It is one of the remarkable villas from Wiesbaden's great 19th century period, when Wiesbaden became famous as a world spa town in Europe and beyond. It was built in 1882 and stands on a very prominent location on the famous Wilhelmstrasse, on the corner of Friedrichstrasse.

Like many other buildings, it has a particularly interesting and eventful history to tell. As one of 1,300 villas built around Wiesbaden's city center - the spa district - it represents the typical architectural style of the 19th century, known as historicism. It is easy to see how stylistic elements from previous building eras were integrated during the historicism period. The Italian Renaissance had a particular influence on Villa Clementine.

The villa was built in 1882 by a wealthy factory owner from Mainz for his wife Clementine. Unfortunately, she died in the year it was completed. The house stood empty for years. Until 1888, when the Queen of Serbia found refuge in it with her son Alexander while fleeing from her husband, the King of Serbia. After lengthy diplomatic negotiations, she had to return her son to the king. Unfortunately, there is no trace of her afterwards.

One of my humorous personal highlights on our tour of Wiesbaden is the story about the filming of the three-part movie adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel "The Buddenbrooks", a large part of which took place at Villa Clementine in 1978.

You could register as an extra back then. I did this to supplement my study budget. I had long dark hair, in keeping with the 70s. The director took a look at me and immediately gave me the role of the waiter at Mrs. Buddenbrook's garden party. Reason: I didn't need a wig.

And so it happened that on the day of filming I had to walk down the stairs into the garden past several cameras 30 times with a tray full of six glasses of beer. I was either too fast or too slow, in the meantime the foam on the glasses was no longer nice and even. So the filming of this scene took the whole hot summer day. It wasn't until the evening that the director came to his senses and seemed satisfied. Well done!

This experience made me wiser about a possible future career choice. I'm certainly not going to be an actor. I don't have the patience for that. Not to mention talent.

So, dear guests, I would now like to say goodbye to you. I wish you many more interesting experiences on your tour. Have fun and you know what I mean:

Stay healthy!

Wolfgang Molitor