Nuremberg
Nuremberg is the largest city in Franconia and the second-largest city in the German state of Bavaria. Its 544,414 inhabitants make it the 14th-largest city in Germany.
Nuremberg sits on the Pegnitz, which carries the name Regnitz from its confluence with the Rednitz in Fürth onwards, and on the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, that connects the North Sea to the Black Sea. Lying in the Bavarian administrative region of Middle Franconia, it is the largest city and unofficial capital of the entire cultural region of Franconia. The city is surrounded on three sides by the, a large forest, and in the north lies , an extensive vegetable growing area and cultural landscape.
The city forms a continuous conurbation with the neighbouring cities of Fürth, Erlangen and Schwabach, which is the heart of an urban area region with around 1.4 million inhabitants, while the larger Nuremberg Metropolitan Region has a population of approximately 3.6 million. It is the largest city in the East Franconian dialect area.
Nuremberg and Fürth were once connected by the Bavarian Ludwig Railway, the first steam-hauled and overall second railway opened in Germany. Today, the U1 of the Nuremberg U-Bahn runs along this route. Subway lines U2 and U3 are the first German driverless subway lines, automatically moving railcars. Nuremberg Airport is the second-busiest airport in Bavaria after Munich Airport, and the tenth-busiest airport in the country.
Institutions of higher education in Nuremberg include the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany's 11th-largest university, with campuses in Erlangen and Nuremberg and a university hospital in Erlangen, Technische Hochschule Nürnberg, Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg and the newly founded University of Technology Nuremberg. The Nuremberg exhibition centre is one of the biggest convention center companies in Germany and operates worldwide.
Nuremberg Castle, its medieval old town and the city's walls, with their many towers, are notable attractions. Staatstheater Nürnberg is one of the five Bavarian state theatres, showing operas, operettas, musicals, and ballets, plays, as well as concerts. Its orchestra, the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, is Bavaria's second-largest opera orchestra after the Bavarian State Opera's Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich. Nuremberg is the birthplace of Albrecht Dürer and Johann Pachelbel. 1. FC Nürnberg is the most famous football club of the city and one of the most successful football clubs in Germany. Nuremberg was one of the host cities of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
History
Middle Ages
The first documentary mention of the city, in 1050, mentions Nuremberg as the location of an imperial castle between East Francia and the Margraviate of the Nordgau of Bavaria. From 1050 to 1572 the city expanded and rose dramatically in importance due to its location on key trade-routes. King Conrad III, reigning as King of Germany from 1137 to 1152, established the Burgraviate of Nuremberg, with the first burgraves coming from the Austrian House of Raabs. With the extinction of their male line around 1189, the last Raabs count's son-in-law, Frederick I of the House of Hohenzollern, inherited the burgraviate in 1193.From the late 12th century to the Interregnum, however, the power of the burgraves diminished as the Hohenstaufen emperors transferred most non-military powers to a castellan, with the city administration and the municipal courts handed over to an Imperial mayor from 1173/74. The strained relations between the burgraves and the castellans, with gradual transferral of powers to the latter in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, finally broke out into open enmity, which greatly influenced the history of the city.
The city and particularly Nuremberg Castle would become one of the most frequent sites of the Imperial Diet, the Diets of Nuremberg from 1211 to 1543, after the first Nuremberg diet elected Frederick II as emperor. Because of the many Diets of Nuremberg, the city became an important routine place of the administration of the Empire during this time and a somewhat 'unofficial capital' of the Empire. In 1219 Emperor Frederick II granted the Großen Freiheitsbrief, including town rights, Imperial immediacy, the privilege to mint coins, and an independent customs policy – almost wholly removing the city from the purview of the burgraves. Nuremberg soon became, with Augsburg, one of the two great trade-centers on the route from Italy to Northern Europe.
In 1298, the Jews of the town were accused of host desecration and 698 of them were killed in one of the many Rintfleisch massacres. Behind the massacre of 1298 was also the desire to combine the northern and southern parts of the city, which were divided by the Pegnitz. The Jews of the German lands suffered many massacres during the plague pandemic of the mid-14th century.
In 1349, Nuremberg's Jews suffered a pogrom. They were burned at the stake or expelled, and a marketplace was built over the former Jewish quarter. The plague returned to the city in 1405, 1435, 1437, 1482, 1494, 1520, and 1534.
The largest growth of Nuremberg occurred in the 14th century. Charles IV's Golden Bull of 1356, naming Nuremberg as the city where newly elected kings of Germany must hold their first Imperial Diet, made Nuremberg one of the three most important cities of the Empire. Charles was the patron of the Frauenkirche, built between 1352 and 1362, where the Imperial court worshipped during its stays in Nuremberg. The royal and Imperial connection grew stronger in 1423 when the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg granted the Imperial regalia to be kept permanently in Nuremberg, where they remained until 1796, when the advance of French troops required their removal to Regensburg and thence to Vienna.
In 1349 the members of the guilds unsuccessfully rebelled against the patricians in a Handwerkeraufstand, supported by merchants and some by councillors, leading to a ban on any self-organisation of the artisans in the city, abolishing the guilds that were customary elsewhere in Europe; the unions were then dissolved, and the oligarchs remained in power while Nuremberg was a free city. Charles IV conferred upon the city the right to conclude alliances independently, thereby placing it upon a politically equal footing with the princes of the Empire. Frequent fights took place with the burgraves without, however, inflicting lasting damage upon the city. After fire destroyed the castle in 1420 during a feud between Frederick IV and the duke of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, the city purchased the ruins and the forest belonging to the castle, resulting in the city's total sovereignty within its borders.
Through these and other acquisitions the city accumulated considerable territory. The Hussite Wars, the second Black Death pandemic in 1437, and the First Margrave War led to a severe fall in population in the mid-15th century. Siding with Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria-Munich, in the War of the Succession of Landshut of 1503–1505, led the city to gain substantial territory, resulting in lands of, making it one of the largest imperial cities.
During the Middle Ages, Nuremberg fostered a rich, varied, and influential literary culture.
Early modern age
The cultural flowering of Nuremberg in the 15th and 16th centuries made it the centre of the German Renaissance. In 1525 Nuremberg accepted the Protestant Reformation, and in 1532 the Nuremberg Religious Peace was signed there, preventing war between Lutherans and Catholics for 15 years. During the Princes' 1552 revolution against Charles V, Nuremberg tried to purchase its neutrality, but Margrave Albert Alcibiades, one of the leaders of the revolt, attacked the city without a declaration of war and dictated a disadvantageous peace. At the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, the possessions of the Protestants were confirmed by the Emperor, their religious privileges extended and their independence from the Bishop of Bamberg affirmed, while the 1520s' secularisation of the monasteries was also approved. Families like the Tucher, Imhoff or Haller ran trading businesses across Europe, similar to the Fugger and Welser families from Augsburg, although on a slightly smaller scale.The state of affairs in the early 16th century, increased trade routes elsewhere and the ossification of the social hierarchy and legal structures contributed to the decline in trade. During the Thirty Years' War, frequent quartering of Imperial, Swedish and League soldiers, the financial costs of the war and the cessation of trade caused irreparable damage to the city and a near-halving of the population. In 1632, the city, occupied by the forces of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, was besieged by the army of Imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein. The city declined after the war and recovered its importance only in the 19th century, when it grew as an industrial centre. Even after the Thirty Years' War, however, there was a late flowering of architecture and culture; secular Baroque architecture is exemplified in the layout of the civic gardens built outside the city walls, and in the Protestant city's rebuilding of St. Egidien church, destroyed by fire at the beginning of the 18th century, considered a significant contribution to the baroque church architecture of Middle Franconia.
After the Thirty Years' War, Nuremberg attempted to remain detached from external affairs, but contributions were demanded for the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War and restrictions of imports and exports deprived the city of many markets for its manufactures. The Bavarian elector, Charles Theodore, appropriated part of the land obtained by the city during the Landshut War of Succession, to which Bavaria had maintained its claim; Prussia also claimed part of the territory. Realising its weakness, the city asked to be incorporated into Prussia but Frederick William II refused, fearing to offend Austria, Russia and France. At the Imperial diet in 1803, the independence of Nuremberg was affirmed, but on the signing of the Confederation of the Rhine on 12 July 1806, it was agreed to hand the city over to Bavaria from 8 September, with Bavaria guaranteeing the amortisation of the city's 12.5 million guilder public debt.