in Hirschhorn after a terrible storm on the Neckar from which they just manage to escape. "I dozed off to sleep while contemplating a great white stuffed owl which was looking intently down on me from a high perch with the air of a person who thought he had met me before but could not make out for certain." This same owl can still be seen at Langbein Museum today. Twain's description of Hirschhorn is still as true as it was in 1878: "...Hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river. Then the clustered brown towers perched on the green hilltop, and the old battlemented stone wall stretching up and over the grassy ridge and disappearing in the leafy sea beyond, make a picture whose grace and beauty entirely satisfy the eye." In his book Gestalten der Kindheit (People in my Childhood), which was first published as a text in a literary magazine in 1948, Heinrich Weis remembers Hirschhorn people and places of his childhood in the years before the First World War. Weis was one of the literary editors of Badische Zeitung in Freiburg from 1946 to 1965. The first president of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss, also fondly remembers a visit to Hirschhorn in 1925 ("Von Ort zu Ort" - "From one place to another"). Lying in the grass on the left bank opposite the town and the castle, he thinks, "You can be wonderfully lazy here". Little did he know that years later this very spot would be the site of Hirschhorn's new school building. Heuss then wanted to draw some of the wooden Baroque figures in Ersheim Church - and was locked in by mistake. It was only by ringing the church bell that he was able to draw attention to his plight. Economy and infrastructure Transport By rail: The RheinNeckar S-Bahn connects Hirschhorn with Heidelberg and Mannheim in the west and from there with the whole network of German Rail. Towards the northeast, the railway line leads to Mosbach and Osterburken, whereas another branch carries on along the Neckar to Heilbronn and Stuttgart. During the week, S-Bahn trains run every half hour, at the weekends the intervals are longer (usually an hour). By road: Bundesstrasse 37 (which is combined with Bundesstrasse 45 in this part of the Neckar valley) links Hirschhorn with Heidelberg and the motorways to the north, south and