Sister cities of Trossingen

Trossingen is a town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated in a region called Baar, between the Swabian Alb and the Black Forest. Stuttgart is about an hour away, Lake Constance about half an hour, and the source of the river Danube can be reached in about twenty minutes by car.

Trossingen is renowned as a "music town". Although it has around 15,000 inhabitants, the town is home to the renowned 'University of Music Trossingen' [1] (with its famous Early Music department), which is one of Baden-Württemberg's five state conservatories, and there are several other institutions specializing in musical education, like the 'Bundesakademie für musikalische Jugendbildung' [2] and the 'Hohner Konservatorium' [3].

In 1830 Christian Messner from Trossingen a cloth maker and weaver copied a Harmonica bought to Trossingen by his next door neighbor and clockmaker, from Vienna, the beginning of musical instrument production in the town. He had such success with making such instruments, that eventually his brother and some relatives also started to build harmonicas. From 1840 on his nephew Christian Weiss started to work on his own, so by 1855 two registered Businesses were in existence - Christian Messner & Co. and Württ. Harmonikafabrik Ch. WEISS. Trossingen is also the home of the worlds oldest harmonica manufacturer, C.A Seydel Sohne, founded in 1847.

See German Wikipedia page about Christian Messner de:Christian Messner.

In 1857 the Matthias Hohner company was founded. Today, Hohner harmonicas and accordions are well known all over the world. Trossingen houses the German Harmonica Museum.

Trossingen also has a historic railway: the Trossinger Eisenbahn.

At the edge of town, in a former clay quarry, several dozens of skeletons, complete and partial, of the prosauropod dinosaur Plateosaurus engelhardti were found during excavations in the early 20th century. The local museum Auberlehaus houses several original bones.