In August 1980 some ballroom dancers of the „Giessener-Dance-Club (GTC) 74“ visited the USA to participate in several dancing contests. There they saw Square Dance for the first time. “People from Giessen enthusiastic about American Dancing“ – this is what the daily press of Giessen wrote. The decision was made to found a Square Dance section within the GTC 74, but it took a lot of negotiating with the German-American-Partnership Society, the American Press Incorporation and the US Military Administration to overcome a lot of problems. On June 20th 1986 the first dance evening with 26 participants took place. Five months later on November 23rd 1986 the “Lahn-River-Wheelers” were established as a section of the GTC 74, which is also pointed out in our logo.

The first president of the Square Dance Section was the joint founder and long time chairman of the GTC 74 Gerhard („Peppi“) Mohr. The first callers were Judy and Ron Hays until they went back to Texas in 1989. For nearly a year the caller was Dave Houlihan, who educated a class, until John Granger took over in 1990. He was club caller until Markus Grossmann from Hamburg moved to Giessen in 1997 and took charge of the Lahn-River-Wheelers, for whom he has been calling for now for 14 years.

Presidents following Peppi Mohr were Jürgen Kahl (1993-2002), Udo Bastian (2002-2006) and Heribert Hinderfeld (since January 2006).

The dance location is the Club’s home of the GTC 74, where we dance Mainstream and Plus every Monday, and Plus every 1st Thursday of the month. Every year –in 2011 for the 18th time- the Lahn-River- Wheelers host an Open Air Dance in the court of the Schiffenberg Monastery, which takes place in the context of the “Schiffenberg Musical Summer” organized by the city of Giessen. This is a great opportunity to demonstrate Square Dance to a wide audience and advertise new beginner classes.

At the moment we have 75 members, of which 35 dance Plus. Since the foundation of the club Klaus Schmidt is an active member. He works as the treasurer of the GTC 74 and the Square Dance Section for some years now. Klaus Rohrbach has been a member for 24 years. He is also the current editor of the EAASDC-Bulletin.

Birthday-Special

We are going to celebrate our 25th birthday on November 19th 2011 at the Community Center of Giessen-Wieseck.

The callers will be Tommy Schneeberger and Markus Grossmann. They will call Plus at 14h and from 16.30h until 21.30h MS/MS/Plus We would be very glad to see a large number of Square-Dancers at our 25th Birthday Party.

Transl.: Markus Grossmann, Heribert Hinderfeld