Sign in with Facebook
Carlos Krause and Michael Millard
Mozart's Così fan tutte in Bad Orb 2008
Haus Dronsella
BurgjossWegscheide
Anyone who grew up and went to school in Frankfurt has probably been to the Wegscheide, which is a camp for Frankfurt school classes up on a pass in the Spessart hills, not quite four kilometers to the east of Bad Orb.
The name Wegscheide means parting of the ways, not only because it is on a pass with roads and trails going off in different directions, but because at one time the idea was that school classes would come here in their last year together, before splitting up and all going their separate ways.
The camp was first built for the German army in the First World War, then acquired by the Frankfurt schools in the 1920s. When the Nazis came to power they made it into a forced labor prison, and for several years after the Second World War it was a camp for displaced persons. Two cemeteries nearby attest to the horrible conditions in those years.
In the 1950s the Frankfurt schools were again able to take over the Wegscheide, and to this day they use it for class excursions and also as a summer camp during the school vacations.
(I have never been involved in the Frankfurt school system, but I did once spend a week at the Wegscheide for other reasons. This was quite a long time ago.)
