Spalt
Encyclopedia
Spalt is a town in the district of Roth
Roth (district)
Roth is a district in Bavaria, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Nürnberger Land, Neumarkt, Eichstätt, Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen, Ansbach and Fürth, and the cities of Schwabach and Nuremberg....

, in Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It is situated 19 km southwest of Schwabach
Schwabach
Schwabach is a German town of about 40,000 inhabitants near Nuremberg, in the center of the region of Franconia in the North of Bavaria. The city is an autonomous administrative district . Schwabach is also the name of a river which runs through the city prior joining the Rednitz.Schwabach is...

. The city of Spalt is famous for its growing of hops
Hops
Hops are the female flower clusters , of a hop species, Humulus lupulus. They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, to which they impart a bitter, tangy flavor, though hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine...

 for beer
Beer
Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

.

Geography

Spalt is situated between Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...

, Ansbach
Ansbach
Ansbach, originally Onolzbach, is a town in Bavaria, Germany. It is the capital of the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Ansbach is situated southwest of Nuremberg and north of Munich, on the Fränkische Rezat, a tributary of the Main river. As of 2004, its population was 40,723.Ansbach...

, and Treuchtlingen
Treuchtlingen
Treuchtlingen is a town in the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany.-Geography:Treuchtlingen is situated on the river Altmühl, 9 km southwest of Weißenburg in Bayern, and 45 km northeast of Donauwörth...

 in the north of the Franconian lakelands
Franconia
Franconia is a region of Germany comprising the northern parts of the modern state of Bavaria, a small part of southern Thuringia, and a region in northeastern Baden-Württemberg called Tauberfranken...

. In the southwest of the city is the Great Brombachsee and its dam. The Fränkische Rezat
Fränkische Rezat
The Fränkische Rezat is a 64 km long river in southern Germany. It is the western, left source river of the Rednitz. It rises in the Frankenhöhe hills, near Oberdachstetten. It flows generally east through the towns Lehrberg, Ansbach, Windsbach and Spalt. It flows into the Rednitz in Georgensgmünd....

 flows through Georgensgmünd
Georgensgmünd
Georgensgmünd is a municipality in the district of Roth, in Bavaria, Germany....

 into the Rednitz
Rednitz
The Rednitz is a river in Franconia, Germany, tributary of the Regnitz . The Rednitz is formed by the confluence of the rivers Fränkische Rezat and Schwäbische Rezat, in Georgensgmünd . The Rednitz flows north through Roth bei Nürnberg, Schwabach and the southwestern quarters of Nuremberg...

.

Neighboring communities

(starting in the north and going clockwise)
  • Abenberg
    Abenberg
    Abenberg is a town in the district of Roth, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated 9 km west of Roth bei Nürnberg and 25 km southwest of Nuremberg.-References:...

  • Georgensgmünd
    Georgensgmünd
    Georgensgmünd is a municipality in the district of Roth, in Bavaria, Germany....

  • Röttenbach
    Röttenbach
    Röttenbach is a town in the district of Erlangen-Höchstadt, in Bavaria, Germany....

  • Pleinfeld
    Pleinfeld
    Pleinfeld is a municipality in the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany.Pleinfeld it's the biggest town at the Lake Brombach. The Twin Town is Killarney in Ireland. The village lies on the Great Brombachsee, besides Gunzenhausen the main tourist destination in the Franconian Lake...

  • Absberg
    Absberg
    Absberg is a municipality in the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany.The Absberg family was named by this place and had their home castle there....

  • Haundorf
    Haundorf
    Haundorf is a municipality in the Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district, in Bavaria, Germany....

  • Mitteleschenbach
    Mitteleschenbach
    Mitteleschenbach is a municipality in the district of Ansbach in Bavaria in Germany....

  • Windsbach
    Windsbach
    Windsbach is a town in the district of Ansbach, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated 20 km east of Ansbach, and 29 km southwest of Nuremberg.-Location:...


Division of the town

The following places belong to the community of Spalt:

Egelmühle, Enderndorf, Engelhof, Fünfbronn, Großweingarten, Güsseldorf, Hagsbronn, Heiligenblut, Hohenrad, Höfstetten, Hügelmühle, Kaltenbrunn, Keilberg, Massendorf, Mosbach, Mühlreisig, Nagelhof, Ottmannsberg, Schnittling, Steinfurt, Stiegelmühle, Stockheim, Straßenhaus, Theilenberg, Trautenfurt, Untererlbach, Wasserzell, Wernfels

Politics

The city's current mayor is Udo Weingart, a member of the CSU
Christian Social Union of Bavaria
The Christian Social Union in Bavaria is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It operates only in the state of Bavaria, while its sister party, the Christian Democratic Union , operates in the other 15 states of Germany...

 political party. Since 1972, it has had a twin town relationship
Town twinning
Twin towns and sister cities are two of many terms used to describe the cooperative agreements between towns, cities, and even counties in geographically and politically distinct areas to promote cultural and commercial ties.- Terminology :...

 with Bad Sauerbrunn
Bad Sauerbrunn
Bad Sauerbrunn is the name of a mineral spa and the town in which it is located, in the district of Mattersburg in Burgenland in Austria. The spa was used in ancient times by the Romans and was re-opened in 1847. The town, formerly called Savanyúkút, was part of German-speaking western Hungary...

 in the Austrian
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 province of Burgenland
Burgenland
Burgenland is the easternmost and least populous state or Land of Austria. It consists of two Statutarstädte and seven districts with in total 171 municipalities. It is 166 km long from north to south but much narrower from west to east...

, and since 2006, another one with St. Cloud, Minnesota
St. Cloud, Minnesota
St. Cloud is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the largest population center in the state's central region. The population was 65,842 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Stearns County...

.

Culture and sights

  • Spalt has two museums: the Hops and Beer Museum, and a fire station museum.

  • The end of August is celebrated by the annual Hopfenzupferfest, during which a girl is crowned the "Hops Queen."

  • Every two years, the Funsport Challenge Madmud (well known throughout Europe) is held here.

  • Planetenweg (Planet Path): In the Summer of 2000, a 1:1 billion scale model of the solar system was constructed between Spalt and the neighbouring town of Georgensgmünd
    Georgensgmünd
    Georgensgmünd is a municipality in the district of Roth, in Bavaria, Germany....

    . The model begins with a globe representing the sun behind Georgensgmünd's town hall. A 7 km bike path leads one through Rezat valley towards Spalt, where Pluto (now considered a dwarf planet) is represented at the train station of the town. Each planet model has a display board nearby with facts about the planet.

  • Spalt is well-known nationally for its beer. Throughout the surrounding area, it is nearly impossible to find any brand of beer other than "Spalter". The town has a saying about its beer: "In Spalt, in Spalt, dou wern di Leit gor alt; sie kenna nix dafier, dös macht ös goute Bier" (In Spalt, people grow very old; they do not contribute to that, it's done by good beer.)

  • Spalt is the middle of one of Germany's hops
    Hops
    Hops are the female flower clusters , of a hop species, Humulus lupulus. They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, to which they impart a bitter, tangy flavor, though hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine...

     cultivation zones, having grown hops since 1341, with the hops seal since 1538.

Buildings

  • Das Kornhaus is a former tithe barn of the Prince Bishops of Eichstätt. The timber-framed building dates from the first half of the 15th century, and in 1862 became the property of the city and served from 1897 to 1984 for hops storage. The building is 36 meters long, 13 meters wide and 20 meters high. It is currently (September 2009) under renovation and is therefore not accessible to visitors. Upon completion, the Kornhaus will house a hops and beer museum and a cultural center with library and tourist information.

  • The baroque town hall was designed by Gabriel de Gabrieli, a court architect in Eichstätt, and was built in the years 1751 to 1756.

  • The former Doppelkanonikatshaus originally served as a refectory
    Refectory
    A refectory is a dining room, especially in monasteries, boarding schools and academic institutions. One of the places the term is most often used today is in graduate seminaries...

     of the monastery of St. Nicholas and St. Emmeram. It was built in the years 1753 to 1756, after the secularization of the school building. Until 1981, it still served as a convent of the School Sisters. Currently, the municipal nursery school is located here.

  • The former collegiate church of St. Nicholas was built in the years 1767 to 1771, by Matthias Binder from Ellingen, of the German Order of Architechts. This preserved Baroque building was the successor of an earlier church founded in 1294, in the Abbey of St. Nicholas, built from 1302 to 1313 in the same place. Patrons included the Count of Nuremberg Conrad II the Pious and his wife Agnes von Hohenlohe. Inside inside the church are frescoes by Franz Kürzinger and stucco work of the Wessobrunner school. On the former cemetery wall are 24 old grave sites, one of which, No. 14, holds the epitaph of the deacon Wolfgang Agricola. In the 1960s the church was renovated.

  • The evangelical Christophorus-Kirche is a neo-gothic sandstone building. It was originally only a chapel with skylights, but received a tower in 1895, south of the nave.

  • The Catholic parish was built in 1738 by Moritz Pedetti. The baroque building on the first floor has beautiful plaster ceilings. It served since 1812 as a parsonage.

  • The Shepherd's Tower is believed to have been started in first half of the 14th century, and completed in the middle of the 15th century. It was a part of the town's fortification.

Famous people

  • Georg Spalatin, a sympathetic supporter of Martin Luther
    Martin Luther
    Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

    . He named himself after his hometown.
  • Hubert Schwartz, an extreme athlete
  • Wolfgang Spann, a coroner

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK