Overall history
In the prehistory of Bavaria, the Regnitz valley already played an important role as a passageway from north to south. In Spardorf a blade scraper was found in loess deposits, which could be attributed to the Gravettians, which places it at an age of about 25,000 years. Due to the relatively barren soils in the area farming and settlements could only be detected at the end of the Neolithic (2800–2200 BC). The "Erlanger Zeichensteine" (Erlangen Sign Stones, sandstone plates with petroglyphs) in the Mark-Forst north of the city also originated in this time period. The stone plates were later reused as grave borders in the Urnfield period (1200–800 BC).
Once investigated in 1913, it was found that the burial mound in Kosbach contained finds from the urnfield time as well as from the Hallstatt and La Tène period. Next to the hill, the so-called "Kosbacher Altar", which was originated in the late Hallstatt period (about 500 BC), was constructed. The altar is unique in this form and consists of a square stone setting with four upright, figural pillars at the corners and one under the center. The reconstruction of the site can be visited in the area, the middle guard is exhibited in the Erlangen city museum.
Erlangen is first mentioned by name in a document from 1002. The origin of the name Erlangen is not clear. Attempts of local research to derive the name of alder (tree species) and anger (meadow ground), do not meet toponymical standards.
As early as 976, Emperor Otto II had donated the church of St. Martin in Forchheim with accessories to the diocese of Würzburg. Emperor Henry II confirmed this donation in 1002 and authorized its transfer from the bishopric to the newly founded Haug Abbey. In contrast to the certificate of Otto II, the accessories, which also included the "villa erlangon" located in Radenzgau, were described in more detail here. At that time the Bavarian Nordgau extended to the Regnitz in the west and to the Schwabach in the north. Villa Erlangon must therefore have been located outside of these borders and thus not in the area of today's Erlangen Altstadt. However, as the name Erlangen is unique to today's town in Germany, the certificate could have only referred to it. The document also provides an additional piece of evidence: In 1002, Henry II bestowed further areas west of the Regnitz, including one mile from the Schwabach estuary to the east, one mile from this mouth upstream and downstream. These two squares are described in the document only by their lengths and the two river names. No reference to a specific place is given. They are also unrelated to the accessories of St. Martin, which included the "villa erlangon", another reason why it must have been physically separated from the area of the two miles. Size and extent of the two squares correspond approximately to the area requirement of a village at the time, which supports the assumption that at the time of certification a settlement was under construction, which should be legitimized by this donation and later, as in similar cases, has adopted th name of the original settlement. The new settlement was built in a triangle, today bordered by the streets Hauptstraße, Schulstraße and Lazarettstraße, on a flooding-free sand dune.
Only 15 years later, in 1017, Henry II confirmed an exchange agreement, through which St. Martin and its accessories (including Erlangen) were given to the newly founded Bishopric of Bamberg, where it remained until 1361. During these centuries, the place name appears only sporadically.
On 20 August 1063, Emperor Henry IV created two documents "actum Erlangen" while on a campaign. Local researchers therefore concluded that Erlangen must have already gained so much in extent that in 1063, Henry IV took his residence there with many princes and bishops and was therefore the seat of a King's Court. It was even believed that this court could have been located in the Bayreuther Straße 8 and given away without mention by the certificate of 1002. Other evidence of this estate is also missing. It is regarded as most likely today, that Henry IV was not residing in the "new" Erlangen, but rather in the older "villa erlangon", as the north–south valley road changed to the left river bank of the Regnitz and then ran in the direction of Alterlangen, Kleinseebach-Baiersdorf to the north, to avoid the heights of the Erlangen Burgberg.
Otherwise, Erlangen was usually only mentioned if the bishop pledged it due to lack of money. How exactly the village developed is unknown. Only the designation "grozzenerlang" in a bishop's urbarium from 1348 may be an indication that the episcopal village had outstripped the original "villa erlangon".
In December 1361, Emperor Charles IV bought "the village Erlangen including all rights, benefits and belongings". and incorporated it into the area designated as New Bohemia, which was a fief of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Under the crown of Bohemia, the village developed rapidly. In 1367 the emperor spent three days in Erlangen and gave the "citizen and people of Erlangen" grazing rights in the imperial forest, Nuremberg Reichswald. In 1374, Charles IV granted the inhabitants of Erlangen seven years of tax exemption. The money should instead be used to "improve the village". At the same time he lent the market right to Erlangen. Probably soon after 1361, the new ruler of the administration of the acquired property west of the town built the Veste Erlangen, on which a bailiff resided. King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia built a mint and officially granted township to Erlangen in 1398. He also granted all the usual town privileges: Collection of tolls, construction of a department store with bread and meat bank and the construction of a defensive wall.
Two years later, in 1400, the prince-electors voted to "un-elect" Wenceslaus, who sold his Frankish possessions, including Erlangen, to his brother-in-law, the Nuremberg burgrave Johann III due to lack of funds in 1402. During the process of division of the burggrave property in Franconia, Erlangen was added to the Upper Principality, the future Principality of Bayreuth. The Erlangen coining facility ceased its operation because the Münzmeister was executed for counterfeiting in Nuremberg.
During the Hussite Wars the town was completely destroyed for the first time in 1431. The declaration of war by Margrave Albrecht Achilles to the city of Nuremberg in 1449 led to the First Margrave War. However, as the army of Albrecht could not completely enclose the city, Nuremberg troops broke out again and devastated the Margravial towns and villages. As reported by a Nuremberg chronicler, they "burnt the market at most in Erlangen and brought a huge robbery". As soon as the town had recovered, Louis IX, Duke of Bavaria attacked the Margrave in 1459. Erlangen was raided and plundered again, this time by Bavarian troops. In the following years the town recovered again. Erlangen was spared from the Peasants' War in 1525 and the introduction of the Reformation in 1528 was peaceful. However, when Margrave Albert Alcibiades triggered the Second Margrave War, Erlangen was attacked again by the Nurembergers and partially destroyed. It was even considered to completely abandon the town. Because Emperor Charles V imposed the imperial ban on Albrecht, the Nurembergers incorporated Erlangen into their own territory. Albrecht died in January 1557. His successor, George Frederick, requested that the imperial sequestration over the Principality of Kulmbach be reversed and was able to take back the government one month later. Under his rule, the town recovered from the war damage and remained unharmed until well into the Thirty Years' War.
Little is known about the place itself and about the people who lived here during this period.
From 1129, members of the noble family "von Erlangen" appear as witnesses in notarizations. They were probably ministers of the von Gründlach family. The family had numerous possessions in and around Erlangen as antecedents of the von Gründlach imperial fiefdom. Despite multiple mentions in documents, it is no longer possible to establish a line of ancestry. At the beginning of the 15th century, the family died out.
In a foundation deed of 1328 a property is mentioned on which "heinrich the old sits". Twenty years later, in the Episcopal Urbar of 1348 (see above), seven landowners who were obliged to pay interest were named. For the first time, the entire city is recorded in the register of the Common Penny of 1497: 92 households with 212 adults (over 15 years). If one assumes 1.5 children under the age of 15 per household, the population is calculated to be around 350. This figure is unlikely to have changed much in the subsequent period. The Urbar of 1528 lists 83 taxable house owners and the Türkensteuerliste of 1567 97 heads of households, plus five children under guardianship. A complete list of all households, including tenants, arranged by street, was drawn up in 1616 by the Old Town priest Hans Heilig: At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, the city counted 118 households with about 500 people.
The old town of Erlangen has been completely destroyed several times, most recently in the great fire of 1706. Only parts of the city wall date back to the late Middle Ages. After the fire of 1706, the cityscape with its street layout had to be rigorously adapted to the regular street scheme of the newly built "Christian-Erlang", which had its own administration (judicial and chamber college) until the administrative reform of 1797. Only the streets Schulstraße, Lazarettstraße and Adlerstraße were spared. The low cellars, however, survived all destruction and fires mostly unscathed. Above them, the buildings were newly erected. For this reason, two Erlangen architects have been surveying the cellars of the old town on behalf of the Heimat- und Geschichtsverein since 1988. At the same time, the city archaeology of Erlangen has excavated in the courtyard of the Stadtmuseum. Both measures give an approximate picture of the late medieval or early modern location: Pfarrstraße ran further north, northern Hauptstraße somewhat further east than today. The western houses at Martin-Luther-Platz protruded to different extents into today's area; on its eastern side the buildings ran diagonally from today's Neue Straße to the city gate "Oberes Tor" (between Hauptstraße 90 and 91). The eastern city wall first led south from Lazarettstraße, then turned slightly southwest from Vierzigmannstraße and cut the base of today's Old Town Church at the northeast corner of the nave. Foundations of this wall, which run exactly in the described direction, were discovered during the excavations in the courtyard of the town museum. Outside the upper gate the upper suburb began to develop. In front of the city gate "Bayreuther Tor" was the lower suburb (Bayreuther Straße to Essenbacher Straße) with the mill at the Schwabach. The Veste was located in the west of the city.
After the Thirty Years' War, the town was rebuilt relatively quickly. On 2 December 1655 the parish church was consecrated to the title of Holy Trinity. The situation changed in 1685 when French king Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted Calvinist subjects – called Huguenots by their opponents – religious freedom since 1598. The revocation triggered a wave of refugees of about 180,000 Huguenots who settled mainly in the Dutch Republic, the British Isles, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and some German principalities. A small number of religious refugees later went to Russia and the Dutch and British colonies.
Margrave Christian Ernst also took advantage of this situation and offered the refugees the right to settle in his principality, which was still suffering from the consequences of the Thirty Years' War, in order to promote its economy in the sense of mercantilism through the settlement of modern trades. He was thus one of the first Lutheran princes in Germany to accept Calvinists into his country and even to guarantee them the freedom to practise their religion. The first six Huguenots reached Erlangen on 17 May 1686, about 1500 followed in several waves. In addition, several hundred Waldensians came, however, as they were unable to settle down they moved on in 1688. Even before it was foreseeable how many refugees could be expected, the margrave decided to found the new town of Erlangen as a legally independent settlement south of the small town called Altstadt Erlangen. The rational motive of promoting the economy of one's own country was associated with the hope of wealth as a city founder, which was typical of absolutism.
The new city was conveniently located on one of the most important trade and travel routes to and from Nuremberg. Water was to be drained from the nearby Regnitz for a canal necessary for certain trades, however this failed due to the sandy ground. The plan of the city, which at first sight appeared simple, but was in fact extremely differentiated and highly sophisticated, was designed by the margravial master builder Johann Moritz Richter using the "golden ratio" and ideal criteria. The rectangular layout is characterised by the main street, which is designed as an axis of symmetry and has two unequal squares, and the "Grande Rue", which surrounds the inner core and whose closed corners, designed as right angles, act like hinges, giving the entire layout strength and unity. As the plan made clear, it was not the design of the individual buildings that was important, but the overall uniformity of the entire city. Even today, the historical core is characterised by this uniform, relatively unadorned facades of the two-storey and three-storey houses in straight rows with the eaves side facing the street. The construction of the town began on 14 July 1686 with the laying of the foundation stone of the Huguenot Church. In the first year about 50 of the planned 200 houses were completed. The influx of the Huguenots did not meet expectations, because their refugee mentality did not change into an immigrant mentality until 1715. The change of mentality happened in this year, as the peace treaties after the War of the Spanish Succession ruled out their return to France, but also because the Margrave was engaged as commander in the War of the Palatinate Succession against France from 1688 to 1697. Therefore, further expansion stagnated. It was not until 1700 that he received new impetus from the construction of the margravial palace and the development of Erlangen into a royal seat and one of the six provincial capitals. After a major fire destroyed almost the entire old part of the town of Erlangen on 14 August 1706, it was rebuilt on the model of the new town with straightened street and square fronts and a two-storey, somewhat more individually designed house type. In Erlangen, this resulted in the special case of two neighbouring planned cities, which is probably unique in the history of European ideal cities. The old city of Erlangen, which was actually older and still managed independently until 1812, is younger in terms of architectural history than the new city of Erlangen.
The new town, named after its founder Christian-Erlang in 1701, became not only the destination of the Huguenots, but also of Lutherans and German Reformed, who had been granted the same privileges as the Huguenots. In 1698, approximately 1000 Huguenots and 317 Germans lived in Erlangen. Due to immigration, however, the Huguenots soon became a French-speaking minority in a German city. The French influence diminished further in the following years. In 1822, the last service in French was held in the Huguenot Church.
In 1792 Erlangen and the Principality of Bayreuth became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. During the War of the Second Coalition, Frederick III of Württemberg retreated to Erlangen after the French occupied Württemberg. When Napoleon won the Battle of Jena and Auerstedt, the two principalities were brought under French rule as a province. In 1810 the principality of Bayreuth was sold to the allied kingdom of Bavaria for 15 million francs. In 1812 the old town and the new town - until then still called Christian-Erlang - were united to form one town, which received the name Erlangen. In the period that followed, the city and its infrastructure were rapidly expanded. Especially the opening of the Ludwig Canal and the railway connections as well as the garrison and the university gave important impulses for the urban development.
Already with the Bavarian community reform of 1818, the city received its own administration, which was later called "free of district". In 1862 the district office Erlangen was formed, from which the administrative district Erlangen emerged.
After Germany's defeat in the First World War, the antidemocratic parties NSDAP, DNVP and KPD gained strong popularity in Erlangen due to high inflation, reparations payments and the world economic crisis. A two-tier society was established, which was reinforced by industrial settlements. In the city council, state parliament and Reichstag elections, the SPD initially held a relatively stable majority of 40%. On the other hand, there were the parties of the centre and the right, whose supporters came from the middle class, the university and the civil service. The NSDAP was represented in the city council from 1924. Five years later, the Erlangen university became the first German university with its student representation controlled by the party, making it a centre of nationalist and anti-democratic sentiment. Many students and professors became intellectual pioneers of National Socialism. From 1930 onwards, the political situation escalated, fuelled by mass unemployment caused by the Great Depression. Both left and right unions organised marches and caused street fights. Despite the strong influx in popularity of the NSDAP, the SPD won 34% of the votes in the 1933 Reichstag election (average: 18.3%).
After the seizure of power by the NSDAP, boycotts of Jewish shops, the desecration and destruction of the monument dedicated to the Jewish professor and Erlangen honorary citizen Jakob Herz on Hugenottenplatz and the burning of books also took place in Erlangen. The NSDAP-controlled city council made Chancellor Hitler, President von Hindenburg and Gauleiter Streicher honorary citizens, the main street was renamed Adolf-Hitler-Straße ("Adolf-Hitler-Street"). During the Reichspogromnacht, the Jewish families from Erlangen (between 42 and 48 people), Baiersdorf (three people) and Forth (seven people) were rounded up and humiliated in the courtyard of the then town hall (Palais Stutterheim), their flats and shops partly destroyed and plundered, then the women and children were taken to the Wöhrmühle (an island in the Regnitz river in Erlangen), the men to the district court prison and then to Nuremberg to prison. Those who could not leave Germany in the following wave of emigration were deported to concentration camps, where most were murdered. In 1944 the city was declared "free of Jews", although a "Half-Jew" stayed in town until the end of the war, protected by the police chief.
As the academic community supported NS politics to a large extent, there was no active resistance from the university. In the sanatorium and nursing home (today part of the Clinic am Europakanal), forced sterilisations and selections of patients for the National Socialist "euthanasia murders (Aktion T4)" took place.
From 1940, prisoners of war and forced labourers were deployed in the Erlangen armament factories. In 1944 they already accounted for 10% of the population of Erlangen. Their accommodation in barrack camps and treatment were inhuman.
In 1983, Erlangen was one of the first cities in Bavaria to begin to reappraise its National Socialist history in an exhibition at the city's museum. In the same year, Adolf Hitler and Julius Streicher were officially deprived of their honorary citizenship, which had automatically expired with their death, as a symbolic gesture of distance.
During the Second World War, 4.8% of Erlangen was destroyed by bombings; 445 flats were completely destroyed. When the American troops moved in on 16 April 1945, the local commander of the German troops, Lieutenant Werner Lorleberg handed over the city without a fight, thus avoided a battle inside the city area that would have been pointless and costly. Lorleberg himself, who until the end was regarded as a supporter of the National Socialist regime, died at Thalermühle on the same day. Whether he was shot by German soldiers when he tried to persuade a scattered task force to give up, or whether he committed suicide there after the surrender message was delivered, has not been conclusively established. Lorlebergplatz in Erlangen, named after him, is a memorial to him. The text about Lorleberg, which is attached to it, refers to his death, which had saved Erlangen from destruction.
After the handover of the city, American tanks severely damaged the last preserved city gate (the Nuremberg Gate built in 1717), which was blown up shortly afterwards. This probably also happened at the instigation of shopkeepers living in the main street who, like the passing American troops, found the baroque gate an obstacle to traffic because of its relatively narrow passage. The other city gates had already been demolished in the 19th century.
During the district and area reform in 1972, the district of Erlangen was united with the district of Höchstadt an der Aisch. Erlangen itself remained an independent town and became the seat of the new administrative district. Through the integration of surrounding communities, the city was considerably enlarged, so that in 1974 it exceeded the 100,000-inhabitant limit and thus became a major city of Germany. In 2002 Erlangen celebrated its thousandth anniversary.
On 25 May 2009, the city was awarded the title of Ort der Vielfalt (German for "Place of Diversity") by the Federal Government in the context of an initiative launched in 2007 by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration to strengthen the commitment of municipalities to cultural diversity. Erlangen was awarded the title "Federal Capital for Nature and Environmental Protection" in 1990 and 1991 for its highly successful policy of creating a balance between economy and ecology. It was the first German prizewinner and the first regional authority to be included in the list of honour of the United Nations Environment Agency in 1990. Due to the above-average proportion of medical and medical-technical facilities and companies in relation to the number of inhabitants, Lord Mayor Siegfried Balleis developed the vision of developing Erlangen into the "Federal Capital of Medical Research, Production and Services" by 2010 when he took office in 1996.
