The Most German of Towns: Creating an Ideal Nazi Community in Rothenburg ob der Tauber Joshua Hagen Department of Geography, Marshall University During the Nazi period, Rothenburg ob der Tauber served to exemplify Nazi ideas of landscape and nation. This article focuses on the manner and circumstances under which Rothenburg was manipulated to advance what Nazi ideology held to be the fundamental characteristics of the German nation and its history. The first section of this article examines attempts to politicize and reorganize tourism in Rothenburg led by Kraft durch Freude (KdF). The KdF aimed to promote a sense of national belonging, demonstrate the regime’s commitment to improving the material, physical, and spiritual well-being of the German nation, and project a positive image of the regime in Germany and abroad. The second section moves beyond KdF to explore efforts to transform the town into a type of Nazi utopia through more stringent preservationist and commercial policies designed to eliminate non-German elements from the town’s built environment, while reinforcing the themes of cleanliness, health, and traditional ways of life and consumption. Finally, anti-Semitism emerged as an important factor within this broader campaign to restructure the town in accordance with Nazi ideology. The aim is to see Rothenburg not merely as a symbolic representation of Nazi beliefs, but also to see local residents and the town itself as an active force in reshaping and framing these beliefs into a form that could be seen, experienced, and consumed. Key Words: anti-Semitism, consumer culture, historical preservation, Kraft durch Freude, landscape, nationalism, Nazi Germany, tourism. D uring the Nazi period, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a town with a long-established popularity as a symbol of Germany’s medieval past, served to illustrate, and perhaps even model, Nazi ideas of landscape and nation. This article focuses on the manner and circumstances under which tourism, historical preserva- tion, and anti-Semitism in Rothenburg evolved during the Nazi period and how they were instrumentalized to further the regime’s policies. Efforts in these three areas formed a dynamic and interactive process where each ultimately served to reinforce the others. Tourists came to Rothen- burg because the town seemed to represent the essential qualities of the German past through its historic archi- tecture; while the preservation, beautification, and eventual racial cleansing of the town to better reflect Nazi idealizations of small town life enhanced Rothen- burg’s reputation as a quintessentially German community and increased its overall visibility. The article interprets Rothenburg not only as a symbolic representation of Nazi beliefs but also demonstrates how local residents and the town itself engaged as active forces in shaping and framing the tourist experience and built environment to commu- nicate specific images and ideologies. In many respects, Rothenburg began to recreate itself proactively to better represent an idealized Nazi community, the most German of towns. The first section of this article focuses on attempts to reorganize tourism in Rothenburg led by the Nazi party organization Kraft durch Freude (KdF). The KdF politi- cized tourism in Rothenburg to further the goals of the Nazi regime. Rather than a mere vacation, KdF aimed to promote a sense of national belonging, demonstrate the regime’s commitment to improving the nation’s material, physical, and spiritual well-being, and project a positive image of the regime in Germany and abroad. The second section moves beyond KdF to explore efforts to transform the town into a type of Nazi utopia through more stringent preservationist and commercial policies designed to eliminate non-German elements from the town’s built environment, while reinforcing the themes of cleanliness, health, and traditional ways of life and patterns of consumption. Finally, anti-Semitism and a desire to purge the town of biological contamination emerged as impor- tant factors within this broader campaign to bring the town in line with Nazi thinking. It is common to regard nations as ‘‘imagined commu- nities,’’ yet this imaginative aspect of the nation is not to deny the cultural and historical contexts that help frame and set limits to what type or form of community can be imagined (Anderson 1983). Studying these broader contexts provides a key to understanding how these national communities are imagined. Critical to this is how issues of identity, culture, and social relations are expressed through historic places and landscapes (see, Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Lowenthal 1985; Daniels and Cosgrove 1988; Nora 1989; Duncan 1990; Gruffudd Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(1), 2004, pp. 207–227 r 2004 by Association of American Geographers Initial submission, May 2002; revised submission, July 2003; final acceptance, September 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U.K.