Wiesloch

The fossil remains of the oldest hummingbird found to date, Eurotrochilus inexpectatus, were found in a clay pit at Frauenweiler. This bird lived during the Early Oligocene (30 mya), when the area had a humid, subtropical climate similar to the northern Caribbean today.[3]

In 1077, Emperor Henry IV locked more than 100 of his enemies in the early church at Wizinloch (as the place was then known) on the site of the present Reformed church (Stadtkirche) and burnt the building down.[4]

Battle of Wiesloch (1632)

There were three battles near Wiesloch, the Battle of Mingolsheim on 27 April 1622 (during the Thirty Years' War), the 1632 Battle of Wiesloch on 16 August 1632, (during the same war) and the 1799 Battle of Wiesloch on 3 December 1799 (during the War of the Second Coalition).

Wiesloch was attacked on 28 January 1689 by French troops under Ezéchiel du Mas, Comte de Mélac, during the Nine Years' War, and was almost completely burnt down and destroyed.

First "filling station" in the world

The city pharmacy in Wiesloch was the first "filling station" in the world, because Bertha Benz stopped there on 5 August 1888, on the first long distance car trip, to refill the tank of her automobile, which her husband Karl Benz had invented. She was supplied with ligroin by the apothecary Willi Ockel.

In 2008, the Bertha Benz Memorial Route was officially designated an industrial heritage route, following Bertha Benz's route on the world's first long-distance journey by automobile. It is a 194 km signposted circuit from Mannheim via Heidelberg and Wiesloch to Pforzheim in the Black Forest, and back.

The Minnesinger von Wissenlo, from the Codex Manesse

The Codex Manesse includes four sophisticated Middle High German lyrics in the tagelied genre ascribed to the Minnesinger von Wissenlo (meaning "minnesang poet from Wiesloch").[5][6] The identity of the Minnesinger von Wissenlo is not known, but the poet is conjectured to be Heinrich Swendinger von Wissenloch, who lived in the second half of the 13th century.[7] An illustration titled von Wissenlo in the Codex Manesse shows a lady, a child, and a knight, and includes an escutcheon which does not match that of the Von Wissenloch family.[8]

There are two statues of the Minnesinger von Wissenlo in Wiesloch town centre: one, by Hatto Zeidler from 1978, is in the square by the united protestant church (Stadtkirche) and shows the poet playing the lyre;[9] the other, an equestrian statue on a tall column, is part of a group by Karel Fron that was erected in the market square near the town hall in 1988.[10]