Bonn


Bonn, officially the Federal City of Bonn, is a federal city in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, located on the banks of the Rhine. With a population exceeding 300,000, it lies about south-southeast of Cologne, in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region.
Bonn served as the capital of West Germany from 1949 until 1990 and was the seat of government for reunified Germany until 1999, when the government relocated to Berlin. The city holds historical significance as the birthplace of Germany's current constitution, the Basic Law.
Founded in the 1st century BC as a settlement of the Ubii and later part of the Roman province Germania Inferior, Bonn is among Germany's oldest cities. It was the capital city of the Electorate of Cologne from 1597 to 1794 and served as the residence of the Archbishops and Prince-electors of Cologne. The period during which Bonn was the capital of West Germany is often referred to by historians as the Bonn Republic.
Following the German reunification, a political compromise known as the Berlin-Bonn Act ensured that the German federal government retained a significant presence in Bonn. As of 2019, approximately one-third of all ministerial jobs remain in the city. Bonn is considered an unofficial secondary capital of Germany and is the location of the secondary seats of the president, the chancellor, and the Bundesrat. Bonn is also the location of the primary seats of six federal ministries and twenty federal authorities. The city's title as Federal City underscores its political importance.
The global headquarters of Deutsche Post DHL and Deutsche Telekom, both DAX-listed corporations, are in Bonn. The city is home to the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn university, and a total of 20 United Nations institutions, the highest number in all of Germany. These institutions include the headquarters for Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention Climate Change, the Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and the UN Volunteers programme. Birthplace of composer Ludwig van Beethoven, a center of Rhenish carnival, and its geography by the Middle Rhine make it an important tourist destination. In Bonn the Bönnsch Platt, a dialect of the Ripuarian language is spoken by all generations, especially during carnival.

Geography

Topography

Situated in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr region, Germany's largest metropolitan area with over 11 million inhabitants, Bonn lies within the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, on the border with Rhineland-Palatinate. Spanning an area of more on both sides of the river Rhine, almost three-quarters of the city lies on the river's left bank.
To the south and to the west, Bonn borders the Eifel region which encompasses the Rhineland Nature Park. To the north, Bonn borders the Cologne Lowland. Natural borders are constituted by the river Sieg to the north-east and by the Siebengebirge to the east. The largest extension of the city in north–south dimensions is and in west–east dimensions. The city borders have a total length of. The geographical centre of Bonn is the Bundeskanzlerplatz in Bonn-Gronau.

Administration

The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is divided into five governmental districts, and Bonn is part of the governmental district of Cologne. Within this governmental district, the city of Bonn is an urban district in its own right. The urban district of Bonn is then again divided into four administrative municipal districts. These are Bonn, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Bonn-Beuel and Bonn-Hardtberg. In 1969, the independent towns of Bad Godesberg and Beuel as well as several villages were incorporated into Bonn, resulting in a city more than twice as large as before.
Municipal district Coat of armsPopulation Sub-district
Bad Godesberg73,172Alt-Godesberg, Friesdorf, Godesberg-Nord, Godesberg-Villenviertel, Heiderhof, Hochkreuz, Lannesdorf, Mehlem, Muffendorf, Pennenfeld, Plittersdorf, Rüngsdorf, Schweinheim
Beuel66,695Beuel-Mitte, Beuel-Ost, Geislar, Hoholz, Holtorf, Holzlar, Küdinghoven, Limperich, Oberkassel, Pützchen/Bechlinghoven, Ramersdorf, Schwarzrheindorf/Vilich-Rheindorf, Vilich, Vilich-Müldorf
Bonn149,733Auerberg, Bonn-Castell, Bonn-Zentrum, Buschdorf, Dottendorf, Dransdorf, Endenich, Graurheindorf, Gronau, Ippendorf, Kessenich, Lessenich/Meßdorf, Nordstadt, Poppelsdorf, Röttgen, Südstadt, Tannenbusch, Ückesdorf, Venusberg, Weststadt
Hardtberg33,360Brüser Berg, Duisdorf, Hardthöhe, Lengsdorf

Climate

Bonn has an oceanic climate. In the south of the Cologne lowland in the Rhine valley, Bonn is in one of Germany's warmest regions.
The Bonn weather station has recorded the following extreme values:
  • Its highest temperature was on 25 July 2019.
  • Its lowest temperature was on 27 January 1942.
  • Its greatest annual precipitation was in 2007.
  • Its least annual precipitation was in 1959.
  • The longest annual sunshine was 2013.9 hours in 2018.
  • The shortest annual sunshine was 1240.7 hours in 1981.

    History

Chronology

In 1989, Bonn celebrated its 2,000th anniversary. The city was commemorating the construction of the first fortified Roman camp on the Rhine in 12 BCE, after the Roman governor Agrippa had already settled the Ubii there in 38 BCE. However, people had lived in the area of today’s city much earlier. Evidence of this includes the 14,000-year-old double burial at Oberkassel as well as a trench and wooden palisades found on the Venusberg, dating back to around 4080 BCE.
In the years before the birth of Christ, Roman presence in Bonna was modest, but this changed after the Roman defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE. In the following decades, a legion was stationed there, which built the Legionary Fortress Bonn in the northern part of present-day Bonn. Around the camp, and to the south along what is now Adenauerallee, traders and craftsmen settled in a vicus.
With the end of the Roman Empire, Bonn declined during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. During the Viking raids in the Rhineland, Bonn was burned twice in 882, and in 883, the recently rebuilt town was again attacked, burned, and looted by the Normans.
In the Frankish Empire, and finally in the 9th and 10th centuries, a religious center developed around the Bonn Minster, and a market settlement emerged in the area of today’s market square. The year 1243 is considered the year in which Bonn was granted full city rights.
The outcome of the Battle of Worringen in 1288 was of great importance for the further development of the city. The Cologne prince-electors made Bonn—along with Brühl and Poppelsdorf—one of their residences, and eventually their residence city. The magnificent palaces built by the prince-electors in the 17th and 18th centuries gave the city its baroque splendor.
This era ended with the occupation by French troops on October 8, 1794. This was followed by nearly two decades of occupation by the troops of Napoleon. Taxes in the form of food, clothing, and accommodations, as well as the loss of the electoral state administration, led to poverty among the population and a decline in the number of inhabitants by around 20%. The French introduced a civil code and a municipal constitution in Bonn. Even under French occupation, medium and large industrial companies, particularly in the textile sector, were established in Bonn. The French also pursued a thorough secularization: properties of the ecclesiastical electorate, especially the electoral buildings, were taken into state ownership. The areas on the right bank of the Rhine that are now part of Bonn came into the possession of the Prince of Nassau-Usingen; Oberkassel belonged to the Duchy of Berg, a French satellite state. By the Treaty of Lunéville of February 9, 1801, the Rhine near Bonn was designated as the French eastern border. Bonn became the seat of a sub-prefecture in the newly formed Rhin-et-Moselle.
File:Rathaus Bonn 1900.jpg|thumb|left|Market square with the Old Town Hall, photochrom print around 1900
After the defeats of the French army in the Russian campaign of 1812 and the Battle of Leipzig, the French evacuated Bonn in January 1814.
Following the decisions of the Congress of Vienna, Bonn became part of Prussia in 1815. In the following decades, the city was shaped by the newly founded University of Bonn, established by the Prussian government on October 18, 1818. The founder and namesake was King Frederick William III of Prussia. A university had existed in Bonn at the end of the 18th century but was closed during the French occupation in 1794. The Prussian foundation was not a continuation of that earlier institution, but part of a program that also included the University of Berlin and the University of Breslau. The term Rheinische in the name of the Bonn university was meant to mark it as a "sister" institution to the Berlin and Breslau universities. Over the next 100 years, Bonn became the preferred place of study for the Hohenzollern princes. It was nicknamed the "Princes' University," as both the then-Prussian Crown Prince Frederick William, his son Wilhelm, and Wilhelm's four sons studied there. Other sons of noble families also favored studying at this university in the 19th century. Before the founding of the Bonn university, Cologne had been its main rival. The "enlightened tradition" of Bonn, compared to the "holy Cologne," likely made it more suitable for a confessionally neutral university. Practical reasons also favored Bonn: the old electoral palace and the Poppelsdorf Palace were already available as suitable buildings.
From 1815 onward, professors, students, civil servants, and officers arrived in Bonn, including many Protestants from the Prussian provinces, which was unusual for the predominantly Catholic Rhineland. Prussia also made Bonn a garrison town. As a result, Bonn became popular as a retirement location for military officers. Tourism also grew after German unification in 1871, fueled by the Romanticism on the Rhine of the time.
File:Bonn-wccb-hotel-fernsicht-27052015-05.jpg|thumb|The government quarter in Bonn: roof of the World Conference Center Bonn, Old Parliament House and Schürmann-Bau, Langer Eugen, and Post Tower – with the Siebengebirge mountains in the background
After the First World War, the city was initially occupied by Canadian, then British, and finally by French troops.
More than 1,000 Bonn residents, mostly of Jewish descent, were murdered during the Nazi era. About 8,000 people were forced to leave their hometown, were arrested, or imprisoned in concentration camps. When American troops entered Bonn on March 9, 1945, ending World War II for the city, 30% of the buildings were destroyed. Of these, 70% were slightly to severely damaged, and 30% were completely destroyed residential buildings. More than 4,000 Bonn residents had died in bombings. On May 28, 1945, Bonn became part of the British occupation zone.
After the Second World War, the city experienced rapid reconstruction and expansion, especially after the decision to make Bonn the provisional capital of the new Federal Republic of Germany instead of Frankfurt am Main on November 29, 1949. As a result of the law implementing the Bundestag resolution of June 20, 1991, to complete German unification —which involved the relocation of the parliament, parts of the government, many diplomatic missions, lobbyists, and the privatization of the German Federal Post Office—the city underwent another transformation around the turn of the millennium. The remaining ministries, newly established federal agencies, headquarters of major German companies, international organizations, and institutions of science and research administration are now the drivers of this structural change, which has so far been considered successful and continues to this day.
On October 30, 2014, under the patronage and active participation of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Unity Tree Monument for German Unity was planted.
Municipal Mergers
The city of Bonn was enlarged several times through municipal mergers. Around 1900, Bonn grew significantly. As a result, on June 1, 1904, the towns of Poppelsdorf, Endenich, Kessenich, and Dottendorf—which had already merged physically with Bonn—were incorporated.
Through the law on the municipal reorganization of the Bonn area of August 1, 1969, the city’s population roughly doubled, and the Sieg District was merged with the Bonn District to form the Rhein-Sieg District. The formerly independent cities of Bad Godesberg and Beuel and the municipality of Duisdorf became independent boroughs of Bonn.
The borough of Beuel, on the right bank of the Rhine, was also assigned the villages of Holzlar, Hoholz, and the Oberkassel administrative area, which had previously belonged to the Sieg District. Bonn itself was expanded with the villages of Ippendorf, Röttgen, Ückesdorf, Lessenich/Meßdorf, and Buschdorf from the former Bonn District, while Lengsdorf and Duisdorf, along with some new housing developments, formed the borough of Hardtberg.
The city of Bad Godesberg had already incorporated several villages earlier. As early as 1899, Plittersdorf and Rüngsdorf had joined Godesberg, and in 1904, Friesdorf was added, effectively merging Bad Godesberg with Bonn. In 1915, Bad Godesberg expanded southwest out of the valley, leading to the incorporation of Muffendorf. On July 1, 1935, Lannesdorf and Mehlem became districts of Bad Godesberg.