Bad Homburg feels more spacious and prosperous than Exeter, due to having only half the population (52,000) in the same municipal area (about 50km²), and being located only 20 kms from prosperous Frankfurt am Main, one of ten Alpha world cities and ranked 21st in the Global Cities Index, home to both Deutsche Bundesbank and the European Central Bank.

It was not always like that. In the late middle ages, we were told the local woollen industry was destroyed by international competition from places like Exeter and Topsham that took over the Dutch market for woollen goods. Both towns are now post-industrial. Homburg’s automotive industry (e.g. Horex motorcycles and Mercedes gearboxes) has disappeared, leaving the eyesore of empty building sites, but tourism and the knowledge economy (health care, consulting, IT and conference hosting) have more than filled the gap, and Bad Homburg imports labour.

However, it is the recounting of its social history that made the greatest impression. Homburg’s renown began when Princess Elizabeth, born in Buckingham Palace in 1770, married Frederick of Hesse-Homburg in 1814 and used her wealth to benefit the town. The first spa was named after her and opened in 1834, yielding salt water of a sufficiently disgusting taste to be called healthy, and a casino was built by the Blanc brothers.

This combination of health, fun and dangerous liaisons proved irresistible to visitors who could pretend their health was improving even as their wallets shrank. Homburg became fashionable, visited by such as Robert Louis Stevenson in 1850, Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1870, and Oscar Wilde together with Lord Alfred Douglas in 1892. But changes occurred. Hesse-Homburg was allied with Austria which lost the war to, and was absorbed into, Prussia in 1866. König, later Kaiser Wilhelm I promptly ejected the Blancs, who took their gambling know-how to Monte Carlo. Homburg acquired a new tourist formula based on attracting the sporty and aristocratic Englishman. Kaiser Wilhelm II declared the Schloss an imperial summer residence in 1888 and made the town his own with his delightful architecture, including the spectacular Erlöserkirche. He was often in residence up to 1918, when he actually directed the war from there, travelling twice weekly by special train from the Fürstenbahnhof, still extant, to visit von Hindenburg and Ludendorff in Kreuznach.

The English tourists were led by Bertie, Prince of Wales, and subsequently King Edward VII of the house of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha (later renamed Windsor). His record length of time as heir to the throne will not be surpassed by Prince Charles until next year. Bertie was half German, fluent in French and German, whose relatives were almost entirely German, including his nephew, Wilhelm II.

Edward came to Homburg on 32 occasions from 1882 onwards to slim his enormous waistline and dictate fashion like the Homburg hat and undone bottom jacket button required to accommodate the failed slimming regime.

The overwhelming and lasting impression is of the present rather than of the past and is one of a hearty welcome and warm hospitality of lovely people in lovely surroundings.

Tony Colvin