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Bad Arolsen
Coat of arms	Location
Administration
Country	Germany
State	Hesse
Admin. region	Kassel
District	Waldeck-Frankenberg
Mayor	Gerhard Schaller (independent)
Basic statistics
Area	126.32 km² (48.8 sq mi)
Elevation	286 m  (938 ft)
Population	18,297  (31/12/2004)
- Density	145 /km² (375 /sq mi)
Other information
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Licence plate	KB
Postal code	34454
Area codes	05691, 05696
Website	Stadt Bad Arolsen Coordinates: 51°22′″N 9°1′″E / Expression error: Unexpected / operator, Expression error: Unexpected / operator

Bad Arolsen (until 1997 Arolsen) is a small town in northern Hesse, Germany, in Waldeck-Frankenberg district.

Contents 1 Geography 1.1 Location 1.2 Neighbouring communities 1.3 Constituent communities 2 History 3 Politics 3.1 Town council 3.2 Coat of arms 3.3 Partnerships 4 Culture and sightseeing 4.1 The town 4.2 Buildings 4.3 Natural monuments 4.4 Regular events 5 Economy and infrastructure 5.1 Transport 5.2 Public institutions 6 Personalities 6.1 Sons and daughters of the town 7 References 8 External links

The main town lies roughly 45 km west of Kassel.

Bad Arolsen was from 1655 to 1918 the residence town of the Princes of Waldeck-Pyrmont and then until 1929 the capital of the Waldeck Free State.

The town lies on the German-Dutch holiday road called the Oranier-Route, joining towns, cities and regions associated with the House of Orange.

Bad Arolsen borders in the north on the town of Diemelstadt, in the northeast on the town of Volkmarsen (both Waldeck-Frankenberg), in the southeast on the town of Wolfhagen (Kassel district), in the south on the town of Waldeck, in the southwest on the community of Twistetal, and in the west on the community of Diemelsee (all three in Waldeck-Frankenberg) and the town of Marsberg (Hochsauerlandkreis in North Rhine-Westphalia).

Besides the main town, which bears the same name as the whole, the town of Bad Arolsen consists of the following centres:

• Braunsen, 190 inhabitants
• Bühle, 124 inhabitants
• Kohlgrund, 263 inhabitants.
• Helsen, 2,128 inhabitants
• Landau, 1,148 inhabitants
• Massenhausen, 552 inhabitants
• Mengeringhausen, 3,768 inhabitants
• Neu-Berich, 242 inhabitants
• Schmillinghausen, 505 inhabitants
• Volkhardinghausen, 132 inhabitants
• Wetterburg, 903 inhabitants

Arolsen is first documented in 1131 when an Augustinian nunnery was established there. The nunnery was secularized in 1526 and in 1655 became the residence of the Counts (later Princes) of Waldeck, who converted it into a stately home. It was torn down in 1710 and replaced with a new Baroque structure (1713-1728) by Prince Frederik Anton Ulrich (1676-1728).

From 1918 to 1929 Arolsen was capital of the Free State of Waldeck-Pyrmont (after 1922: Free State of Waldeck), which was subsequently incorporated into Prussia.

Bad Arolsen is the site of the International Tracing Service archive, a venue for millions of documents related to the Nazi-attempted extermination of the Jewish people and others. Information kept hidden to the public for the past fifty years is slated to be made available by the ITS, an organization that is part of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The town council's 37 seats are apportioned thus, in accordance with municipal elections held on 26 March 2006:

CDU	15 seats
SPD	11 seats
Offene Liste	3 seats
FDP	3 seats
FWG	3 seats
Greens	2 seats

Note: FWG is a citizens' coalition. Offene Liste is the "Open List".

Bad Arolsen's civic coat of arms might heraldically be described thus: In argent a nine-leaved oak tree vert with four acorns Or, before which an inescutcheon within which in Or a bar-topped letter "A" sable surmounted by a halved eight-pointed star sable.

The oak tree stands for the surrounding woods and indirectly the fresh air that Bad Arolsen is known for as a climatic spa. The inescutcheon shows the town's (original) initial, and the eight-pointed star of Waldeck.

The original arms were dropped in 1938 owing to a perceived reference to Freemasonry, which was not officially tolerated in Nazi Germany. The charge in question was "God's Eye" – a triangle with the sun's rays shining out of it, such as may still be seen in Bad Krozingen's civic coat of arms. Bad Arolsen's old arms showed the same inescutcheon over this, but "God's Eye" was replaced with an oak tree in 1938.[1]

• Bad Köstritz, Thuringia
• Heusden-Zolder, Belgium
• Hermann, Missouri, United States
• Klütz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Worthy of note is the town's Baroque layout near the stately home. The street grid shows a chequered pattern that was typical of that time. It was originally planned to build a mirror-image layout to the stately home's east and west, but the plans were never fully carried out; after completing the developments west of the stately home, there was no money left over to do the eastern part. Some of the development's buildings are protected by law. Since 1999 there has been a Gestaltungssatzung – or "design charter" – in place to ensure the townscape's current form through collective protection.

• The Baroque stately home, Schloss Arolsen, belonging originally to the Princes of Waldeck-Pyrmont with its imposing construction was built in the years 1713-1728 by architect Julius Ludwig Rothweil. Of particular importance are the ceiling paintings by the Italian artist Carlo Ludovici Castelli, and the outstanding stucco works by Andrea Gallasini.
• Landauer Wasserkunst, an historic waterworks in Landau dating from 1555.

The best known outing destination near Bad Arolsen is the Twistesee, a man-made lake.

Panorama of Twistesee

• August: Arolser Kram- und Viehmarkt (a fair with household goods and cattle markets)
• May: Arolser Barockfestspiele (Baroque festival)

Of particular economic importance to the town was its role as a garrison town. On 17 December 2004, the Bundeswehr's Bad Arolsen base (Mengeringhausen) was dissolved.

Bad Arolsen lies on the railway line from Kassel to Korbach. Local public transport is also handled by buses of the North Hesse Transport Association (Nordhessischer Verkehrsverbund; NVV). Furthermore, the town is also served by the BRS (Busverkehr - Ruhr - Sieg) bus company.

Since 1946, Bad Arolsen has been headquarters to the International Tracing Service, an organization dedicated to finding missing persons, typically lost to family and friends as a result of war or political unrest during World War II. The institution is led and administered by the International Red Cross and financed by the Federal Republic of Germany.

The town is home to vast archives of Nazi-related documents. In April 2006, German justice minister Brigitte Zypries announced that Germany would cooperate with the United States and allow survivors and historians of the Holocaust access to 47 million pages of documents, although an eleven-nation accord must decide unanimously that this is to be done.[2] 12 Million of the documents have now being digitally scanned and shared with research institutions around the world. The archive will be fully opened later this year when France, Italy and Greece ratify changes to the access protocol[3].

• 1556 Philipp Nicolai, song-poet and Reformer, in Mengeringhausen (died 26 October 1608 in Hamburg)
• 1620 Prince Georg Friedrich von Waldeck (died 19 November 1692 in Bad Arolsen)
• 1767 Johann Stieglitz, doctor (died 31 October 1840 in Hanover)
• 1777 Christian Daniel Rauch, sculptor (died 3 December 1857 in Dresden); The Museum in Bad Arolsen looks after his memorial.
• 1804, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, painter (died 7 April 1874 in Munich)
• 1822, Friedrich Kaulbach, painter (died 17 September 1903 in Hanover)
• 1838, Walther Herwig, founder of German high-sea fishing
• 1858, Adelheid Emma Wilhelmina Theresia von Waldeck-Pyrmont, Queen and 1890-1898 Regent of the Netherlands (Dutch King William III's second wife; died 20 March 1934 in The Hague)
• 1861, August Bier, surgeon, in Helsen (died 12 March 1949 in Sauen (near Beeskow))
• 1873, Rudolf Klapp, orthopaedics professor
• 1896, Josias Erbprinz von Waldeck-Pyrmont, SS Obergruppenführer (died 30 November 1967 in Bad Arolsen)

This article is based on a translation of an article from the German Wikipedia.

• Town's official website
• Bad Arolsen at the Open Directory Project

v • d • e Towns and municipalities in Waldeck-Frankenberg district
Allendorf | Bad Arolsen | Bad Wildungen | Battenberg | Bromskirchen | Burgwald | Diemelsee | Diemelstadt | Edertal | Frankenau | Frankenberg | Gemünden | Haina | Hatzfeld | Korbach | Lichtenfels | Rosenthal | Twistetal | Vöhl | Volkmarsen | Waldeck | Willingen