Saxony

This is a rather industrial part of Saxony. Nearby Zwickau was the centre of the Saxon car industry, Chemnitz was called Saxon Manchester. Both have interesting museums: Zwickau the Horch museum, which covers the history of Audi, Horch, Wanderer, DKW, Auto Union and Trabant, Chemnitz the Saxon Museum of Industry, the Saxon Railway Museum and the Saxon Motoring Museum. Nearby Chemnitz is Augustusburg Hunting Lodge, which offers a good motorcycle museum.
You are right, Lichtenstein and the surrounding villages are nothing special, but it's still a good base for sight-seeing. To the north, in a triangle between Chemnitz, Altenburg and Grimma, are several impressive castles, like Kriebstein (the best), Gnandstein, Colditz, Rochlitz or Mildenstein. To the south are the Ore mountains, which are Germanys Christmas country. A day trip to Seiffen, a village with nothing but Christmas shops, via Annaberg- Buchholz, which offers a stunning church, is highly recommended. And almost every little village there has a mining museum. The town museum of Annaberg-Buchholz for instance, in a medival house opposite the church, offers a medieval walkable mine in the middle of the town and below the house. If you are interested in steam trains you could do a day trip via Schwarzenberg to Cranzahl, from where you can take a nostalgic steam train to Oberwiesenthal, Germanys highest town. I would also recommend a visit to Freiberg, once the biggest and richest town of the Ore mountains. Or, if the rental company allows it, into the Spa Triangle in Czechia (Karlovy Vary/Carlsbad etc.).
I'm not a big fan of the Ore mountains when it comes to hiking. It's a elevated plateau and on the German side it looks pretty flat. Hiking on the ridgeway however seems quite popular. Maybe have a look here: http://www.outdooractive.com/en/tours/#cat=Wanderung&zc=11,12.49798,50.73906

What about an interesting route heading south from Saxony before the
flight back home from Frankfurt?

If you follow the direct route you cross Thuringia and the Thuringian Forest. At the foot of the mountains are several cute little towns, spa towns, castles etc.. Thuringia was once divided into many tiny duchies (among them Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, where the Windsors are from), and each tiny duchy had a tiny capital with a huge castle, like Coburg, Rudolstadt or Gotha. Deep in the mountains is Lauscha, the village where the Christmas baubles were invented (most German Christmas traditions come from the area between the Thuringian Forest and Eastern Saxony). Or you just follow the Autobahn and visit Weimar, Erfurt and/or Eisenach. Weimar is a very pleasant small town related to many famous Germans and a World Heritage Site, Erfurt offers a beautiful partly medieval old town and is called a "untouristy Rothenburg" by Rick Steves, and Eisenach offers the Wartburg, historically the most important German castle.

Thanks very much for your helpful and interesting replies.
Martin, I appreciate your detail and the route suggestions, and will indeed follow parts of both, and might use Weimar area as a home base for a few days, maybe get a concert or opera in. Erfurt and some of the castle towns in Thuringia might satisfy our castle craving for this trip rather than race through southern Germany as well. I'm happier moving around less and seeing more in depth.
DB

I believe Saxony also has it's share of interesting castles, although I don't know the details of any. When I drove across the state to visit Dresden, I noticed what seemed to be a fair number of he brown tourist placards along the Autobahn that advertised interesting looking castles. However, I only visited Albrechtsburg in Meißen and Schloss Moritzburg, which is more of a hunting palace than a castle.

As Martin mentioned, Erfurt is a very attractive town, although I don't get where Mr. Steves sees the comparison to Rothenburg, other than a few Fachwerk buildings sprinkled here and there.

I didn't visit any of them, but I recall seeing at least a few hilltop castles in the hinterlands around Erfurt and Weimar.

The Wartburg in Eisenach definately merits a visit. Read up on it's connection to the legend of Tannhäuser and St. Elizabeth of Hungary before you go.

Speaking of all the small Thüringian principalities and their castles, in my opinion, the best of the lot (and perhaps in all of Germany) is Veste Coburg, above the town of Coburg. However, this town is now a part of Bavaria, and it might not be convenient to the flow of your trip.

If you have any interest in zoos, in my opinion, Leipzig has Germany's best. There's a small pedestrian-only street that runs off the main Markt called "Barfußgasse" (I think that's the name... translates to "Barefoot alley"). Anyway, several restaurants line the alley and a table at one of these affords you one of the best people-watching opportunities in Saxony. Also don't miss the Völkerschlachtdenkmal a little bit on the outskirts of the city. I have absolutely no proof, but it would not surprise me if the designers of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies are familiar with this huge monument. It looks like something the dwarves of Middle Earth would have built.

I visited Lauscha last summer. The town is small and not especially attractive but has a nice small glass museum that's worth a stop if you are traveling nearby. There are some glass shops (or maybe it's one sprawling shop) in the same building as the museum, and there's another spot just a short way up the road (walkable) with lots of glass for sale. The latter had a tour bus out front. Both those complexes were open on Saturday; not sure about Sunday. There were some small shops in town, too, but most of those were closed on Saturday. I remember seeing the old-style Christmas ornaments in multiple places. In sum, I don't think Lauscha's worth a detour unless you're interested in glass.

I liked Erfurt a lot. Very attractive old town, youthful vibe. I found a small Jordanian restaurant that I enjoyed. I hadn't yet reached Berlin, and after 2 months in Italy it was wonderful to find Middle Eastern food that was a bit better than the fast food joints you see all over. Definitely worth an overnight if you have time.

Yes to Wartburg Castle. The town of Eisenach is worth a wander, as well.

Weimar gives you access to Buchenwald. The information about the wartime concentration camp is augmented by material concerning its post-war use as an internment camp for those who ran afoul of the Soviet occupiers. Very interesting.

I don't believe it's on your direct path, but I adored Quedlinburg, which is 77 miles from Leipzig. Yes, it gets a lot of tourists, but the large medieval old town--which survived the war intact--is lovely, and the cathedral treasury is impressive. The treasury was especially interesting to me because an American soldier stole a number of important pieces just as the war ended, and they were returned decades later; there's a lot of info about this on the internet. You can rent an audio guide for the town from the tourist office. I believe there are also English-language walking tours. In the old town there's a gallery with lots of work by Lyonel Feininger; unfortunately, I didn't have time to visit it. There are supposedly over 1000 half-timbered buildings in Quedlinburg. It deserves more than just a quick stop even if all you want to do is wander around.

Not to completely crowd up your itinerary with recommendations, but I agree with the last poster. Quedlinburg is incredible.

Thanks Tom and acraven! - wow, I am re-thinking our route, as there are so many more interesting places to see than I realized (the problem with an almost last-minute decision to take a trip somewhere new to me- I usually prepare ahead!). Perhaps I need help planning a new route.
I'm 67, traveling with my 22 year old son and his girlfriend. Those two are interested in everything, though a bit less in beer-drinking and pop culture than one might expect. The impetus for me to go was to explore my roots, as my grandfather came from the Lichtenstein Saxony area, so I thought I should have a home base near there with a rental apt (we all prefer having a home base rather than moving around daily). I may want to go to Chemnitz or? to do some archive searching. The addition of my son and friend will make the trip way more fun, but we have a little less than 2 weeks and don't want to have a day in each place, rather make day trips from a central location. An apt in Weimar or Jena, would probably be too far from Lichtenstein (and we want to see Dresden if possible - the Blue Note Cafe is on the list for the jazz-loving son) and Moritzburg. We are all musicians, and I majored in German lit., so Weimar and Leipzig are draws. We land in Frankfurt, will rent a car, then drive asap (depending on the severity of jet lag, coming from Vancouver BC) to Saxony. We don't want to go too much farther north than the #4 highway, (Berlin et al north will be another trip) and want to touch on Thuringia and if there's any time before the return home, see a bit of something (day trip?) farther south, though this is looking less likely.

Route ideas, with apt rental as often as poss.?

Chemnitz isn't a beautiful city. But the region was one of the economic centres of Germany before WW2, and if your grandfather lived there at that time a visit to one of the mentioned museums gives you a better understanding of his past, since that region changed a lot in the last 30-60 years.

I would stay a week in Thuringia and one in Saxony. Weimar is a good base to explore Thuringia, and with a car even Quedlinburg (not in Thuringia anymore) is doable. In this case I recommend to cross the Harz mountains and drive via Stolberg, which is a cute little town deep in the mountains. If you want to see hidden gems I recommend a day trip to Bad Langensalza + Mühlhausen. Both are mostly preserved, although Mühlhausen suffered a bit during Communist times, but they offer at least partly preserved town walls, and Mühlhausen is historically interesting because of the connection to Thomas Müntzer and the Protestant Reformation.
Tom is right that Coburg offers the best castle of all former Thuringian capitals. If you want something closer to Weimar: Gotha and Rudolstadt, with castles so big it's absurd. The castle of Rudolstadt looks bigger than the town itself.

If you want to see more of Saxony than just Lichtenstein and the surrounding I recommend to stay closer to Dresden. I like Radebeul a lot. It's basically a suburb of Dresden and offers vineyards, a wine village and several castles and palaces. Meissen is a good choice too, especially if you stay at the castle. From there you can easily do day trips to all parts of Saxony.

Thanks again, Martin.
I took a couple of days break from planning - it helps to get perspective. Will look into your suggestions re: Meissen and around Dresden - have noticed what seem like good deals through airbnb though haven't used them before.

Hi,

I've done a day trip to Meissen, (from Dresden) , well worth it to see the town and the view, called, die Wiege Sachsens, "the cradle of Saxony." Take the S-Bahn from Dresden Hbf. If you're into German literature, then Weimar is almost a pilgrimage, Deutschlands Dichterstadt. (city of poets), aside from the most famous pair of Goethe and Schiller. Weimar I am more familiar with than Meissen, since I did stay there in a night in 2009, and having done day trip there from Berlin. Keep in mind that these two towns have a very different feel to them from comparable size towns in western Germany. I'll be going back to Weimar for another day (from Dresden) in June.

If you decide to skip these smaller places for a big city such as Leipzig, that's also well worth your time especially if you're interested in music with the museums/houses of Liszt, Wagner, Bach, Mendelsohn all there. Historically in Leipzig there is also the huge Prussian monument to the Allied victory over Napoleon at the battle of Leipzig in October of 1813, the Völkerschlacht Denkmal, which includes a small museum on the premises.

The monument was completed for the centennial of inflicting this loss on Napoleon. thus ending the campaign of 1813. If you get to the museum, as you see that famous painting depicting the meeting of the three Allied sovereigns following the defeat of the French, that painting can be seen in two other museums, one in Vienna, the other in Berlin. If you're motorised, then you can track down more sites in this region related to this history.

Thank you, Fred. It will be interesting and heartening to see both Meissen and Dresden, and actually any of the former East Zone, as I was there briefly, years before reunification, when bomb damage was as yet unrepaired and people were struggling. I appreciate your suggestions. DB