In the Schillerhaus memorial site in Ludwigshafen, you can have a look at where poet Friedrich Schiller hid for seven weeks in 1782. The place also tells the story of Oggersheim palace and of the Baroque period, which might almost be forgotten today if it weren’t for the local history club Heimatkundlicher Arbeitskreis.
If you look up, you will discover him. Perhaps only at second glance. But then you can recognize the man standing at the window. Even if only his striking silhouette is visible, his journey becomes alive right here, at number 6 Schillerstraße in Oggersheim. The great poet is looking out of the room in the upper floor where he lived for seven weeks in 1782.
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Travelling through time: Our video follows in Schiller’s footsteps.
Friedrich Schiller spent his time in Oggersheim in “erwünschter Verborgenheit”—in desired concealment—as a sandstone plaque on the façade of the baroque building states in an unintended comical tone. ‘Hidden’ would have been a more accurate term, because the poet had deserted and was on the run. He was afraid of being arrested in Mannheim. Board and lodging were too expensive in Frankfurt. So he rented a room in the Viehhof inn under a false name. From the then small but cosmopolitan residential town of Oggersheim, which attracted many travellers for its important postal station, it was not far to Mannheim, just an hour’s walk; far enough to feel safe, yet close enough to the electoral city to maintain contact with patrons and the National Theatre.
Schiller lived in this room with his friend Andreas Streicher. It is only 12 square metres in size and tells the story of the Schiller era, his companions and his stay in Oggersheim in a small exhibition.
His friend, the musician Andreas Streicher, kept him company. You can pay a visit to the humble corner room in which the two friends lived in Oggersheim. Only twelve square metres in size, just enough to accommodate a bed, which they both had to share, a table and two chairs. None of this furniture has survived, but the place is still well worth a visit. A Schiller memorial site featuring first editions and an original letter from the poet was set up in the former Viehhof inn by the city of Ludwigshafen on the initiative of the librarian Karl Schenkel (1904–1987) in 1959. The memorial site was elaborately restaged and chronological overviews, pictures and busts, audio stations and a pretty little cardboard theatre were added under the auspices of the city museum in 2024. The Schillerhaus has also been looked after by the local history club since the early 1990s, whose members provide plenty of knowledge, commitment and passion.
Friedemann Seitz researched and produced kind of an Oggersheim chronicle.
“My father co-founded the local history club,” says Michaela Ferner, who, like the first chairwoman Gabriela Nagel, describes herself as a “native of Oggersheim”. Michaela’s colleague Friedemann Seitz and herself are sitting in the temporary exhibition area, just a few metres from Schiller’s room. On the table in front of them is Friedemann’s latest work. It is kind of a chronicle of Oggersheim, spanning from the mid-18th century to the mid-20th century—the Schiller era. The work is called Stadt Land Fabrik (city country factory). Friedemann spent a lot of time and effort doing the research for it alongside his job as a social worker.
The local history club regularly organizes exhibitions, ...
such as here at Oggersheim's factories.
Michaela Ferner (left), Gabriela Nagel and Friedemann Seitz .
They have collected the advertising signs, eyewitness accounts and photos of Oggersheim factories on display around them. The exhibits are part of the alternating three temporary exhibitions that the club curates each year—everything done on a voluntary basis. The Schillerhaus is open for the public twice a week. Regular events are held there, including for children, such as the traditional summer parade, in which a snowman made of straw is burnt on Laetare Sunday three weeks before Easter, songs are sung and pretzels are distributed. Gabriela has been cultivating this custom for many years. “These parades only exist in the Electoral Palatinate and neighbouring areas,” says the retired educator, adding that they were already mentioned in letters written by Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, who lived from 1652 to 1722.
Sublime: The baroque palace church towers over Mannheimer Straße.
The Oggersheim palace church built in the Baroque period is a jewel. It houses the oldest nativity scene of the Palatinate, which likely came to Oggersheim with the Franciscans in 1845. When the monastery chapel was remodelled, there was no more room for the large nativity scene, hence it wasn’t on display for years. The monks then decided to give it away to families. “We then rescued and reassembled it, but also restored it and researched its history,” explains the former pastoral counsellor, who, together with Rainer Göbel from the local history club, is involved in setting up and maintaining the nativity scene during the Christmas season and even longer. As an annual nativity scene, the story continues until the Wedding at Cana and thus into the spring. The nativity scene has to be continually adapted to the evolving story during this period.
Elisabeth Auguste lived in Oggersheim for twelve years.
Prince-electress Elisabeth Auguste—long estranged from her husband Charles Theodore—had the Oggersheim pilgrimage church built according to plans by Peter Anton von Verschaffelt just a few years before Schiller came to Oggersheim. Inside is a Loreto chapel, which her father had commissioned as the home of a Black Madonna. “It was her wish to be able to look directly at the church from her room in the castle and at the patron saint of the Palatinate,” explains Michaela. There are countless stories like this from the Schiller era that the local history club researches and preserves.
“I have not yet been anywhere but Oggersheim, where the Prince-electress really resides and where I was shown the palace and the garden,”
Friedrich Schiller wrote in a letter to Henriette von Wolzogen on 11 August, 1783.
Friedemann painstakingly drew up a city map in which he marked all the houses that have survived from the Schiller era. “The layout of the streets and alleyways is still the same today as it was when Schiller was here,” he says. The map gives you an impression of how much Baroque can still be found in Oggersheim’s buildings and gardens today, even though the construction of factories, industrialisation, war destruction and demolitions have changed the townscape and Schiller’s departure marked the beginning of the end of the palace.
The history of Oggersheim palace is told in the first exhibition room. Outlines give an impression of the splendour and size of the gardens.
Elisabeth Auguste was given the residence as a summer residence by her husband Charles Theodore and had it partially extended. Its former Baroque splendour is hardly visible today. However, it included a 105-metre-long corps de logis, which ran along Mannheimer Straße, as well as a kitchen and servants’ wing, a palace tower with grotto, a concert hall, a bathhouse, an orangery, a tea pavilion, a Chinese-English garden, a menagerie with animal enclosures, water basins, canals, a vegetable and fruit garden, a pheasant run and an ice cellar. The garden plans were drawn up by Nicolas de Pigage (1723–1796), who designed the world-famous Schwetzingen palace gardens.
Elisabeth Auguste lived here for twelve years. She left the residence in 1793 fleeing from the French army to Weinheim, where she died in 1794. In the same year, French soldiers were billeted in the palace and devastated it. The Imperial Army followed and further destroyed it. It was eventually auctioned off and used as a quarry. “The buildings of the velvet factory were built on the former grounds of the palace during industrialisation,” says Friedemann.
The Oggersheim district library is located on the ground floor of the Schillerhaus.
The local history club not only preserves relics relating to the poet in the Schiller House. In the first room of the permanent exhibition, it also displays sandstone capitals of the palace and outlines of the former gardens and gives background information on the Prince-electress and her court. “In some places it takes a little imagination to discover baroque features,” says Michaela. Right next to the Schillerhaus is the Mayer Brauhaus private brewery. If you look closely, you can recognize a baroque head above the lintel of the main entrance, which had probably been part of the palace. A few minutes’ walk further on, concealed by the greenery, you can discover a single red sandstone column behind today’s parish centre. It is the last reminder of the once lush park. Gabriela uses a large bunch of keys to open a few doors to the parish centre—where the palace once stood. Then we descend into the cellar vaults of the Kavalierflügel wing of the building. The plaster and tiles from the 1970s have long since changed the impression of the baroque period. However, the height of the underground rooms with their light-wells give you an idea of what was here in the Schiller era.
A look into the former palace catacombs, which lie beneath today’s parish centre in Oggersheim.
And what connection did the poet himself have to Oggersheim palace? Was he ever there? There is evidence that he visited it in 1783 during his second stay in Oggersheim, whereas he had barely left his rooms in the Viehhof inn in 1782 for fear of being discovered by Württemberg spies; but also so that he could work intensively on Intrigue and Love and prepare Fiesco for the Mannheim stage. After Schiller hid in Oggersheim, he found shelter with Henriette von Wolzogen in Bauernbach in Thuringia, but then returned to Mannheim in 1783 and also to the Viehhof inn, which he would remember fondly for the rest of his life. “In the inn where I stayed for seven weeks last year, I was received in a way that touched me very much,” he wrote to Henriette von Wolzogen on 11 August 1783. It was “a joyful experience to not be forgotten by strangers.”
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