Eisenach

The Bach Museum in Eisenach, the city of birth of Johann Sebastian Bach. Born into a highly musical family, Bach received his early musical tuition first from his father Johann Ambrosius Bach, who was a town musician, and then from his father's cousin, the organist Johann Christoph Bach.

Industrial town on the western edge of the state of Thuringia, Germany; population (1995) 45,600. Industries include the manufacture of motor vehicles, mechanical engineering, electronics, pottery, and tourism. German church reformer Martin Luther made the first translation of the Bible from Greek into German in the 11th–12th-century Wartburg Castle nearby. The composer J S Bach was born here.

Eisenach was the old capital of the Landgraves of Thuringia, on the northwest edge of Thüringer Wald (Thüringian Forest), at the foot of the Wartberg. Before the reunification of Germany in 1990, the town was a centre of Wartburg motor vehicle production in East Germany, with 10,000 employees manufacturing 80,000 vehicles each year. A new vehicle manufacturing plant (Opel) has been established here, with some 1,800 employees producing some 150,000 vehicles. The town hosts part of the Thuringian Bach Festival (March–April), and the Telemann Festival (June).