This article is currently being reconstructed from the remnants of an earlier version.
The A7 autobahn runs north-south through central Germany from the Danish border to Austria. At not far short of 1000 km, it's the Republic's longest autobahn – and it's been the longest in the making too. The central section was started in 19371 and the final 15 km section from Nesselwang to the Grenztunnel Füssen2 was only completed in September 2009. From Flensburg near the Danish border the road passes over the Kiel Canal, through the City-State of Hamburg, past the Saxon Cities of Hannover and Göttingen and thence into Bayern (Bavaria). At that point a third of the length of the road still remains and – except for the occasional incursion into neighboring Württemberg-Baden – it's all within Bavaria.
The last 120-km of the autobahn takes you through the gently rolling countryside of Bavaria's most southwesterly region, Schwaben – or Swabia – where they speak Schwäbisch. With luck, to your right soon after you enter Swabia, you should get a distant view of Ulm Münster. With its 161.5 m spire it's the world's tallest church and, until the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is completed, it's likely to remain so.
Some 30 km further south, again on your right, you pass the dual township of Altenstadt-Illereichen. Meanwhile, to your left, you see the gentle slopes of the Kellmünzer Wald. Beyond the wood, hidden from view, is the little village of Osterberg (to access it, click on Former and existing Synagogues, then Bavarian Schwaben, then Osterberg).
With 4,700 inhabitants, Altenstadt isn't large – about the size of Watchet, for example – and Osterberg, with its 850 souls, is smaller still. Yet, some 150 years ago, this seemingly insignificant part of Swabia was the cradle of the once-mighty General Electric Company of Great Britain.
Osterberg was the birthplace of two of the three founders of the company – Gustav Binswanger in 1855 and his brother Max in 1862. And Altenstadt was where the third of the trio, Hugo Hirsch, was born in 1863. All three anglicized their surnames after settling in England. The Binswanger brothers changed their surname to Byng and Hugo Hirsch became Hugo Hirst. Both the Binswangers and the Hirsches were well-established Swabian-Jewish families and both owned thriving distilleries.
As you leave the dual township behind you two parallel waterways come into view on your right. They are the River Iller and the Illerkanal. They roughly mark the western border of Swabia. On the other side lies the state of Württemberg-Baden and beyond that is France. The Iller rises in the Austrian border country some 100 km to the south and joins the Donau (the Danube) at Ulm. The Illerkanal is the more northern of two canals which bypass the less navigable stretches of the river. It wasn't built until 1905 3 so Hugo Hirst and the Byng brothers wouldn't have known it in their childhood.
Two or three kilometers south of Altenstadt the Autobahn passes close to the start of the canal. You see the parting of the waters on your right and the Altenstadt Hydroelectric power plant just beyond. Then the Autobahn crosses the river and you leave Bavaria and are in Württemberg-Baden. For the next 15 km the road weaves back and forth between the two states until just after Junction 127 where you leave the River Iller and return to Bavaria for whole of the last 80 km of the Autobahn. Finally you see in front of you the entrance to Grenztunnel Füssen.
The tunnel takes you into Austria – but that's not our destination. Instead we stay in Swabia and go back in time nine hundred years.