Literal Settings, Inspiration, Authenticity

Famous authors didn’t just pass through Germany’s Historic Highlights. These remarkable cities literally left their mark in books, plays, and poems. These places shaped their work – providing the settings, the inspiration, and sometimes the occasional tragedy that fueled their greatest pages.

Germany earned its reputation as the “land of poets and thinkers” (Dichter und Denker): An extraordinary concentration of literary talent shaped Western thought. German writers have won eight Nobel Prizes in Literature. From Goethe’s Faust to Remarque’s searing war prose, German literature grappled with questions of existence, morality, and human nature that still resonate today.

What sets these literary sites apart is their authenticity. The Remarque Center houses actual documents. The Brecht Memorial stands in his birthplace. Dostoyevsky actually lost his money in the casino you can still visit.

For readers, these connections transform abstract admiration into something tangible. Standing where Goethe once stood, or walking streets Remarque knew as a child, creates a relationship with literature that no classroom can replicate.

Germany’s writers grappled with universal questions – war and peace, love and loss, meaning and absurdity. Their historic cities offer the chance to explore those questions in the places where they first took shape.

Augsburg Merkurbrunnen Fountain, Regio Augsburg Tourismus GmbH, multimaps 360 A Rochau

Acclaimed Writers in Germany’s Heritage Cities

Goethe’s Germany: Following the Master

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe casts such a long shadow over German literature that following his trail could occupy an entire vacation. The Frankfurt-born polymath, poet, novelist, playwright, scientist, and statesman traveled constantly throughout his life, and Germany’s historic cities bear his fingerprints everywhere.

Heidelberg was one of the places that captured his imagination. Goethe visited more than once and wrote that the city’s setting and surroundings had “something ideal” about them. Guided walking tours of Heidelberg’s Old Town today trace his visits alongside those of other writers the city drew, including Mark Twain.

Erfurt‘s connection to Goethe centers on one of the most famous meetings in German cultural history. In October 1808, during the Congress of Erfurt, Napoleon summoned Goethe to an audience in the city’s Kaisersaal, a grand hall that still stands in the Old Town. The meeting between the world’s most powerful man and its most celebrated living writer became legendary, with Napoleon reportedly greeting him with words to the effect that here, at last, was a man.

Wiesbaden knew Goethe as a spa guest. He stayed in the city in 1814 and 1815, drawn like so many others by its therapeutic hot springs. His time there left a lasting mark: in 1825, Goethe persuaded Frankfurt collectors Johann Isaac and Johann Christian Gerning to donate their extensive art and antiquities collections to the Duchy of Nassau, a gift that became the founding core of what is now Museum Wiesbaden.

Heidelberg Castle during fall, Heidelberg Marketing GmbH, Tobias Schwerdt

Erfurt Augustinian Monastery Cloister © Ev Augustinerkloster zu Erfurt CC-BY-SA

Wiesbaden Kochbrunnen Fountain (c) Brian Lehmkuhl

Bertold Brecht (c) Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg

Brechthaus exterior (c) Regio Augsburg Tourismus GmbH, Norbert Liesz-Wolfgang F. Lightmaster

Bertolt Brecht: Augsburg’s Theatrical Revolutionary

Bertolt Brecht Gedenkstätte

Bertolt Brecht transformed modern theater with his “epic theater” techniques, challenging audiences to think rather than simply feel. His influence extends from Broadway to experimental stages worldwide.

Augsburg claims Brecht as a native son. He was born in 1898 in a typical craftsman’s house located on a canal of the River Lech – humble origins for a writer who would revolutionize dramatic art.

The Bertolt Brecht Gedenkstätte (Bertolt Brecht Memorial) now occupies his birthplace, a museum dedicated to both Brecht’s work and young artists continuing experimental traditions. The city also offers “Bertolt Brecht’s Paths in Augsburg” – a tour tracing his footsteps through the streets that shaped his early imagination.

Brecht’s relationship with Germany was complicated; he fled the Nazis, lived in exile, and eventually settled in East Berlin. But Augsburg shaped his sensibilities, and the city honors that connection with characteristic German thoroughness.

Official: Codex Manesse, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

Osnabrück Theater, TOL, sc finke-ennen

Osnabrück Town Hall, TOL, Max Wiesenbach

Erich Maria Remarque: Osnabrück’s Witness to War

The Peace Center Behind All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque remains one of the most widely read German authors of the twentieth century, and one of the most controversial in his own country.

Born Erich Paul Remark in Osnabrück on June 22, 1898, Remarque drew on his own World War I service to write Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front), published in 1929. The novel’s unflinching account of the war made it an international bestseller and earned Remarque the enmity of the Nazi Party, which burned his books and revoked his German citizenship in 1938.

Osnabrück now honors its native son through the Erich Maria Remarque-Friedenszentrum, part of Osnabrück University. The center holds a permanent exhibition on Remarque’s life and work, along with an archive of his papers, letters, and personal documents. Changing exhibitions supplement the permanent collection.

For visitors interested in 20th-century history, the center offers context for how one novel shaped international attitudes toward war, and why its message still resonates.

Official: Erich Maria Remarque-Friedenszentrum, Osnabrück University

Heidelberg Castle during fall, Heidelberg Marketing GmbH, Tobias Schwerdt

Heidelberg Philosopher´s Walk, Heidelberg Marketing GmbH, Tobias Schwerdt

Where Writers Came to Dream

A University Town’s Literary Magnetism

Something about Heidelberg proved irresistible to writers. Its centuries-old university, the castle ruins overlooking the Neckar River, and the surrounding hills drew a remarkable run of literary figures over the centuries.

Goethe, an admirer of the city, wrote that its setting and surroundings had “something ideal” about them. The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach’s presence at Heidelberg’s university drew the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller there as well; Keller studied in the city from 1848 to 1850 and wrote part of his autobiographical novel Der grüne Heinrich while living in a house by the Neckar bridge, now marked with a plaque. Poets tied to German Romanticism, including Hölderlin, Eichendorff, and Brentano, are also linked to the city and the surrounding region.

Heidelberg Marketing, the city’s official tourism organization, offers themed guided walking tours of the Old Town that trace this literary and cultural history alongside the city’s other landmarks.

That legacy earned Heidelberg formal recognition in 2014, when UNESCO designated it a City of Literature as part of its Creative Cities Network, citing its publishing houses, bookshops, libraries, and literary festivals, along with its long history as a magnet for writers.

Among Heidelberg’s international admirers, Mark Twain deserves special mention. The American writer spent time in the city in 1878 during the travels that produced A Tramp Abroad, published in 1880. His descriptions of student dueling fraternities and his essay on “The Awful German Language” remain entertaining reading and give English-speaking visitors a lighthearted lens on the city that still applies today.

Official: UNESCO

Heidelberg Philosopher`s Walk, Heidelberg Marketing GmbH, Tobias Schwerdt

Much of that reflective spirit still centers on the Philosophenweg (pictured above), the Philosophers’ Walk that climbs the hillside on the north bank of the Neckar, opposite the Old Town and castle. The path takes its name from the university professors, philosophers, and students who have long favored it for quiet walks and conversation, and it remains one of the best places in the city to take in the view over the rooftops and castle ruins.

Planning Your Literary Journey

For travelers following the written word, Germany’s Historic Highlights offer layered literary experiences, from guided walking tours to archives holding a writer’s original letters:

Augsburg
The Brechthaus, Bertolt Brecht’s birthplace turned museum, and the self-guided “Bertolt Brecht’s Paths in Augsburg” route through the streets that shaped him

Heidelberg
A UNESCO City of Literature since 2014, with themed walking tours through the Old Town, the reflective Philosophenweg above the Neckar, and connections to Goethe, Mark Twain, and the poets of German Romanticism

Wiesbaden
The still-operating casino where Dostoevsky lost everything and found the raw material for The Gambler, plus Goethe’s own spa visits, which led him to help found what’s now Museum Wiesbaden.

Erfurt
The Kaisersaal, where Napoleon summoned Goethe for one of the most famous meetings in German literary history

Osnabrück
The Erich Maria Remarque-Friedenszentrum, home to a permanent exhibition and archive on the author of All Quiet on the Western Front

The Historic Highlights cities offer writer-centric experiences.
For a full list of events, click here.