50 Fun Facts About Frankfurt

Which airship left Frankfurt in May 1937 bound for New Jersey, where it burst into flames while landing?

Hindenburg began nearly all its Atlantic crossings at Frankfurt's airport, and in 1936 flew a record round trip to Lakehurst in under 99 hours in the air.

Which smaller city on the Rhine narrowly beat Frankfurt in the 1949 vote to choose West Germany's capital?

Bonn won partly because Konrad Adenauer, the first postwar chancellor, wanted the capital close to his hometown.

Which storybook heroine is sent to Frankfurt as a companion for the invalid Klara Sesemann?

Heidi grows so homesick in the grand Frankfurt household that she starts sleepwalking, and the family doctor has her sent back to the mountains.

Which girl, born in Frankfurt in June 1929, moved with her family to Amsterdam after the Nazis took power?

Anne Frank was four and a half when she joined her family in Amsterdam in 1934. Her father Otto was the only one of them to survive the Holocaust.

Which writer was born in 1749 in a Frankfurt house that was bombed flat and later rebuilt as a museum?

Goethe's family home was destroyed in a 1944 air raid, then rebuilt exactly as it had stood, with work starting in 1947.

Which EU institution moved in 2014 into a new tower on the site of Frankfurt's former wholesale market?

European Central Bank staff had worked in the Eurotower before the move, and the bank kept that building too because banking supervision needed the extra space.

Which tart drink is poured from grey stoneware jugs called Bembel in Frankfurt's Sachsenhausen taverns?

Apple wine is the state beverage of Hesse and comes in a ribbed glass called a Geripptes, cut to give a better grip.

Which banking dynasty began in Frankfurt's Judengasse, the Jewish ghetto where its founder Mayer Amschel was born?

Rothschild became an international name through Mayer Amschel's five sons, who ran banks in five European cities from London to Naples.

Frankfurt is the largest city in the German state of Hesse, but which smaller city is the state capital?

Wiesbaden already held the state government in 1949, one reason Frankfurt looked free to become West Germany's federal capital.

Which product is traded each October at a huge Frankfurt fair with roots in the fifteenth century?

Books have been traded at Frankfurt since at least 1462, soon after Gutenberg developed movable-type printing in the nearby city of Mainz.

Which club beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7–3 at Hampden Park in the 1960 European Cup final?

Real Madrid won before a record crowd of over 127,000, with Ferenc Puskás scoring four goals and Alfredo Di Stéfano three.

Which boxer defended his world heavyweight title against Karl Mildenberger at Frankfurt's Waldstadion in 1966?

Muhammad Ali was troubled early on by the German's awkward southpaw style and needed until the 12th round to stop him.

Which condition is named after the doctor who examined Auguste Deter at a Frankfurt asylum in 1901?

Alzheimer's disease was described after she died in 1906: her husband had agreed to hand over her brain and records in return for free care.

Which round Frankfurt landmark housed the first parliament for the whole of Germany from 1848 to 1849?

Paulskirche was picked because its circular preaching hall let every delegate hear the speaker, and it was the first building Frankfurt rebuilt after the war.

Which former merchant's house on a Frankfurt square has served as the city hall for more than 600 years?

The Römer was sold to the city council by a merchant family in 1405, and the complex now spreads across nine houses around six courtyards.

Which British architect designed Frankfurt's Commerzbank Tower, Europe's tallest building on completion in 1997?

Norman Foster's firm opened the tower's atrium into sky gardens at nine levels, earning it the label of the world's first ecological skyscraper.

Which share index tracks the major German blue-chip companies trading on Frankfurt's stock exchange?

DAX began at a base value of 1,000 points at the end of 1987, and unlike most headline share indices it counts reinvested dividends as well as prices.

Which Frankish ruler held a church council at Frankfurt in 794, the year of the city's first written mention?

Charlemagne kept a royal court at the site, and his council drew bishops from the Frankish kingdom, Italy and Aquitaine, plus clergy from England.

Which kingdom annexed the Free City of Frankfurt in 1866, ending its independence?

Prussia had just beaten Austria, and Frankfurt, loyal to the German Confederation, was folded into the new province of Hesse-Nassau by royal decree.

What does the 'furt' in Frankfurt's name mean, a clue to why the Franks valued the site?

A ford is a shallow stretch where a river can be crossed on foot, and legend says a doe showed the Frankish army the way over.

Which cold Frankfurt speciality is made from seven fresh herbs, including borage, sorrel and chervil?

Green sauce is eaten with boiled potatoes and hard-boiled eggs, and Frankfurt honoured it with a monument of its own in 2007.

In Frankfurt's dish 'Handkäse mit Musik', which topping is said to provide the 'music' through its effect on digestion?

Raw onions are piled on the pungent sour-milk cheese, and locals joke that the music arrives later.

Which sweet paste forms Bethmännchen, the Frankfurt Christmas treats named after a local banking family?

Marzipan is rolled into balls and studded with almonds; legend says there were once four, one for each son of the banker Simon Moritz von Bethmann.

Which set of cautionary tales did Frankfurt doctor Heinrich Hoffmann write as a Christmas present for his young son?

Struwwelpeter includes a tailor who snips off the thumbs of a boy who will not stop sucking them, and Mark Twain later made his own English translation.

Which room did Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky redesign in 1926 as a compact built-in unit for Frankfurt's social housing?

The kitchen she designed was laid out to cut the steps a cook had to take, and about 10,000 were installed, the forerunner of today's fitted kitchens.

Which Oscar-winning film composer was born in Frankfurt in 1957 and moved to London as a teenager?

Hans Zimmer started out writing advertising jingles in London before winning Academy Awards for his scores to The Lion King and Dune.

Germany's other Frankfurt, a smaller city on the River Oder, looks across the water to which country?

Poland gained the part of town on the east bank after World War II; renamed Słubice, it had belonged to Frankfurt an der Oder until 1945.

Which Scottish club did Eintracht Frankfurt beat on penalties in Seville to win the 2022 Europa League?

Rangers lost the shoot-out 5–4 after a 1–1 draw, and Eintracht finished the whole competition unbeaten.

Which airline, founded in Cologne in 1953, runs its largest hub and operations base at Frankfurt Airport?

Lufthansa long hoped to move its base back to Germany's pre-war capital, but the plan was never carried out, even after reunification.

Which king turned down the imperial crown that the Frankfurt Parliament offered him in 1849?

Frederick William IV would not take a crown from an elected assembly, arguing that the offer trampled the rights of the German princes.

Which American general worked from Frankfurt's huge IG Farben Building in 1945 as military governor?

Dwight Eisenhower's old office there later hosted the 1948 handover of the Frankfurt Documents, which asked state premiers to draft a federal constitution.

Former staff of which Nazi camp complex went on trial in Frankfurt from December 1963?

Auschwitz officials were charged under ordinary German criminal law, in a prosecution led by Fritz Bauer, who had himself been held in Nazi camps for months in 1933.

Which rulers were crowned in Frankfurt's Gothic church of St Bartholomew between 1562 and 1792?

Holy Roman Emperors earned the church its name Kaiserdom, yet it was never a true cathedral, because Frankfurt has never been a bishop's seat.

Which decree of 1356 named Frankfurt as the place where the prince-electors were to choose each new king?

The Golden Bull warned the electors that if they had not chosen a king within thirty days, they would be kept in Frankfurt on bread and water.

The 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt made France hand which border region to the new German Empire?

Alsace-Lorraine came with a bill: the treaty also made France pay five billion francs, and German troops stayed on French soil until the money arrived.

To which city did Germany's international motor show move in 2021 after seven decades in Frankfurt?

Munich inherited the show under a new name, IAA Mobility; Frankfurt had hosted it since the car makers' association moved it there in 1951.

The German National Library divides its work between Frankfurt and which city in the former East Germany?

Leipzig had the original library from 1912; Frankfurt's was started in 1946, and the two merged into one institution when Germany reunified in 1990.

Which city did American cargo planes from Frankfurt's Rhein-Main Air Base keep supplied by air in 1948–49?

Berlin got its coal, flour and other cargo from C-54 Skymasters that flew out of Frankfurt into the blockaded western sectors.

Which wooded mountain range rises north-west of Frankfurt, with the Grosser Feldberg as its tallest peak?

Taunus heights around the Feldberg are the tallest in the whole Rhenish Slate Mountains, and a long-running German family car was named after the range.

Frankfurt's slender Europaturm telecom tower is nicknamed after which vegetable by local residents?

Asparagus is paired with the wrong district, though: the 'Ginnheim Asparagus' actually stands just inside neighbouring Bockenheim.

Which Frankfurt Zoo director won an Academy Award for the documentary Serengeti Shall Not Die?

Bernhard Grzimek took over the bombed-out zoo in May 1945 and had it open again by July, once the craters had been filled in.

Which Frankfurt art museum was created by the will of a banker who left his house, collection and fortune in 1816?

The Städel grew from Johann Friedrich Städel's bequest into the centrepiece of the Museumsufer, the row of museums along Frankfurt's riverbanks.

The Frankfurt School of Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse is best known for developing which body of thought?

Critical theory travelled with its authors: after 1933 their institute left Frankfurt for Geneva and then New York, where it joined Columbia University.

Which philosopher lived alone in Frankfurt from 1833 with a succession of poodles named Atman and Butz?

Arthur Schopenhauer credited his healthy old age to regular walks in any weather, and people visited Frankfurt's Englischer Hof just to watch him dine.

Frankfurt-born chemist Otto Hahn won a Nobel Prize for which 1938 discovery, made with Meitner and Strassmann?

Nuclear fission won the prize for Hahn alone, and he was being held in secret at Farm Hall when it was announced, so the committee could not even send a telegram.

Paul Ehrlich's Frankfurt laboratory produced Salvarsan in 1909, the first effective drug against which infection?

Syphilis was among Europe's most lethal infections, and Ehrlich called a drug that struck only its target microbe a magic bullet.

Frankfurt's triangular Museum of Modern Art, opened in 1991, is popularly named after which food?

A piece of cake, or Tortenstück, suits a building squeezed onto a three-sided plot, where even the rooms at the narrow end are wedge-shaped.

Which electronic dance genre emerged from Frankfurt's techno scene around 1990 and spread quickly across Europe?

Trance took shape on Frankfurt labels such as Eye Q and Harthouse, so closely that the city's sound and the genre were treated as one and the same.

Which device did teacher Philipp Reis present to Frankfurt's Physical Society in 1861?

The telephone he built carried music fairly well but only a word or two of speech, one reason later claims that he had beaten Bell to it failed in court.

Which nation won the 2011 Women's World Cup final in Frankfurt, beating the United States on penalties?

Japan won the shoot-out 3–1 after a 2–2 draw, becoming the first Asian team to win a senior World Cup final, men's or women's.