Bad Frankenhausen
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Bad Frankenhausen (officially: Bad Frankenhausen/Kyffhäuser) is a spa town in the German state of Thuringia. It is located at the southern slope of the Kyffhäuser mountain range, on an artificial arm of the Wipper river, a tributary of the Saale. Because of the nearby Kyffhäuser monument dedicated to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, it is nicknamed Barbarossastadt. The municipality includes the villages of Seehausen, Udersleben and (since 2007) Esperstedt.
Peasants' War Panorama
Thomas Müntzer as an early revolutionary became an icon of historical materialism in East Germany. At the 450-years jubilee of the battle the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) charged the rector of the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts Professor Werner Tübke with the creation of a monumental panorama painting. The work in a specially erected rotunda was finished in 1987. It has 123m/404ft in length, a height of 14m/46ft and depicts more than 3000 individuals.
Despite the Politburo's plans modelled on the Battle of Borodino panorama at Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow, Tübke realized a rather pessimistic vision of a resigned Müntzer standing alone among battling troops, a Bundschuh flag on the ground at his side. The panorama was inaugurated on September 14, 1989 by Kurt Hager and Margot Honecker as deputy for her husband, thus eight weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Notable people
- Sethus Calvisius, composer, born February 21, 1556 in Gorsleben, died November 24, 1615 in Leipzig grew up in Frankenhausen
- Martin Gottfried Weiss, commander of the Dachau concentration camp, born June 3, 1905 in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, died May 29, 1946 in Landsberg am Lech studied electrical engineering in Bad Frankenhausen
- Ludwig Elsbett, inventor of the Elsbett Engine, born November 8, 1913 in Salz, Bavaria, died March 28, 2003 ibid. studied engineering in Bad Frankenhausen
- Doris Schade, actress, born May 21, 1924 in Frankenhausen
- Christa Wolf, novelist, born on March 18, 1929 in Landsberg an der Warthe (now Gorzów Wielkopolski) finished school in Bad Frankenhausen
- Eva Padberg, fashion model, born January 27, 1980 in Bad Frankenhausen.
