Explore Hesse
Jugendstil, the German version of Art Nouveau, is the reason most people visit DARMSTADT, thanks to Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig (1868–1937), under whose aegis the remarkable Mathildenhöhe artistic colony flourished in the years before World War I. Nowadays it boasts of its scientific as well as its artistic credentials; students at the Technische Universität ensure an easygoing nightlife, while Darmstadt is popular with families downshifting from the hurly-burly of Frankfurt. The laidback ambience is infectious; in summer a day or two here is liable to induce a certain feel-good languor.
Darmstadt lost its Altstadt to a nightmarish 1944 air raid, and its bland central shopping streets can safely be skipped in favour of the cluster of monuments around the Schloss and Herrngarten. The most significant attraction, Mathildenhöhe, is to the east, while south of the centre there are more formal gardens in Bessungen. Away from the main sights, much of Darmstadt – particularly the districts fringing its parks – has a villagey charm.
Darmstadt is a good base for forays into the unspoilt southern Hesse countryside, much of which forms part of the Geo-Naturpark Bergstrasse-Odenwald. To the east, the city gives way to woodland and a remarkable archeological site, the Grube Messel. To the south, the Bergstrasse passes through one of Germany’s mildest climate zones on its way to Heidelberg. Protected from easterly winds by the Odenwald uplands, the region produces almonds, cherries, peaches and apricots, and in spring is a profusion of blossom. The major attraction, however, is Charlemagne’s abbey at Lorsch.
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Mathildenhöhe, Rosenhöhe and the Grosser Woog
Mathildenhöhe, Rosenhöhe and the Grosser Woog
A traffic-free promenade leads up to Mathildenhöhe, the artists’ colony founded by the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig in 1899. A grove of clipped plane trees, the Platanenhain, stands at the entrance and provides shade for summer boules players. The first building is the tiny, richly decorated Russische Kapelle (Tues–Sun 10am–1pm & 2–4pm; donation requested) built for Ernst Ludwig’s relatives, the Russian royal family.
The Hochzeitsturm and Ausstellungsgebäude
Behind the Platanenhain soars the 48.5m Hochzeitsturm or Wedding Tower designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich as the city’s wedding present to the Grand Duke on the occasion of his second marriage in 1905 and completed in 1908. It remains the colony’s most prominent landmark. It’s an impressive work of architecture, reflecting the eclectic roots of the style: daringly modern for its time yet with copper-clad gables that recall North German brick Gothic.
Take the lift to the top to enjoy views which extend to Frankfurt and the Taunus on a clear day, then descend via two richly decorated rooms: the Hochzeitszimmer or Wedding Room and the opulent Fürstenzimmer. The tower still functions as Darmstadt’s registry office; renovation work at the time of writing meant parts of the building could not be seen. Alongside the Hochzeitsturm the Austellungsgebäude was built for the colony’s 1908 exhibition and is now the venue for major touring art and design exhibitions.
The Museum Künstlerkolonie and the artists’ villas
Much smaller than the Hochzeitsturm but more richly decorated, nearby Ernst-Ludwig-Haus was built for the colony’s 1901 exhibition and functioned as the artists’ ateliers. It now houses the Museum Künstlerkolonie, a fascinating exhibition on the history and work of the colony. There’s a model of the area in the foyer, while the displays document the four great exhibitions and the work of individual members of the colony. Highlights include the dining room Peter Behrens created for the Berlin department store Wertheim in 1902. Afterwards, stroll among the villas to the south of the main complex, many of which have been taken over for institutional purposes. Particularly noteworthy are the Kleines Glückerthaus at Alexandraweg 25, Haus Olbrich at no. 28 and Haus Behrens at no. 17.
Rosenhöhe and Grosser Woog
East of Mathildenhöhe, the Expressionist, brick-built 1924 Löwentor is topped by the lions from the 1914 exhibition and marks the entrance to Rosenhöhe, a former vineyard reworked as an English-style park in the early nineteenth century. The grounds are peppered with buildings, from the 1950s artists’ ateliers to a pretty Biedermeier tea house and the Neoclassical mausoleum in which many of the Hesse-Darmstadts are buried. The highlight is the formal rose garden created for Ernst Ludwig. West of Rosenhöhe on Landgraf-Georg-Strasse, the Familienbad Grosser Woog offers open-air swimming at the lake of the same name.
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The Grube Messel
The Grube Messel
A few kilometres east of Darmstadt is the GRUBE MESSEL, a redundant oil-shale pit on the site of an ancient volcanic crater-lake which has yielded such rich fossil finds that it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The fossils date from the Eocene period around 49 million years ago, when the climate in what is now Hesse was subtropical; the present-day descendants of many of the species found here – including opossum, anteaters, flightless birds and crocodiles – are now only found far from Germany.
The fossils are in exceptionally good condition, often preserving food residue in their stomachs: the macrocranion – a relative of the modern hedgehog – has been found with fish bones in its stomach, while the stomachs of the world’s oldest-known bats preserve the scales of moths and butterflies. One theory for the unusual richness of the finds is that poisonous gas from the crater-lake – a so-called maar volcano – killed the bats. Messel is particularly famous for its fossils of ancient horses, which were tiny compared with their modern descendants.
The impressive new Besucherzentrum (visitor centre) has displays relating to the origins and history of the site, from vulcanicity and the evolution of the landscape to its later industrial heritage. Between April and October it organizes regular daily guided tours of the pit itself; it’s advisable to book in advance, since demand is heavy. The centre has a café.
There’s also a small museum, the Fossilien und Heimatmusem Messel, in the old centre of Messel north of the train station, with lots of fossils on display; it’s worth visiting this and the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt as well as seeing the pit.
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Kloster Lorsch
Kloster Lorsch
What it lacks in size, the mysterious Torhalle at the former Benedictine abbey of Lorsch – another UNESCO World Heritage Site – more than makes up for in beauty and historical significance. The royal abbey was built between 767 and 880 AD, and the Torhalle dates from the latter part of this period. With its well-preserved, festive red-and-white stone facade rising above three very Roman-looking arches, it certainly looks like a gatehouse, hence its popular name, but it’s actually not at all certain what the original function of the little building was. Archeological investigation suggests, however, that it stood within the main gate of the abbey, whose precincts covered a much greater area than that which you now see. The hall upstairs is a palimpsest of wall paintings, from two layers of Carolingian origin to traces of Romanesque and more substantial, Later Gothic work.
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Darmstadt’s dynastic web
Darmstadt’s dynastic web
Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hessen und bei Rhein (1868–1937), was a grandchild of Queen Victoria, as was his first wife Princess Victoria of Edinburgh, but the marriage was an unhappy one and ended in divorce. In 1931 Georg Donatus, Ernst Ludwig’s son by his second wife Eleonore, married Cecilia of Greece, a member through the maternal line of the Battenberg family, whose family seat, Schloss Heiligenberg, is just south of the city. Shortly after Ernst Ludwig’s death in 1937, the young couple were killed in a plane crash en route to a wedding in London. But the connection to Britain lived on: the wedding – of Georg Donatus’s brother Ludwig to Margaret Geddes, daughter of the British politician and businessman Auckland Geddes – went ahead; the bride wore black. After the war, Cecilia’s brother Philip married the future Queen Elizabeth II, becoming Duke of Edinburgh. Philip’s uncle Louis Mountbatten was the son of the German-born British admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg – who anglicizsed the family name during World War I – and of his wife Viktoria, Ernst Ludwig’s sister.
The Russian connection
The anglophile Hesse-Darmstadts remained close to the British royal family until Margaret’s death in 1997. Yet the family’s dynastic links were not only with Britain. Another of Ernst Ludwig’s sisters married Tsar Nicholas II to become Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna, notorious for her friendship with Rasputin. The dynastic links between Darmstadt, London and Russia explain why, when the Russian royals’ remains were rediscovered in Yekaterinburg in the early 1990s, a DNA sample from the Duke of Edinburgh helped to identify them.
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The Mathildenhöhe Künstlerkolonie
The Mathildenhöhe Künstlerkolonie
The Matildenhöhe artists’ colony in Darmstadt was founded by Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig with the aim of making the city a cultural centre unique in Germany. The artists who joined it built their own houses and lived and worked here, in a district that covered a cluster of streets. The Grand Duke was a passionate art lover, inspired by the English Arts and Crafts movement, one of whose members, Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott, refashioned two rooms of the Grand Duke’s residence in 1898. Shortly afterwards, the Grand Duke’s office was designed by the German Jugendstil artist Otto Eckmann, and Jugendstil – literally the “style of youth” – became the colony’s trademark style. Of the seven founding members, the best known are the Austrian architect Joseph Maria Olbrich, who as leader of the colony was responsible for the concept of the first two big exhibitions, and the pioneering modernist Peter Behrens.
Four major exhibitions – in 1901, 1904, 1908 and 1914 – spread the fame of the colony and its innovative work, which embraced architecture, interior design, furniture and applied arts. Olbrich left for Düsseldorf in 1907, where he designed the Tietz department store; he died shortly afterwards. His role as leader of the colony was taken by Albin Müller, but the 1914 exhibition was cut short by the outbreak of World War I, which brought the colony’s brief heyday to an end.
