Brown-white sheet metal on the edge of the motorway: every few kilometers they advertise historical or tourist attractions. But sometimes there are also real curiosities.
Travel educates, even as you drive by. At least a little. All you have to do is travel at a reasonably calm speed on the motorway and pay attention to the large brown and white signs.
Maybe you know anyway that you are roaming the Sauerland or the Lneburg Heath. The “Cologne Cathedral” almost inevitably comes to mind when approaching the city on the Rhine. But of a Zevener Geest, a “Gellert town of Hainichen” or the Hinzert concentration camp memorial, at best history buffs and insiders have a clue.
For some, the “tourist information boards”, as the signs are called in official German, are local customers driving past or marketing along the motorway, for others another contribution to the forest of signs on our streets.
Do you know how many signs are there …?
Nobody knows exactly how many of these brown signs there are. They are not recorded centrally. Professor Sven Gro comes up with more than 3,400 signs with around 1,800 motifs. The tourism researcher from the Harz University of Applied Sciences presented a study on this at the beginning of 2020.
According to this, every sixth person has spontaneously followed such a sign. Two out of three respondents said they can remember signs and the destinations shown. Only four percent said they had never seen a sign like this before.
You can’t actually overlook the boards. They are around ten square meters in size, always in the colors brown and white and sometimes even bilingual in border regions.
Village churches, mazes and old towns
If you cross the country on the A 4 from west to east, the first sign draws attention to the “Industrieland NRW Technologieregion Aachen” and the last sign shortly before the Polish border to the “European city of Grlitz Zgorzelec”. The signs are not the same in both directions. Those who drive from east to west, for example, have to live without reference to the “Cunewalde village church”, the “Kleinwelka maze” or the “gingerbread town of Pulsnitz”.
If you drive on the A 7 from north to south, there are a good 950 kilometers between the Nolde Museum on the North Sea coast and the historic old town of Fssen – and well over a hundred signs.
Full concentration is required, especially in the south of the Republic, who wants to study the signs on the edge of the motorway as a passenger. Sven Gro counted 836 signs in Bavaria alone. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the tourism researcher came up with 184, in Berlin just one – it is reminiscent of the “German division 1945–1990”.
South Baden sign forest
In South Baden along the A 5, too, people are busy beating the drum for the sights and cultural features along the route. In Offenburg, the Baden Revolution is historically significant with the sign “Platz der Verfassungsfreunde”. The Breisgau wine region is also signposted in brown and white, as is the Hohengeroldseck castle ruins near Seelbach or the baroque town of Ettenheim. Castle Brgeln Schliengen, the Blankenhorn Palais in Mllheim, the Zhringerstadt Neuenburg am Rhein, the wine country Markgrflerland, “Architecture and Design Weil am Rhein” are represented or simply the Black Forest as such – outlined with gentle hills, pointed fir trees and a classic farmhouse . And the Europa-Park in Rust has also put it on its own sign advertising a detour to the amusement park with roller coaster loops and a large Eurosat ball.
What exactly is on the sign is often a question of the perspective on the special features of the region – and of creativity, as the topic of thermal baths in Sdbaden shows: The tinny reference to the Badenweiler thermal baths gives preference to the historical and shows the Badenweiler ruins in a particularly prominent way , while a water fountain symbolizing the thermal baths can only be seen on the lower edge of the sign. The sign “Thermen Bad Bellingen” is completely different. A graphic, strictly bubbly fountain is emblazoned on the large table and even the temperature is given in large letters: 34 degrees.
The first board was set up in 1983 on the A 8 near Stuttgart, inspired by the French, who already had several years of experience. It drew the attention of motorists to Teck Castle. Initially, such signs were allowed to appear no more than every 20 kilometers and only refer to significant cultural or architectural monuments or landscapes that were visible from the motorway. The authorities are now more generous.
And what does meaningful mean here?
Bettina Harms works for the Lower Saxony State Authority for Road Construction and Transport and is responsible for six motorway sections in the Oldenburg area. If someone applies for a new sign, Harms uses the “Guidelines for Tourist Signs” and first clarifies whether it is a significant tourist destination.
These include Unesco world heritage sites, cultural and architectural monuments, nature parks, but also war cemeteries and leisure parks. The destination must not be more than ten kilometers as the crow flies from the nearest connection point. Harms does not want to see more than two brown signs between two connection points, whereby the distance should be at least 1000 meters – one of many provisions in the guidelines.
Most of the signs are in landscape format. But if the mountain and castle should fit on it, it can also be in portrait format, as with the reference to the “Geotope Isteiner Klotz – Historisches Istein” or in the Rhineland on the sign for the world cultural heritage Klner Dom.
Allow yourself to be led astray by the curious
If you drive carefully through the country, you will also discover shorter distances between the signs. And in addition to the colors brown and white, which are actually only allowed, there is also a seaweed or a butterfly in blue. When it comes to getting drivers’ attention, applicants are inventive.
And for a long time now it is not just cultural and historical monuments and scenic attractions that are being pointed out. Tourist attractions are also a must. The Fernweh-Park Oberkotzau, located on the A 9 in the Upper Franconian district of Hof, has been pointing to its large exhibition with a corresponding sign since January 2020 – place-name signs from all over the world. One sign leads to even more signs.
Even if the tourist benefits can hardly be measured in tangible numbers, more signs will be added everywhere in Germany – and not all of them will always make sense. “It is really so small and small that you ask yourself: Is that necessary?”, Says tourism researcher Gro.
At the same time, as a “fan of regional specialties”, he admitted that he too only became aware of the “Thringer Klowelt Heichelheim” thanks to a large brown sign. And so these boards will continue to influence travel planning in the future. Or at least close small gaps in knowledge.
Book tip: Sights along the Autobahn, Bassermann Verlag, 2014, 352 pages, 7.99 euros
–
