Trossingen ( Swabian: ''Drossinge'') is a town in

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It is situated in a region called Baar, between the

Swabian Alb The Swabian Jura (german: Schwäbische Alb , more rarely ), sometimes also named Swabian Alps in English, is a mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, extending from southwest to northeast and in width. It is named after the region of ...

and the

Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

is about an hour away,

Lake Constance Lake Constance (german: Bodensee, ) refers to three Body of water, bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (''Obersee''), Lower Lake Constance (''Untersee''), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, ca ...

about half an hour, and the source of the river

Danube The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , pa ...

can be reached in about twenty minutes by car. Trossingen is renowned as a "music town". Although it has only nearly 17,000 inhabitants as of December 31, 2018, the town is home to the renowned 'University of Music Trossingen

(with its famous Early Music department), which is one of Baden-Württemberg's five state Music school, conservatories, and there are several other institutions specializing in musical education, like the 'Bundesakademie für musikalische Jugendbildung

and the 'Hohner Konservatorium

Hauptstraße_in_Trossingen

In 1830 from Trossingen, a cloth maker and weaver, copied a harmonica brought to Trossingen by his next door neighbor, a clockmaker from Vienna. This was the beginning of musical instrument production in the town. Messner was so successful at making such instruments that eventually his brother and some relatives also started making harmonicas. From 1840 on his nephew Christian Weiss started working on his own, so by 1855 there were two registered businesses - Christian Messner & Co. and Württ. Harmonikafabrik Ch. WEISS. Trossingen is also the home of the world's oldest extant harmonica manufacturer, C.A Seydel Sohne, founded in 1847. In 1857 the Hohner, Matthias Hohner company was founded. Today, Hohner

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...

s and

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

s are well known all over the world. Trossingen also houses the German Harmonica Museum. Trossingen has a historic railway: the Trossinger Eisenbahn. At the edge of town, in a former clay quarry, were found several dozen skeletons, both complete and partial, of the

prosauropod Sauropodomorpha ( ; from Greek, meaning "lizard-footed forms") is an extinct clade of long-necked, herbivorous, saurischian dinosaurs that includes the sauropods and their ancestral relatives. Sauropods generally grew to very large sizes, had l ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

Plateosaurus ''Plateosaurus'' (probably meaning "broad lizard", often mistranslated as "flat lizard") is a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, around 214 to 204 million years ago, in what is now Central and Northern Eur ...

engelhardti'' during excavations in the early 20th century. The local museum Auberlehaus houses several original bones.

International relations

Trossingen is twinned with: *

Cluses Cluses (; frp, Clluses) is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in southeastern France. Citizens are known as ''Clusiens''. The commune is situated in the Arve Valley, on the river which bears the same n ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

* Beaverton,

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Windhoek Windhoek (, , ) is the capital and largest city of Namibia. It is located in central Namibia in the Khomas Highland plateau area, at around above sea level, almost exactly at the country's geographical centre. The population of Windhoek in 20 ...

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

References

External links

*
German Harmonica MuseumStaatliche Hochschule für Musik Trossingen/University of Music Trossingen
* ttp://www.study-in-germany.de/english/4.22.3.1648.html Living in Trossingen (emphasis on the city's musical endeavor)br> Hohner's 150th Anniversary Celebration - September 8, 2007
Tuttlingen (district) Württemberg {{Tuttlingen-geo-stub