Land of Philosophers and Artists : Germany

Nearly a thousand museums (including, for example, the Clock Museum in Furtwangen with its unparalleled collection of Black Forest cuckoo clocks), two state theaters, ten city theaters, festivals, film festivals and the Solitude Palace Academy near Stuttgart, which promotes art and artists on an international scale: Cultural life finds exceedingly varied forms of expression in Baden-Wurttemberg. Literary memorials and literature prizes recall the many great figures in Germany’s intellectual history who were born here - Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843), Wilhelm Hauff (1802-1827) and the philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), Friedrich Wilhelm Scheiling (1775-1854) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).

Today the Stuttgart Ballet, the International Bach Academy and the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe are internationally acclaimed. 6,400 music and choral groups as well as 90 amateur orchestras by their very number attest to the joy that many people in Baden-Wurttemberg derive from music. The state is also an important media center and the domicile of major publishing companies; 33 percent of Germany’s magazines and 22 percent of its books are published here.