The poet Friedrich Hölderlin was born at Nordheimer Straße 5 in Lauffen in 1770 and spent the first four years of his life here. The plastered half-timbered building from the Baroque period largely retained the shape given by Hölderlin's grandfather, because the subsequent owners neither removed walls nor carried out any alterations. The staircase artfully turned around a spruce trunk, a plank floor together with the layout of the rooms are therefore still preserved in their original form. In 2015, the house was acquired by the city of Lauffen, renovated in accordance with its status as a listed building, and an extension was added to house an event hall. In summer 2020, a permanent exhibition on the life and work of Hölderlin was opened in the building.
However, the Hölderlin House is not the first memorial in Lauffen. In the former monastery church, which was converted into a museum there had already been a Hölderlin room since 1984, which was completely redesigned in 2008. This predecessor facility in the Museum Klosterhof was closed in September 2019.
