Twinners and hosts at Mosbach’s historic Rathaus (Town Hall).
(Nearest the camera is Mosbach Bürgermeister Patrick Rickenbrot)
(photo: Dave Miller)
Some thirty LITA members visited Mosbach in May 2025 to savour our twin-town’s fine location on the Neckar River set in the Odenwald. We enjoyed the generous hospitality of the town’s Bürgermeister (Mayor) and Oberbürgermesiter (Regional Mayor) as well as that of our kind personal hosts. Many twinners have strong links shared for decades by now with the poeple of this charming location in central Germany: next year will mark thirty years of twinning with Mosbach.
Our main outing as a group was to the UNESCO World Heritage site on the huge and impressive former Cistercian monastery at Maulbronn. We shared a charming coach trip through the densely wooded Odenwald and associated farmlands. The small town of Maulbronn centres on one of Europe’s most complete and best-preserved medieval monastery complexes. Founded in 1147, the site is girded by fortified walls. The main buildings in the large enclosed area date from the 12th and 16th centuries. The monastery church, almost cathedral-sized, is mainly in ‘Transitional Gothic’ style and had a major influence in the spread of Gothic architecture across northern and central Europe. In the 16th century, the Cistercian monastery was dissolved and replaced with a Protestant seminary. It became the seat of an major administrative district of the Duchy, later Kingdom, of Württemberg. (Today, Baden-Württemberg is the Land, the German state that includes Mosbach, has Stuttgart at its centre, stretching from Heidelberg and Mannheim in the north to Freiburg, Basel and the Bodensee (Lake Constance) in the south). The monstary complex, surrounded by turreted walls and a tower gate, today houses the Maulbronn town hall, other administrative offices, and a police station. The monastery itself contains an Evangelical seminary and a boarding school. We shared an evening meal at a local restaurant before heading back to Mosbach.
The group also visited a relatively newly-established museum on the site of a Nazi-era forced labour camp. The Neckarelz Concentration Camp Memorial is located on the school grounds of the Clemens Brentano Elementary School in Neckarelz, a district of Mosbach. The primary school building – which still serves youngsters in Mosbach – features displays revealing how some 500 prisoners were housed and treated between 1944 and 1945. Most were political prisoners or prisoners of war from all over Europe as well as some prisoners of Jewish heritage. In total some 5,000 prisoners worked in aircraft engine factory established in local gypsum mines to avoid air attack. Amazingly, this impressive and moving museum was founded less than twenty years ago. Many artefacts have been donated by local families and former prisoners to produce a fascinating but deeply moving memorial to the horrors such camps represented.
In a more joyous atmostphere, as on previous visits, we enjoyed a drinks-and-snacks reception in Mosbach’s elegant Rathaus (Town Hall) with welcoming words from Bürgermeister Patrick Rickenbrot, and Oberbürgermeister Julian Stipp. The group photos taken on the Rathaus steps have become a charming convention of our visits.
Our final evening, as usual, saw the entire group with their hosts enjoy a dinner together. We ate at the Krone Gasthaus in Diedesheim. We were entertained by an excellent local male-voice choir and brief speeches from Tim, Ness from our side and OB Stipp for Mosbach. Most LITA visitors returned by place from Frankfurt the next day with some of our number extending their stay in Germany and beyond. We all enjoyed the hospitality of the Mosbachers and the town’s lovely surroundings. We look forward to reciprocating next year when Mosbach visits us again.
