Category: Sights

Ten kilometers afar of the city center of Chemnitz, Germany you can find a wonderful castle surrounded by water – the Wasserschloß Klaffenbach. It was built between 1555 and 1560 in renaissance style and you can pass the moat on a stone bridge. In addition to the round lake the castle is standing in some V-shaped buildings are attached that today house a restaurant and a hotel. This place is nowadays often used for concerts of various music styles.

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In the Eastern Bloc there was an interesting tradition: narrow-gauge railways were built for the amusement of children. They were operated by the youth organizations of the local communist parties following the procedures and standards of normal railways. In the GDR they were all located within parks and typically had round courses. They were called ‘Pioniereisenbahn‘ – as the mass organisation for children in the GDR was the ‘Pionierorganisation Ernst Thälmann‘ (a copy of the Soviet ‘Komsomol‘). In 1990 the railways were renamed to ‘Parkeisenbahn‘ to remove the political touch.

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A good area to relax can be found in the north of Chemnitz, Germany. There you can have a walk in the vast Küchwald park (and ride a narrow-gauge steam-engine train) and you’ll also find a nice botanical garden. It was already created in 1898 and contains numerous middle-European plants, a tropical greenhouse with crop plants, a collection of succulents and much more animals than you would expect at such a place.

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You wouldn’t guess it while visiting Chemnitz, Germany, but the Roter Turm (red tower) is considered the town’s landmark. It is a tower standing close to the city center which was built as a bergfried in the 12th century. Later it was included into the city fortifications and used as a prison. August Bebel (one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party in Germany) was one of the well-known ‘guests’ there, but that’s not the reason for the name: the material used to build it (tuff) has a red colour by nature. The fame of this building roots in the fact that it is older than Chemnitz and older than the city of Dresden.

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Karl Marx never went to Chemnitz, Germany. But nevertheless the city was named Karl-Marx-Stadt between 1953 and 1990 to honour him. That is also the reason why you can find a massive, 7 meters high representation of his head close to the city center. It weighs 40 tons and was created by Soviet sculptor Lew Kerbel. In the background attached to a building you can read the words ‘Working men of all countries, unite!‘ from the communist manifesto (written by Marx and Engels) in four languages. Locals call the memorial ‘do Nischel‘ – ‘Nischel‘ just means ‘head‘ in the middle high German language.

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