Brunswick (Germany) understand · Brunswick (Germany) tourist information
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Brunswick (Germany) tourist information
Brunswick (Germany) tourist information
Brunswick was a city of importance in medieval Germany. Economically, it was situated at the intersections of major trade routes; moreover, the river Oker was navigable from Brunswick, allowing access to the sea port of Bremen. It was among the last nine cities of the Hanseatic League.
Politically, Brunswick gained importance through one of its most important rulers, Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria. During his reign, Henry founded several German cities (among them Schwerin and Munich), defying his cousin German Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, and married Richard the Lionheart's sister Matilda of England, thus establishing familial ties to the royal family of England, which still exist to this day. His son, Otto of Brunswick, was crowned German emperor in 1209. To document his claim to power, Henry had the Lion monument erected in 1166, which also appears in the city's coat of arms.
Brunswick is considered having been one of the most tumultous cities of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (next to Paris and Ghent). Numerous constitutional conflicts ended in uprisings and civil unrest.
Despite its rich medieval traditon, Brunswick's appearance today owes much to its almost complete destruction during World War II. Allied bombing destroyed 90% of Brunswick's medieval city center (leaving only 80 of formerly over 800 timberframe houses). Only a small number of buildings have been re-erected; the majority of downtown buildings nowadays exhibit the somberness of 1950's post-war architecture.
An important industrial hub, the district of Brunswick is home to many companies, such as the steel industry in Salzgitter (Salzgitter AG) and Peine, or Volkswagen in Wolfsburg.
The region of Braunschweig is the most R&D-intensive area in the whole European Economic Area investing a remarkable 7.1% of its GDP in the research & technology sector (places two and three go to Varsinais-Suomi and East Anglia with 4.1% each). It is home to the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the national institute for natural and engineering sciences and the highest technical authority for metrology and physical safety engineering in Germany. Part of its assignments is the accurate measurement of time. It is responsible for the German atomic clock CS2 and the longwave time signal DCF77. In addition, the PTB operates time servers for the distribution of time on the internet.
Brunswick is further known for its universities Technische Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig, Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, Ostfalia Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften, Welfenakademie Braunschweig, and 19 research institutes, among them the Johann Heinrich von Thuenen Institute (until the end of 2007 named Federal Agricultural Research Center), and the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research.
Braunschweig was declared Germany's City of Science 2007.
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Brunswick (Germany) Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.