Paul Sullivan hops on his bike to explore three hundred years of German thought and culture on a tour of Thuringia…
As soon as I found out about the “Thüringer Stadtketten” (Towns of Thuringia cycle route), which stretches 230 kilometres from Eisenach in the west of the German federal state to Altenburg in the east, I knew I needed to take my bike south to do some exploring. I had heard about some of Thuringia’s well-known sights—Wartburg castle, the city of Weimar, the sprawling Thuringian Forest—but had somehow never found a reason to visit.
In my mind, I had Thuringia down as one of Germany’s more low-key states but the more I researched, the more I also discovered a lot of famous cultural connections: Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach; Martin Luther translated the bible at Wartburg Castle; Goethe and Schiller both lived and worked in Weimar; Walter Gropius set up and ran the Bauhaus school in Weimar before it moved to Dessau in 1926. And this turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg.
The more I dug into it, the more the names kept coming. It turned out that renowned sociologist Max Weber was born in Erfurt, the state capital. Fichte, Schlegel and Hegel all taught and studied at Jena’s famed university. Weimar-era artist Otto Dix hailed from Gera, while his Dada contemporary Hannah Höch was born in Gotha. Lucas Cranach (the elder) and Franz Liszt the composer both lived and died in Weimar. My scenic bike ride quickly turned into a cultural tour spanning several centuries of German history.
The train connection to Eisenach, the starting point of the ride, was a breeze from Berlin: a direct two-hour trip with plenty of space for my bike. Located right on the northwestern edge of the Thuringian Forest, and not far from the Hainich National Park, the town is a popular base for hikers, but turned out to be a great introduction to the picturesque charms of the region’s towns and cities too.
Dating back to the twelfth century, its small-but-quaint historical centre features a Romanesque city gate, a Renaissance-era town hall and a handsome state theatre from 187…