Renchen - Grimmelshausen

Renchen is a small town, which likes to call itself the "City of Grimmelshausen", as the poet Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, author of "Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus", served from 1667 until his death in 1676 as the Bishop of Strasbourg's executor in Renchen.

Grimmelshausen's work attained a readership larger than any other seventeenth-century novel. In 1668, Grimmelshausen published "Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus", which has been called the greatest German novel of the 17th century. Simplicissimus has been interpreted as its author's autobiography; he describes the hero´s adventures amid the stirring scenes of the Thirty Years' War.

This red gumball machine is located just opposite the "Grimmelshausen Stuben", the local pub.