Marbach am Neckar · Baden-Württemberg · Germany
Marbach am Neckar — Wildermuth in the town
An old walled city about 25 miles north of Stuttgart, birthplace of Friedrich Schiller, with the family surname carried into German civic memory in two places: Wildermuthstraße (named after Ottilie Wildermuth, the 19th-century children's writer) and her preserved childhood home with its memorial plaque.
Why this place matters
Marbach is not where the family came from — that is Rielingshausen, just a few kilometers away. Marbach is where the family name became *literature*. Ottilie Wildermuth (née Rooschüz, 22 February 1817 – 12 July 1877) was one of 19th-century Germany's most widely read writers for young readers. The street and the plaque are why Robert Earl, and Chuck a generation later, included Marbach on the family-pilgrimage route.
Then & now
Robert Earl photographed Wildermuthstraße — the residential street named for Ottilie — in November 1992. Chuck, in 2018, photographed the memorial plaque on her surviving childhood home a few blocks away. Two ways of registering the family surname in the same town's public memory.
The Wildermuth presence in Marbach
Across generations
Additional Marbach street views Chuck made on the same trip — context shots of the old town around Wildermuthstraße.
Robert Earl’s November 1992 caption on the back of the Wildermuthstraße print, kept here verbatim because his words carry the visit:
“This is part of the residential district on Markt Platz, Wildermuth Strassg (Street) in Marbach, Germany. The street is named in honor of Ottilie Wildermuth, wife of Johannes David Wildermuth. She was Germany’s most famous female poetess and publisher in the early 1800s. Marbach is an old walled in city with a Wildermuth gate through the wall. It is about 25 miles north of Stuttgart. The town is a famous tourist center and it is the birthplace of Johannes Schiller (early 1700s) who was Germany’s most famous poet and playwright — Germany’s Shakespeare. Note Germany’s unique ‘Ginger bread’ type architecture. All autos parked here were Mercedes Benz an everyday car in Germany.” — R.E.W. I
Chuck’s 2018 plaque photograph adds what the 1992 visit hadn’t yet documented: that Ottilie Wildermuth was born 22 February 1817 and died 12 July 1877, that her maiden name was Rooschüz, that her father Gottlob Rooschüz was the local district judge, and that the house was built in 1824–25 as a district court — she lived there from 1825 until 1839, when the court moved to Strohgasse.