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Home Page > Travelogues > Germany > Hessen > Kassel > Downtown Kassel Other Chapters in the Kassel
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I didn't know very much about the Brothers Grimm beyond the
fairy tales attributed to them when I was a child. Many of them had to do
with dark
This travelogue covers the Brothers Grimm museum and the rest of the inner city of Kassel from the walls above the Karlsaue on the Fulda River westward down Wilhelmshoeher Allee to the base of the Schloss Wilhelmshoehe. Kassel (also spelled Cassel from the days of French occupation) was
once upon a time (guffaw) one
of the major cultural centers in Germany. But because it was also a large
industrial center, it was heavily damaged by Allied bombardment in World War
II. Evidence of this could be seen all along the Wilhelmshoeher Allee that
exhibited two types of architecture -- the decorative yellow-and-red brick
buildings of the original cultural era, and the
Thankfully, much of the inner city's monuments and structures were restored in amongst the new, modernized European shopping malls. Kassel had many museums, theaters, and art galleries to emphasize its cultural past. When I first got downtown, I cut across the Main Train Station
in the north and followed Treppenstrasse through Friedrichsplatz and headed straight
to the Karlsaue. Treppenstrasse was cool, basically a stair-stepped road
that in the summer hosted outdoor cafés and whose storefronts held
black-and-gold representations of the major towns in northern Hessen.
Friedrichsplatz was an open garden hosting the famous Museum Fridericianum, shown in the second photograph.
The Fridericianum is famous for hosting Kassel's best-known event, the
Documenta, a city-wide
A number of Documenta exhibits became permanent fixtures in the city. All were clearly marked on the tourist map. One example was mounted on the annex of the Fridericianum just off the second photo to the left. It was Thomas Schütte's "Die Fremden" or "The Foreigners", a rooftop sculpture depicting travelers from other cultures. Another one was the "Rahmenbau", meaning something like "Constructed Frame", a sculpture resembling a large hanging metal frame built over the pathway to the Karlsaue. I did not make it a point to seek out all the art exhibits, but I hope to next time. After visiting the Karlsaue, I returned up the bank at the south end of the downtown, and arrived at the Neue Gallerie and the Brothers Grimm Museum, shown in the third photo. It's a very nice museum, costing only 1.50 Euro, but with a wealth of information about the famous brothers. The biggest surprise for me was learning that the Brothers Grimm
were story collectors, not writers. They collected their fairy tales from sources
all over north and western Germany.
After the museum, I worked my way back to the main street, Koenigstrasse, open only to street cars and pedestrians in the center. Apart from the Rathaus and the Friedrichsplatz, much of the Koenigstrasse was modernized. Some of the shopping malls seemed quite American on the inside, and every place was crowded.
Like many culture-oriented cities, Kassel offered museum packages and other discounts through their various tourist offices, located both at the Kassel-Wilhelmshoehe train station and the Rathaus. Kassel was a wonderful and worthwhile trip, and I think you would find it enjoyable and entertaining... especially if you believe in fairy tales. Other Chapters in the Kassel
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Trip taken 15-16 March 2003 -- Page last updated 24 October 2006 -- (C) 2003 Tom Galvin |
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forests, tall castles, little towns,
and wolves eating
grandmothers. I had always assumed they were the authors, like two
dreamers spending their entire lives in a fantasyland and penning tales to
delight or frighten children of future generations. The opportunity to visit their
museum was one of the primary reasons I went up to the northern Hessian city of Kassel. As with many of my travel experiences thus far, I would learn that
my preconceived notions were way off base.
sanitized, utilitarian, bland
structures from the Marshall Plan years. One particularly bland example was
the Kassel-Wilhelmshoehe train station that services the long distance trains.
Unlike impressive concrete edifices like other German train stations,
this one was just steel and windows fronted with a flat metal canopy held up by
twenty or so metal poles. 
contemporary
art festival held every five years (2002, 2007, 2012, etc.). 
They
were lawyers by trade, and
their primary motivation including simply trying to put in words all the tales
the townfolk had been telling over the ages, out of fear that the local oral
traditions were dying. In the process, the Grimms put forth strong
evidence to show that the dozens of Germanic languages spoken throughout the
land came from a single root.
With this, they began compiling the definitive dictionary of the German language
which led to standardization (which was also due to the establishment of a
single German empire in the last 19th century). In their honor,
the German tourist bureau established the Deutsche Märchenstrasse, or Fairy
Tale Road, that ran from 
Several points of interest along the way. Just above the
Rathaus was the Hessisches Landesmuseum (Hessian Provincial Museum), a beautiful
manor fronted
by a gold-brick tower. That building can be seen from much of the
city. A couple of old towers remained standing, the most notable being the
Druselturm located next to the Martinskirche (St. Martin's church, shown in the
background of the fifth photo). The Druselturm was a simple cylindrical
stone tower that seemed out of place with its modern surrounding, but seemed
like it was inspired by the Rapunzel legend. In the foreground of the
fifth photo was the city's swimming hall, complete with massive enclosed water
slide. You can't tell from the photograph, but the inside was really very
crowded. I took that shot from the Martin Luther Platz, site of the
Lutherkirche, which was unfortunately destroyed during the war. All that
remained was its main tower. Meanwhile, the platz housed a replacement
church, that frankly looked more like a parking garage. I left wishing
they had rebuilt the original church.
