History of Cologne

The History of Cologne, Germany's oldest major city, can be broken into several periods.

Roman

In 39 BC, the tribe of the Ubii entered into an agreement with the Roman forces and settled on the left bank of the Rhine. Their headquarters was "Oppidum Ubiorum" — the settlement of the Ubii, and at the same time an important Roman military base. In 50 AD, Agrippina the Younger, wife of the Emperor Claudius, who was born in Cologne, asked for her home village to be elevated to the status of a "colonia" — a city under Roman law. It was called "Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensis" (a "colony of Claudius and the altar of Agrippina"), or "Colonia Agrippina", "the Colony of Agrippina". In 80 AD water supply was built, the Eifel Aqueduct, one of the longest aqueducts of the Roman Empire, which delivered 20,000 cubic metres of water to the city every day. Ten years later, the "colonia" became the capital of the Roman province of Lower Germany "Germania Inferior" with a total population of 45,000 people.

In 260 AD Postumus made Cologne the capital of the Gallic Empire which included the German and Gallic provinces, Britannia and the provinces of Hispania. The Gallic Empire lasted only fourteen years.

By the 3rd century, only 20,000 people lived in and around the town. In 310 AD, Emperor Constantine I had a bridge over the Rhine constructed; this was guarded by the "castellum" Divitia (nowadays "Deutz").

Frank, Merovingian, and Carolingian

In 355 AD, the Alemanni tribes besieged the town for 10 months. At the time, the garrison of Colonia Agrippina was under the generalship of Marcus Vitellus. The city was captured after the months of siege and was reestablished as a Roman colonia several months afterwards by the soon-to-be Roman Emperor Julian. In 455, the Salian Franks finally captured Cologne and made it their capital city.

Prince-Bishops of Cologne

Cologne's first Christian bishop was Maternus. He was responsible for the construction of the first cathedral, a square building erected early in the 4th century. In 794, Hildebald (or Hildebold) was the first Bishop of Cologne to be elevated to Archbishop of Cologne. Bruno I (925-965), younger brother of Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, founded several monasteries here. Subsequent Archbishops of Cologne became very influential as advisers to the Saxon, Salian and Hohenstaufen dynasties. From 1031, they also held the office of Arch-Chancellor of Italy. Between 1159 and 1167, Rainald of Dassel was Archbishop of Cologne, as well as being Imperial Chancellor and adviser to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

In 1074 the commune was formed. By the 13th century, the relationship between the city of Cologne and its archbishop had become difficult, and after the Battle of Worringen in 1288, Cologne effectively became a free city (though this status would not be formally confirmed until 1475) and the Archbishops removed their residence to Bonn. They would not live in Cologne again until 1821.

Hanseatic League

Cologne was a leading member of the "Hanse", especially through trading with England.

French Occupation

The French Revolutionary Wars resulted in the occupation of Cologne and the Rhineland in 1794. In the following years the French consolidated their presence. In 1798 Cologne became an arrondissement in the newly created Département de la Roer. In the same year the University of Cologne was closed. In 1801 all citizen of Cologne were granted the French citizenship. In 1804 Napoléon Bonaparte visited the city together with his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais. The French occupation of Cologne ended in 1814.

Prussian

In 1814, Cologne was occupied by Prussian and Russian troops. In 1815, Cologne and the Rhineland were allocated to Prussia.

Third Reich

At the beginning of the Third Reich, Cologne was seen as a difficult territory by the Nazis because of deep-rooted communist and Catholic influences on the city. The Nazis were always struggling for control of the city.

It was planned to rebuild a large part of the inner city, with a main road connecting the Deutz station and the main station, which was to be moved from next to the cathedral to an area adjacent to today's university campus, with a huge field for rallies, the "Maifeld", next to the main station. The "Maifeld", between the campus and the "Aachener Weiher" artificial lake, was the only part of this over-ambitious plan to be realized before the start of the war. After the war, the remains of the "Maifeld" were buried with rubble from bombed buildings and turned into a park with rolling hills, which was christened "Hiroshima-Nagasaki-Park" in August, 2004, as a memorial to the victims of the nuclear bombs of 1945. An inconspicuous memorial to the victims of the Nazi regime is situated on one of the hills.

In World War II, 90% of Cologne's buildings were destroyed by Allied (mostly by the Royal Air Force (RAF)) aerial bombing raids. On the night of 30/31 May 1942 Cologne was the target for the first 1,000 bomber raid of the war. The number reported killed was between 469 and 486, of which 411 were civilians and 58 military casualties. 5,027 people were listed as injured and 45,132 as bombed out. It was estimated that from 135,000 to 150,000 of Cologne's population of nearly 700,000 people fled the city after the raid. The RAF lost 43 aircraft, 3.9 per cent of the 1,103 bombers sent on the raid. [http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/thousands.html]

On 10 November 1944 a dozen members of the anti-Nazi Ehrenfeld Group were hanged in public. Six of them were 16-year-old boys of the Edelweiss Pirates youth gang, including Barthel Schink; Fritz Theilen survived.

Bookseller Gerhard Ludwig, who worked for the influential publisher Neven du Mont in 1941, was dismissed immediately when he got into trouble with the Gestapo for political reasons. Upon his return to Cologne after his release from Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1946, editor Neven du Mont spotted him and complained about the release of prisoners from the camps - he still saw them as "criminals".

Jews in Cologne

As early as 321 AD, an edict by the Emperor Constantine allowed Jews to be elected to the City Council. The first pogrom against the Jews was in 1349, and in 1424 they were evicted from the city, but were allowed back again in 1798.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Jewish population of Cologne was about 20,000. By 1939, 40% of the city's Jews had emigrated. The vast majority of those who remained had been deported to concentration camps by 1941. The trade fair grounds next to the Deutz train station were used to herd together the Jewish population for deportation to the death camps and for disposal of their household goods by public sale.

On "Kristallnacht" in 1938, Cologne's synagogues were set on fire.

Postwar Cologne

Despite Cologne being the largest city in the region nearby, Düsseldorf was chosen as the political capital of the newly set-up Federal State North Rhine-Westphalia. With Bonn being chosen as the (provisional) capital of the Federal Republic, Cologne took benefit being sandwiched between the two important political centers of former West Germany. The city became home to a large number of Federal agencies and organizations. After reunification in 1990 a new situation has been politically co-ordinated with the new federal capital city of Berlin.

In 1945 architect and urban planner Rudolf Schwarz called Cologne the "world's greatest heap of debris". Schwarz designed the masterplan of reconstruction in 1947, which called for the construction of several new thoroughfares through the downtown area, especially the 'Nord-Süd-Fahrt' (North-South-Drive). The Masterplan took into consideration the fact that even shortly after the war a large increase in automobile traffic could be anticipated. Plans for new roads had already to a certain degree evolved under the Nazi administration, but the actual construction became easier in times when the majority of downtown lots were undeveloped. The destruction of famous [http://www.romanische-kirchen-koeln.de/ romanesque churches] like St. Gereon's Basilica, Great St. Martin, St. Maria im Capitol and about a dozen others in World War II meant a tremendous loss of cultural substance to the city. The rebuilding of those churches and other landmarks like the Gürzenich was not undisputed among leading architects and art historians at that time, but in most cases, civil intention prevailed. The reconstruction lasted until the 1990s, when Romanesque church of St. Kunibert was finished.

It took some time to rebuild the city. In 1959 the city's population reached pre-war numbers again. Afterwards the city grew steadily, and, in 1975, the number exceeded 1 million inhabitants for about one year. Since then, the number lingers slightly underneath.

In the 1980s and 1990s Cologne's economy prospered from two factors: First, the steady growth in the number of media companies, pertaining to both the private and the public sector. Catering especially to these companies is the newly developed Media Park, which creates a strongly visual focal point in downtown Cologne and includes the "KölnTurm", one of Cologne's most prominent highrises. And second, a permanent improvement of the diverse traffic infrastructure, which makes Cologne one of the most easily accessible metropolitan areas in Central Europe.

Due to the economic success of the Cologne Trade Fair, the city arranged a large extension to the fair site in 2005. At the same time the original buildings, which date back to the 1920s are rented out to RTL, Germany's largest private broadcaster, as their new corporate headquarter.

A controversy started after Muslims in Cologne sought to build a mosque.Harry de Quetteville. " [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/25/wger125.xml Huge mosque stirs protests in Cologne] ". "Telegraph", June 26, 2007.]

References

External links

* [http://www.lwl.org/westfaelische-geschichte/portal/Internet/ku.php?tab=pro&ID=54 Edicts of the "Kurfürstentum" of Cologne, 1461-1816 online]
* [http://www.hoeckmann.de/germany/cologne.htm Map of the Archbishopric of Cologne in 1789]