Fürth

Fürth watched the future arrive first: on 7 December 1835, Germany's first railway steamed the six kilometres from Nuremberg to Fürth, the Adler locomotive inaugurating the machine age between two Franconian neighbours — the city has counted itself ahead of schedule ever since. Its deeper distinction was tolerance: for centuries Fürth sheltered one of Germany's most important Jewish communities, earning the name "Franconian Jerusalem", with famed Talmudic schools, Hebrew printing and a Jewish hospital among the earliest; the Jewish Museum Franconia keeps this heritage, and the city's most famous son belongs to it — Henry Kissinger, born here in 1923, remained a lifelong supporter of the local football club.

That club, SpVgg Greuther Fürth, carries improbable laurels: three German championships in the 1910s and 20s, when the cleverest football in the Reich was played here. A second native son rebuilt the country by other means: Ludwig Erhard, father of the economic miracle, born above his parents' shop — his museum explains prosperity's Franconian roots.

Fürth's streetscape survived the war nearly whole: sandstone façades, courtyard after courtyard, and the Stadttheater of 1902 — a jewel by the Viennese theatre architects Fellner and Helmer — hosting opera and drama in gilded splendour. The Michaelis-Kirchweih each autumn turns the whole town into Franconia's grandest street festival: the future's city, celebrating like the past.