If there is a city which reminds everybody of something, Frankfurt is the place. Some associate the metropolis on the river Main whit money, as it is a major financial centre and the heart of Europe's banking world: other associate it with literature and culture, since Frankfurt is the city of Gutenberg and Goethe, as well as the International Music Trade Fair and the Book Fair.
Frankfurt is by no means short of modern buildings: its tower blocks, built of concrete and glass, have gained Frankfurt the epithet "Mainhatten". In the 1950s the cathedral, with its 96-metre-high steeple, was the tallest building in the city. Today, Commerzbank's almost 300-metre-high tower holds the record as the highest office block in Europe, but the competition for the highest tower block in Frankfurt has not yet been decided. Still at the planning stage as Europe's highest is the Millennium Tower, which will be 365 metres in all. Currently about 80 high-rise buildings, mainly banks and office blocks, reach up from the middle of the city: there will soon be one hundred. The skyline reflects the economic dynamism of Frankfurt - but after all, the motto of the mighty commissioners of such buildings is no longer just higher and higher, but also finer and finer.
The river Main flows east-west through the city, separating the north bank's skyscrapers and bustle from the south's more laid-back charms, where some attractive old timber-framed houses preserve the atmosphere of Frankfurt before the large-scale destruction it suffered in World War II. One of the greatest German writers, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, to whom the city pays tribute by naming streets, a square, and the main university after him, lived in such a timer-framed house from his birth on 28 August 1749 until 1775, when he moved to Weimar. It was here that he penned his ode to suicide, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and began work on Faust. This was also the scene of his bittersweet love affair with Marianne von Willemer. Today his perfectly refurbished house, the Goethemuseum, which is beautifully decorated with a mixture of reproduction and original furniture and where Goethe's original writing desk and parts of his library are exhibited, attracts big crowds every year.
A walk in the old town evokes up even more history. Frankfurt was established as a trading centre even in Roman times, and by the twelfth century the city's famous trade fairs were attracting traders from as far afield as the Mediterranean and the Baltic. The town was propelled into prominence when it was made the site of the election and coronation of German kings from 1152. The Frankfurters bought their autonomy from Karl IV for a fee of 8800 goulden in 1372, marking Frankfurt a freie Reichstadt, or free imperial city.
The existence of so many written documents concerning the city's past is, to a great extent, due to Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, who settled here in 1454. It was as a result of his work that printing houses soon became widespread. Even the tradition of the book fairs dates back to him, although the privileges accorded by Frederick V had made Frankfurt a site of international trade fairs from 1240.
Frankfurt's character was strongly secular, as befitted a cosmopolitan trading centre, and the city was among the first to embrace the ideas being put forward by Luther, who visited the city for the first time in 1521. The subsequent religious conflicts do not belong among the most pleasant chapters in the city's history, but the fact remains that Frankfurt was a multi-denominational town from the early seventeenth century. The contemporary financial centre also dates back to the seventeenth century, the first money institutions were established by such dynasties as the Rothschilds, the Bethmanns andt the Speyers, which are still famous today. Later the Prussian and the French, the Habsburgs and the troops of Napoleon shaped the history of the city. As did Fascism, which in the 1930s used the multinational company I.G. Farben in the Höchst district to promote its contemptible goals
Although Germany's most beautiful gothic downtown was burned to ashes during World War II, much of the historical centre has been painstakingly reconstructed since the late 1940s, and even if the effect can be a little theatrical and one-dimensional it is preferable to the barren streetscapes and brutal concrete creations that went up in the 1960s. One such successfully reconstructed building is the old town hall, or the Haus zum Römer, originally built in 1405 in the old market square, the Römerberg. Alongside the refurbished houses some original buildings have survived, including the Salzhaus, the "Golden Swan" house, the renaissance lustitia well, and some fragments of the classicist Paul Church, which have been skilfully and carefully incorporated into the newly erected version.
The romantic bank of the Main - near the gothic old town has been a setting for many films. And, talking about films, among the plethora of museums here (Frankfurters were not exaggerating when they dubbed the south bank "Museum Embankment") the Deutsches Filmmuseum is a real treat, with premises, theme exhibitions and seasons, and an extensive archive. Last but not least, once in Frankfurt you must not miss the rowdy taverns, rustic restaurants and tiny alleys of Sachsenhausen, after all, the beer and cider taverns are also symbolic of this city. And if you want to take a tip from Goethe, try the rich herb sauce known as Gröne Sosse, which is served with potatoes eggs or meat. Apparently it was the winter's favourite dish.
Szászi Júlia