Two Towns In Germany Claim Elvis Back-To-Back Festivals Tied To Presley’s Military Service

Thirty-five years after Elvis Presley completed his Army service and left Germany, Elvis impersonators and adoring fans came Saturday to the small town where he lived to pay homage to the King.

“For me he is the Jesus Christ of the 20th century,” said Silvie Schmidt, 25, who took an overnight train from Vienna, Austria, for the one-day festival. “He was so charismatic, his music was so lovely.”

Others from Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and across Germany - about 1,000 in all - made the pilgrimage to Bad Nauheim, a spa town in central Germany.

Many young women in the crowd wore ‘50s-style dresses, while Elvis-style hair, long sideburns and embroidered shirts were de rigueur for the serious male fans.

Presley lived in Bad Nauheim while he did his military service two miles down the road in Friedberg from October 1958 through February 1960. The towns are staging rival memorial festivals, each one competing for tourists and the claim to be the “Memphis of Germany.”

The rivalry is intense, but friendly, even though Bad Nauheim upstaged Friedberg by holding its festival a week before Friedberg’s.

“We are two Elvis towns in Germany. There is no war. … He was a part of both,” said Bad Nauheim Mayor Peter Keller, who was born in Friedberg and whose brother Michael heads the cultural office there. Both towns are 25 miles north of Frankfurt.

Elvis lived in the Hotel Grunewald for several months before moving into a rented house. Saturday, on a small patio in front of the art deco hotel, Keller unveiled a 6-foot stone column with Elvis’ face at the top and a dedication to “The King of Rock and Roll.”

Next week, Friedberg will rename a small, tree-lined square as Elvis Presley Place.

Inside a theater across the street from the Bad Nauheim hotel, fans mingled around stands selling Elvis CDs and a new book by local author Heinrich Burk: “Elvis in the Wetterau” (the region of Bad Nauheim and Friedberg). They watched videos of Elvis’ life and munched on hot dogs.

In one corner, Martin Anthony of Nashville, Tenn., a pretty good Elvis look-alike, signed autographs and posed for family pictures. He is on his third trip to Germany to perform Elvis music.

“They love it here,” he said.