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Veterans wanted to attend museum opening in Germany

The Delaware Gazette - 3/11/2017

Rand Guebert is on a mission to locate veterans from Delaware County to represent the community in Baumholder, Germany next year.

The American garrison town, and sister city of Delaware, will open a museum next year, which will provide a history of the local U.S. military base’s impact on the town.

“We will open the museum in March 2018. To get everything ready will take until winter, but we would like to open the whole building in spring with [a] big event,” said Ingrid Schwerdtner, the director of the museum, in an email to Guebert.

A member of the Sister City Advisory Board, Guebert said he hopes to find veterans that may have once served at the base.

“It’s going to be a nice place,” he said.

The town once had about 30,000 troops during the Cold War. In 2012, there were more than 4,500 American soliders with an American population of more than 13,000, according to the Washington Post. But that changed when the 170th Infantry Brigade departed the same year.

The town’s German population of 4,000 outnumbered the Americans in 2013 for the first time in five decades, according to Stars & Stripes. It bounced in April last year as the base had 2,500 troops with an American population of 4,600 people. The paper reports that the Army is the town’s “prime economic engine” by providing 450 jobs.

Guebert said veterans interested in going to the museum’s opening can contact him at 614-743-4599.