Smalkald

a small city of Central Germany noted in the Reformation. Present population, about 7,000. It is today surrounded by walls and a moat. Narrow, crooked streets are lined with Gothic houses adorned with lofty gables and rich carving. A monument in the marketplace commemorates Karl Wilhelm, a native of the place, the author of the German war song, Die Wacht am Rhine (The Watch on the Rhine). In 1631 the Protestant princes met in an old-fashioned inn called The Crown to form the League of Smalkald against the Catholic emperor, Charles V. The inn still receives guests. Another inn indicated by an inscription and the sign of a Golden Swan is the place where Luther, Melanchthon, and other reformers met in 1637 to draw up the Smalkald Articles, a reaffirmation of the Augsburg Confession. See Luther; Augsburg