Erbach

Erbach carved its fortune in ivory — and now guards the craft's conscience. Count Franz I of Erbach-Erbach, an enlightened traveller of the eighteenth century, learned turning and carving himself and planted the art in his Odenwald residence town: ivory workshops flourished for two centuries, making Erbach the German capital of the material, and the German Ivory Museum today holds the story with both admiration and modern responsibility — historic masterpieces of the carvers' art displayed alongside the ethics of protection, contemporary artists working mammoth ivory and substitutes, the town's identity handled with clean hands.

The counts' Schloss anchors the town: its collections — the count's beloved antiquities, one of Germany's notable arrays of antlers and armour arranged by Franz himself, chambers essentially unchanged — make it a rare intact document of aristocratic Enlightenment taste, while the Städtel below keeps the old court quarter's lanes, the orangery and the lake-set English park of Eulbach with its romantic ruins a carriage ride away.

Around town rolls the Odenwald proper: wooded hills toward Michelstadt — whose famous half-timbered town hall stands one valley bend north — the Mümling's meadows, and trails in all directions under UNESCO Geopark auspices. Archive note: Germany counts several Erbachs (notably Erbach an der Donau); event records should be verified against venue and region. Ivory by decree, antlers by the thousand, forest without end: Erbach remains the count's town, curated.