Bad Arolsen: Guide, Hotels, Map & Photos
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EUR 74 - 210 WELCOME HOTEL Bad Arolsen
 This elegant, 4-star hotel offers a large spa area, free parking and free Wi-Fi. It is situated in the heart of the spa town of Bad Arolsen, next to t… MoreEUR 47 - 115 LandKomforthotel Teuteberg
 The LandKomforthotel Teuteberg features country-style rooms and an indoor pool with spa area. It is located in the village of Schmillinghausen, 8 minu… MoreEUR 65 - 65 Gasthof Breda
 This guest house offers quiet rooms and apartments in Landau. It features a country-style restaurant with pub, and is a 3-minute walk from the Schloss… MoreEUR 60 - 90 Brauhaus-Hotel
 Set in a charming historic building, this privately run hotel offers cosy rooms in the Baroque old town of Bad Arolsen, just a 5-minute walk from the … More | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bad Arolsen: Guide
Bad Arolsen (until 1997 Arolsen) is a small town in northern Hesse in Waldeck-Frankenberg district.
Geography
Location
The main town lies roughly 45 km west of Kassel.
Bad Arolsen was from 1655 to 1918 the residence town of the Princes of Waldeck (state)|Waldeck-Pyrmont and then until 1929 the capital of the Waldeck Free State.
The town lies on the German-Netherlands|Dutch holiday road called the Oranier-Route, joining towns, cities and regions associated with the House of Orange.
Neighbouring communities
Bad Arolsen borders in the north on the town of Diemelstadt, in the northeast on the town of Volkmarsen (both Waldeck-Frankenberg), in the southeast on the town of Wolfhagen (Kassel (district)|Kassel district), in the south on the town of Waldeck, Hesse|Waldeck, in the southwest on the community of Twistetal, and in the west on the community of Diemelsee (all three in Waldeck-Frankenberg) and the town of Marsberg (Hochsauerlandkreis in North Rhine-Westphalia).
Constituent communities
From 1918 to 1929 Arolsen was capital of the Free State of Waldeck-Pyrmont (after 1922: Free State of Waldeck), which was subsequently incorporated into Prussia.
Bad Arolsen is the site of the International Tracing Service archive, a venue for millions of documents related to the Nazi-attempted extirmination of the Jewish people and others. Information kept hidden to the public for the past fifty years is slated to be made available by the ITS, an organzation that is part of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The oak tree stands for the surrounding woods and indirectly the fresh air that Bad Arolsen is known for as a climatic spa. The inescutcheon shows the town's (original) initial, and the eight-pointed star of Waldeck.
The original arms were dropped in 1938 owing to a perceived reference to Freemasonry, which was not officially tolerated in Nazi Germany. The charge in question was "God's Eye" – a triangle with the sun's rays shining out of it, such as may still be seen in Bad Krozingen's civic coat of arms. Bad Arolsen's old arms showed the same inescutcheon over this, but "God's Eye" was replaced with an oak tree in 1938.
Worthy of note is the town's Baroque layout near the stately home. The street grid shows a chequered pattern that was typical of that time. It was originally planned to build a mirror-image layout to the stately home's east and west, but the plans were never fully carried out; after completing the developments west of the stately home, there was no money left over to do the eastern part. Some of the development's buildings are protected by law. Since 1999 there has been a Gestaltungssatzung – or "design charter" – in place to ensure the townscape's current form through collective protection.
The town is home to vast archives of Nazism|Nazi-related documents. In April 2006, German justice minister Brigitte Zypries announced that Germany would cooperate with the United States and allow survivors and historians of the Holocaust access to 30-50 million pages of documents, although an eleven-nation accord must decide unanimously that this is to be done.
This "Travel Guide" section is drawn from the Wikipedia article "Bad Arolsen". We hope you will edit and improve it. It is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Besides the main town, which bears the same name as the whole, the town of Bad Arolsen consists of the following centres:
Braunsen, 190 inhabitants
Bühle, 124 inhabitants
Kohlgrund, 263 inhabitants.
Helsen, 2,128 inhabitants
Landau, 1,148 inhabitants
Massenhausen, 552 inhabitants
Mengeringhausen, 3,768 inhabitants
Neu-Berich, 242 inhabitants
Schmillinghausen, 505 inhabitants
Volkhardinghausen, 132 inhabitants
Wetterburg, 903 inhabitants History
Arolsen is first documented in 1131 when an Augustinian nunnery was established there. The nunnery was secularized in 1526 and in 1655 became the residence of the Counts (later Princes) of Waldeck, who converted it into a stately home. It was torn down in 1710 and replaced with a new Baroque structure (1713-1728) by Prince Frederik Anton Ulrich (1676-1728). Politics
Town council
The town council's 37 seats are apportioned thus, in accordance with municipal elections held on 26 March 2006:
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Note: FWG is a citizens' coalition. Offene Liste is the "Open List". Coat of arms
Bad Arolsen's civic coat of arms might heraldically be described thus: In argent a nine-leaved oak tree vert with four acorns Or, before which an inescutcheon within which in Or a bar-topped letter "A" sable surmounted by a halved eight-pointed star sable. Partnerships
Bad Köstritz, Thuringia
Heusden-Zolder, Belgium
Hermann, Missouri|Hermann, Missouri, United States
Klütz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Culture and sightseeing
The town
Buildings
The Baroque stately home, Schloss Arolsen, belonging originally to the Princes of Waldeck-Pyrmont with its imposing construction was built in the years 1713-1728 by architect Julius Ludwig Rothweil. Of particular importance are the ceiling paintings by the Italian artist Carlo Ludovici Castelli, and the outstanding stucco works by Andrea Gallasini.
Landauer Wasserkunst, an historic waterworks in Landau dating from 1555. Natural monuments
The best known outing destination near Bad Arolsen is the Twistesee, a Reservoir (water)|man-made lake.
Regular events
August: Arolser Kram- und Viehmarkt (a fair with household goods and cattle markets)
May: Arolser Barockfestspiele (Baroque festival) Economy and infrastructure
Of particular economic importance to the town was its role as a garrison town. On 17 December 2004, the Bundeswehr's Bad Arolsen base (Mengeringhausen) was dissolved. Transport
Bad Arolsen lies on the railway line from Kassel to Korbach. Local public transport is also handled by buses of the North Hesse Transport Association (Nordhessischer Verkehrsverbund; NVV). Furthermore, the town is also served by the BRS (Busverkehr - Ruhr - Sieg) bus company. Public institutions
Since 1946, Bad Arolsen has been headquarters to the International Tracing Service. This institution is led and administered by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement|International Red Cross and financed by the Federal Republic of Germany. Personalities
Sons and daughters of the town
1556 Philipp Nicolai, song-poet and Reformer, in Mengeringhausen (died 26 October 1608 in Hamburg)
1620 Prince Georg Friedrich von Waldeck (died 19 November 1692 in Bad Arolsen)
1767 Johann Stieglitz, doctor (died 31 October 1840 in Hanover)
1777 Christian Daniel Rauch, sculptor (died 3 December 1857 in Dresden); The Museum in Bad Arolsen looks after his memorial.
1804, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, painter (died 7 April 1874 in Munich)
1822, Friedrich Kaulbach, painter (died 17 September 1903 in Hanover)
1838, Walther Herwig, founder of German high-sea fishing
1858, Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont|Adelheid Emma Wilhelmina Theresia von Waldeck-Pyrmont, Queen and 1890-1898 Regent of the Netherlands (Dutch King William III of the Netherlands|William III's second wife; died 20 March 1934 in The Hague)
1861, August Bier, surgeon, in Helsen (died 12 March 1949 in Sauen (near Beeskow))
1873, Rudolf Klapp, orthopaedics professor
1896, Josias Erbprinz von Waldeck-Pyrmont, Schutzstaffel|SS Obergruppenführer (died 30 November 1967 in Bad Arolsen) Reference
External links