Frankfurt, while low on Old World charm, offers a good look at today’s no-nonsense, modern Germany. Ever since the early Middle Ages when, as its name hints, Frankfurt was a good place to ford (-furt) the river, people have gathered here to trade. A pragmatic city, Frankfurt’s decisions are famously based on what’s good for business. Destroyed in WWII? Take it as an opportunity to rebuild better than ever for trade. And that’s what they did.
Cosmopolitan Frankfurt — nicknamed “Bankfurt” — is a leading business center and home to the European Central Bank. Though it’s often avoided by tourists (who consider it just a sterile transportation hub), Frankfurt’s modern energy, fueled in part by the entrepreneurial spirit of its immigrant communities, makes it a unique and entertaining city that’s well worth a look.
Finished in 2000, the Main Tower offers the best (and only public) viewpoint from the top of a Frankfurt skyscraper. For €6.50 (about $9), you can enjoy a 55-second, ear-popping elevator ride to the 54th floor, 650 feet above the city. Frankfurt is bursting with striking architecture. By German law, no worker should be kept out of natural light for more than four hours, so work environments are filled with light. And, as you can see, Germans like their skyscrapers with windows that open.
For a cheaper — but still grand — city view, nurse a drink on the rooftop of the Galeria Kaufhof department store. All over Europe, towering department stores offer great cafeteria lunches…with rooftop views for no extra charge.
Anywhere in Europe, the market halls come with great eateries, priced for local shoppers and serving the freshest of quality ingredients. And when the locals are lining up, you know something exciting is being served up — like the best sausage sandwiches around, here in Frankfurt’s wonderful Kleinmarkthalle. This delightful, old-school market was saved from developers by local outcry, and to this day it’s a neighborhood favorite. Browse and sample your way through the ground floor. It’s an adventure in fine eating and a photographer’s delight.
All over Europe, WWI and WWII war memorials are located prominently, for all to remember…except in Germany, where citizens walk a fine line of honoring lost loved ones without celebrating their cause. This memorial, tucked away in a Frankfurt park, is very easy to miss. While other countries honor those lost “for God and country,” German casualties are “victims of violence.” On one memorial reads, “Germany brought the war to the world, and the war came back to Germany.”
The memorial to Frankfurt’s Jewish community, which was devastated by the Holocaust, is at the site of the old Jewish ghetto, where the city’s main synagogue once stood. Commemorating 12,000 murdered Jews, it’s a powerful and evocative collection of images: Around the cemetery is the Wall of Names, with a tiny tombstone for each Frankfurt Jew deported and murdered. This gives each victim the dignity of being named (a data bank inside the adjacent museum keeps their memory alive with everything known about each person). The pebbles atop each tomb represent Jewish prayers. A paved section in front of this marks the footprint of the Börneplatz Synagogue, which was destroyed on November 9, 1938. While this night is often called Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”), recently historians have pointed out that real people were destroyed along with lots of glass, so the preferred name is now “Pogrom Night.” In the wake of WWII, American troops made Frankfurters memorialize each synagogue they destroyed with a plaque.
To me, the area around Frankfurt is one of the best “undiscovered” (by English-language tourists, at least) regions of Germany. Despite Frankfurt’s modern skyscrapers, the concentration of well-preserved historic towns, like Büdingen, Seligenstadt, Miltenberg, Idstein, Königstein im Taunus, etc. is probably denser than any other region of the country, particularly to Frankfurt’s north. Immediately to the south, the great untouristy alternative to the Black Forest, the Odenwald, is RIGHT THERE in front of your eyes, but because it isn’t well known, most visitors just drive right by it… despite all the castles that you can easily see from the Autobahn.
The windows that can be opened on Frankfurt’s skyscrapers are an interesting element. A long-standing criticism of skyscrapers is that they are dehumanizing. They reduce people to the level of ants, though in skilled hands, skyscrapers enhance a city and its inhabitants. I love European cities because they have human scaled, without a lot of skyscrapers, but tall buildings are inevitable as the world urbanizes. Windows are something that can make skyscrapers human centric.
Rick,
Two things of interest re Frankfurt:
1.The beautiful botanical gardens where you can spend a lovely afternoon.
2.the University of Frankfurt, which is very photographic (because it used to be the largest office building in Europe and is just humongous) and has a plaque in the front entrance area (in German only, but you can get a translation on the internet) telling that these buildings used to house the IG Farben headquarters,the largest chemical company in the world during the war, which collaborated with the Nazi regime to make Zyklon B gas, used at the death camps.The directors of this huge conglomerate (employing 218,000 employees in 1938)were put on trial at Nuremberg, but did not serve much time. After the war the complex housed Eisenhower and the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied European Forces.