The Glockenspiel and the Pied Piper

Four times a day, at noon, three, six, and nine in the evening, a bell tower at the Bavarian Inn comes to life. Frankenmuth itself was founded in eighteen forty-five by Lutheran immigrants from the Rosstal area of Franconia, who came mainly for religious reasons. The name joins Franken and Mut, roughly the courage of the Franconians.

This is the Glockenspiel, and it is not a recording. The tower holds a thirty five bell carillon imported from Germany. When the bells finish their German and American tunes, a stage below the carillon opens and carved wooden figures glide out on tracks to act out a story.

The story is the legend of the Pied Piper of Hameln, a German tale dating back to the thirteenth century, in which a mysterious piper rids a town of a plague of rats and then, when the townspeople refuse to pay him, leads their children away with his music. The carved wooden figures and the tower were installed in nineteen sixty seven. Stand in the plaza when the bells ring and you get a small dose of the fairy tale Germany that Frankenmuth built its identity on.

In town, the Cass River is crossed by Zehnder's Holzbrucke, a wooden covered bridge two hundred thirty-nine feet long, finished in nineteen seventy-nine. About five thousand people live in the town.