Darmstadt

Darmstadt has provided settings for experimentation in both design and music. At Mathildenhöhe, the artists' colony developed between 1899 and 1914, bringing architecture, interiors, applied art and landscape into a coordinated environment. Its houses, exhibition buildings and Wedding Tower preserve that ambition in built form. A different field of experimentation emerged with the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music, held since 1946. Concerts, seminars, masterclasses and debates made it a meeting place for composers and performers. The Internationales Musikinstitut preserves recordings, correspondence and other documentation of this activity, allowing the city's postwar musical history to remain available for study.