DEUTSCHLAND	GERMANY
Bundesland: Baden-Württemberg
Regierungsbezirk: Freiburg
Landkreis: Schwarzwald-Baar-Kreis

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Donaueschingen is situated at an elevation of 686 m in the German Black Forest region near the confluence of the two sources of the river Danube (in German: Donau). It is located about 13 km south of Villingen-Schwenningen, 24 km west of Tuttlingen, and about 30 km north of the Swiss town of Schaffhausen. The municipality has a population of about 22,500 (2017).

Donaueschingen is first recorded as Esginga in 889; the modern form of the name is first attested in 1292. In 1283, Baar and Donaueschingen were granted to the counts (1667 princes) of Fürstenberg; connected with this grant was the right to brew beer, which became the source of the Royal Fürstenberg Brewery. In 1488, possession was passed to the counts of Fürstenberg-Baar. In 1806, Donaueschingen came under the rule of the Grand Duchy of Baden and was granted township in 1810. A large part of the town was destroyed by fire in 1908. Donaueschingen has a tradition as a military garrison; since World War II the French military has maintained barracks in the town, and, until the early 1990s, the U.S. Air Force operated a contingency hospital there. The hospital never received casualties on a large scale from military operations; it saw the most activity in 1989, when the United States offered the facility as temporary housing for refugees leaving from East Germany to the West.

Glass no. 3575 [left] shows a view of the so-called source of the Danube in the park of the Fürstenberg palace in Donaueschingen. The karst spring is actually the source of the stream Donaubach, which after running underground for 100 metres flows into the Brigach, one of the two actual sources of the Danube. The Donaubach spring was taken as the source of the Danube at least since the 15th century, maybe even since Roman times. The present catchment of the spring was designed in 1875 by the architect Adolf Weinbrenner and the sculptor Franz Xaver Reich. The monument of 'Mother Baar showing the way to her daughter Danube' was created in 1895 by Adolf Heer while Reich's original monument was moved to the confluence of Brigach and Breg.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaueschingen, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaueschingen; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Fürstenberg; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donauquelle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_of_the_Danube]