I’ve posted a few things about this in years past, but it seems Heidelberg still has a vision of converting PHV into a sort of “city of the future.” If you click on this link you can watch a video presentation from May 2023 talking all about it. It’s in German so I don’t understand any of it, but if you go to right around the midpoint you will see an aerial view of PHV today and then it switches to a mock-up of what it might look like after redevelopment. In this shot I liked seeing Boxberg up on the mountain to the right, because I remember as a kid being fascinated by the “city on the hill” as we drove around the Heidelberg area below. If you then go to maybe 75-80% through the video, there are a few shots of PHV streets today, followed by their vision for its future.
There is also this English-language page describing the project, using some of the same imagery from the video.
The dream seems a little overly optimistic to me, but who knows. At any rate, it’s interesting to see what they’re thinking about the area.
I poked around for any recent info on PHV and I came across a Patrick Henry Village category on Wikimedia Commons. The first pictures on that page are from 2015 but the majority of them are from 2022 and, from the looks of things, may have been taken in conjunction with some meeting to talk about future development of the property.
Anyway, in those pictures you’ll see that PHV is being reclaimed by nature, and also some building have big art murals on them. Also, one of the apartment buildings has been torn down! I can’t tell which building, but it could be that more demolition has happened since these pictures were posted.
Luca Ding is a high school student in Heidelberg who is writing a paper on Patrick Henry Village and provided the following questions. Please feel free to add a comment with your answers if you feel so inclined.
When did you live (stationed) in Heidelberg, Germany?
How old were you, when you lived in Heidelberg?
Where did you live (PHV, MTV, Campbell Barracks, outside of Army settlement)
If you lived outside the army settlements: Was it confiscated property?
Could you roughly describe the accommodation? (size, furnishing, layout)
Was the accommodation different from what you are used to in the USA? (type of building, household items, etc.)
Would you consider the atmosphere in the army settlements as comparable to a normal neighborhood or an army base in the US?
Did it feel like home to you or just as a temporal accommodation?
Did you have much contact with German children or adults?
If so, how was the relationship with these people?
How much time did you spend outside of the army settlements?
Did any Germans (especially kids) visit the army settlements?
Did you both celebrate American holidays and typical German holidays alike? (Thanksgiving, St. Nikolaus)
Were the consumed products/ food similar to the ones in the US?
Did your time in Heidelberg imprint on you in a special way?
Did you retain any hobbies or habits first developed in Heidelberg? (soccer/Fußball 😉 instead of American Football )
Would you consider the army settlements some sort of a “little America”?
Was the school curriculum comparable to schools in the US? (Did you have any German classes?)
I am several years late coming to this, but on Youtube you can watch the entire Goodbye GI documentary which focuses on Patrick Henry Village as an example of the American military withdrawal from Germany. The dialog alternates between German and English but any subtitles are only in German so you may not be able to understand everything, but at the least you can see some footage of PHV from around the time of the shutdown.
Just wanted to point out that in the top right you’ll find a new link called Posts by Topic. With the blog format I find it frustrating to go back and find older stuff, something that probably everyone struggles with when they first discover this blog, so I’m hoping this will make the information more accessible. I’ve only included my first month’s worth of posts there so far but will continue building it out.
Before I get too deep into it, if anyone out there is more WordPress-savvy and has any better suggestions, please comment here!
One mystery I’ve had all these years is a memory of walking through the woods and coming across a medieval tower, just seemingly out by itself. I seemed to recall this was a hike that started at Heidelberg castle, but in looking at satellite views of the surrounding area I could never find anything that seemed to fit. But today I think I happened to stumble across it, and more as well. This post may not be particularly notable to any German readers or those with better memories, but I felt a bit like Indiana Jones digging all this up.
Across the Neckar River from the Königstuhl (King’s Seat), the mountain where the castle can be found, is another hill. It’s not often featured in photos, although it seems photographers often climb this hill in order to turn around and take pictures of the castle and old town. If my German-to-English translations can be trusted, this is called Michelsberg Hill and is named after an ancient civilization which once existed in the region. I’ve also seen it referred to as Heiligenberg, or Saints Mountain.
Stephanskloster
When poking around around in Google Maps I came across Stephanskloster, which is mostly ruins except for a solitary tower. My best guess is that we must have hiked around Michelsberg Hill at some point, perhaps as part of a volksmarch, and this must be the tower I’ve always vaguely remembered.
I translated its page from the German Wikipedia page and it appears this is what remains of a monastery which was founded in the year 1090. Its major donor was a Handschuhscheimer crusader which, after further digging, I think just refers to a crusader from the village of Handschuhscheim which essentially makes up the northernmost part of the Heidelberg metro area, and is right at the base of this hill. It also features the ruins of the moated Tiefburg castle, which I’m throwing in here just because castles are cool.
The Heidenloch
But there’s more hidden on Michelsberg Hill than just the tower. Just down from Stephanskloster is The Heidenloch which seems to be a bit of a local mystery. Again relying on a German Wikipedia page, It’s a deep shaft running 55 meters (180 feet) straight down and nobody knows who built it or why. It was apparently built around the year 1100. At 22 meters down, there is something carved into the wall which is called the female portrait — I get the impression it may just vaguely resemble a woman. They’ve found various objects in the shaft including horseshoes, knives, and keys. They didn’t build a covering over the shaft until 1987!
Heiligenberganlage – Thingstätte
Climbing further up the hill there is this large outdoor theater which was completed in 1935 during the pre-war Nazi era. This actually has an English Wikipedia page which says that after WWII the American occupying forces would have jazz concerts here and it was used for public events until just a few years ago.
Michaelskloster Heiligenberg
The pièce de résistance of the hill is the Monastery of St Michael, or rather its ruins, perched on the very top. In the picture at the top of this post you can just see trees at the top, but apparently it used to be cleared off and the monastery had a commanding view of the surrounding terrain. It looks like it may have been built in 1023 although there is a reference to it being as early as 870. There are also conflicting stories about it being dismantled for its stone, some of which was used to expand upon Heidelberg castle.
The English Wikipedia page includes the following depiction from 1645 which appears to show it already in disrepair at that time. Notice this also features the mysterious shaft mentioned earlier!
Click the image below to read an article which briefly describes the future plans for PHV which were decided in June 2020. If I’m understanding correctly, it sounds like the entirety of PHV will become a residential area surrounded by new commercial development. Be sure to click the Photo Gallery link at the bottom of the article to have a look around.
One of my PHV memories from elementary school is several field trips to various castles in the area. Heidelberg Castle is a big part of that, of course. I can remember several others but have no idea where they might be or what they’re called. I did a little internet researching into castles within reasonable field trip distance from PHV and I found one!
The name Dilsberg Fortress doesn’t really ring a bell, but I definitely recognize this castle. There’s not much of it left, as you can see in these pictures I found online, but apparently it once had a reputation for being unconquerable. After castles became obsolete, the locals used it as a quarry to reuse the stone and I think that’s why not much remains.
How do I know this is one that we visited? Mainly because of that distinctive tower. I clearly remember one of the teachers making a game out of counting all the steps as you wound up the tower to walk along the wall. I think she said it was good luck or that it was tradition, but it probably had more to do with just keeping our minds occupied so we’d be easier to manage.
I also learned in my research that Mark Twain visited this fortress in his travels and wrote about a secret passage under the castle that came up through the well, to supply them during siege. Turns out there really is a passage down there, but it is now thought to have been for ventilation. I have a vague memory of us kids trying to peer down the well while the adults were trying to get us organized, although these pictures show a metal cover over the well. I think one common theme with us boys was trying to determine where the castle dungeon was located, so we were probably looking for that.
One memory I have of castle field trips is seeing a falconry show, where the birds flew over the heads of the audience to fetch a mouse from the handler. It turns out that such shows are common at many German castles, but I wonder if the show I remember is from Dilsberg Fortress. If you look at the first photo above, you can see a seating area off to the left.
I don’t specifically have a memory of running around on top of this wall section, but it has a nice view of the Neckar river, the same that flows through Heidelberg.
Here’s a picture I found online, just looking at Patrick Henry Village from another angle. I believe that building at the far right is the commissary, but when I lived there in the late 70s/early 80s you had to drive into town for that. The two buildings in the foreground, each with a central courtyard, didn’t exist back then. It was just a big open field where people would fly kites. In between those and the commissary is the middle school.
Click on the picture to go to the original site where I found it. That version is a bit bigger and easier to make out details.
I found the following aerial photo of PHV on some German-language website and found it incorporates a lot of the locations I’ve described in this blog over the years. I decided to annotate the picture with some notes. First is the unaltered picture, then is a version where I’ve added numbers, and then below that are my notes for each number.
This photo was dated 2016 and my memories are from roughly 1977-1981, so there are quite a few changes. This photo is cutting off a good chunk of the north end of PHV, to the right, and also the south end of PHV to the left, but many prominent locations are visible.
This area north of the main gate was undeveloped as far as I can recall. Just out of the frame to the right was a row of buildings, and in one of the first ones I remember there being a day care center that I attended for some amount of time. I seem to recall there being a big nutcracker statue out front, or something similar to that.
This is the church, which I vaguely remember attending. During one Christmas presentation I played an angel, which basically meant I wore wings and I stood around in the background not really doing anything.
I believe this was the library. One time we checked books out from there, then we were playing in the trees near the church and ended up leaving our books under a tree there and I assume our parents had to pay for them.
One of these buildings was the movie theater, and the other was the bowling alley.
This is one end of the little strip mall which included Foodland, a book store, and other shops I’m forgetting offhand. In the parking lot they would set up a big tent for Oktoberfest. Just off frame to the right would be the NCO club, I believe.
The front gate. In my time at PHV it was just a straight road with a small guardhouse. We never needed to stop for the guards as I recall, and they would salute as we drove by since my dad was an officer and we had some sort of identifying sticker on the car. I’ve read online that security at PHV was tightened up after 9/11, and this entrance area is much more elaborate than it used to be.
This is the Primary Center, where I attended 1st and 2nd grade with Ms. Stasavich and Mr. Moore, respectively. It was separated from the main elementary school (#9) and only had three classes in it (the other being 3rd grade). I don’t completely understand its purpose but I think it was experimental in some way, either in teaching method or just in having a smaller learning environment than a large school building.
This entire area between #7 and #9 used to be open space. That light blue building sits roughly where there was a large playground – I remember swings, a big jungle gym, and also a metal slide that got very hot in the sun. The big parking lot closer to the camera and the connecting road didn’t exist at all, it was just a large field where I think we would sometimes play soccer.
This is the main elementary school, where I attended 4th grade, I believe my teacher’s name was Mrs. Klar. The central area was the gymnasium, which was also where we ate lunch — as I recall there was no cafeteria and all kids had to bring their lunch from home.
Another part of the elementary school, where I attended kindergarten with Ms. Staley. It was right at the central crosswalk which was heavily used because as far as I recall all kids in PHV had to walk to school. I got to be a crossing guard there at least once, holding up a little Stop sign to manage traffic. Also from an upper window of this building I took a photo using the camera I’d made from a Quaker Oats cardboard cylinder.
This large paved area used to be where we’d play sometimes and maybe line up to return to class after recess. I think there are more buildings back here, behind the main elementary school, than there used to be. I remember that a giant map of the United States used to be on this pavement and we would all stand on whatever state we were from.
I don’t know what this large area of red-topped buildings is, they didn’t exist during my time in PHV. At least part of this area used to be a large parking lot where people would park their RVs or other vehicles that didn’t see everyday use. It looks like that parking area may now be a grass lawn in front of these new buildings.
This is marking the building that served as a concession stand for the track area. I don’t remember it ever actually being in use, but that’s probably because we didn’t go to any events at the track when it would’ve been open. But we kids used the dumpster and trees next to the building to climb up onto the roof and run around. There also used to be a large metal tower right in front of it, I think for announcers during sporting events. It has since been torn down but you can still see the concrete slab where it used to stand.
This building, the 3rd one back, is where Mrs. Taylor used to live. She ran a daycare center out of her apartment and we used to walk there after school until our parents picked us up after work.
This building, the 2nd one back, is where I lived while in 4th grade. The big field in between #14 and #15 is where I spent a lot of time playing. There were three playgrounds in that area, and also marble courts (dirt areas with “pots” dug into the ground). We played games like Red Light Green Light against the wall of #14 that faced this open space.
This is the building that had the big hedge out front running the entire length, and over the years kids had sort of hollowed out that hedge to form a long tunnel/hideout. The building I lived in during kindergarten-2nd grade was along the street the same as this one, but two or three buildings to the left out of frame.
There were baseball diamonds here where I used to have tee-ball games. The middle school is just out of frame to the left. That square-shaped building with an inner courtyard, further back from #17, didn’t exist during my time. Instead it was a big open space where people would fly kites, and in the very back was a dirt BMX track where kids would ride their bikes.
Patrick Henry Village 