The best dog-friendly hikes and walks around Parkwald Maudacher Bruch

It’s wonderful to have such quiet places even in urban areas

Quiet, narrow hiking trail, simply beautiful

Monte Scherbelino is a small hill which, at 117m, is the highest elevation in Frankenthal.

The camp in Ludwigshafen-Rheingönheim was dissolved in July 1945. The prisoners were either released, transferred to other existing POW camps – primarily to Heilbronn – or taken to France for reconstruction. After the camp's dissolution, it was long forgotten. The area became a construction site for businesses and residential buildings, as well as a sports facility. In 1991, at the instigation of former POWs, a memorial stone was placed in the center of the former camp grounds to commemorate the fate of the 90,000 inmates and serve as a reminder of peace. On May 8, 1995, local groups organized a memorial march to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. In a spirit of reconciliation, they linked the memory of the persecution of the Jews with the POW camp and the bombings that Ludwigshafen suffered.

Pure nature, here live pheasants, otters 🦦 and herons

It's wonderful to watch the highland cattle. Here on the meadow path, which is also a nature trail, you can watch the shaggy animals. There is also a viewing platform here.

Rhine meadow camp Construction and construction Between April and July 1945, the US Army set up numerous prisoner of war camps along the Rhine, including in Bretzenheim, Remagen and Sinzig. They officially referred to them as Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosures (PWTE) and numbered them A1 to A19 and C1 to C4. A camp built in Urmitz was never put into operation. In addition, there were other collection camps, some of which only existed for a few weeks, including in Eckelsheim, which did not receive an official PWTE designation. However, the same conditions prevailed there as in the other camps along the Rhine. The provisional character, which was born out of necessity, is already indicated by the official name of the camps as “Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosures” (PWTE), which means the term “temporary”. picks up. Since the Americans did not want to keep the prisoners under their control for long, they did not establish any developed camps with camp regulations. Everything was based on the conviction that these camps were only a temporary facility and many things could only be regulated imprecisely in such a short time. This was one cause of the chaotic conditions in the spring and summer of 1945. The decision for the locations on the Rhine was influenced by the availability of large, open areas on which the camps could be set up. The Rhine served as a natural border and the American leaders could assume that a recapture of these areas by the German army was impossible. Villages or towns with a railway connection bordered all camps, which provided further transport and supply options. The Americans separated open-air farm areas with barbed wire and divided them into smaller units, so-called cages or compounds, each containing 5,000 to 10,000 prisoners. The prisoners were not allowed to leave these cages or were only allowed to leave them in exceptional cases. A camp consisted of ten to 20 of these cages, which were guarded by American soldiers. Contact between the cages was hardly possible as they were often separated from each other by a path blocked off with barbed wire. The Rhine meadow camps were completely overcrowded with a total of over a million prisoners, as they were originally intended for far fewer people.

There is a large willow here