and several dozen regional bus lines operated by the Wartburgmobil transport company and its partner companies. The new construction of a central bus station (ZOB) in the immediate vicinity of the main train station was completed in 2017, so that the previously spatially separate central stops for the city bus lines and regional transport were merged in the Gabelsberger Straße. There is a long-distance bus stop near the city car park on Uferstrasse.

The central taxi rank has been at the main entrance in front of Eisenach's main train station since the 1920s.

 

Air traffic

The Eisenach-Kindel airfield is located 12 kilometers north-east of the city in the neighboring municipality of Hörselberg-Hainich. The former military airfield is approved for aircraft up to 20 tons and helicopters. The nearest scheduled airports are Erfurt-Weimar Airport, about 50 kilometers to the east, and Kassel-Calden Airport, about 80 kilometers to the north-west.

 

Bicycle traffic

Eisenach is located on the long-distance cycle path of the Thuringian chain of cities, on the Iron Curtain Trail long-distance cycle path, near the Rennsteig cycle path, near the Werra cycle path, on the Hörseltal cycle path, the Pummpälzweg and the Hercules-Wartburg cycle path to Kassel. In town, there is already a first continuous cycle path connection along the Hörsel, some main streets have been extended to include lanes for cyclists, and the cycle path concept developed in 2003 is to be implemented in the next few years. The goal is a consistent cycle path network that will separate cycle traffic from motor vehicle traffic, especially on busy roads.

 

Media

The first newspaper was published in Eisenach as early as the 18th century, initially as part of the court reporting and government gazette. At the end of the 19th century, Philipp Kühner took over the editor-in-chief of the Eisenacher Tagespost and a little later also its publishing house. Under his direction, the newspaper developed into the most widely read daily newspaper in western Thuringia. Today, Eisenach is the seat of a local editorial office for the Thüringische Landeszeitung and the Thüringer Allgemeine.

In April 1926, a radio intercom of the Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk AG (MIRAG) was put into operation in the Ritterbad of the Wartburg. This meeting point in the Wartburg, which has been technically renewed several times, was in operation as an external studio for the Weimar station until 1987 and enabled the transmission of numerous concerts and conferences from the Wartburg. The local radio station Wartburg-Radio 96.5 has been broadcasting from Eisenach since 2001. The private radio station Antenne Thüringen operates a regional studio in the city.

The television series Familie Dr. produced from 2004 to 2020 on behalf of Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. Kleist was born and played in and around Eisenach.

 

Personalities

Honorary citizen

The title of honorary citizen was first conferred in Eisenach in 1837 on the senior postal clerk Franz Maximilian Diez in recognition of his services to the postal service in the city. Other honorary citizens include the Duchess of Orléans (1851), Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1895) and Bishop Moritz Mitzenheim (1961).

With a municipal council decision of December 5, 1946, the National Socialists Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Frick and Fritz Sauckel were stripped of their honorary citizenship, which had been awarded centrally in 1933.

 

Eisenach personalities

For a city of this size, Eisenach boasts a multitude of personalities from German and world history.

Born in Eisenach in 1685, Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most important German composers of the Baroque era. With Johann Wilhelm Hertel, an important representative of the "sensitive style" of German pre-classicism is a son of the city. In 1925, Rudolf Mauersberger founded the Eisenach Bach Choir.

Eisenach is also a city of humanities and natural sciences, the philosopher Christian Schreiber, the physicist Ernst Abbe and the educator Wilhelm Rein were born there. The philosopher and women's rights activist Hedwig Bender worked there, as did the geologist Johann Georg Bornemann.

The relationship between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charlotte von Stein, who was born in Eisenach in 1742, still offers material for speculation today. The poetess Julie von Bechtolsheim, who spent most of her life in Eisenach, also maintained friendly relations with Goethe.

The Cotta family was one of the most influential patrician families in the city in the 15th and 16th centuries. Both Johann Cotta (sen.) and his son Johann Cotta (jun.) were mayors in Eisenach in the 16th century. Ursula Cotta is said to have housed and supported the young Martin Luther. From the 17th century, but especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the members of the Eichel-Streiber family of industrialists had a great influence on the fate of the city State politician Friedrich von Eichel-Streiber.

Also in the recent past, the city has produced some important personalities, e.g. the politicians Sabine Bergmann-Pohl and Botho Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein, the national handball player Stephan Just and the author and theater director Michael Schindhelm. The handball player Werner Aßmann, after whom the ThSV Eisenach venue is named, lived and worked in Eisenach.

 

Miscellaneous

Place name

There are several theories for the interpretation of the name Eisenach, which are mostly based on abnormalities of the main tributaries, but so far have not provided any coherent explanation. The place name is said to have originated as Middle High German îsîn, "iron" and aha, "water".

"The Middle High German name "Isenacha", "iron river", is derived from the location on the Hörsel, which is brownish in color due to the high iron content."

This interpretation is contradicted by linguists, because the Hörsel does not carry ferrous water, the turbidity corresponds to that of any other stream in the region.

 

License Plate

From 1991, the vehicle distinguishing mark for the district of Eisenach and the city that belonged to the district at the time was ESA. After the founding of the Wartburg district, it was temporarily issued until January 31, 1995 and was replaced by the new distinctive sign WAK on February 1, 1995. With the attainment of district freedom, the city was assigned the distinguishing mark EA, which was issued from then on for new registrations and re-registrations.

28,777 vehicles were registered in the registration district on December 31, 2018.

Despite the reintegration into the Wartburg district on July 1, 2021, Eisenach kept the license plate EA, whereby the license plates WAK and SLZ, which are customary in the district, were also introduced in the urban area. Nevertheless, EA was approved in the entire district.

Planetoids Eisenach and Bach
As a special form of honor, the naming of newly discovered celestial bodies after important places and personalities in history has been common for over 100 years. With Johann Sebastian Bach, nine Bach planetoids in the asteroid belt of the sun have already been considered, and the most important places of action have also been taken into account. The planetoid 1931 TWI – (01814) discovered by K. Reinmuth in 1931 bears the official name (1814) Bach. The planetoid (10774) Eisenach discovered in 1991 by F. Börngen (Tautenburg Observatory) has an orbital period around the sun of 3.72 years, the surface is 65 square kilometers and the diameter is around 4.5 kilometers.

Eisenach corners
A pastry made of wafers developed in Eisenach around 1950 was called Eisenach corners.