Everything about Marburg totally explained
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This page is about the city in Germany. For other meanings, see Marburg (disambiguation).
Marburg is a city in
Hesse,
Germany, on the
Lahn river. It is the main town of the
Marburg-Biedenkopf district. Its population is 78,701, and its geographical position is .
Universitätsstadt Marburg
History
Founding and early history
Like many settlements, Marburg developed at the crossroads of two important early medieval highways: an east-west one (
Cologne to
Prague) and a north-south one (from the
North Sea to the
Alps and on to
Italy), the former crossing the river
Lahn here. The settlement was protected, and customs raised, by a small castle that was built in the 9th or 10th century by the dynasty of the Giso. Marburg has been a town since
1140, as proved by coins. From the Gisos, it fell around that time to the
Landgraves of
Thuringia, residing on the
Wartburg above
Eisenach.
St Elizabeth
In
1228 the widowed princess-langravine (
Landgräfin) of Thuringia, Elizabeth, chose Marburg as her dowager seat, as she didn't get along well with her brother-in-law, the new Landgrave. The countess dedicated her life to the sick and would become after her early death in
1231, aged 24, one of the most eminent female saints, St
Elisabeth of Hungary. She was canonized in
1235.
Capital of Hesse
In
1264, St Elizabeth's daughter
Sophie of Brabant, succeeded in winning the
Landgraviate of
Hesse, hitherto connected to
Thuringia, for her son
Henry. Marburg (alongside
Kassel) was one of the capitals of Hesse from that time until about
1540. Following the first division of the landgraviate, it was the capital of
Hesse-Marburg from
1485 to
1500 and again between
1567 and
1605. Hesse was one of the more powerful second-tier principalities in Germany. Its "old enemy" was the
Archbishop of Mainz, one of the
Prince-electors, who competed with Hesse in many wars and conflicts, stretching over several centuries, for territory.
After 1605, Marburg became just another provincial town, known mostly for the
university. It became a virtual backwater for two centuries after the
Thirty Years' War,
1618-
1648, when it was fought over by
Hesse-Darmstadt and
Hesse-Kassel. The Hessian territory around Marburg lost more than two thirds of its population, more than in all later wars (including
World War I and
World War II) combined.
Reformation
Marburg is the seat of the oldest
Protestant university in the world, the
University of Marburg, or
Philipps-Universität, founded in
1527. It is one of the six classical "university villages" in Germany, the other five being
Freiburg,
Göttingen,
Heidelberg, and
Tübingen, as well as the city of
Gießen, which is located 30 km south of Marburg.
In 1529,
Philipp I of Hesse arranged the
Marburg Colloquy, to propitiate
Martin Luther and
Huldrych Zwingli.
Romanticism
Owing to its neglect during the entire 18th century Marburg – like
Rye or
Chartres – survived as a relatively intact
Gothic town, simply because there was no money spent on any new
architecture or expansion. When
Romanticism became the dominant cultural and artistic paradigm in Germany, Marburg became interesting once again, and many of the leaders of the movement lived, taught, or studied in Marburg. They formed a circle of friends that was of great importance, especially in
literature,
philology,
folklore, and
law. The group included
Friedrich Karl von Savigny, the most important
jurist of his day and father of the
Roman Law adaptation in Germany; the poets, writers, and social activists
Achim von Arnim,
Clemens Brentano, and especially the latter's sister and former's later wife,
Bettina von Arnim. Most famous internationally, however, were the
Brothers Grimm, who collected many of their
fairy tales here –
Rapunzel's Tower stands in Marburg, and across the Lahn hills, in the area called Schwalm, little girls' costumes included a red hood.
It has to be said, however, that this circle had disappeared from Marburg by the 1820s, and for another 45 years, Marburg became a Hessian backwater again.
Prussian town
In the
Austro-Prussian War of
1866, the reactionary
Prince-elector of Hesse had backed
Austria; Prussia won, and invaded (without any bloodshed) and annexed
Hesse-Kassel (as well as
Hanover, the City of
Frankfurt, and other territories) north of the
Main river, while likewise pro-Austrian
Hesse-Darmstadt remained independent. For Marburg, this turn of events was very positive, because Prussia decided to make Marburg its main administrative center in this part of the new province
Hesse-Nassau and to turn the
University of Marburg into the regional academic center. Thus, Marburg's rise as an administrative and university city began; since the Prussian university system would become the indubitably best in the world, Marburg would now attract very famous scholars. There was, on the other hand, hardly any industry to speak of, so that students, professors, and civil servants – who generally had enough but not much money and paid very little in taxes – dominated the town, which tended to be very conservative.
20th century
Franz von Papen, vice-chancellor of Germany in 1934, delivered an anti-
Nazi speech at the University of Marburg on June 17. This contributed to several of von Papen's staff being murdered by the Nazis.
In 1945, Marburg became President and Field Marshal
Paul von Hindenburg's final resting place. His grave is in the
Elisabethkirche. He is an honorary citizen of the town.
Marburg is also now home to one of the most progressive schools for the blind in the world. Street crossings are equipped with "walk" and "don't walk" signs that also emit sounds enabling the blind to know what the signs are "saying."
Architecture
Marburg is famous for its medieval churches, especially the
Elisabethkirche, one of the two or three first purely Gothic churches north of the Alps outside of France and thus an incunable of Gothic architecture in Germany, as well as for the castle.
More important, however, is Marburg's city as such, an unspoilt, spire-dominated, castle-crowned Gothic/Renaissance city on a hill, intact because Marburg was an extreme backwater between 1600 and 1850. Unlike, for example,
Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Marburg regained some of its importance in later centuries, so it isn't a "museum village" but rather a student-dominated university town.
Much of the physical attractiveness of Marburg today is the legacy of the legendary Lord Mayor Dr.
Hanno Drechsler (in office 1970-1992), who promoted urban renewal and the restoration, for the first time, by object and not by area, for example areas were not pulled down but rather buildings restored. Thus, at a time when other cities were still pulling down medieval quarters, Marburg already protected its unique heritage. Marburg also had one of the first pedestrian zones in Germany. Marburg's
Altstadtsanierung (since 1972) received many awards and prizes.
Politics
As a larger mid-sized city, Marburg, like six other such cities in Hesse, has a special status as compared to the other municipalities in the district. This means that the city takes on tasks more usually performed by the district so that in many ways it's comparable to an
urban district (
kreisfreie Stadt).
The mayor (
Oberbürgermeister) Egon Vaupel, directly elected in January
2005 and in office since
1 July 2005, is from the
Social Democratic Party of Germany. His deputy, the head of the building and youth departments Dr. Franz Kahle is supplied by the
Greens. The majority in the 59-seat city parliament is held by a coalition of SPD (20 seats) and Green (10 seats) members. Also represented are the factions of the
CDU (17 seats), the
PDS (4 seats), the
Freie Wähler (Free Voters) BfM (
Bürger für Marburg- 3 seats), the
FDP (3 seats) and a CDU splinter group MBL (
Marburger Bürgerliste- 2 seats).
Outside the parliament, there are in Marburg, like otherwise only in big cities, a full range of groupings. Among the leftwing groups are
ATTAC, the
Worldshop movement, an
autonomist-
anarchist scene, but also groups engaged in ecological or human-rights concerns.
The city of Marburg, similar to the cities of Heidelberg, Tuebingen, Goettingen etc. has a rich history of student corporations or "Verbindungen" for example associations or faternities including Corps, Landsmannachaften, Burschenschaften, Turnerschaften etc.
City partnerships
Coat of arms
Marburg's coat of arms shows a Hessian Landgrave riding a white horse with a flag and a shield on a red background. The shield shows the red-and-white-striped Hessian lion, also to be seen on Hesse's state arms, and the flag shows a stylized M, blue on gold (or yellow). The arms are also the source of the city flag's colours. This is three horizontal stripes coloured, from top to bottom, red (from the background), white (from the horse) and blue (from the shield).
The arms, which were designed in the late
nineteenth century, are based on a landgrave's seal on a municipal document, which is an example of a very prevalent practice of replacing forgotten coats of arms, or ones deemed not to be representative enough, with motifs taken from seals. Under municipal codes in force in Germany today, the use of city or municipal arms in service seals is often mandatory.
Marburg virus
The city's name is also connected to a filovirus, the
Marburg virus, which was first noticed and described during an outbreak in the city due to workers being accidentally exposed to infected
grivet monkey tissue at the city's main industrial plant (
1967), the Behring-Werke, then part of Hoechst and today of CSL Behring, founded by Marburg citizen and first
Nobel Prize in Medicine winner,
Emil von Behring. During the outbreak, 31 people became infected and seven of them died. While this may seem a small number of people, during a
cholera epidemic in the modern world only 1 in 20 people die. The Marburg virus is named after the town as it's customary to name viruses of such ferocity after the town or area in which they originate.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Marburg'.
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