088 - Germany

Dinkelsbühl is a historic city in Bavaria, Germany. It lies in the district of Ansbach, north of Aalen. Dinkelsbühl is still surrounded by the old medieval walls and towers. There exist a lot of outstanding attractions. The image of this town is very typical for a German town of the 15th to early 17th century.

* St. George's Minster is a beautiful masterpiece of the gothic style in the late 15th century ( by Nikolaus Eseler )
* St. Paul's, now a Protestant church, was rebuilt in the 19th century in the style of the far late Roman architectural style.
Originally it was part of a former monastery.
* the Castle of the Teutonic Order, with a rococo chapel
* The so-called Deutsches Haus, the ancestral home of the counts of Drechsel-Deufstetten, is a fine specimen of the German renaissance style of wooden architecture.

* situated in front of the Minster is the monument to Christoph von Schmid (1768-1854), a 19th century writer of stories for the young
* Museum of the 3rd Dimension, the former city mill
* theHistorical Museum, is showing historical findings and reconstructions of ancient houses of the city. In 2008 the complete museum gets a new domicile in the so called "Steinerne Haus" from the 14th century.
* the church of St. Vincent, 2 km outside the city

062 - Germany

(postal card) Velbert is a town in the district of Mettmann, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Langenberg, a district of Velbert, is well known as the location of the Sender Langenberg transmitter site.Velbert is located in the hills of the Berg region, approx. 20 kilometres north-east of the state capital Düsseldorf and 12 kilometres north-west of Wuppertal on the left side of the Ruhr river. Velbert stands on the highest part of the Berg region and also in its centre. Its average elevation is around 230 metres above sea level; its highest point, at 303 metres, is the Hordt-Berg and its lowest, at around 80 metres, is in Nierenhof am Deilbach. The highest point in Velbert itself is 263 metres above sea level, at the corner of Friedrichstraße and Langenberger Straße.

Bernhard Klemens Maria Grzimek was a renowned zoo director, zoologist, book author, editor, and animal conservationist in postwar West-Germany. After studying veterinary medicine in 1928, first at Leipzig and later in Berlin, he received a doctorate in 1933. After World War II he became director of the Frankfurt Zoological Garden, then in ruins, which he made into one of the largest zoological gardens in Germany. At the same time he served as president of the Frankfurt zoological society for over forty years. The society - organized on similar principles as its London and New York counterparts - runs a number of wildlife conservation projects both in Germany and overseas; most well-known is its ongoing work in the Serengeti ecosystem in Tanzania, East Africa.

Grzimek is most famous for the work he undertook for the conservation of the Serengeti. He spent several years studying the wildlife there along with his son Michael, especially on areal observation and counts of large scale annual migrations. In 1959 Michael was killed in an aircrash while flying the Dornier Do 27 due to a collision with a Griffon Vulture. He wrote a best-selling book called Serengeti shall not die, which appealed enormously to the public and was key in driving the creation of the Serengeti National Park.

040 - Germany

Sanssouci Park is a large park surrounding Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam, Germany. Following the terracing of the vineyard and the completion of the palace, the surroundings were included in the structure. A baroque flower garden with lawns, flower beds, hedges and trees was created. In the hedge quarter 3,000 fruit trees were planted. The greenhouses of the numerous nurseries contained oranges, Melons, peaches and bananas. The goddesses Flora and Pomona, who decorate the entrance obelisk at the eastern park exit, were placed there to highlight the connection of a flower, fruit and vegetable garden.
With the expansion of the site after the creation of more buildings, a 2.5 km long straight main avenue was built. It began in the east at the 1748 obelisk and over the years was extended all the way to the New Palace, which marks its end in the west. In 1764 the picture gallery was constructed, followed by the New Chambers in 1774. They flank the palace and open the alley up to rondels with the fountains, surrounded by marble statues. From there paths lead in a star pattern between tall hedges to further parts of the gardens.
In his organisation of the park, Frederick continued what he had begun in Neuruppin and Rheinsberg. During his stay as Crown Prince in Neuruppin, where he was commander of a regiment from 1732 to 1735, he ordered that a flower, fruit and vegetable garden be laid out in the grounds of his abode. He already deviated here from the classical organisation of baroque gardens, which concerned themselves purely with the model represented by Versailles, by combining the beautiful and the useful. He also followed this principle in Rheinsberg. Apart from the transformation of the palace, which Frederick received as a present from his father Frederick William I in 1734, he ordered the establishment of fruit and vegetable garden areas enclosed by hedges. In addition the central avenue and a larger intersecting avenue did not lead directly to the palace, as was usual in French parks of the era, but took off from the south wing and at a right angle to the building.
Frederick invested heavily in the fountain system of Sanssouci Park, as water features were a firm component of baroque gardens. But the Neptune Grotto, finished in 1757 in the eastern part of the park, was used just as little for its intended function as the fountain facilities. Atop the Ruinenberg, roughly six hundred metres away, was a water basin from which no water could arrive into the park and because of the "fountaineers"' lack of expertise the project failed.
It did not succeed until steam power was employed one hundred years later, and thus the purpose of the water reservoir was finally fulfilled. In October 1842 an 81.4 horsepower steam engine built by August Borsig started working and made the water jet of the Great Fountain below the vineyard terraces rise to a height of 38 metres. A pumping station on the Havelbrucht was especially built for this machine. It was commissioned by Frederick William IV and built by Ludwig Persius between 1841 and 1843, "in the manner of a Turkish Mosque with a minaret as a chimney".
Many years earlier, Frederick William III had acquired an area which bordered Sanssouci Park to the south and given it to his son Frederick William IV for Christmas in 1825. There Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Ludwig Persius built Charlottenhof Palace on the site of a former farm house and Peter Joseph Lenné was commissioned with the garden design. With the baroque flower and fruit and vegetable gardens from the Frederician era in mind, the garden architect converted the flat and partly swampy grounds into an open landscape park. Broad meadows created visual avenues between Charlottenhof, the Roman Baths and the New Palace with the Temple of Friendship developed from the time of Frederick the Great. Casually placed groups of bushes and trees and a moat that was broadened into a pond at its southeastern end beautify the large park. Lenné used the materials excavated to create the pond to construct a gentle hilly area landscape where the paths meet in the shape of stars at the high points.

039 - Germany

Ulm is a city in the German Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at 120.000 (2006), forms an urban district of its own (German: Stadtkreis) and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and traditions as a former Free Imperial City (German: freie Reichsstadt). Today, it is an economic centre due to its varied industries, and it is the seat of a university (University of Ulm, founded in 1967). Internationally, Ulm is primarily known for the tallest church in the world, the Gothic minster (Ulm Minster, German: Ulmer Münster) and as the birthplace of Albert Einstein.
The oldest traceable settlement of the Ulm area began in the early Neolithic period, around 5000 BC. Settlements of this time have been identified at the villages of Eggingen and Lehr, today districts of the city. In the city area of Ulm proper, the oldest find dates from the late Neolithic period. Ulm was first mentioned in 854 and declared an Imperial City (German: Reichsstadt) by Friedrich Barbarossa in 1181.
At first, Ulm's significance was due to the privilege of a Königspfalz, a place of accommodation for the medieval German kings and emperors on their frequent travels. Later, Ulm became a city of traders and craftsmen. One of the most important legal documents of the city, an agreement between the Ulm patricians and the trade guilds (German: Großer Schwörbrief), dates from 1397. This document, considered an early city constitution, and the beginning of the construction of an enormous church (Ulm Minster, 1377), financed by the inhabitants of Ulm themselves rather than by the church, demonstrate the assertiveness of Ulm's mediæval citizens. Ulm blossomed during the 15th and 16th centuries, mostly due to the export of high-quality textiles. The city was situated at the crossroads of important trade routes extending to Italy. These centuries, during which many important buildings were erected, also represented the zenith of art in Ulm, especially for painters and sculptors like Hans Multscher and Jörg Syrlin the Elder. During the Reformation, Ulm became Protestant (1530). With the establishment of new trade routes following the discovery of the New World (16th century) and the outbreak and consequences of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), the city began to decline gradually. Around 1700, it was alternately invaded several times by French and Bavarian soldiers.
Most of the city was rebuilt in the plain and simple style of the 1950s and 1960s, but some of the historic landmark buildings have been restored. Ulm experienced substantial growth in the decades following World War II, with the establishment of large new housing projects and new industrial zones. In 1967, Ulm University was founded, which proved to be of great importance for the development of the city. Particularly since the 1980s, the transition from classical industry towards the high-tech sector has accelerated, with, for example, the establishment of research centres of companies like Daimler, Siemens and Nokia and a number of small applied research institutes near the university campus. The city today is still growing, forming a twin city of 170,000 inhabitants together with its neighbouring Bavarian city of Neu-Ulm, and seems to benefit from its central position between the cities of Stuttgart and Munich and thus between the cultural and economic hubs of southern Germany.

030 - Germany

The Palatinate Forest (German: Pfälzerwald) is a low-mountain region in southwestern Germany, located in Palatinate in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Nature Park (German: Naturpark, equivalent Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) Palatinate Forest covers 1.771 km² and its highest elevation is Mount Kalmit (673 m). Together with the northern part of the adjacent Vosges Mountains in France it forms the UNESCO Biosphere reserve Palatinate Forest-Vosges du Nord. The Biosphere reserve is one of the biggest forests in Europe.

The Palatinate Forest can be divided into 3 areas:
* The northern Palatinate Forest, bounded by the northern Palatinate extensive hilly landscape and reaching southwards to a line from Kaiserslautern to Bad Duerkheim
* The middle Palatinate Forest from the stream Isenach and the line Kaiserslautern - Bad Duerkheim to the stream Queich and the line Pirmasens - Landau
* The southern Palatinate Forest, the so called Wasgau, from the stream Queich and the line Pirmasens - Landau to the french borderline in the south.

008 - Germany

(postal card) Dortmund is a city in Germany, located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 587,830 (20 June 2005) makes it the 7th-largest city in Germany, and 34th-largest in the European Union. The Ruhr river flows south of the city, and the small river Emscher flows through the municipal area. The Dortmund-Ems Canal also terminates in the Dortmund Port, which is the largest European canal port, and links Dortmund to the North Sea. Dortmund is known as Westphalia's "green metropolis". Nearly half the municipal territory consists of waterways, woodland, agriculture and green spaces with spacious parks such as Westfalenpark and the Rombergpark. This contrasts with nearly a hundred years of extensive coal mining and steel milling within the city limits.

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born, and generally known in English-speaking countries, as Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809 - November 4, 1847) was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. The grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he was born to a notable Jewish family which later converted to Christianity. He was recognised early as a prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not seek to capitalise on his abilities. Indeed his father was disinclined to allow Felix to follow a musical career until it became clear that he intended to seriously dedicate himself to it. Early success in Germany was followed by travel throughout Europe; Mendelssohn was particularly well received in England as a composer, conductor and soloist, and his ten visits there, during which many of his major works were premiered, form an important part of his adult career. His essentially conservative musical tastes however set him apart from many of his more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Liszt, Wagner and Berlioz. The Conservatoire he founded at Leipzig became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook. Mendelssohn's work includes symphonies, concerti, oratorios, piano and chamber music. He also had an important role in the revival of interest in the music of J. S. Bach. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality is now being recognized and re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.