Butzbach, our new, unchosen home town, had also been hit by a few bombs during the war, and the railroad station and some of the oldest houses in town had been destroyed. There were barracks in Solms Castle, which had originally belonged to the Counts of Solms- Licht and was occupied by the US Army until 1990. When we were there there were still two shoe factories, a cannery and a few small manufacturing businesses providing work and bread for people from the town and the region. Today the town is part of the Frankfurt commuter belt. In those days it was a typical Upper Hessian small town, tranquil and resistant to change. There was even a novel about it by Ernst Gläser, titled Jahrgang 1902, which describes its mentality and social atmosphere very well. Gläser was born in Butzbach in 1902. But after the war even Butzbach had to face up to new developments and new attitudes that didn't necessarily conform to views and habits of the old residents. Refugees, expellees and the occupying troops were slowly but surely giving the old town a new face.

Butzbach lies in the Wetterau on the eastern edge of the Taunus mountains. The first mention of it in the historical record is in the Codex Carolina of 773. Matthäus Merian's Topographia Hassiae of 1646 contains an engraving and a description of it. The description makes reference to a “Heuneburg”: “Near the city on the high road to Giessen is a place called the Heuneburg where people have found old walls and coins. It is believed that the Huns, who laid waste to the whole of Europe with their General Attila, built a fortress here.” In fact it's a Roman castellum with its surrounding camp settlement, and it must have been quite important given that it stood directly on the border with the non-Roman Chattia/Hessen to the east. The limes – outer border of the Roman empire – ran past it. The castellum and its settlement were abandoned by the Romans in the first half of the third century CE, probably because of intensified attacks by the Germanic tribes.