Location: Bavaria Map
On the Bavarian Red Main lies the city of Bayreuth, world-famous
for its Richard Wagner Festival and the Margravial Opera House,
which has been declared a World Heritage Site. In 2016 she organized
the state garden show in Bavaria.
The first documented
mention dates back to 1194 as Baierrute. The name probably goes back
to the Bavarians and a clearing, i.e. here rute. Almost 40 years
later, in 1231, Bayreuth was first referred to as a city. Later
(1361) the city received the right to mint coins and in the course
of the Reformation Bayreuth became Protestant in 1528.
Founded by the Andechs-Meranians, the city passed into the
possession of the burgraves of Nuremberg (Hohenzollern) in 1260.
From 1603 the Margraves of Brandenburg-Bayreuth moved their
residence from the Kulmbacher Plassenburg to Bayreuth. This marked
the beginning of the city's heyday, which culminated in the work of
Margravine Wilhelmine, a sister of Frederick II of Prussia. She
turned the sleepy Markgrafenhof into a residential city that could
stand comparison with the large residences in Berlin and Vienna. At
this time, Bayreuth got its baroque cityscape, which is still
visible today. Among other things, the Margravial Opera (1748), the
Hermitage with the new palace and sun temple (1753) and the New
Palace (1754) were built or expanded at that time.
In the
first half of the 17th century, the plague and two major fires raged
in the city, which in the second half was still being affected by
the Thirty Years' War.
After the margraves died out, Bayreuth
fell first to the Ansbach line and towards the end of the 18th
century to the Prussian relatives. As a result of the Napoleonic
conquest in 1806, Bayreuth briefly belonged to France. The French
surrendered the city to Bavaria in 1810 for a payment of 15 million
francs.
Moor Washer
In the middle of the 19th century
there were performances by showmen in front of the opera house in
Bayreuth. This included a dark-skinned actor. The authenticity of
his skin color was doubted by the Bayreuthers, so the "Mohren" was
then washed by a police officer to see whether the dark color washed
off. But the color was preserved, so that the Bayreuthers were
embarrassed.
Since that time, the inhabitants of Bayreuth
have been called Mohrenwascher.
In 1872 the foundation stone was
laid for what is probably the city's best-known trademark to this
day, the Festspielhaus desired by Richard Wagner and planned by the
architect Otto Brückwald, which was officially opened in 1876.
In the Third Reich, according to Hitler's plans, Bayreuth was to
be transformed into the Reich's cultural capital after the final
victory. After the Second World War, festivals were held in the
partially destroyed city for the first time in 1951. By resolution
of the Bavarian state parliament, Bayreuth became a university town.
The university began teaching in 1975.
Bayreuth Marketing & Tourismus GmbH (abbreviated to BMTG) at Opernstraße 22 can be the first point of contact. Info hotline: 0921/ 8 85-88, fax: 0921/ 8 85-755, email. Opening hours: Monday - Friday: 9 am - 6 pm, Saturday: 9 am - 4 pm, Sunday: 10 am - 2 pm (01.05. - 31.10.)
The BMTG offers city tours on various topics for individual travelers and also for group travellers: e.g. city tour "Historical Bayreuth"; In the footsteps of Jean Paul; In the footsteps of Richard Wagner; Jewish life in Bayreuth;...
There
are three churches in the very center of the city.
Hospital
Church, Maximilianstrasse 64. The neoclassical hospital church was built
in 1748 according to the plans of the court architect Joseph
Saint-Pierre (who wrote the Margravial Opera House, the Castle Church
and the New Castle) is located at the western end of the market square
in Maxstraße and has been renovated in recent years. The church contains
gallery paintings by Elias Brendel, stucco decorations by Rudolf Albini
and a pulpit altar with four Corinthian columns by the sculptor Johann
Räntz. In 1828 the altarpiece with the burial of Jesus was added.
Castle Church, Schloßberglein 1 . The Castle Church is characterized by
a single tall tower that rises high and can be seen from many places. It
contains, among other things, the bones of Margravine Wilhelmine. The
tower stairway is so wide that in earlier times it was possible to go up
in a carriage.
City Church, Kirchplatz 1 . The Gothic town church was
closed from the middle of 2006 to the 1st of Advent 2014 because
medieval "botched construction" was discovered during renovation work;
Parts of the church had subsided and were partially in danger of
collapsing. On the 1st of Advent 2014 it was inaugurated again. A
special feature of the "new" town church is the view into the burial
place of the Bayreuth margraves
Other churches are:
collegiate
church. Georg Christoph von Gravenreuth had stipulated in his will in
1735 that a hospital for old and poor people with a chapel should be
built from his estate. The hospital with the chapel was built by the
court building inspector Johann Georg Weiss from 1741 to 1744. The
church does not stand alone like other churches, but is integrated into
the frontage of the street, so it is easy to walk past it.
Order
Church of St. Georgen. The religious order church of St. Georgen is also
called the Sophienkirche. The foundation stone was laid in 1705 and the
church was consecrated in April 1711. The interior of the church shines
in baroque splendor.
St. Hedwig's Church, Schwindstrasse 14;
Schwindstrasse 14 a commons. The Catholic St. Hedwig's Church was built
in 1960 by the well-known architect Emil Stefann. It is considered one
of his most beautiful works. The church impresses with its unusual
masonry, which consists entirely of unplastered Jura limestone. In
addition, scenes from the Old and New Testament can be found on the two
entrance doors.
Christ Church. Above all, the three spiers
characterize the area between downtown Bayreuth and the Richard Wagner
Festival Hall. The floor plan of the church hall corresponds to a
hexagonal central building.
1
New Castle (Neues Schloss),
Ludwigstrasse 21 . The New Castle was built between 1753 and 1758 on
behalf of Margrave Friedrich von Brandenburg-Bayreuth as a new city
residence after the Old Castle was largely destroyed by fire.
2 Old
Castle, Maximilianstrasse 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 . The old castle with the
castle church of Our Lady was rebuilt in the 1950s after partial
destruction during the Second World War. It is in the pedestrian zone.
Part of the building is now used as a tax office.
3 Jagdschloss
Thiergarten, Oberthiergärtner Straße 36. The Jagdschloss Thiergarten is
a palace complex that served the Margraves of Brandenburg-Bayreuth for
hunting and is now used as a European school (see below). It is about
5km south of Bayreuth.
4 Birken Castle, Castle courtyard Birken 27 .
Birken Castle is a baroque palace complex in the Birken district. The
castle is also called “Rothenbücher-Villa” after its current owner.
5
Colmdorf Castle, Colmdorf 8. Colmdorf Castle, also known as
Carolinenruhe Castle, is located in the Colmdorf district (Königsallee,
B 22 in the direction of Weiden). The chateau faces a large garden and
was completely renovated in 2021.
6
Eremitage or The Old Palace,
Eremitagestraße 4. The Old Hermitage Palace is accessible again after
extensive renovation work. In addition to the shards of mirrors, the
inner grotto with water features, which are presented during every
guided tour to the screeching joy of the visitors, is particularly worth
seeing.
7 New Hermitage Palace. The New Hermitage Palace is based on
the Sanssouci Palace of Margravine Wilhelmine, favorite sister of
Frederick II the Great. However, it consists of three individual
building parts, which are grouped in a crescent shape around the upper
grotto. The castle was badly damaged in World War II, so that only the
sun temple in the middle of the complex still shows the original
interior. On the outside, however, the castle still shows itself in all
its splendor with the walls decorated with glass blocks and the gilded
quadriga.
8 Ordensschloss, Bernecker Strasse 7, Bernecker Strasse 9 .
The order castle in the district of St. Georgen is now used by the
Bayreuth JVA.
Other castles in Bayreuth, which are not open to
the public:
9 Monplaisier Castle. Monplaisier Castle was built in
1720 as the private residence of the engineer Johann Heinrich Endrichin,
who gave it to Wilhelmine of Prussia in 1732.
10 Laineck Castle,
Schloßstraße 22. Laineck Castle has stood here since the 14th century, a
former manor that later served as a poorhouse and workers' dwelling and
currently houses a kindergarten.
11 St. Johannis Castle,
Steinachstrasse 2 . St. Johannis Castle came into private ownership in
the mid-18th century. Since 1957 it has been an agricultural operation
of the Bayreuth prison.
12 Meyernberg Castle. Meyernberg Castle goes
back to a farm that was converted into a manor in 1753 by Johann Gottlob
von Meyern. Around 1850, Duke Alexander von Württemberg was the owner of
the building, which was redesigned again and is therefore also known as
the palace.
13
Markgräfliches Opernhaus/
Margravial Opera House, Opernstrasse 14 . The Margravial Opera House is
considered one of the most beautiful baroque theaters in Europe and was
recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on June 30, 2012. Court
architect Joseph Saint-Pierre planned the façade on behalf of Margravine
Wilhelmine; the interior was designed by Giuseppe and Carlo Galli
Bibiena. The following opening hours apply to visitors, but there are
fixed group admission times: April-September: daily from 9am-6pm,
October-March: daily from 10am-4pm. In the front part of the building
with the entrance and the museum ticket office there has been a small
exhibition on the history of the building and the ongoing renovation
work on two floors since May 2013.
Richard Wagner Festival Hall,
Festival Hill 1 . The Richard Wagner Festival Hall is the location of
the Bayreuth Richard Wagner Festival on the Green Hill. It is unique in
its architecture and acoustics and is one of the largest opera stages in
the world. Richard Wagner had the building built in 1872, and the first
festival was held as early as 1876.
Fama Fountain,
Maxstrasse.
Hercules Fountain, Maxstrasse.
Markgrafenbrunnen,
Ludwigstrasse. 1705. By Elias Räntz, in front of the New Castle.
Neptune Fountain, Maxstrasse.
World Fountain, Luitpoldplatz. Globe
fountain in the shape of a world in front of the New Town Hall.
Wittelsbach Fountain, Opernstrasse.
14 Richard Wagner Museum, Richard-Wagner-Strasse 48, 95444 Bayreuth.
Tel.: +49 921-757280, fax: +49 921 7572822, e-mail:
info@wagnermuseum.de. The museum is spread over three buildings. On the
one hand there is Richard Wagner's house "Wahnfried", in which the life,
work and creativity of Richard Wagner is shown. In the
Siegried-Wagner-House, Wagner's ideology, the relationship between the
Wagner family and Adolf Hitler and the connection between the city of
Bayreuth and the Nazi dictatorship are highlighted. The interior of the
building has been preserved in its original form from the 1930s. There
is a modern extension that is completely dedicated to the Bayreuth
Festival. Stage models and costumes from performances are exhibited
here. Open: Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., in July and August
also Monday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Price: adults €8.00, children and
young people up to the age of 18 have free entry.
15 Franz Liszt
Museum, Wahnfriedstrasse 9, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921-5166488, fax:
+49 921 7572822, e-mail: franz-liszt-museum@stadt.bayreuth.de . Museum
of the work and life of Richard Wagner's father-in-law. Open: Tuesday to
Sunday from 10am to 12pm and from 2pm to 5pm, in July and August every
day from 10am to 5pm. Price: adults €2.00, concessions €1.00.
16 Jean
Paul Museum, Wahnfriedstrasse 1, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 5071444,
fax: +49 921 7572822, e-mail: jean-paul-museum@stadt.bayreuth.de
commons. Open: Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 12pm and from 2pm to 5pm,
in July and August every day from 10am to 5pm. Price: adults €2.00,
concessions €1.00.
There is a combination ticket for the Richard
Wagner Museum, the Franz Liszt Museum and the Jean Paul Museum for
€11.00
17 Margravial state rooms/Bayreuth faience, Ludwigstraße 21,
95444 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921-7596921, fax: +49 921-7596915, email:
sgvbayreuth@bsv.bayern.de. The collection shows ceramics from the
Bayreuth manufactory. Open: from April to September daily from 09:00 to
18:00, from October to March: Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 16:00.
18 Museum "The Bayreuth of Margravine Wilhelmine", Ludwigstraße 21,
95444 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921-7596921, fax: +49 921-7596915, email:
sgvbayreuth@bsv.bayern.de. The chronology of the margrave period and the
history of the Hohenzollerns in Franconia and Bayreuth are illustrated.
Drawings, miniatures and books are shown. Open: from April to September
daily from 09:00 to 18:00, from October to March: Tuesday to Sunday from
10:00 to 16:00.
19 State Gallery in the New Palace, Ludwigstrasse 21,
95444 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921-759690 . Paintings by Dutch and German
painters from the 17th and 18th centuries are on display. Open: from
April to September daily from 09:00 to 18:00, from October to March:
Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 16:00.
You buy one ticket for all
three parts of the museum in the New Palace. The prices are €5.00 for
adults and €4.00 for concessions.
20
Historical Museum,
Kirchplatz 4, 95444 Bayreuth. Email: historicsmuseum@bayreuth.de . The
museum presents the city history and development of Bayreuth and the
former principality. Among other things, there is a city model that
shows Bayreuth in 1763. Open: Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.,
in July and August also Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Price: adults
€2.00, concessions €1.00.
21 Urwelt-Museum Oberfranken, Kanzleistraße
1, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921-511211, fax: +49 921-511212, e-mail:
verwaltung@urwelt-museum.de wikipediacommons. Fossils, crystals and
rocks from the history of the earth are on display. Open: Tues to Sun
from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., during the summer holidays and the festival
season also on Mondays. Price: Adults €3.50, reduced €2.50, family
ticket €10.00.
22
Archaeological Museum,
Ludwigstrasse 25b, 95444 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921-65307. Finds from the
region from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages are on display. Among
them are stone axes from the Neolithic Age and objects from the Bronze
Age. You can experience for yourself how the work was done on a replica
of a stone drill and a grain grinding stone from the Neolithic Age.
Open: from May to October every Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
and every first Sunday of the month from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., other
times by arrangement. Price: adults €1.00, reduced €0.50.
23
Museum of Art,
Maximilianstrasse 33, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921-7645310, fax: +49
921-7645320, e-mail: info@kunstmuseum-bayreuth.de. The focus of the
exhibitions is on art from the 20th century. The building also houses
the small poster museum with advertising posters from the areas of
theatre, cinema and music and the tobacco history collection of British
American Tobacco with exhibits such as pipes, cases for cigarettes and
chewing tobacco and various graphics. Open: Tuesday
24 Iwalewahaus, Wölfelstrasse 2, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49
921-554500, fax: +49 921-554502, e-mail: iwalewa@uni-bayreuth.de . The
Iwalewahaus shows contemporary art from Africa. Open: During ongoing
exhibitions from Tue to Sun from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. When there are no
exhibitions, the house is closed. Price: adults €5.00, reduced €3.00.
25 Wilhelm Leuschner Memorial, Moritzhöfen 25, 95447 Bayreuth. Phone:
+49 921-1507200 . The memorial was set up in Wilhelm Leuschner's
birthplace. The exhibition shows his life with stations in Bayreuth
(childhood, youth, training), Darmstadt (work, joining a union and
joining the SPD, serving as a soldier in the First World War) and Berlin
(resistance to the Nazi dictatorship and execution). Open: Tuesday to
Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Price: Admission is free.
26 Maisel's Brewery Museum, Kulmbacher
Strasse 40, 95444 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921-401234, fax: +49 921-401233,
email: brauereimuseum@maisel.com. Visiting the museum is only possible
with a guided tour, which takes place daily at 2:00 p.m. Groups of 12 or
more people can also book another date with prior agreement. The tour
lasts approximately 90 minutes. Finally there is a glass of Maisel's
Weisse or a non-alcoholic drink for tasting in the "Alten Abfüllerei".
Price: adults €5.00, young people €3.00.
27 Bayreuth catacombs,
Kulmbacher Strasse 60, 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921-401234, fax: +49
921-401233, e-mail: katakomben@bayreuther-bierbrauerei.de. Guided tours
for individuals take place Monday to Sunday at 4:00 p.m. Other dates can
be booked for groups of 12 or more people by arrangement. The guided
tour of the catacombs takes approximately 60 minutes. The visitor learns
details from the history of the brewery, but also how the catacombs were
used for other purposes. The temperature in the catacombs is 10 degrees,
so don't forget suitable clothing. After the tour there is a freshly
tapped AKTIEN Zwick'l cellar beer in the "Bräustüberl". Price: adults
€5.00, young people €3.00.
28 German Masonic Museum, Im Hofgarten 1,
95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921-69824, e-mail: museum@freimaurermuseum.de.
The museum exhibits Masonic clothing, medals, lodge badges, engravings,
pictures and cups related to Masonic lodges. Open: Tuesday to Friday
from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m.
to 12 p.m., closed on public holidays.
29 Wo Sarazen Art,
Brandenburger Strasse 36, 95448 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921-20616. Artist
Wo Sarazen has placed sculptures and objects in his "Cellar Art Museum"
in extensive corridors carved into the sandstone for the storage of
beer. Open: by appointment; during the festival daily from 11:00 a.m. to
4:00 p.m. Price: Admission is free.
30 SpVgg Oberfranken Bayreuth
1921, Markgrafenallee 3a, 95448 Bayreuth. Email:
museum@altstadt-kult.de. Museum founded and run by volunteers all about
the Bayreuth football club. Open: Museum: before and after the home
games of SpVgg Bayreuth. Special opening is possible by arrangement.
31 German Typewriter Museum, Bernecker Strasse 11, 95448 Bayreuth. Tel.:
+49 921-23445, fax: +49 921-7857475, e-mail: info@forschungsstatte.de.
All about typewriters. The oldest device dates back to 1888.
Appointments for viewing only by prior arrangement.
32 School Museum,
Wittelsbacherring 9, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921-759850, fax: +49
921-7598530, e-mail: verwaltung@rwg-bayreuth.de. The
Richard-Wagner-Gymnasium shows its development from a private high
school for girls in 1867 to a modern grammar school and how events
(World War I, Nazi dictatorship, reconstruction after 1945) influenced
school life. Open: only after prior registration. Price: Admission is
free.
33 Transport Museum Wedlich, Ludwig-Thoma-Strasse 36, 95447
Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921-759060, email: info@wedlich.com. The Transport
Museum shows old tools from the office and warehouse, such as scales,
hand trucks, boxes, typewriters and telex machines. Open: by
appointment.
34 Lettenhof - Museum for farming implements,
Adolf-Wächter-Strasse 17, 95447 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921-78461430, Fax:
+49 921-784691430. Collection of rural farming and household implements.
Viewing is only possible by appointment. Price: Adults and young people
€1.50, children under 16 and reduced €0.70.
Maximilian-Strasse, or Maxstrasse for short,
is the main shopping street and, together with a few side streets,
forms the pedestrian zone.
In the Friedrichstrasse, which was
laid out from the early 18th century, there are many historical
buildings, with the death house of the poet Jean Paul and the
Steingräber piano factory.
The Ludwigstraße leads past the New
Castle, the government of Upper Franconia and the Stork House.
In
the Brandenburger Straße in the district of St. Georgen you will
find a lot of historical architecture worth seeing.
Hermitage, Hermitage 4 . The Hermitage is a historic park and refuge
of Margrave Georg Wilhelm (early 18th century) in the St. Johannis
district. The orangery, the sun temple and the individual grottos
and fountains are worth a visit. The Old Castle can only be visited
as part of a guided tour. In the New Castle there is a café in the
east wing and the museum ticket office with museum shop and the west
wing is used for art exhibitions in summer. The west wing, as well
as the sun temple (central building), can be rented for private
celebrations.
courtyard garden. The Court Garden forms the
extension of the New Palace. On the edge of the Hofgarten are the
Villa Wahnfried and the Masonic Museum.
Festspielpark below the
Festspielhaus
Rohrensee, at the north-west end of the
Studentenwald. There is a small animal enclosure, a children's
playground and a rowing boat rental.
Botanical Garden of the
University of Bayreuth. Located on the edge of the university campus
is the Botanical Garden, next to Munich the most important park of
its kind in Bavaria.
In addition, there are many smaller
parks in the individual districts.
Other park-like local
recreation areas are the forests that surround the city and
sometimes extend far into the city center.
Student forest,
south of the university on the southern ring road
Hohe Warte,
north above the Festspielhaus, with the victory tower as a viewing
platform.
Buchstein, located between the districts Altstadt and
Meyernberg.
Saas Forest, on the edge of the Saas district.
Laimbacher Wald, next to the Meyernberg district.
Grunauer Wald,
located between the districts of Grunau/Aichig and Wolfsbach.
Various
The glockenspiel, which used to hang on the New Town
Hall, now rings at the Graser School (Kanalstraße) directly opposite
the ZOH.
The graves of Jean Paul and Franz Liszt and the Wagner
family can be found in the city cemetery.
Lohengrin Therme, Kurpromenade 5, 95448 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 (0)921
79240-0 . In the district of Seulbitz behind the Hermitage. Thermal
world with 13 pools, the sauna area with Finnish sauna, soft sauna,
sanarium and stone bath and a large wellness area.
SVB indoor pool.
50 meter track and extra diving pool.
city pool. Sauna world and aqua
fitness.
Open-air pools are the Kreuzsteinbad (admission fee) near
the university and/or the Altstadtbad (free) in the Fantasy Street. The
latter with very cold water.
Cineplex, Hindenburgstrasse 2, 95445
Bayreuth. Seven cinemas on Hindenburgstraße opposite the Rotmaincenter.
The ADFC Bayreuth offers guided bike tours for everyone; there are also
plenty of tips on cycling around the festival city on its website.
Bayreuth Golf Club, Rodersberg 43, 95448 Bayreuth. Tel.: (0)921 970704,
fax: (0)921 970705, e-mail: info@golfclub-bayreuth.de. The club also
offers membership on the public short course. Price: Nine holes for €50.
Mini golf, Am Schiesshaus 2. Tel.: (0)921 2 06 38.
The candle fair takes place in February as a traditional market in the
pedestrian zone Maximilianstraße
A carnival parade takes place on the
Sunday before Shrove Monday in Maximilianstraße.
The traditional
Bayreuth Spring Festival begins in April on the Volksfestplatz.
Maisel's wheat beer festival. At the end of April and beginning of May,
the brewery of the same name hosts the Maisel's wheat beer festival for
four days. Bands and rock greats of the past play from Thursday to
Sunday (e.g. Nazareth, The Sweet, Saga etc.). The conclusion is the fun
run (short distances for children up to a half marathon through the city
area. A small entry fee is charged when you register.).
The
Whitsun market is always one week before Whitsun from Saturday to
Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the market square, with around 40
stalls offering all sorts of little things from knife sharpeners to
spices,
Bayreuth folk festival. From Pentecost Friday, the festival
will take place for 10 days. There will be fireworks on the first and
last day. Wednesday is family day with half prices and Thursday "Miss
Bayreuth" election, which is always good for a surprise!
Bayreuth
Citizens' Festival. This festival has been held on the first weekend in
July since 1977. In the historic city centre. Food, drink, culture,
music and fun from Friday to Sunday.
Midsummer Nights Festival. At
the end of July/beginning of August there is a summer night festival in
the Hermitage with live music and fireworks.
Bayreuth Wagner
Festival. The Bayreuth Wagner Festival is celebrated from the end of
July to the end of August. If you want tickets, you have to apply for
years or be lucky when selling online.
The Martinimarkt takes place
in mid-November as a traditional market in the Maximilianstrasse
pedestrian zone.
In December, the Christmas market takes place in
front of the hospital church and the winter village is set up in front
of the old castle.
Cycle toursThe flat cycle paths to Hollfeld,
which follow former railway lines, or the Rotmain cycle path to Thurnau
and on to Kulmbach are ideal for first excursions out of the city.
Mountain bikers also get their money's worth, because Bayreuth is
right in the middle of the three Franconian mountain bike networks
Fichtelgebirge, Franconian Forest and Franconian Switzerland.
Around Bayreuth there is a network of cycle paths created under the
leadership of the Bayreuth district office; In the western and
south-western district (roughly in the direction of Franconian
Switzerland) these are the so-called BT cycle paths BT 1 to BT 21, in
the north-eastern direction (roughly in the direction of the
Fichtelgebirge) the cycle paths BT 22 to BT 37. The total length of the
circular cycle paths is around 675 km, 325km of it in Franconian
Switzerland and 350km in the eastern district. The length of the
circular routes is between 17 and 48 kilometers with an average length
of 26 kilometers. This network is supplemented within the district by
nine themed cycle paths and two MTB routes from the Neubürg development
company.
Furthermore, several national cycle paths in the active
region of Upper Franconia lead through Bayreuth; These paths, mostly
designed as circular cycle paths, can be combined with each other,
supplemented by the overriding paths of the Bavarian network for
cyclists, e.g. B. the Franconian Switzerland Cycle Path, the
Fichtelgebirge Cycle Path, the Pegnitz Cycle Path or the Haidenaab Cycle
Path. Bayreuth is also on the Castle Road Cycle Route, which runs from
Mannheim to Prague.
The world-renowned Richard Wagner Festival has been taking place in
Bayreuth since 1876. Wagner operas are staged on the so-called Green
Hill. The tickets with official prices of up to 300 euros are usually
sold out in advance (up to 10 years waiting time), but there are chances
of acquiring tickets for individual performances at moderately higher
prices on the black market in front of the Festspielhaus. There are also
chances of seeing one or the other act if you "talk" the ticket out of
the performance/production to disappointed opera friends who leave
during the break and get the rest (one or two complete acts, because
during an act access to the theater space is closed).
For
price-conscious art lovers, since 2008 there has been a sponsored public
viewing of the performances on a large screen with HD picture quality
and 3D surround sound (in 2009 with 38,000 viewers and listeners) at the
Bayreuth festival square. There is also the live stream on the Internet
at a bargain price of 14.90 euros;
The Studiobühne Bayreuth shines
with semi-professional in-house productions. The venues of the studio
stage are the theater in the Roentgenstraße, the ruins theater in the
Bayreuth Hermitage and the courtyard of the Bayreuth piano factory
Steingraeber & Sons, as well as the ruins theater in Sanspareil in the
municipality of Wonsees.
The Brannaburger Kulturstadl is an amateur
theater company and cabaret in the heart of the St. Georgen district.
The Stadthalle Bayreuth is the location for proms, balls of the city of
Bayreuth and cultural events of all kinds.
The center is a small
event hall in which the readings of the North Bavarian Kurier also take
place in winter.
Advance ticket sales at the box office in the
Bayreuth travel agency, Luitpoldplatz 9, Tel. +49 (0)921/69001, email:
info@kurier-tickets.de, Monday to Friday 9 a.m. - 6 p.m., Saturday 9
a.m. - 2 p.m
By plane
The nearest airport with German and international
connections is Nuremberg Airport (IATA: NUE), arrival via the A9
motorway heading south; distance around 90 km).
Bayreuth
airfield (IATA: BYU), Flugplatzstraße 1, 95463 Bindlach. Tel.: +49
9208-657944, fax: +49 9208 - 657945, e-mail: info@fair-air.de . it
is only flown to by business and hobby pilots.
By train
Bayreuth main station From Nuremberg, the regional express runs
every hour via Hersbruck and Pegnitz to Bayreuth. Journey time is
approx. 1 hour. There are direct connections with regional express
trains to Würzburg and via Kronach to Saalfeld every 2 hours. If you
want to go to Saxony, you have to change in Hof to the RE to
Dresden. A regional train runs between Bayreuth and Weiden, another
runs the sack route to Weidenberg.
Local public transport in
the metropolitan region of Nuremberg is operated by the
Verkehrsverbund Großraum Nürnberg VGN. It is possible to use
different means of transport with one ticket, such as bus, train,
S-Bahn or U-Bahn. Tickets can be purchased online or via an app.
Thuringia, in Hof, Kulmbach, Bayreuth, Neustadt an der Waldnaab,
Weiden, Tirschenreuth and Wunsiedel in Upper Franconia, in Saxony in
Vogtland, Zwickau and the western Ore Mountains and in the Czech
Republic in the Karlovy Vary region. The day pass for second class
costs €24 (200 Kč in Czech Republic) (plus €2 in Germany if bought
at the counter) for the 1st person. For the 2nd to 5th person the
surcharge is 8 € (100 CZK) extra each. On the day of validity, you
can make as many journeys as you like with the participating
transport companies up to 3:00 a.m. the following day. You are also
allowed to take 3 children between the ages of 6 and 14 and any
number of children under the age of 6 with you. One bike per person
is also free. The surnames and first names of all travelers must be
entered in block letters on the ticket, ID cards must be carried.
By bus
Various bus companies travel to Bayreuth, see also
long-distance buses in Germany. The bus station is on Goethestraße,
so confusingly neither in the immediate vicinity of the main train
station nor at the ZOH. Coming from the train station, head out of
town towards the Festspielhaus on Bahnhofstrasse/Bürgerreuther
Strasse and turn left after the main post office into Goethestrasse.
In the street
Bayreuth is on the A9 autobahn, which runs from
Munich to Berlin via Nuremberg. There are only two exits,
Bayreuth-Nord (industrial area and quickest way to the
Festspielhaus) and Bayreuth-Süd (exit for the university). Just
under 10 km north of Bayreuth is the Bayreuth/Kulmbach motorway
triangle with the A70 motorway coming from
Bamberg-Schweinfurt-Würzburg.
For calmer minds, three main
roads lead through Bayreuth: the main road B2 from Hof in the
direction of Nuremberg, the main road B22 from Würzburg in the
direction of Cham and the main road B85 from Weimar via Kronach in
the direction of Passau.
The traditional Castle Road leads
through Bayreuth on its way from Mannheim to Prague. The city is
just before the end of the stage Bamberg - Czech border.
By
bicycle
Several long-distance cycle paths connect the district
with other regions. The best known is the Main Cycle Path, whose
southern headwaters, the Rotmain Cycle Path, go through Bayreuth,
and the Pegnitz Cycle Path, which partly shares the route with the
Rotmain Cycle Path, but continues south. The Bayreuth-Chemnitz cycle
path is also becoming increasingly important. And last but not
least, the so-called D-Netz should be mentioned - here Bayreuth is
located directly on the D-Netz route 11 - Ostsee-Oberbayern, which
leads from Rostock to Salzburg and in turn is part of the EuroVelo
route 4, the 4000km long West -East connection from Roscoff on the
Atlantic coast to Kiev in the Ukraine.
The only public transport is the city bus. The network is
sufficiently well developed and runs regularly during the day,
mostly every 20 minutes. Individual lines or sections of track can
also have a larger cycle. More information online at the Bayreuth
public transport company. All buses go via the central bus stop ZOH
(ZOH, Kanalstraße / corner Hohenzollernring), where you can reach
all other lines.
tied together.
Otherwise, all the
important sights in the city center can be easily reached on foot.
For drivers, there are a large number of multi-storey car parks
and parking lots (e.g. Münzgasse) near the city centre, which vary
greatly in price and are sometimes very expensive (e.g. Badstraße).
During the Bayreuth Festival (end of July to the end of August)
there are few construction sites in road traffic, but before and
after the festival they increase or decrease significantly and
abruptly.
For cyclists there is a well-developed network of
cycle paths to all important sights.
If you need a car, you
will find it at the largest rental companies:
Sixt, Bernecker
Str. 65, near the Bayreuth-Nord motorway exit.
Avis,
Markgrafenallee 6, at the district office.
Budget,
Markgrafenallee 6, at the district office. Online booking only.
Europcar, Albrecht-Dürer-Str. 3. Near the SVB indoor pool.
Call line taxi from Bayreuth Hbf or Luitpoldplatz to many towns in
the district, in the evening (usually 9:00 p.m., 10:30 p.m. and
12:00 a.m.) from Sunday to Friday, registration no later than 45
minutes before the departure time on Tel. +49 (0)921/ 64422 (Taxi
and rental car Worschech), specify the starting stop and the number
of people, 2.50 euros per person
Cycling in downtown Bayreuth
is passable - there is even a cycle path map, albeit a bit outdated
(edition 10/2010).
1 Rotmain Center (RMC), Hohenzollernring 58, 95444 Bayreuth. Like
almost all cities, Bayreuth also has a modern shopping center in the
city center. The Rotmain-Center is located outside the old city center
on the Hohenzollernring and offers everything that similar shopping
centers offer: restaurants, cafés, chain companies (e.g. Wöhrl, H&M,
Nordsee etc.) and retailers. The RMC is also connected to Maxstrasse by
a suspension bridge over the Hohenzollernring.
2 Maximilianstraße, or
Maxstraße for short, is the central shopping street and, after the
redesign, the city's living room. It is the center of the pedestrian
zone, which stretches across Sophienstrasse, Von-Römer-Strasse and other
streets. It is definitely worthwhile for every stranger to explore the
long Maxstrasse and its side streets.
Hof Pharmacy,
Richard-Wagner-Str. 2. Tel.: +49 (0)921 65210. A Bayreuth specialty is
the herbal liqueur Santo Ruvino, which the court pharmacy produces.
3
E-Center, Carl-Burger-Strasse 8, 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 (0)921 54380.
Open: Mon – Sat 7 a.m. – 8 p.m.
4 REWE, Friedrich Str. 53, 95444
Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 (0)921 761091. Open: Mon – Sat 7 a.m. – 8 p.m.
5
Kaufland, Weiherstrasse 27, 95448 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 (0)921 789350.
Open: Mon – Sat 7 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Factory outlets
6 Walküre
Porzellan, Gravenreutherstraße 5. Tel.: +49 921 78930-760. Open: Monday
to Friday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
7 Arena Outlet
Bindlach, Stoeckigstrasse 2, 95463 Bindlach. Tel.: +49 9208 6573120.
Swimming trunks, shorts, bathing suits, bikinis, swimming goggles,
t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc. from the Arena brand. Open: Monday-Friday
10am-6pm, Saturday 10am-1pm.
8 Dick, Outer Badstrasse 2, 95448
Bayreuth. Email: bayreuth@dick.de. Selection of knives and tools 2nd
choice at special prices. Open: Mon to Thurs 7 a.m. - 12 p.m. and 1 p.m.
- 3 p.m., Fri 8 a.m. - 11 a.m.
Factory outlet for outerwear at
Markgrafenallee 3d (near the district office): Wednesdays; T-shirts from
€5
9 Schiesser, strictly speaking, is in Bindlach, Stöckigstraße 2,
95463 Bindlach. Phone: +49 9208 570461, email:
wvk.BindlachLtg@schiesser.com. Irregular special sales with great
discounts and bargains (e.g. Hilfiger sweatshirts for 5 €) and the new
underwear collections far from the "good, old double fine rib" make the
power shopper's heart beat faster. Open: Mon to Fri 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.,
Sat 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
The Franconian, rich and hearty cuisine is omnipresent in Bayreuth
and the surrounding area. Delicious roasts, dumplings, cabbage, crispy
Schäuferla and a fresh beer. All this is available cheaply in many
places, i.e. a main course for less than 8€ and around 2€ for half a
liter of beer (locally also called Seidla) in the nearby Franconian
Switzerland and every visitor should have experienced the good
Franconian cuisine at least once. But even those who don't necessarily
like hearty meat dishes will find varied and inexpensive places in
Bayreuth.
Sausages
Delicatessen Christian Schmauß,
Ludwig-Thoma-Strasse 25A, 95447 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 23051416. More
than 50 bratwurst variations are offered alternately. There is also
cheese, bread, sausage, raw and smoked fish, dry-aged meat and unusual
meats. Open: Tue - Fri 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
The bratwurst booth in
the upper pedestrian zone (Richard-Wagner-Strasse) between Woolworth and
DM-Drogeriemarkt - 2 bratwurst for €1.80; also a piece of Bayreuth.
The local, classic Bayreuth fast food par excellence: bratwurst with
mustard (local: Brodwärschd mit Semfbd). Various stalls in the city
center.
Cheap
In the area of fast food there are the following
options:
McDonald's: there are three "Schotten" branches in
Bayreuth. A drive-in with McCafé in the St. Georgen industrial area
(Bayreuth-Nord motorway exit), since August 2008 a McCafé in the main
train station and a small branch in the Rotmaincenter (first floor, near
the rear exit).
Burger King: currently there is a small branch in the
Rotmaincenter (first floor, near the rear exit); a second was built in
the St. Georgen industrial area (Bayreuth-Nord motorway exit) and opened
in June 2008.
Kebab stands are distributed almost everywhere in the
city.
fFod trucks
Swagman, Riedingerstrasse 11, 95448
Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 163 1722076. The Roadhouse is the permanent address
in Bayreuth. The food trucks are at different locations in Bayreuth and
the surrounding area from Monday to Friday, details on the homepage. The
specialty is mashed potatoes with vegetables, meat and sauces. Open: Mon
- Fri 10 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Middle
2 Oskar-Das Wirtshaus am Markt,
Maximilianstraße 33, 95444 Bayreuth. Typical Franconian cuisine in a
modern cooking style. Open: Daily from 8am to 1am. Price: Main courses
€6 - €15.
3 PizzaRia, Spinnereistrasse 7, 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49
921 1510055. With very modern facilities in the converted new spinning
mill. Price: Pizza €6-€12.
4 Lamondi, Bahnhofstrasse 23, 95444
Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 2305699. Formerly Mondial, with fusion food
opposite the main train station, great value for money with lounge music
in a design atmosphere.
5 Hansl's Holzofenpizzeria, small pizzeria
with a family flair and cult status, opposite the Stadthalle.
6
Enchilada, Hindenburgstrasse 3, 95445 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921 66177,
fax: +49 921 5072891, e-mail: bayreuth@enchilada.de. Tex-Mex food from
the well-known franchise chain, 'happy hour' until 8 p.m. (cocktails
half price), opposite the cinema. Open: Mon – Thu 5pm – 1am, Fri 5pm –
2am, Sat 12pm – 2am, Sun 5pm – 12am.
Upscale
7 GENDERRIES,
Bahnhofstrasse 14, 95444 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 (0)921 7860-0. Restaurant
in the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, with French cuisine. Open: bistro, daily
from 7am to 11am and 5pm to 1am, breakfast daily from 7am to 11am,
dinner à la carte, Monday to Sunday from 6pm to 10.30pm.
8 Hotel
Goldener Anker, Opernstrasse 6, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 7877740.
Restaurant (25 seats) with fine French cuisine. Open: only in the
evenings from Wed to Sun.
1 Mohren Bräu, Tristanstraße 8. Tel.: +49 921 1635936. Directly at
the Festival Park, one of the few preserved old Franconian inns, tasty
own beers 0.5 l - 2.00 €, very good local food at traditional prices
3-12 € and generous portions, good audience of all stripes, many artists
during the festival season, funny landlords, ideal for regulars' tables,
beer garden small but nice, every customer is warmly welcome, every
first Thursday and Friday of the month there are the rustic
Buschenbiertage (beer 1 .50 € and meat loaf from the oven 1.50 €)
Clubhouse of the organization MenschenWürde e.V. Open: Mon to Fri from 5
p.m.
2 Becher Bräu, St.-Nikolaus-Strasse 25, 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.:
+49 921 68993. The oldest brewery restaurant in Bayreuth, a rustic pub
in Bayreuth's old town with very cheap little things and also larger
dishes to go with the beer. Bayreuth cult! But nothing for people who
don't like the witty sayings of the landlord. "You want a klaans beer?
Wait until you're doing something big!"
3 Schinner Braustuben,
Richard-Wagner-Strasse 38, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 67673. Right
next to Villa Wahnfried, very good food, inexpensive daily specials,
good beers. Open: 10.00-14.00 and from 17.00-24.00, Sunday evening and
Monday closed.
4 Liebesbier, Andreas-Maisel-Weg 1, 95445 Bayreuth.
Phone: +49 921 46008020 . An idea of the Maisel brewery, over 100
regional and international beers on tap and in bottles. There are also
steaks, fish, burgers and regional products in a rustic ambience. Open:
Daily 5 p.m. to 12 p.m.
5 Manns-Bräu, Friedrichstrasse 23, 95444
Bayreuth. Phone: +49 921 1638988 . Cozy inn with beer garden in the
alley. Mann's Bräu - special dark beer is brewed by the Bayreuther
Becher brewery. Open: Daily 10:30 a.m. - 10:00 p.m., Fri 4:00 p.m. -
10:00 p.m.
6 Glenk Bräu, Eichelweg 10-14, 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49
921 15137316. Next to the brewery is a large beer garden with a
playground and a tavern. Open: Brewery: Mon - Fri 09:00 - 18:00, Sat
09:00 - 13:00; Beer garden: Tue - Sat 4 p.m. - 10 p.m., Sun 10 a.m. - 2
p.m. and 4 p.m. - 10 p.m., kitchen until 9 p.m. Price: Cold and warm
dishes from €4.80 - €9.20.
7 WunderBar, Erlanger Strasse 2, 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 68280.
Admission from 18 years of age. Open: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday and before public holidays from 10 p.m.
Beer gardens:
Glenk beer garden, see breweries above
8 Herzogkeller,
Hindenburgstrasse 9 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 4341. Nice beer garden
on Hindenburgstraße (out of town on the left hand side after the
brewery) on a small hill. Beer and snacks must be fetched inside. Open:
From mid-April to the end of September daily from 4 p.m. Price: Snacks 4
- 8 €.
9 Storchenkeller, Oberkonnersreuther Straße 6. Old linden
trees provide pleasant shade. Insider tip: the portion of Rippla for
€7.80 is huge and tasty and the cellar drink has a habit of
"evaporating" ;-)
During the Bayreuth Festival, the city is more international and
sophisticated. However, there may be bottlenecks in the accommodation
options in Bayreuth and the surrounding area, and room prices rise
accordingly. Those who are not particularly interested in Wagner should
avoid the period from the end of July to the end of August.
Cheap
1 Gasthof Kolb, Wendelhöfen 8, 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 24216.
Small family business with a beautiful beer garden - bicycle-friendly
business. Rooms with shower, toilet, hairdryer, room safe and TV. Price:
Single room from €41, double room from €74 with breakfast.
2 Grunau
Hotel, Kemnather Strasse 27, 95448 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 79800. Garni
hotel in a building complex in which there is a gym as well as a few
supermarkets. Price: Single room from €74, double room from €96 with
breakfast.
3 Bayreuth Youth Hostel, Universitätsstr. 28, 95447
Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 764380, e-mail: bayreuth@jugendherberge.de. Near
the university behind the Kreuzsteinbad. A maximum of 4 guests in one
room, breakfast and bed linen included, 24-hour opening with number
code, guest washing machine for a fee, free W-LAN in all public areas.
Feature: free wifi. Check in: 17:00 - 22:00.
Middle
4 Arvena
Kongress Hotel, Eduard-Bayerlein-Strasse 5a, 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49
921 7270. 24 junior suites and 172 rooms for double or single occupancy
with bath/shower, toilet, hair dryer, minibar, direct dial telephone,
flat screen TV, radio, trouser press, cosmetic mirror, kettle, room safe
and air conditioning, WiFi free of charge. Feature: free wifi. Price:
Single room from €85, double room from €110 with breakfast.
5 Hotel
Goldener Löwe, Kulmbacher Str. 30, 95445 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 746060.
Hotel with restaurant in a historic building between the brewery museum
and the city center. 47 beds, non-smoking rooms with shower/toilet,
make-up mirror, hairdryer, TV connection and direct dial telephone.
Price: Single room from €43, double room from €85 with breakfast.
6
Hotel Goldener Hirsch, Bahnhofstrasse 13, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921
15044000. Rooms with bath/shower/toilet, telephone and cable TV, parking
lot (5 €/day) directly at the house. The hotel with 85 beds and
restaurant has been family-owned since 1920. Price: Single room from
€68, double room from €85 with breakfast.
upscale
7 Hotel
Goldener Anker, Opernstrasse 6, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 921 7877740.
Centrally located in the pedestrian zone, right next to the Margravial
Opera House. Traditional family hotel in the 13th generation. Price:
Single room from €98, double room from €168 with breakfast.
8
RAMADA HotelResidenzschloss, Erlanger Strasse 37, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.:
+49 921 75850. 104 rooms with reading lamp, satellite TV with Pay TV,
free WLAN, telephone, hairdryer and safe. Restaurant in the listed rooms
of a former brewery. Feature: free wifi. Price: Rooms at daily rates.
9 Bayerischer Hof, Bahnhofstrasse 14, 95444 Bayreuth. Phone: +49
(0)921 7860-0. right at the train station. Price: single room from €65,
double room from €85.
Camping/ RV
Motorhome parking space at
(Seulbitz district, see also activities. Information on +49 0921 79
240-0
1 University of Bayreuth, Universitätsstrasse 30. The university was
founded in 1975, making it one of the youngest universities in Germany.
The range of courses is varied and ranges from studying engineering to
law and languages. Under the motto Becoming a Bayreuther is easy you
will find important services of the city of Bayreuth for freshmen as a
PDF.
2 VHS Bayreuth. The Adult Education Center offers a new program
twice a year with a wide range of courses and events.
Evangelisches
Bildungswerk Bayreuth/Bad Berneck. Non-denominational focal points of
the work in the areas of religion and theology, church and society,
educational and life issues, psychology and pedagogy, cooperation with
initiative groups and social movements.
KEB - Catholic adult
education. The topics range from art, music, religion, politics to
health and personal development. Study trips and exhibitions are also
organized.
City library - main office, Luitpoldplatz 7. Tel.: +49
(0)921 25 17 56, fax: +49 (0)921 25 14 39, e-mail:
stadtbibliothek@stadt.bayreuth.de.
With the exception of jobs in the catering sector, the work situation is difficult, as is the case throughout Upper Franconia.
Bayreuth City Police Station, Werner-Siemens-Strasse 9, 95444 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 (0)921 5062130.
miscellaneous
Two clinics that now belong together are:
2
Bayreuth Clinic, Preuschwitzer Straße 101. With children's clinic.
3
Klinik Hohe Warte, Hohe Warte 8. With a good stroke unit.
Further:
4 District Hospital, Nordring 2. Clinic for Psychiatry and
Psychotherapy.
5 Herzoghöhe Clinic, Kulmbacher Straße 103. Clinic for
rehabilitation and acute rheumatology clinic.
6 Surgical emergency
practice, Friedrich-von-Schiller-Straße 18 b. i.a. for work or school
accidents.
7 Primary care practice, Hindenburgstraße 10 (near the
Romaincenter). Tel.: +49 (0)921 403573. Open: Mon – Fri 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.,
Sat, Sun + public holidays 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. + 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Dialysis centers
8 Hohe Warte Hospital, Hohe Warte 8. Tel.: +49 (0)
921 24082.
9 Dialysis Center Bayreuth, Spitzwegstr. 55. Tel.: +49
(0)921 507202-0.
Pharmacies
10 Adler Pharmacy,
Maximilianstrasse 47, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 (0)921 65461, fax: +49
(0)921 64006, e-mail: apoadler@t-online.de. Open: Mon - Fri 8 a.m. - 7
p.m., Sat 8 a.m. - 2 p.m.
11 Market Pharmacy, Maximilianstrasse
52-54, 95444 Bayreuth. Tel.: +49 (0)921 64414, Fax: +49 (0)921 64461.
Open: Mon – Fri 8 a.m. – 7 p.m., Sat 8 a.m. – 6 p.m.
12 Brandenburger
Pharmacy, Brandenburger Str. 24, 95448 Bayreuth. Phone: +49 (0)921
22209, fax: +49 (0)921 22207, email:
info@brandenburger-apotheke-bayreuth.de. Open: Mon - Fri 8 a.m. - 6.30
p.m., Sat 8.30 a.m. - 12.30 p.m.
Some bakers (e.g. Backstadl: Friedrich-Ebert-/corner of Rosestraße)
are open on Sundays between 7.30 a.m. and 10.30 a.m. Pastries and rolls
(rolls, Laabla, Rundstück) are sold according to the motto "first come,
first served". Advance orders for bread, baguettes, etc. are possible.
The station bookstore offers the latest regional and national
newspapers, city maps, newspapers, magazines and books, as well as
postcards, travel guides and paperbacks, seven days a week from 6 a.m.
Taxis can be found on Schulstraße between the ZOH and the pedestrian
zone and at the main train station.
Natural gas filling stations in
Bayreuth.
Miscellaneous
The main post office is diagonally
opposite the main train station. As in all of Germany, the yellow
mailboxes have become rare, but there is also a mailbox for drivers at
the zebra crossing directly in front of the main train station, which is
also emptied later than the other mailboxes.
All of the major German
mobile phone providers are represented across the board in Bayreuth, so
nothing stands in the way of good cell phone reception.
There is free
WiFi for guests of the Bayerischer Hof and the attached pub Gendarmerie
(at the main station) as well as the coffee-espresso bar
Von-Römergasse/corner of Maxstraße (lower pedestrian zone).
There is
free internet access in many places via the BayernWLAN hotspots.
TMT
offers WLAN access in a large area of the city center for €4/h (payable
via paypal) or €20/month (flat rate).
Local radio stations are Radio
Mainwelle (all ages) on UKW 104.3 and Radio Galaxy (youth-oriented) on
UWK 92.7.
The local television station is TV Oberfranken (TVO), at
times also with a regional window on the cable frequency of RTL (usually
Mon-Fri 6:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.)
In 1194 the place was first mentioned as Baierrute in a document of
Bishop Otto II of Bamberg. The name component -rute is probably to be
interpreted as clearing (see -reuth). The fact that Baier- could refer
to immigrants from the Bavarian settlement area is controversial and
cannot be proven. There are many indications that the final naming took
place after the secondary local expansion and was intended to make
special Bavarian interests visible. In 1199 the name "Beirrut" and in
1231 "Beirruth" are documented. In the Bayreuth Landbuch of 1421/24, the
designations "Peyeruth" and "Peyrreute" are also documented, the
predecessor church of the Holy Trinity town church was initially
referred to as "Pfarr peyr Reut" (Reut = old town).
The "y" of
the place name appeared for the first time in 1532, long before the city
was taken over by Bavaria. The current form of writing is documented in
the Kulmbacher Bürgerbuch in 1625, but has not yet finally established
itself. Margravine Wilhelmine (1709-1758) called the town "Bareith".
Finds in the Bayreuth area - at the Bodenmühle, near Bindlach and on
the Neubürg - go back to the Neolithic Age. Tumuli near Eckersdorf,
Görschnitz and at Pensen are considered to be from the Bronze Age. The
Hallstatt period can u. a. Assign finds on the Saaser Berg, on the
Sophienberg and near Mistelgau. In 1992, the remains of a Celtic
settlement from around 400 BC were discovered at the foot of the
Bindlacher Berg. found.
Already in the early Middle Ages there
was a fortification on the site of the former Laineck Castle. Its wall,
which was initially a pure wood-earth block construction, was later
replaced by a new wood-earth wall, which was reinforced by powerful
posts set into the ground. In a third phase, this was replaced by a dry
stone wall. Especially the first and third level of this fence are
strongly reminiscent of Slavic construction methods, Slavs settled in
parts of Upper Franconia in the early Middle Ages. In the second half of
the 11th century, the Slavs of the Upper Franconian region disappeared
from written history, numerous place and field names (Dürschnitz,
Döhlau, Kulm) still indicate their presence. The fortifications on the
Rodersberg also date from between 800 and 1000 AD.
The East
Frankish colonization, which was carried out by the nobility and free
Franks, reached the Zweimainland at the beginning of the 9th century.
Under the Counts of Schweinfurt, Franconian settlers advanced as far as
Mistelgau and Gesees, Obernschreez and Eckersdorf can also be attributed
to this settlement phase.
With the founding of the diocese of
Bamberg in 1007, the independent cultural development of the region
began. At the same time there was a loss of power of Schweinfurt, whose
house with the death of Otto III. 1057 extinguished. His youngest
daughter Gisela married Arnold from the Andechs line of those from
Dießen in 1098; this is how the later Dukes of Merania gained a foothold
in the Bayreuth area.
The fact that the Bamberg prince bishops
forbade the rulers from expanding Altentrebgast Castle accelerated
settlement development in the Bayreuth area. From around the year 1000,
the towns of Altenreuth (today the Altstadt district), Heinersreuth,
Oberkonnersreuth and Meyernreuth emerged. Bindlach became the original
parish, whose district u. a. which included daughter churches in today's
old town and in Sankt Johannis. A small settlement on the lower market
was probably established as early as the 11th century during the
clearing activities of the Counts of Schweinfurt. The founding of the
future city in the power triangle Bindlach - Altentrebgast - Altenstadt
probably fell into the period of rivalry between Bamberg and the new
rulers Dießen-Andechs and Sulzbach, d. H. in the years 1137 to 1177.
The incorporated towns of Seulbitz (1035 as Salian royal estate
Silewize in a document of Emperor Konrad II) and Sankt Johannis
(possibly 1149 as Altentrebgast) were mentioned earlier than Bayreuth.
The Altstadt district (Altenstadt until the 19th century) to the west of
the city center is also likely to be older than the Bayreuth settlement.
In 1600, the town clerk referred to it as the original Bayreuth
("Urbayreuth"), a view that lasted until the end of the 19th century.
Even older traces of human presence were found in the district of
Meyernberg: ceramic remains and wooden crockery were dated to the 9th
century based on their decorations.
The layout of a street market, the route of which is integrated into
an old Carolingian street, indicates an early small trading center in
this area. Very early on, the "market", as it is still called today, was
the pulsating heart of the settlement, whose inhabitants were initially
mainly farmers. When market rights were granted to Neustadt am Kulm in
1370, the market rights granted to Bayreuth were cited as a model.
While Bayreuth was initially (1199) referred to as a villa
(village), the term civitas (city) appeared in a document for the first
time in 1231. One can therefore assume that Bayreuth was granted city
rights in the years between 1200 and 1230. Until 1248, the Counts of
Andechs-Meranien ruled the town. After their extinction, the burgraves
of Nuremberg from the Hohenzollern family took over the inheritance in
1260. In the second half of the 12th century, as part of a first
expansion of the city, the city church, today's Sophienstrasse,
Kanzleistrasse, Brautgasse and Kirchgasse were built. The upper and
lower gates formed the two entrances.
Initially, however, the
Plassenburg in Kulmbach was the residence and center of the country. The
city therefore developed only slowly and was repeatedly affected by
disasters. But as early as 1361, Emperor Charles IV granted Burgrave
Friedrich V the right to mint coins for the cities of Bayreuth and
Kulmbach.
In 1421 Bayreuth, which from that year had the status
of a margrave town under the rule of the Frankish Hohenzollerns,
appeared on a map for the first time as "Pairaeut". On the map of the
"lantstrassen durch das Romisch reych" by Erhard Etzlaub (1501),
Bayreuth is shown as station on the Via Imperii from Leipzig to Verona.
The Bayreuth town hall was located in the middle of the widest part of
the elongated market square. Privileges such as coinage and customs law,
jurisdiction and the brewing monopoly have been handed down from the
15th and 16th centuries. The most important trades were represented by
the dyers, cloth makers, cloth fullers, wool sifters, butchers, bakers,
bread shopper, millers, leather workers, shoemakers and candel
foundrymen.
Although the Roman-German King Sigismund had assured
him safe conduct to and from the Council of Constance, the Bohemian
theologian and reformer Jan Hus was burned at the stake in Constance in
1415. Sigismund implacably persecuted his followers, called Hussites, as
enemies; further executions and atrocities fueled popular anger in
Bohemia. In January 1430, the Hussites, led by Andreas Prokop, invaded
what is now Upper Franconia via Zwickau and Plauen with a large army.
Margrave Friedrich I, who was regarded as a favorite and paladin of
Sigismund, was unable to protect his lands from their invasion through
negotiations. In the night of January 29th, 1430 he left Bayreuth with
his troops, whereupon the able-bodied men withdrew into the surrounding
forests.
Probably on January 30, 1430, the Hussites occupied the
town, which had around 1,500 inhabitants at the time, and almost
completely destroyed it. On that day Bayreuth's favorable development
was abruptly interrupted. The town hall and the churches burned down,
and the town's historical documents and sources were largely destroyed.
The first hospital and nursing home (hospital) in the city, which was
located outside of the city at the time, also fell victim to the Hussite
invasion. Instead of rebuilding it on the same spot, a place within the
city walls was chosen. In 1435 the Bürgerspital was inaugurated on the
lower market, and in 1439 the predecessor of today's hospital church was
inaugurated next to it.
Frederick I took care of the
reconstruction of the city, which in 1444 already had around 200 houses
within the city walls. Under his successor Johann, the town hall was
rebuilt on the old site in 1446; the new building housed 14 meat shops
in addition to other shops. 1448 is the first Bayreuth tower detectable;
Until 1932, the watchmen lived and worked in the watchman's room on the
north tower of the town church, from where they overlooked the town and
drew attention to fires that had broken out by ringing the bell.
From 1450, according to data from the Society for Leprosy, a medieval
leprosarium can be proven in Bayreuth, which was located on Erlanger
Straße and was referred to as a "sick house". It was renovated in 1580,
was then used as a military hospital from 1666 and existed as a building
until 1854. Since the destruction of the town hall by the Hussites
almost all of the documents kept there fell victim, the oldest Bayreuth
town book dates from the year 1463. There are etc. interest payments
documented by the Jewish residents.
With Kasimir, the city and
the country were ruled by a brutal and ruthless prince from 1515 to
1527: Mass gouging out of eyes, cutting off of limbs and other
mutilations were considered milder punishments for the peasants who were
defeated in the Peasants' War. In 1517, indulgence dealers in Bayreuth
also collected money for the construction of St. Peter's Basilica.
As early as 1528 (eleven years after the beginning of the
Reformation), the sovereigns of the Franconian margravial areas joined
the Lutheran confession. Margrave George "the Pious", who ruled the city
from Ansbach from 1527 to 1541, was personally acquainted with Martin
Luther. The Schwabach Articles written by him and the Nurembergers in
1528 formed the basis for the Reformation in his countries. According to
the principle "Cuius regio, eius religio" all residents of Bayreuth had
to accept the faith of their prince, only the 18th century, with the
Enlightenment, brought more tolerance towards people of other faiths.
The Franciscan monastery, founded in 1514 on nearby Oschenberg, was
dissolved again in 1529. There had already been followers of Luther in
the city: George's predecessor Casimir, who banned Luther's teaching in
the country, had the preacher Schmalzing arrested and taken to the
bishop's prison in Bamberg. George's successor Albrecht "Alcibiades" was
again Catholic; he had the Augsburg Interim introduced in the country,
but failed with the attempt to reverse the form of Lutheran worship.
Between 1558 and 1654 witch hunts also took place in Bayreuth. In 1591,
22 "witches" died at the stake.
During the Margravial War in
1553, the settlements outside the city were abandoned in order to be
able to better defend Bayreuth. In 1495 and 1602 the plague raged in
Bayreuth, killing almost 20 percent of the population.
A turning point in the city's history was the relocation of the
residence from the Plassenburg above Kulmbach to Bayreuth by Margrave
Christian, the son of Elector Johann Georg von Brandenburg. The mayor
and the city council had tried in vain to dissuade the ruler from this
plan and belittled Bayreuth as a "little farming town". In 1603, the
town became a residence town against its will; the court of the prince,
meanwhile, brought a new, diversified world of work for the next two
centuries – e.g. with wig makers, truffle hunters and litter bearers. In
the same year, a sovereign courier post was set up from Bayreuth to
Coburg, where it was connected to the Imperial Reichspost
Frankfurt-Leipzig. In 1682, the Imperial Imperial Post Office in
Bayreuth was founded under taxi administration and in 1738 it was first
moved to Friedrichstraße ("Postei"), and then in 1742 to Marck Gass
(today's Maximilianstraße 16).
The first Hohenzollern Castle, the
forerunner of today's Old Castle, was built by Margrave Johann the
Alchemist between 1440 and 1457 and was expanded and rebuilt many times.
After Christian's death, he was succeeded in 1655 by his grandson
Christian Ernst, who founded the Illustre Gymnasium (later
Christian-Ernestinum Gymnasium) in 1664 and was involved in the
liberation of Vienna besieged by the Turks in 1683. To commemorate this
deed, he had the Markgrafenbrunnen, which today stands in front of the
New Palace, made as a memorial, on which he is shown as the Turkish
conqueror. During this time, the outer ring (Zwingermauer) of the city
wall was built and the (old) castle church was built.
A cattle
market was first mentioned in writing in Bayreuth in 1585, but during
the Thirty Years' War the weekly, annual and cattle markets came to a
standstill. In the first year of peace, 1648, Margrave Christian ordered
its rebuilding. From 1715 the city was allowed to hold four horse and
cattle markets and ten "common" cattle markets each year.
In
1605, a major town fire caused by negligence destroyed 137 of 251
houses, followed by another major town fire in 1621, which also
destroyed the town hall on the market square. At the beginning of the
17th century the first municipal water supply was built. The tapping of
the spring was completed in 1611, the water flowed in wooden pipes from
the Oberer Quellhof at the Rohrensee into four wells in the city. During
the great city fire of 1621, Bayreuth's marksmen's regulations from the
mid-15th century were lost. In 1623 a new shooting order came into
force; that year, the Schützengilde, the oldest civic association in the
city, was founded.
Bayreuth suffered badly from looting in the
final phase of the Thirty Years' War, which depopulated the city by
almost 30 percent. Thanks to Margrave Christian's policy of neutrality,
until 1630 it looked as if the principality could be kept out of the
war. After the intervention of the Swedes he joined the Protestant camp
in 1631; the fact that Bayreuth was now enemy territory for the
Imperialists was felt very severely in the following three years. On
September 20, 1632, it was occupied, looted and burned on Wallenstein's
orders. In 1633, the Bavarian General Johann von Werth had the suburbs
burned down, and in 1634 General von Wahl's troops shelled Bayreuth with
cannons. The following year, the margrave signed the Peace of Prague,
but from then on the city was hostile territory for Swedes and the
French. Passages, stationing and billeting of their troops burdened the
inhabitants. It was not until 1642 that Margrave Christian returned to
Bayreuth with his court.
In the 1680s, Margrave Christian Ernst
began to bring Huguenots to his country as religious refugees. From
1686, craftsmen and tradesmen came to Bayreuth, mainly from southern
France, and founded the first French Reformed church there that year.
At the beginning of the 18th century the Main barracks - destroyed in
1945 - were built. Christian Ernst's successor, the hereditary prince
and later Margrave Georg Wilhelm, began in 1701 with the construction of
the then independent town of Sankt Georgen am See (today's district of
St. Georgen, incorporated into Bayreuth in 1811), with the so-called
Order Castle, a town hall, a prison and a small barracks. He had the
Brandenburg pond there enlarged, on which he had naval battles staged.
In 1705 he founded the Order of Sincerity (ordre de la sincérité), which
was renamed the Order of the Red Eagle in 1734, and had the order's
church built, which was completed in 1711. In 1716 a princely faience
factory was set up in St. Georgen.
The first palace in the park
of the Hermitage was also built at this time by Margrave Georg Wilhelm
(1715-1719). In 1721, the city council acquired the palace of Baroness
Sponheim (today's Old Town Hall) to replace the town hall built in 1440
in the middle of the market square and destroyed in one of the town
fires. In 1729, Margrave Georg Friedrich Karl had the meat benches on
the market square demolished and 35 new benches built on the outside of
the city wall, west of the Mühltürlein, for 3,000 guilders.
In
1735, a retirement home, the so-called Gravenreuther Stift, was founded
in St. Georgen by a private foundation. Although the costs for the
building exceeded the means of the foundation, Margrave Friedrich
stepped in for this.
Bayreuth experienced a high point in the
city's history during the reign (1735-1763) of the margrave couple
Friedrich and Wilhelmine, who is also known as the "favourite sister of
Frederick the Great". Under the overall urban planning of Johann
Friedrich Grael, who was appointed building director of Bayreuth in
1736, a widespread desire to build began to change the face of the
residential city. An ordinance of the court building office set up in
1735 granted great privileges to all those who "planned to build
according to a previously examined plan, in order to give the city an
adornment". The old gloomy gatehouses were demolished as they obstructed
traffic and were defensibly obsolete. The city walls were also built
over in some places. After Grael's death in 1740, Wilhelmine appointed
the Paris-trained architect Joseph Saint-Pierre to the Bayreuth court.
In 1743 Margrave Friedrich engaged the cartographer Johann Adam Riediger
as chief engineer; His first assignment was to draw up a plan for the
residential city of Bayreuth and its surroundings, which he presented in
1745 under the title "Carte spéciale de la résidence de Bareuth". Today
this surviving map is called the Riediger plan.
In the years that
followed, numerous representative buildings and complexes were built
under the direction of the court architects Joseph Saint-Pierre and Carl
von Gontard: the Margravial Opera House as a richly furnished Baroque
theater (1744-1748), the redesign and expansion of the Hermitage with
the construction of the New Hermitage Palace with the sun temple
(1749–1753), the construction of the new (city) palace with courtyard
garden (from 1753) after the old palace had burned out due to the
Margrave’s carelessness, and the magnificent town expansion in today’s
Friedrichstrasse. An independent variant of the Rococo emerged, the
so-called Bayreuth Rococo, which primarily characterized the interior
design of the buildings mentioned.
Margrave Friedrich
successfully kept his principality out of the raging wars of his
brother-in-law Frederick the Great at the time, thereby bringing peace
to the Franconian imperial circle.
In 1742 the
Friedrichs-Akademie was founded, which was raised to the status of
university in 1743, but was moved to Erlangen in the same year due to
the negative attitude of the population after serious riots. It still
exists there as a university today. From 1756 to 1763 there was also an
academy of liberal arts and sciences in Bayreuth, which was initiated by
the margrave couple's trip to Italy.
The Catholics were given the
right to set up an oratory, and Jewish families also resettled. The
synagogue was dedicated in 1760 and the Jewish cemetery in 1787.
Margravine Wilhelmine died in 1758. Margrave Friedrich married again,
but this marriage was short lived and there were no descendants. After
Frederick's death in 1763, many artists and artisans emigrated to Berlin
and Potsdam to work for the Prussian King Frederick the Great, because
Margrave Frederick's successor, Margrave Friedrich Christian, had little
understanding of art. But he also lacked the means, because the lavish
lifestyle of his predecessor, the buildings and the salaries for the
mostly foreign artists had devoured a lot of money. The court, which had
comprised around 140 people under Georg Friedrich Karl, had grown to
around 600 employees by the end of Margrave Friedrich's reign. In 1769
the principality was on the verge of bankruptcy.
In 1769, the
childless Friedrich Christian Margrave Karl Alexander from the Ansbach
line of the Franconian Hohenzollerns followed. Bayreuth sank to a
secondary residence. Karl Alexander continued to reside in Ansbach and
rarely came to Bayreuth. In order to be able to settle his high debts,
the margrave provided the English with two regiments, an artillery
detachment and a hunter company during the American Revolutionary War.
More than 2,300 men from its Bayreuth and Ansbach territories were
forced into military service in the Thirteen Colonies under threat of
summary death sentences; only 1,379 returned. In 1788 Karl Alexander
again lent 1500 soldiers who had to fight for the States-General of the
Netherlands on Java.] In 1775 the Brandenburger Weiher in St. Georgen
was drained.
After the last margrave, Karl Alexander, renounced
the principalities of Ansbach and Bayreuth on December 2, 1791, his
territories became a Prussian province. The Prussian Minister Karl
August Freiherr von Hardenberg took over the administration from the
beginning of 1792. In March 1792, a fusilier battalion was transferred
from Halle to Bayreuth, which became a Prussian garrison town. Alexander
von Humboldt came to the city that year as the royal representative for
the mining of the two principalities, where he lived – with
interruptions – until 1796. The "Resource" was founded in 1796 based on
the example of English gentlemen's clubs. Its members met on the top
floor of the town hall for discussions, reading and games. After
disputes within their own ranks, 54 members founded a new society called
"Harmonie" in 1803. In 1805 they acquired the Palais d'Adhémar on the
Schloßberglein, which was built by Gontard and which was subsequently
referred to as the Harmony Building. In May 1800, Bayreuth workers went
on strike for the first time: bricklayers and carpenters went on strike
at that time of general inflation against the offered wage increase to
only 21 instead of the demanded 30 Kreuzer, which was perceived as too
low.
The rule of the Hohenzollerns over the Principality of
Kulmbach-Bayreuth ended in 1806 after Prussia's defeat by Napoleonic
France. When Prussia declared war on France in the summer of 1806, the
principality was almost defenseless at the mercy of Napoleon and his
Bavarian allies. On October 7, Marshal Soult occupied the city with
30,000 men, coming via the Dürschnitz. Marshal Ney appeared with 18,000
soldiers on October 8, and the first Bavarian division marched in the
following day. Forced billeting, requisitions, looting and violent
attacks terrified the population. With Etienne Le Grand de Mercey, the
city received a military governor who took a firm hand.
During
the French occupation from 1806 to 1810, Bayreuth was considered a
province of the French Empire and had to pay high war contributions. 2.5
million francs were demanded “in the shortest possible time”. From
November 14, 1806, the principality was under the administration of
Comte Camille de Tournon, who wrote a detailed inventory of the then
principality of Bayreuth. He described Bayreuth as "one of the prettiest
cities in Germany". In June 1809, the city was occupied by Austrian
troops, who had to give way to the French in July.
On June 30,
1810, the French army handed over the former principality to Bavaria,
which had meanwhile become a kingdom and had bought it from Napoleon
Bonaparte for 15 million francs. At that time, Bayreuth had around
12,000 inhabitants. On the part of the population, the political
transition to Bavaria was by no means greeted with jubilation. The
citizens of the city harbored no hope for more freedom and equality.
Napoleon was still at the height of his power and the Bavarian king was
his ally. Bayreuth became the district capital of the Bavarian
Mainkreis, which later became the Obermainkreis and in 1837 was renamed
the government district of Upper Franconia. The previously Protestant
Castle Church became Catholic and the oratory profaned.
With the
takeover by the Bavarians, the city became a Bavarian garrison. The Main
Barracks, which were destroyed in 1945, initially served as infantry
barracks, while the cavalry was housed at Geißmarkt. In the middle of
the 19th century, 5000 soldiers were stationed in the town of 15,000
inhabitants. Before the turn of the century that followed, construction
of the barracks district on the southern outskirts of the city began and
troops were moved there by 1903. Napoleon Bonaparte came to the city on
May 15, 1812 with his wife Maria Louise. He was greeted without cheering
by the population, and a local merchant's attempt to blow him up failed.
In 1810, 561 Jews were counted in the city. In the spirit of the
Enlightenment, margravial politics ensured that the Jewish population of
Bayreuth could feel tolerably safe in the 18th century. The Bavarian
Jewish Edict of 1813 improved their legal position. In 1814, Sigismund
Kohn was the first Jewish child to attend the local high school. The
Bayreuther Koppel Herz studied medicine from 1835, but in 1854 he was
initially denied his habilitation. It was not until 1869 that he became
the first Jew to become a full professor in Bavaria. After the guild
obligation was abolished in 1868, the Jews, who had previously worked
primarily as traders, were also able to take up trades.
Due to
the short Prussian rule and the French occupation, Bayreuth had a bad
starting position for the emerging industrialization, which occurred
rather late in the entire region, which was also due to the competition
from other regions. One advantage of Bayreuth was its convenient
location on various trunk roads. The connection to the railway in 1853
also brought about a positive development, although Bayreuth never
became an important industrial city. In 1855 there was a shop window in
the city for the first time, in 1866 the Bayreuther Tagblatt called the
still unpaved Jägerstrasse (today's Bahnhofstrasse) as the city's
busiest street "pathetic beyond all description".
The first
company in Bayreuth was Theodor Schmidt's sugar factory in the Sankt
Georgen district from 1834/35. However, the most important thing for
Bayreuth was the textile industry. Sophian Kolb founded the first
mechanical flax spinning mill in 1846, and the mechanical cotton
spinning mill was established in 1853. In 1894 Friedrich Christian
Bayerlein opened a business, and in 1889 Carl Schüller and Otto Rose
founded the New Cotton Spinning Mill. Spinning mills remained the city's
industrial mainstay well into the twentieth century. The 33 factories
counted in 1889 also included a furniture factory with 300 employees, a
stove factory with 100 workers and the Steingraeber company, Bavaria's
largest pianoforte factory.
In 1825 the guilds were converted into
trade associations and lost many of their privileges. Finally, in 1868,
the Trade Act brought full freedom of trade. As a result, free
craftsmen's guilds emerged, such as the Bayreuth butchers' guild in
1878. Until the end of 1869, butchers were forced to sell their goods at
fixed prices at the butchers. In November 1870, for the first time, a
master butcher announced his intention to set up “his own locale” in his
house on Ziegelgasse (today’s Badstraße), and other butchers soon opened
their own shops.
The brewery still holds a special position in
Bayreuth. For a long time, it was mainly the bakers who took over the
brewing; In 1860, bakers founded the Bürger-Bräu cooperative brewery and
brewed together in a communal brewery on Erlanger Straße. From the
middle of the 19th century, more and more industrial breweries emerged,
such as the Bierbrauerei AG, founded in 1872, and the brewery of the
Maisel brothers, opened in 1887, which are still the two most important
breweries in Bayreuth today.
In 1852, a Royal Bavarian telegraph
station was set up in the Old Castle, connecting the city with Bamberg.
In 1859 it was moved to the old station building, which had been
destroyed in 1945, and then to Maximilianstrasse 80 in 1874. The factory
owner Sophian Kolb received the first private telephone line to the
station in 1870. The local telephone network went into operation in
1891, initially with 35 subscribers. A telephone connection with
Nuremberg was put into operation in 1892 and with Munich two years
later. At the beginning of the 20th century, 250 "intercoms" in the city
area were already connected to the "city telephone system" and were
connected by the "misses from the office".
In the years
1852/1853, a public company built a gas factory next to the brickworks
south of the courtyard garden. It initially processed wood and from 1864
hard coal. In 1890 the facility was taken over by the city. After
connection to the long-distance gas supply, the gas works were shut down
in early March 1965 and dismantled in October of that year. As early as
the 1850s, the magistrate had the greasy oil lanterns over the streets
replaced by gas lighting. On April 30, 1853, the city's first gas
lanterns were lit. On September 13, 1855, for the first time, a man
sentenced to death was executed with the guillotine instead of beheading
with the sword on the "Henkersau" at Mistelbach.
When Bavaria was
opened up by the railway, the main line from Nuremberg to Hof
(Ludwig-Süd-Nord-Bahn) was laid past Bayreuth, it runs via Lichtenfels,
Kulmbach and Neuenmarkt-Wirsberg to Hof. Bayreuth was not connected to
the rail network until 1853, when the leased railway (from Neuenmarkt)
built at the expense of the city of Bayreuth was inaugurated. It was
followed by the Eastern Railway (from Weiden) in 1863, the
Fichtelgebirge Railway from Nuremberg in 1877 and the local railway to
Warmensteinach in 1896. Construction of a solid station building did not
begin until August 1856, nearly three years after the railway opened.
Until 1879 the construction of today's reception building took place.
The old building was used by the Royal Bavarian Post until it was
destroyed in April 1945.
During the course of the German War, a
battalion of the Bavarian Life Regiment was defeated by Prussian troops
near Seybothenreuth. In the summer of 1866, Bayreuth temporarily came
under Prussian rule again, which obviously did not displease parts of
the population and the local daily newspaper. The magistrate and
municipal officials then had trouble limiting the damage and assured her
"Majesty" that the city's representatives and residents had "never
deviated from the path of honor and duty". In November 1866, Ludwig II
paid a three-day visit to the city in order to tie the Bayreuth
subjects, who were accused of being fickle, more firmly to the Bavarian
crown.
On April 17, 1870, Richard Wagner visited Bayreuth because
he had read about the margravial opera house, whose large, but above all
deep stage seemed suitable for his works. However, the orchestra pit
could not accommodate the large number of musicians, for example in the
Ring des Nibelungen, and the ambience of the auditorium also seemed
inappropriate for the “artwork of the future” he propagated. That's why
he thought about building his own festival theater in Bayreuth. The city
supported him in his project and provided him with a plot of land, an
undeveloped area outside the city between the train station and Hoher
Warte, the Green Hill. At the same time, Wagner acquired a plot of land
near the Hofgarten for the construction of his house, Haus Wahnfried. On
May 22, 1872, the foundation stone was laid for the festival hall, which
was officially opened on August 13, 1876 (see Bayreuth Festival) -
making Bayreuth the first festival city in Europe. Planning and
construction management were in the hands of the Leipzig architect Otto
Brückwald, who had already made a name for himself with the construction
of theaters in Leipzig and Altenburg.
In the 1840s, the Jean Paul
Association had founded a "children's sanctuary" in which around 1860
around 35 children were "removed from material and moral misery". The
foundation of the magistrate Christoph Friedrich Leers created the
material basis for an orphanage. The Bayreuth Ladies' initiative,
launched at the beginning of 1859 to support "timid house poor", already
had over 600 members by the end of that year. At that time, the club
system flourished, from the music amateur club to the polytechnic club
for scientifically inquisitive people to the corpse club of the liveried
servants, many inclinations were covered. In 1861 the gymnastics club
was founded, which already had over 400 members in 1864 and created the
first fire brigade. In 1863 the Bayreuth Workers' Association, which
initially formulated no political goals, was founded in order to make
the "spiritual education and moral strengthening" of its members
"fruitful in a Christian sense". The socially weak at that time only
rarely reported and in submissive language to Wor Around 1870, the
carpenters, bricklayers, stonemasons and tailors then joined together to
form trade associations with a combative trade union character. In May
1871, the journeyman tailors were able to negotiate a wage increase of
25%. From 1878, Otto von Bismarck's repressive Socialist Law severely
restricted the radius of action of the Bayreuth proletarians. Even the
workers' song table was declared a political association and dissolved.
In 1885, an electoral association of the SPD was founded under the name
"Association for the Achievement of Popular Elections". Its members have
been jailed for innocent statements like quoting Bible verses.
In
the Reichstag election of 1890, a candidate supported by the Social
Democrats received the majority of the votes in the city area for the
first time in the form of District Judge Heinrich Stoll from the German
Liberal Party. Only the conservative population of the villages saved
the Reichstag mandate of the Wagner intimate Friedrich Feustel in the
Upper Franconia 2 constituency. In 1903, the SPD candidate Karl Hugel
fared no better. He prevailed in the city by a large margin (84% of the
vote in the Altstadt district) and still lost the election. On May 1,
1890, the weavers of the Mechanical Cotton Spinning Mill stopped work
and marched through the city "in closed heaps". After many years of
Bismarckian repression, the “World Day of Struggle” of the proletariat,
which had been proclaimed in Paris the previous year, was celebrated in
Bayreuth for the first time. In 1895 Bismarck was made an honorary
citizen of the city.
The Bayreuth locksmith August Hensel
received a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873 for a
sewing machine he had developed. In 1876, the city's first public urinal
was built at the Main Barracks. The first public toilet house, also for
women, was not opened until 1911 on Luitpoldplatz. The first electric
street lighting was installed on a trial basis in 1887 and permanently
in 1893. The pumping station in the C'est-bon valley at the southern end
of the tube lake supplied the electricity. In 1894, the city banned
skating on public streets. In January 1896, the local press complained
that young people were not taking this regulation seriously and were
“recklessly” bumping into passers-by. The bicycle dealer Conrad Hensel
offered a cycling course for women for the first time in 1896, although
numerous moral and health concerns were raised. In November 1899, the
Friedmann department store (demolished in 1939) with a metropolitan feel
was opened on the lower Opernstraße.
In 1894, the Bayreuther
Tagblatt wrote about the sometimes unhealthy condition of the workers'
housing (described by the newspaper as "true diphtheria caves") and
their blatant lack. On April 8, 1894, workers at the Rose sugar factory
founded a consumer cooperative, which after just a few weeks already had
240 members. In view of the new, unpredictable competition, local
merchants warned in the daily newspaper "emphatically" against this
"superfluous" initiative. Employers quickly got the first strikes under
control with pressure and threatening gestures. In July 1896, for
example, strikers at the Seiler oven factory had to retreat under
humiliating circumstances and declare that they would never again join a
trade association (i.e. a trade union). The "main agitator and his
accomplices" were fired. On March 14, 1897, the Bayreuth trade union
cartel was formed, which triggered an alarm mood in the town hall. Mayor
Theodor von Muncker arranged for the cartel to be monitored
"inconspicuously".
Between 1840 and 1900 the population had doubled to over 27,000. The
first decade of the 20th century saw the city see more strikes than ever
before or since. The workers fought for fair wages and the eight-hour
day. In 1900, the union cartel demanded an increase in the local daily
wage from 1.50 to 2.50 marks, which the magistrate uncompromisingly
rejected. In May 1902, in order to be better armed against the growing
trade union movement, 25 building contractors founded an employers'
association, which two months later was extended to all trades in
Bayreuth and the surrounding area. In 1905, the local homeowners
organized themselves and drew up a blacklist of defaulting tenants.
In those years, the central hall in the Kreuz district became a
joint action platform for social democrats and trade unionists for many
years. Although the Social Democrats had a majority behind them, the
councils remained in conservative hands and were rarely willing to make
concessions due to the municipal electoral law, which largely excluded
workers from municipal political activity. In 1900 Leopold Casselmann
was elected mayor, and in 1907 he received the title of mayor. The
arch-conservative politician of the National Liberal Party, who ruled
the city until 1919, was considered the deadly enemy of social
democracy.
In the autumn of 1901, the municipal employment office
and a warming hall were opened in Schulstrasse. On April 1, 1902, the
insurance company for disability insurance (later LVA), which had been
based in Bayreuth since 1890, was able to move from rooms rented from
the district government to a representative building on Leopoldstrasse.
The first issue of the local SPD newspaper, Fränkische Volkstribüne,
appeared in 1903, and on August 31 of that year the Bauverein housing
cooperative, which shaped the cityscape, was founded. At Pentecost 1904,
the 6th Bavarian Workers' Singers' Association Festival took place in
the Kreuz district, with well over five thousand visitors. On May 1,
1910, the Bayreuth workers held their first powerful May Day rally on
the Mainflecklein. In the same year, after the increase in the price of
beer from ten to eleven pfennigs for Seidla, the trade unions called for
a beer strike that lasted several months. In 1912, Karl Hugel was the
first Bayreuth Social Democrat to be elected to the Reichstag.
The entry into the new century was associated with some innovations in
modern technology, but also in the social sphere. In February 1900 a
women's band played in the central hall for the first time. On March 7th
of that year, the "Women's Work Association" was registered, which took
care of the needs of working women. In July 1904, Elsa Großmann was the
first Bayreuth woman to graduate from high school. One of the
innovations of the first decade was the Damenbad, a swimming pool on
Badstrasse. In 1910, 1. FC Bayreuth was founded; In 1912 there were
already four other football clubs, including the workers' club "Pfeil"
and the club "Wittelsbach" with members loyal to the king. The
bourgeoisie and workers also went their separate ways when it came to
cycling and gymnastics
In July 1900, the bicycle dealer Conrad
Hensel brought the first car to Bayreuth and received a driving license.
Exactly two years later, the city council passed the first speed limit:
twelve kilometers per hour, and even less during the festival season. In
August 1905, the brewery owner Glenk was the first car to have a serious
accident. However, motorisation was slow, and in the early 1920s the
vehicle registration numbers II H 1 to 69 were sufficient. Also in 1900,
the first municipal power station was built at the Herzogmühle, and on
December 20, 1909 a new building went into operation at what is now
Berliner Platz. In July 1907, a "garbage truck" pulled by two horses was
used for the first time as a predecessor of modern garbage collection,
and uniform garbage cans were introduced. In the same year, the
representative building of the royal branch bank (since 2013
Iwalewahaus) was built on the site of the old coin mill that burned down
in 1903. In 1908 the first cinema was opened as a "Theater of Living
Photographs" with the "Central" on Josephsplatz. On the morning of May
30, 1909, Ferdinand von Zeppelin flew over the city in an airship, which
drove people out of the churches on that Whitsunday and caused storms of
enthusiasm. A street was named after Zeppelin on June 3rd and that was
celebrated two days later during a visit to the city. In July 1912, an
air show was held for the first time on the parade ground in the south
of the city.
In 1904 the branch line to Hollfeld and in 1909 the
local line via Thurnau to Kulmbach went into operation. In May 1905, the
municipal hospital was opened in the Kreuz district, replacing the
gloomy old hospital on Dammallee. The building, which cost 620,000
marks, featured electric lighting, low-pressure steam heating and
motor-driven ventilation that was previously unknown in terms of
comfort. A pipeline commissioned in 1908 brought water from the
Fichtelgebirge for the first time. In the years 1914/15, a section of
the main arm "Altbach" of the Red Main was straightened and widened
after areas along the river had been flooded during a flood in 1909. In
the years before the First World War, Bayreuth experienced an economic
boom. In 1910 there were 128 grocery stores, 55 fruit and vegetable
shops and 14 delicatessens in the city. The numerous textile shops were
the domain of Jewish merchants.
With the beginning of the war,
the Richard Wagner Festival was canceled on August 1, 1914 after just
eight performances. Bayreuth's social-democratic newspaper Fränkische
Volkstribüne was banned by military order that same month. On August 27,
the first soldier from Bayreuth was reported as "killed". At the end of
the war, 3,387 soldiers from Bayreuth's 7th Infantry Regiment were
killed, plus almost 7,000 wounded. In the autumn of 1914, the first
French soldiers came to the city as prisoners of war. Not far from the
student forest in the south of Bayreuth, a prison camp was set up for
their accommodation, which at times housed more than 1000 people.
In 1915, after the death of the duke's wife Emilie von Meyernberg,
the city was able to purchase her house on Luitpoldplatz. For 120,000
marks, she converted the Reitzenstein Palace built by Carl von Gontard
into the new town hall and moved into it at the end of 1916. In view of
the deteriorating supply situation, a municipal people's kitchen was set
up in the Münzgasse in October 1916. After the end of the war in 1918,
the workers' and soldiers' councils briefly took over power in Bayreuth.
On February 17, 1919, the so-called “Bacon Putsch” took place, which was
bloodless: for two days, a crowd of up to a thousand besieged the town
hall and the newspaper, occupied the train station, the post office and
the telegraph office.
From 1902, anti-Semitism gradually
increased. As early as 1919, ethnic rumors erupted in the city, and the
first boiler-fighting against the Jewish fellow citizens began. On
January 7, 1920, the swastika was shown for the first time at a meeting
of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund. In that month, Mayor
Albert Preu warned of the threat to public peace posed by "the attacks
on Judaism, some of which were open and some in the form of post-it
notes almost every day". On September 30, 1923, a nationalist German Day
took place in Bayreuth with over 5000 participants (about 15% of
Bayreuth's population). Among the guests were u. a. the Lord Mayor and
Siegfried and Winifred Wagner, who invited Adolf Hitler, the keynote
speaker in Bayreuth, to the Villa Wahnfried, where he also met Richard
Wagner's local son-in-law, the anti-Semitic racial theorist and writer
Houston Stewart Chamberlain. The later NSDAP Gauleiter of the Bavarian
Ostmark, Hans Schemm, also met Hitler for the first time on this day.
At the first festival since 1914, in 1924, the black, white and red
flag of the monarchy was hoisted at the Festspielhaus instead of black,
red and gold. In the city council elections in December of that year,
the “Vaterländische” on the Black-White-Red Unified List received 18
seats and the SPD only 12 seats. When the first Reich President of the
Weimar Republic, the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert, died in February
1925, the conservative majority of the city council refused to fly the
mourning flag against the will of Mayor Preu. Denominational rifts still
shaped coexistence: in 1928, the market square was only allowed to be
opened for the Catholic Corpus Christi procession through government
intervention.
The Bayreuth Adult Education Center was founded in
October 1919, immediately after the Weimar Republic was founded. She
found her first domicile in the Hotel Schwarzes Ross on Ludwigstrasse.
In June 1921, the new city library had an initial stock of 560 volumes.
It was initially housed in the Old Town Hall, but was moved to
Friedrichstrasse 19 in 1928 for reasons of space, and was relocated to
Friedrichstrasse 18 in the mid-1930s. The later city councilor Jula
Dittmar was the first female doctor in the city from 1920. At the time,
she was paid less than her male colleagues for her work as a school
doctor, which the district medical association considered "unworthy of
her status". Instead of matching their wages, the city council then
decided not to use Dittmar's services.
In the summer of 1924, the
first gas station (“Dapolinpumpe”) was opened on Maximilianstraße. Until
then, petrol had to be obtained from drugstores. At the end of the
1920s, almost 400 motor vehicles were registered in the city. In 1926,
the first airfield with scheduled stopovers for the Nuremberg-Leipzig
airline went into operation in the Steinachtal near Laineck. In 1927 the
first youth hostel was opened on the Stuckberg. In 1922, the forerunner
of today's Kreuzsteinbad was created with the "new swimming pool", in
1929 the municipal indoor swimming pool was opened with the Stadtbad.
In 1924 the Bayreuth local group of the democratic association
Reichsbanner was founded, which initially had around 200 members. On
December 8, 1929, the National Socialists moved into the town hall with
nine city councilors for the first time. NS Gauleiter Hans Schemm,
according to the daily newspaper Fränkische Volkstribüne "as notorious
as sour beer in Bayreuth and the surrounding area", sought permanent
confrontation. In the judgment of the conservative Mayor Albert Preu, he
created "an atmosphere that is harmful to the general interest and
disturbing and embarrassing for residents of the Jewish faith". From
1929 onwards, the anti-democratic Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten
carried out mandatory roll calls, physical education classes and target
practice in Bayreuth. In 1933 it had at least 600 members in the city,
plus 125 "patriotic" women from the federation Queen Luise, which was
affiliated with it.
At the beginning of the 1930s, the Social
Democrats and the National Socialists were irreconcilably opposed. In
September 1930 there was a “wild scuffle” in the town hall, and the
Nazis gradually got a firmer grip on the city. After the Reichstag
elections of September 14, 1930, the local Reichsbanner also launched
the Iron Front in Bayreuth; on February 17, 1932, more than 1,000 men
came to the sun room, where Friedrich Puchta made them swear to “stake
blood and life for the democratic republic and for the freedom of the
German people”. In the presidential election on April 10, 1932, Hitler
was clearly ahead of Hindenburg in Bayreuth, and in July 1932 the Nazis
gathered 30,000 people at the “Gautag” on the Untere Au. In the
Reichstag elections on November 6, 1932, the NSDAP received 46.7 percent
of the votes in Bayreuth (33.1 percent on average in the Reich); in the
previous election in July of that year, it even reached 52.6 percent in
the city.
As a result of the Great Depression in the late 1920s
and early 1930s, the city had to limit its spending to the bare
essentials. Construction activity fell sharply during the general
recession. In 1930, only 47 new apartments were built out of 1,341
people who were looking for an apartment, more than half of them by the
Bauverein housing association. In 1932 the administrative districts of
Upper and Middle Franconia were merged and Ansbach was designated as the
seat of government. As a small compensation, Bayreuth got the merged
state insurance institutions of Upper and Middle Franconia. Unlike the
government merger, this merger was never reversed.
At the beginning of 1933, the Nazi leaders, above all Hans Schemm,
had long since prepared the ground for the "brown revolution" in
Bayreuth. The "well-versed" demagogue Schemm was instrumental in the
rise of the NSDAP in the city, which was to become a "powerhouse of
National Socialism". Chamberlain, who died in Bayreuth in 1927 and whom
Joseph Goebbels described as the “father of our spirit” and “pioneering
pioneer”, had welcomed Hitler as a “figure of light” and “God-sent
savior”. For his part, Hitler wrote to Siegfried Wagner: "The spiritual
sword with which we fight today was forged in Bayreuth".
In 1933
Bayreuth became the Gau capital of the Nazi Gau Bayerische Ostmark (from
1943 Gau Bayreuth) and was accordingly to be expanded into a Gauforum.
The first Gauleiter was Hans Schemm, at the same time Bavarian Minister
of Education and Reich Administrator of the National Socialist Teachers'
Association, which in 1936 was based in the House of German Education in
Bayreuth.
On January 31, 1933, the day after Hitler "seized
power", thousands of residents celebrated the event. NSDAP, SA and
Stahlhelm marched together to the new town hall (Reitzensteinpalais),
from whose balcony Schemm and Stahlhelm leader Edmund Alexander Fürst
von Wrede spoke. A large counter-demonstration was organized by the
socialists on February 6th, which ended in a street battle with the new
rulers. In the Reichstag elections on March 5, 1933, the NSDAP won more
than 50 percent in Bayreuth, with SPD majorities in only 5 of the 30
electoral districts – Kreuz, Herzoghöhe, Hammerstatt, Burg and Altstadt.
On March 9, the SPD newspaper Fränkische Volkstribüne was banned, and
the following night 21 communist functionaries and 28 social democrats
were taken into "protective custody". In April, 105 Bayreuth "protective
prisoners", including two SPD city councilors appointed on April 22,
1933, were taken to the Dachau concentration camp. That month, even
before the SPD was banned, the Social Democrats withdrew from city hall
work, which had become pointless. The new Lord Mayor Karl Schlumprecht,
successor to the deposed Albert Preu, appeared before the city
councilors in SS uniform.
Even before Easter 1933, the first
boycott of Jewish shops took place. In the same year, two years before
the “Blood Protection Act” was passed, the Lord Mayor prevented the
Jewish businessman Justin Steinhäuser from marrying an “Aryan” woman. In
September 1933 the Masonic Lodge was plundered by the National
Socialists and expropriated in 1935. The inventory – including the
library with over 10,000 volumes – was lost. On the other hand, the
Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD), which has since been
banned, managed to hold a Reich-wide meeting in Bayreuth that fall.
The May Day celebrations of 1933, which had been perverted by the
Nazis, were given the church blessing by Karl Prieser, the Evangelical
Church Councilor. At the state synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in Bavaria on the following May 4, Hans Meiser was elected state bishop
in Bayreuth. Sections of the Bayreuth Protestants, most of whom had
initially welcomed National Socialism, rebelled against the decreed
Reich Church of German Christians from 1934 onwards. By June 1935, 8,500
citizens had signed the lists of the Confessional Front.
Last but
not least, due to its function as district capital, the number of
inhabitants rose unusually sharply in the 1930s. From 1933 to 1944 it
increased by 14,000 to over 53,000 people, a growth of more than a
quarter within eleven years. Larger new rental apartment complexes were
built e.g. in the lower Herzoghöhe, on the Mainflecklein and on the
"island" in Sankt Georgen. Settlements consisting of detached,
semi-detached or terraced houses with gardens were erected for
“deserving” party members: in 1936 the “SA settlement Birken” and the
“Hans-Schemm-Gartenstadt”, in 1938 the “thanksgiving settlement Roter
Hügel”.
In 1935, the Rotmainhalle was completed as a cattle
auction hall and the weekly market, which took place on Wednesdays and
Saturdays, was moved there from the market square. In 1936 the House of
German Education was inaugurated, and between 1938 and 1942 the Winifred
Wagner Hospital was built (today's Hohe Warte Clinic). In July 1937,
with the completion of the Lanzendorf–Bayreuth section, the connection
to the new Reichsautobahn, today's Bundesautobahn 9, took place. When it
was taken over by the electricity company in 1938, the first municipal
transport company was established. The first city bus route ran from
Sankt Georgen via Sternplatz to the Altstadt train station. In March
1943, the buses were converted to run on coal gas.
On July 17,
1936, the military coup d'état against the Second Spanish Republic began
in Spanish Morocco and with it the Spanish Civil War. The coup general
Francisco Franco sent three emissaries to Germany to ask for ten planes
to transport his troops to Spain. They arrived in Bayreuth on the
evening of July 25, where Hitler was residing (for the first time) in
the Siegfried Wagner House. Shortly before midnight, after a visit to
the Wagner opera Siegfried, the “Führer” even approved 20 Ju 52 aircraft
(“Operation Feuerzauber”). This decision, of global importance, enabled
Franco to move his troops across the sea to mainland Spain.
In
March 1937, Mayor Schlumprecht thwarted Gauleiter Wächtler's plans and
appointed the respected internist Hermann Koerber as medical director of
the municipal hospital. As a result, Bayreuth had four mayors in
succession within less than a year. In order to escape the revenge of
the angry Gauleiter, Schlumprecht moved to Munich for a short time as
Ministerial Director; his successor Otto Schmidt, formerly mayor of
Coburg, only lasted nine months in Bayreuth. After his hasty departure
to northern Germany, Wächtler elected himself mayor of the city in May
1938. Soon after, Hitler personally confronted Wächtler about this, and
Friedrich Kempfler became mayor on July 1. Koerber was imprisoned for
the first time in April 1937, held prisoner a second time from February
to November 1938 and then forced into retirement. After the end of
National Socialist rule, he worked again as medical director of the
municipal hospital until 1955.
On July 24, 1938, a special train
arrived from Czechoslovakia with several hundred Sudeten Germans who
wanted to pay homage to the “Führer” who was in Bayreuth. Some of the
arrivals marched through the city in long columns; at Sternplatz they
threw themselves on Hitler's open car - according to Mayor Kempfler "in
sheer enthusiasm". In the evening, during a break in the Wagner opera
Parsifal, the man whose companions had difficulty avoiding physical
contact received emissaries from Cheb in the Festspielhaus. Meanwhile,
“unimaginable scenes of jubilation” took place in front of the
Festspielhaus. Two months later, when the political crisis in the
Sudetenland escalated, thousands of refugees came from there to
Bayreuth.
During the pogrom night of November 9, 1938, the
synagogue of the Jewish community in the Münzgasse was desecrated and
looted, but not burned down because of its proximity to the opera house.
Quite a few residents witnessed the activities of the Nazis
benevolently, the Jews who were dragged out of their beds and herded
together in the cattle stalls of the slaughterhouse on the Rotmainhall
were insulted, shouted at and beaten. Inside the Bayreuth synagogue,
which is currently being used again as a place of worship by a Jewish
community, a commemorative plaque next to the Torah shrine commemorates
the persecution and murder of the Jews in the Holocaust, which cost the
lives of at least 145 Jewish citizens. In February 1939, the local
Chamber of Commerce and Industry reported: "Chamber district soon to be
free of Jews". 101 companies were "dejudaized" and 220 "liquidated". The
first Jewish fellow citizens were deported on November 27, 1941, and the
second deportation followed on January 12, 1942.
In January 1939,
the pavement duty, from which passenger cars had been exempt since 1905,
was finally abolished in the city area. In the summer of that year, the
Erwege department store (former Friedmann department store, built in
1899 by a Jewish merchant) was demolished at Hitler's request. Food
ration cards were introduced in the last days of August, only eggs,
flour, bread and potatoes remained freely available. On September 1,
1939, at 5:05 a.m., the soldiers of Bayreuth’s 42nd Infantry Regiment
crossed the Polish border. From the first day of the war, the total
blackout of all streets, squares, buildings and vehicles was ordered and
strictly monitored. The evacuation of places on the French border led to
the influx of more than 5,000 people from Saarland, who had to be
provided with quarters by the Bayreuth population. The war turned
Bayreuth into a hospital city where at times more than 3,000 wounded
were cared for.
Hitler last visited the city in July 1940. In
1944 decorative items in shop windows were banned so as not to "awaken
unfulfilled desires to buy". In that year, the extensive network of
cellars and corridors below the city was recorded and the height and
overburden were precisely measured. Parts of the six larger cellar
systems, which in the past centuries had mainly served as storage rooms
for food, beer and ice cream, were used to protect the population from
aerial bombs and were converted into air raid shelters. Towards the end
of the war, the Bayreuth police were weakened because they had handed
over officers to set up the German police station in Jarocin, Poland.
The so-called city guard was created as a replacement: units of unfit
men who had only been given a rifle and an armband took over the
functions of order and marched through the city in rows of three. In
March 1945, the urban green space was turned into vegetable land. At
that time, the later Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard relocated his
Institute for Business Cycle Research from Nuremberg to Bayreuth. On
April 5, 8 and 11, the city was partially destroyed by Allied bombing.
During World War II, the town was a branch of the Flossenbürg
concentration camp, where prisoners had to take part in physical
experiments for the V2. Wieland Wagner, the grandson of the composer
Richard Wagner, was deputy civilian director there from September 1944
to April 1945. So-called foreign workers were used for forced labor in
the local spinning mills and armaments factories as well as in
agriculture. In September 1944, there were around 4,200 men and 2,400
women, most of whom came from Poland and the Soviet Union. 80 deliveries
by forced laborers are documented in the city archives, at least 36 of
their babies died. The brothers Max and Wilhelm Rose of the local Sinti
died in the Dachau concentration camp, and their ashes were sent to
their parents in boxes. Sixteen-year-old Sintezza Hulda Siebert from
Bayreuth was murdered in the Würzburg Gestapo prison in March 1945. An
"Aryan" girl who had entered into a relationship with a Sinti and
married him as Margarete Rose in 1934 was forcibly sterilized before
marriage.
After the building in Berlin was destroyed on February
3, 1945, it was decided to relocate the People's Court to Potsdam and to
relocate the senates responsible for high and state treason to Bayreuth.
The People's Court had met several times in the Bayreuth Palace of
Justice since the fall of 1944. Therefore, on February 6, 1945, around
270 political prisoners were deported from Berlin. They arrived at the
Bayreuth St. Georgen penitentiary on February 17 and were to be shot on
April 14, 1945, in view of the advancing US troops. The Köpenickiade of
the political prisoner Karl Ruth, disguised as an American officer and
who had escaped from there a few days earlier, saved their lives at the
last minute – including Ewald Naujoks and the later President of the
Bundestag Eugen Gerstenmaier. On that day, the city was handed over to
the Americans without a fight.
According to the National Socialist ideology, the city of Bayreuth
was preferred as a cult place of German music and a "cultural pilgrimage
site". This was due to Hitler's close ties to the Wagner family and his
fondness for Richard Wagner as a "German national genius". The erection
of representative buildings in German cities after the seizure of power
also had an effect on Bayreuth, whose development into a socio-political
center required an increasingly opulent conception of the building
projects. Thus, the decree of February 17, 1939 enabled the
implementation of urban planning measures according to Hitler's wishes,
including by the Bayreuth-based party architect Hans Reissinger. He took
over the overall concept and the layout of a "Gauforum", the
construction of which would have meant the removal of around 100
historic buildings, including parts of the New Castle.
Despite
the enactment of an expropriation law on June 24, 1939, few of the plans
were put into practice, which can be attributed to the outbreak of World
War II just under two months later. Some of these projects have,
however, been realised. The Margravial Riding Hall was expanded to
become the Ludwig-Siebert-Festhalle; Furthermore, u. a. at Luitpoldplatz
the House of German Education and the House of German Shorthand. The
redesign of the Richard Wagner Festival Hall in the style of an ancient
acropolis was not carried out.
Bayreuth was largely spared from air raids until April 1945. Only in
the early morning of January 13, 1941 did one or two Royal Air Force
planes with a few bombs hit the buildings of the three large local
spinning mills.
From January 1944, a heavy anti-aircraft
battalion with four 8.8 cm caliber batteries was deployed in Laineck,
Meyernreuth and the Altstadt district. This was primarily intended to
protect the main station and the Hensel ironworks. At the end of 1944,
the department for the protection of hydrogenation plants was
transferred to Brüx, leaving the city vulnerable to Allied bombers. On
April 4, 1945, her name appeared in the Allied plans: Bayreuth was
included in the list of railway centers to be destroyed. In addition, it
had not escaped them that armaments production was taking place in the
city's three large spinning mills. On April 5, 1945, the first massive
air raid hit the city. 39 bombers from the US 18th Air Force dropped
around 55 tons of explosives over Bayreuth in five waves. During the
second wave, numerous first responders died at Wilhelmsplatz. 88 dead
and 67 wounded were reported that day.
Even after this first
attack, the area around the main train station, the mechanical cotton
spinning mill, the district around Wilhelmsplatz, parts of Lisztstrasse
and parts of Jean-Paul-Strasse were destroyed. On Sunday, April 8, 1945,
51 US aircraft launched the second major attack on the city. He met i.a.
the Jean-Paul-Platz with the Ludwig-Siebert-Festhalle (later Stadthalle)
and numerous buildings in the Kasernenviertel.
The third and
heaviest attack took place on April 11, 1945, in which large parts of
the city were destroyed: "Bayreuth's blackest day". On a bright spring
afternoon, 110 British aircraft dropped 340 tons of high-explosive bombs
and 17.8 tons of incendiary and flare bombs over Bayreuth.
According to official figures, these attacks have killed 875 people, but
more than 1,000 have also been reported. 36.8% of Bayreuth's living
space was completely destroyed, 2,700 residential buildings and 4,460
apartments were completely destroyed. The damage amounted to around
45,000,000 RM. This put Bayreuth in 5th place among the most heavily
damaged cities in Bavaria.
The historic city center got off
relatively lightly. However, when the American soldiers moved in, the
Nazis burned incriminating documents in the Old Palace. The fire spread
to the building and the houses on the north side of the market square.
Due to the lack of a functioning fire brigade and the lack of
fire-fighting water, the only way to contain it was to blow up the
houses at Maximilianstrasse 34 and 36. A significant part of the house
front on the north side fell victim to this fire.
On the morning of April 14, 1945, American units advanced from
Altenplos towards Bayreuth. Instead of being an open city, the almost
unarmed place was declared a “fortress” by the National Socialists. The
German troop commander, Lieutenant Erich Braun, who was supposed to
defend the city "to the utmost", capitulated with his soldiers in the
area of the Hohe Warte given the hopelessness of such an approach. Karl
Ruth, a political prisoner who escaped from Sankt Georgen prison during
an air raid, encountered the Americans near Cottenbach and subsequently
served as their negotiator. Their threat to "shoot the city to the
ground" in the event of resistance was averted with his help. Due to the
refusal of the German combat commander General August Hagl, who remained
in the peripheral district of Sankt Johannis, the New Palace of the
Hermitage was destroyed there by a fighter-bomber and artillery attack.
When the handover negotiations with Mayor Friedrich Kempfler were
about to be concluded, the 14th US Armored Division, contrary to the
agreement, opened fire on Bayreuth again. The guns finally fell silent
just before 1 p.m. The American soldiers entered the city from north of
the Red Main. They imposed an exit restriction, initially the population
was only allowed to leave the houses for four hours a day. The
restaurateur Wilhelm Kröll was appointed acting mayor, although Kempfler
was officially still in office.
The US military governor's
instructions for Bayreuth were strict. The population was forbidden to
use certain roads, and the city limits could not be crossed without
permission. Curfew hours were soon extended to 7am-10am and 3pm-6pm.
Cameras and binoculars had to be handed in, violating the ban on gun
ownership was punishable by death. Private property could be confiscated
for public use, and only bicycles and handcarts were permitted as
vehicles. No goods could be accepted from Americans.
After the end of the Second World War, Bayreuth belonged to the
American occupation zone. The American military administration set up DP
camps to accommodate homeless people, so-called Displaced Persons (DPs).
On June 25, 1945, 5,038 DPs were counted in the city, divided between
three camps (Prinz Leopold Camp, Sankt Georgen Camp and Floessanger
Camp). 3833 of them came from Poland, 398 from Ukraine, 160 were
Russians and three Jews. The camps were managed by UNRRA.
In
mid-May 1945, the exit time was extended to 9 p.m. and the blackout
obligation was lifted. From the end of May, the population was allowed
to move freely up to a distance of twelve kilometers from the city
limits. Gatherings of more than five people remained prohibited.
Long-standing NSDAP members were called in to help with the removal of
duds. Instead of a city council, a "main committee" was set up on
November 29, 1945, which advised on immediate measures regarding the
supply of food, housing management and the removal of rubble from
streets and squares, as well as the gradual establishment of a new city
administration.
On December 18, 1945 there was again a daily
newspaper with the first issue of the Franconian Press. The conservative
Bayreuther Tagblatt did not appear again until October 1, 1949. The
first political meeting of the post-war period took place on October 15,
1945, and was organized by the German Communist Party (KPD). On November
9, 1945, the local branch of the SPD was re-established, on December 30
that of the CSU. At the end of June 1946, in the course of
denazification, the first tribunal proceedings began. In the fall of
1948, the three Bayreuth tribunals ceased their activities; Up until
then, the Arbitration Chamber I had classified 5 people as the main
culprits, 23 as incriminated, 66 as less incriminated and 955 as
followers.
The housing situation was initially very difficult:
around 56,000 people lived in the city, considerably more than before
the start of the war. This increase resulted primarily from the high
number of refugees and people who had been displaced from their homes.
On November 1, 1947, there were 11,101 refugees in Bayreuth. Since at
the same time many apartments were destroyed as a result of the war,
thousands of people had to live in emergency shelters. At the end of
1947, 3,706 evacuees were counted, 4,800 of the 16,000 local households
were homeless. Approximately 500 people were even accommodated in the
festival restaurant next to the festival hall. At the beginning of 1947,
municipal warming rooms were set up in eight inns. In May 1949, the
number of displaced persons in the city was around 3,000. The housing
shortage was exacerbated by the fact that the occupying power
requisitioned entire districts (garden city, SA settlement Birken) for
themselves.
In August 1945, 18 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust
founded the first Jewish information office in Bayreuth. As a result,
the city quickly developed into a port of call for Jews from the East.
Lively Jewish life - cultural, religious, social and sporting - arose;
in December 1945 they were able to celebrate their first Hanukkah
festival in the Lisztstraße 12 cultural center provided by the city, and
soon they had their own football club, the Hapoel Bayreuth club. The
quartering of Jews was often rejected by the local population of the
already overcrowded ruined city of Bayreuth.
In 1946, the main
train station became a hub for displaced people from the Sudetenland. On
January 25, 1946, the first train with 1,200 people arrived in Bayreuth;
in that year alone there were 39,281 displaced persons in 33 trains.
They were mostly transported to their destinations in the western zones
of occupation, but many stayed in the city. In March 1948, 11,217
refugees were counted in Bayreuth, including 3,612 Sudeten Germans. In
1950, 22 percent of the population were refugees or displaced persons.
Up until the currency reform of 1948, housing construction developed
only hesitantly, and the shanty towns had hardly emptied. In the autumn
of 1948, 4,500 apartments were still missing, which is why Bayreuth was
recognized as an “emergency area” by the Bavarian Ministry of Social
Affairs at the request of the city council. This set the course for a
stronger inflow of state funds for public and cooperative building
projects. The non-profit housing association (GEWOG) was founded in
April 1949 to combat the housing shortage. After the currency reform in
1948, the reconstruction of the destroyed houses on the north side of
the market square began.
The supply situation was also
precarious: It was not until July 1947 that pigs returned to the local
slaughterhouse. School meals began in May 1947 with a daily rate of 350
kcal per pupil. Shoes were almost impossible to obtain, and cultural
life was better with numerous concerts on offer. However, the Bali
(Bayreuther Lichtspiele) on Richard-Wagner Strasse was the only cinema
left for the time being.
In 1945, about 1,400 men were
conscripted by the city council for "essential work" (cleaning up
destroyed buildings, clearing streets). In 1948, from the initial
500,000 m³ of rubble, 425,000 m³ had already been cleared: 245,000 m³ of
this by the city of Bayreuth, 180,000 m³ by the city itself. In 1949,
80% of the properties in Bayreuth were considered "cleared".
The
first mayor after the war was the lawyer Joseph Kauper, who died in a
traffic accident in November 1945. The former slaughterhouse director
Oskar Meyer was appointed as his successor by the US military
government. In the first city council election on May 16, 1946, and
again in the second on May 5, 1948, the SPD became the strongest force.
On June 6, 1946, the first democratically elected city council of the
post-war period met, and on July 1, 1948, the administration expert Hans
Rollwagen (SPD) was elected mayor with 38 out of 40 votes. At his
request, the city council introduced an "emergency fund" in 1949:
Visitors to sporting events or film screenings had to pay an additional
10 pfennigs per ticket, which was intended for housing and culture.
On March 30, 1946, the ban on civilians was lifted, and in the same
month the first commemoration ceremony for the victims of fascism took
place with the social democratic resistance fighter Oswald Merz.
Cultural life also gradually got going again: in 1947, the Margravial
Opera House held the Mozart Festival Weeks, which later became the
Franconian Festival Weeks. In 1949 the Festspielhaus was used again for
the first time, there was a festival concert with the Vienna
Philharmonic under the direction of Hans Knappertsbusch. In 1951 the
first Richard Wagner Festival after the war took place under the
direction of Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner.
On April 15, 1946, city
bus service was resumed, initially with two veteran buses borrowed from
Hungary; they ran every 30 minutes via the market between Sankt Georgen
and the Altstadt train station. The central bus stop on the market
square went into operation in 1950. In 1949 Bayreuth again became the
seat of the government of Upper Franconia; In November of that year, a
weekly market took place in the Rotmainhalle for the first time, after
it had been temporarily moved to the Dammwäldchen. Even after the
currency reform, some products could only be purchased with ration
cards. The doubling of the butter ration from 125 to 250 grams in 1949
led to a butter shortage. In April 1950, the cooperative retail chain
Konsum opened its first self-service shop at Maximilianstraße 67. In
July 1950, the ban on immigration to Bayreuth was lifted.
In May
1949, a maximum speed limit of 15 mph (24 km/h) was decreed in the city
centre. In 1952 the license plate AB (for American Zone of Occupation)
was replaced by BT; In 1953 the city's first traffic lights were
installed at Sternplatz, and in May 1957 the first parking meters were
set up in front of the Sparkasse building on the lower market. At the
end of March 1956, television reception began, initially in a shop
window of the Bavarian Electricity Supply Company (BELG), founded in
Bayreuth in 1914. Within a few days, the number of television sets rose
from four to 33 sets.
In terms of local politics, the SPD had
been the leading force since 1946, while the CSU, with four mandates,
was only the sixth-strongest parliamentary group in the city parliament
in 1952. In the Bundestag elections, on the other hand, the Christian
Democrats were on the upswing and even won the direct mandate in 1957.
With the support of the CSU, the administration expert and SPD candidate
Hans Walter Wild was elected Lord Mayor in 1958 as the successor to Hans
Rollwagen. He held this post without interruption for the next 30 years.
In 1955 the last prisoners of war returned to Bayreuth from the Soviet
Union.
In the city council elections of 1946 and 1948, the KPD
won two mandates each, in 1952 it no longer entered the city parliament.
One day after the KPD was banned, their office in Badstrasse was closed
on August 18, 1956; in April 1957 propaganda material was confiscated
from a former concentration camp prisoner. In December 1967, the city
administration's plan to have the confiscated writings burned caused a
nationwide sensation. The city, which was already in the pillory of the
media because of the high election results of the right-wing extremist
NPD, also made the headlines because of this book burning.
The
bombing inferno of April 1945 left little of Bayreuth's developed
industrial landscape. Mainly due to the influx of displaced persons, the
city suddenly had around 10,000 more citizens. A number of business
start-ups were due to their innovative spirit and creativity; In 1949,
125 "refugee companies" were registered. In September 1956, the new
cotton spinning mill in Bayreuth hired a guest worker for the first
time. The city, "a late industrial developer with an unhealthy
monostructure", developed the area of the drained Brandenburger Weiher
as an industrial site in the mid-1950s. There, near the Bayreuth-Nord
motorway junction, the companies British American Tobacco (BAT, locally
"Batberg") and Grundig set up production facilities in 1957 and started
production in the same year. In the summer of 1958, Grundig already had
1,000 employees, and in November of that year the first lectures were
held at the teacher training college in what is now the
Markgräfin-Wilhelmine-Gymnasium on the Dürschnitz. The external faculty
of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg received a new building in the
Roter Hügel district in 1964. During the Christmas season of 1958, the
city center was festively illuminated for the first time. The garlands
stretched along and across the streets are now seven kilometers long (as
of 2018) and are the longest chain of Christmas lights in Franconia.
Up until the 1960s there was a considerable number of farms in
Bayreuth. With their piggyback baskets and the obligatory headscarf
(“maichala”), the peasant women were once omnipresent in the city. The
1960s and 1970s were characterized by lovelessness in dealing with the
historic townscape, large parts of the old building fabric were
destroyed. A cross-party focus was placed on the concept of a modern,
car-friendly city, with only sparse opposition from the population and
fewer city councillors. By 1969, the open river bed of the Red Main had
fallen victim to the desire to expand the “City” towards the main train
station. For the sake of road safety, trees were ruthlessly felled and
entire avenues sacrificed. A rethinking only began in the late 1970s.
The municipal tree protection ordinance issued in 1979 was praised by
the Bund Naturschutz as exemplary for Bavaria.
In 1960, the
city's first escalator was installed in the Loher department store on
Kanalstrasse. The City Museum was opened in the New Castle, which today
continues to exist as the Historical Museum in the old Latin school on
the church square. In that year, the central sewage treatment plant on
the Untere Au went into operation and the castle tower became the
property of the Catholic Church. From May 1962, the city received
drinking water from a new elevated tank on the Eichelberg, which was
supplemented by a water treatment plant in 1969. In May 1964 the
Kreuzsteinbad was opened on the site of the former swimming school, and
by January 1965 the former margravial riding hall had been converted
into a town hall. In 1965, the marketplace was redesigned to be
“car-friendly”. In March of that year, it was connected to the
long-distance gas network and the municipal gas works were shut down. In
1968, the last of the city's 320 gas lanterns were dismantled in Sankt
Georgen and Grünewaldstraße. The remaining open section of the Mühlkanal
along Kanalstraße was capped in 1967 and the municipal stadium opened in
June. In 1968 the new building for the Municipal Savings Bank was
erected on Luitpoldplatz on the site of the one-storey remains of the
Reitzenstein Palace that had been demolished in 1966. The first shopping
arcade (today's Eysserhaus Passage) was opened between Maximilianstrasse
and Kanalstrasse.
With ceremonies in both cities in the summer of
1966, the city leaders of Annecy (France) and Bayreuth sealed the
partnership between the two unequal places: Annecy as the center of the
Resistance and Bayreuth as the former stronghold of the National
Socialists. In the city council elections in March of that year, the
extreme right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD) won three seats, and
in the state elections in autumn 1966 they achieved almost 14 percent.
In this regard, the symbolic city of Wagner increasingly fell into the
shadows and was targeted by the world press. The NPD party conference
planned for February 1969 in Bayreuth was banned by the city as an "act
of self-defence" (Mayor Wild). For the first time since 1946, in the
1970 state election, the CSU candidate won the direct mandate from the
constituency of Bayreuth-Stadt and Bayreuth-Land over the SPD candidate.
In 1971 the Bavarian state parliament decided to set up the
University of Bayreuth, the cornerstone of which was laid on March 23,
1974. It began operations on November 3, 1975 in the multi-purpose
building (today: Geowissenschaften I) and now has around 13,500 students
in the city. On May 6, 1972, the new town hall was inaugurated on the
area around the former Altbachplatz. By the mid-1970s, the largely
four-lane inner-city ring road had been built, to which significant
parts of the historic building fabric fell victim, particularly in the
south-west of the inner city. In July 1978, the first section of the
pedestrian zone was built on the lower Maximilianstraße.
Until
the 1970s, Lord Mayor Wild ruled the city almost unchallenged. The
intimate friend of Franz Josef Strauss effortlessly swept away isolated
protests against his modernization and demolition plans. In the 1972
city council elections, the SPD won 23 seats, the CSU 16 and the
Bayreuth Community (BG) five seats, and the SPD won the direct mandate
in the federal elections. After almost thirty years of abstinence, the
CSU presented its own candidate for the mayoral office for the first
time in 1975. With almost 42 percent of the votes, Ortwin Lowack
achieved respectable success. In the 1978 city council election, the CSU
was tied with the SPD for the first time.
At the beginning of
March 1970, heavy snowfall made many streets and sidewalks impassable,
and the city administration had to ask the Bundeswehr for help to clear
them. In 1971, Life 2000, the first shopping center on the outskirts of
the city, opened for just under two years. In May 1972, the most serious
accident involving a roller coaster since the end of the Second World
War occurred at the city's folk festival: an overcrowded car derailed
and several people were thrown out. Four people died and five were
injured, some seriously. On October 1, 1972, the city police lost their
independence and became the Bayreuth City Police Station of the Bavarian
Police. From 1973, the airline Ostfriesischer Lufttransport served the
Bayreuth airport with scheduled services.
In 1972 the city grew
through the incorporation of the suburbs of Oberkonnersreuth and
Laineck, in 1976 Aichig, Oberpreuschwitz, Seulbitz and Thiergarten were
added. The increase in area totaled 29.7 square kilometers; thanks to
the 1955 new citizens, the population exceeded that of Bamberg on July
1, 1976, and Bayreuth temporarily became Upper Franconia's largest city.
In 1973 the dying of the railways began with the closure of the
railway line to Thurnau. The new youth hostel was opened in October 1975
and the artificial ice rink opened in December. The municipal youth
center was set up in 1978 in the former “Hitler Youth Home” on
Hindenburgstrasse. In September of that year, the Bayreuth Citizens'
Festival was celebrated in the city center for the first time. In 1979,
the football club SpVgg Bayreuth narrowly missed promotion to the first
Bundesliga. In October 1979, Bayreuth was a founding member of the
Schwandorf waste recycling association. On October 7, 1982, the first
garbage train to Schwandorf left the municipal garbage transfer station,
where since then Bayreuth's household and bulky waste has been
incinerated in the newly built power plant there to generate energy. In
November 1981, an air rescue service was set up in Bayreuth. The rescue
helicopter Christoph 20 supplies a radius of 70 km around the local
clinic.
After the local elections in 1984, the CSU provided the
majority of the city councilors for the first time. In the 1980s, the
tranquil town increasingly became the scene of demonstrations. The NATO
double-track decision, the forest dieback, the projected Wackersdorf
reprocessing plant and other causes brought numerous people onto the
streets. In 1989, Chinese students demonstrated against the Tiananmen
Square massacre. In 1985 the pedestrian zone was expanded to include the
market square, which retained the central bus stop. In September 1986,
Bayreuth was connected to the long-distance water supply for Upper
Franconia. Also in 1986, the special-purpose hospital on the Red Hill
was handed over to its intended purpose, and in 1987 the rescue
helicopter station and the Oberfrankenhalle were opened. In 1988 the new
fire station replaced the old station on the church square (former Latin
school, historical museum since 1996). The city once again lost historic
buildings for the construction of the North Ring, which opened in 1985.
In 1987, the local radio station Mainwelle went on the air for the
first time. In 1988, the SPD politician Dieter Mronz defeated Ortwin
Lowack in the election for the new mayor. In January 1989, the city
deported a Kurdish Yazidi family to Turkey, sparking nationwide protests
at aid organizations. On the afternoon of October 1, 1989, more than 400
GDR citizens – former occupiers of the Prague embassy who had been
allowed to leave Czechoslovakia – arrived at the main station on a
special Deutsche Reichsbahn train.
After the opening of the
inner-German border in November 1989, the city was literally overrun by
its citizens due to its proximity to the GDR. Around 606,000 East
Germans came to Bayreuth by the end of that year, mainly for shopping;
already on the first weekend (November 11th/12th) there were 25,000. In
December 1990, members of the Soviet Army sang and danced in the Great
Hall of the Town Hall, carrying a message of peace from the USSR on
Mikhail Gorbachev's initiative. In 1991, on the anniversary of Rudolf
Hess's death, a large number of neo-Nazis gathered on Jean-Paul-Platz.
In the following years, the city managed to prevent such events. On
January 19, 1990, the Federal Archive for Burden Equalization with
around 40 million files was put into operation in the factory hall of a
former curtain weaving mill on Justus-Liebig-Strasse. In October 1999 it
moved to the former municipal hospital in the district of Kreuz.
In March 1990, a pilot project for the collection of organic waste
started, to which 10,000 residents were connected, and in May the city
set up an office for environmental protection. In a referendum in
February 1991, the people of Bayreuth voted with 54.99% for the
citizens' action bill "The Better Garbage Concept"; Across Bavaria,
however, the counter-proposal of the CSU prevailed with 51%. In May
1991, the municipal recycling yard went into operation on the site of
the municipal building yard. On March 23, 1992, the US armed forces
stationed in Bayreuth were dismissed. In May 1992, fast rail traffic
with tilting technology trains to the long-distance hub of Nuremberg
began for the city, which is located off the highway. In 1993, Bayreuth
was designated as a regional center by decision of the Council of
Ministers. Mayor Mronz commented on the city's financial situation in
September 1994: "Now all the dams are breaking. The city's ability to
act is practically reduced to zero.” Federal and state restructuring had
greatly increased the financial burden on the municipalities, resulting
in an estimated shortfall of 26.5 million marks in the 1995 city budget.
The largest single item was the 38% increased share of the
municipalities in the solidarity pact, in which Bayreuth had to
participate with 13 million marks. The amendment to the Railway
Crossings Act gave three railway bridges in need of renovation, and the
government's plan to limit unemployment benefits to two years made the
city responsible for providing for the long-term unemployed.
On
January 26, 1995, after precipitation and snowmelt, the Red Main burst
its banks, and in some streets the water was up to 80 cm high. The
controversial Rotmain-Center shopping center on the site of the old
slaughterhouse opened its doors in September 1997. In 1998 the Mühlkanal
- with a different course - was opened on the lower Opernstraße, and in
1999 the palace terraces were built there. Also in 1999, the Lohengrin
Therme opened in Seulbitz.
Much of what remained of the bombing days of April 1945 was
subsequently destroyed. The Old Palace was a late victim of the National
Socialists, who burned incriminating material there. The fire spread to
the building and the house front on the north side of the market square.
Due to a lack of fire brigade and extinguishing water, it was only
possible to contain it by blowing up two houses on the orders of the
advancing American soldiers.
A heavy loss for the city was the
demolition of the house where Max Stirner was born (1970), the historic
Burg social quarter (first Bavarian social settlement of the 19th
century) by 1981 and the remaining remains of the Reitzenstein Palace.
The ensemble at the beginning of Erlanger Straße, including the only
surviving house with visible half-timbering (Eck-Schoberth), was
sacrificed to road traffic in the 1970s with the construction of the
city center ring road. The part of the Red Main that was previously
visible in the center was largely covered as a street and parking area
(the Ludwig Bridge and the guard house from the 18th century were
demolished). For the construction of the new town hall, the idyllic
district on Altbachplatz was demolished, including the judge's house
inhabited by the first festival conductor and Bayreuth honorary citizen
Hans Richter. In addition, from today's point of view, there were other
demolitions that made little sense on Richard-Wagner-Strasse ("Turkish
House", built in 1709), on Sternplatz and on Sophienstrasse (priests'
houses from the 16th century). On the market square, three of the few
remaining old houses on the north side were sacrificed to a new
department store from 1962, and only recently the old savings bank
building from 1934 had to give way to a controversial new building.
A modern building was erected on the site of the demolished
Stirnerhaus in 1971. The text on the commemorative plaque originally
initiated by John Henry Mackay and reinstalled there, according to which
Max Stirner was born, is therefore no longer correct and is therefore
misleading.
Bernd Mayer, historian and honorary citizen of the
city who died in 2011, described the destruction of the post-war period
as more extensive than that during the Second World War.
In September from 2000 to 2009 there was the Bayreuth Baroque Music
Festival in the Margravial Opera House. In 2019, the city council
decided to support the annual Bayreuth Baroque Festival again from
September 2020.
In 2002, Bayreuth was the first city in Bavaria
to put a fiber optic line for high-speed Internet into operation. Since
2005, the city has belonged to the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region, which
was founded that year. In 2006, Michael Hohl was the first mayor of
Bayreuth from the CSU. He only served for six years, on May 1, 2012 he
was replaced by Brigitte Merk-Erbe. The Bayreuth Community (BG)
candidate was elected with the votes of the SPD and Bündnis 90/Die
Grünen. With Thomas Ebersberger, a politician from the CSU has been
mayor again since May 2020.
In 2007 a youth parliament was
elected, consisting of twelve young people between the ages of 14 and
17. At the end of October, the long-planned new central bus stop (ZOH)
and the associated functional building on the newly created
Hohenzollernplatz were inaugurated and put into operation.
On
July 26, 2011, the Israel Chamber Orchestra gave the first guest
performance by an Israeli orchestra in Bayreuth in the Stadthalle. That
year, the City Council rejected a motion to move Stumbling Blocks. On
June 30, 2012, UNESCO declared the Margravial Opera House a World
Heritage Site. In 2013, the central ceremony for the 8th Franconian Day
took place in Bayreuth under the motto "Franken im Ohr"; The mikvah was
inaugurated in the garden of the synagogue, and the building was
extensively renovated by 2018. In 2016, Bayreuth hosted the Bavarian
State Horticultural Show.
A pipe burst on the morning of February
23, 2019 had far-reaching consequences, as a result of which the water
supply from the Hohe Warte elevated tank was interrupted. Around half of
Bayreuth's households, especially in the north and west of the city,
were partially without supplies until late in the afternoon. For New
Year's Eve, the city council decided in October 2019 to ban the use of
fireworks in the city center to protect the historic buildings. As a
result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Richard Wagner Festival has
been cancelled. The redesign of the Maximilianstraße pedestrian zone,
which has been carried out in sections since 2008, was completed in
November 2020 with the last section between Kanzleistraße and
Sternplatz. Archaeological investigations revealed that the "Upper
Gate", which was demolished there after 1730, was a gate castle
consisting of three gates with two ditches in between.
To promote
biodiversity, the city garden office developed an insect-friendly mowing
concept for urban green spaces and roadside areas in 2020. On July 30,
2022, an event on the occasion of Christopher Street Day took place in
Bayreuth for the first time. A demonstration march through the city
center was followed by a rally in front of the Old Castle.
Bayreuth had only a few thousand inhabitants in the Middle Ages and
in the early modern period. The population grew only slowly and fell
again and again due to the numerous wars, epidemics and famines. So in
1430 the Hussites destroyed the city; In 1602, around 1,000 residents
died when the plague broke out. During the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)
the city had to accept a loss of population. Population growth only
accelerated with the start of industrialization in the 19th century.
While 10,000 people lived in the city in 1818, by 1900 there were
already around 30,000.
By 1939, the population had risen to
45,000 - also due to the incorporation of several places on April 1,
1939. Shortly after the Second World War, the many refugees and
expellees from the eastern German regions brought a further increase of
11,000 people to 56,000 inhabitants by October 1946. The population
continued to rise thereafter, not least because of the newly founded
university from the 1970s. On June 30, 2005, the official number of
residents for Bayreuth was 74,137 according to the Bavarian State Office
for Statistics and Data Processing (only main residences and after
comparison with the other state offices). Of these, 63.7 percent were
Protestant and 28.8 percent Catholic. In 2011 the city of Bayreuth had
around 38,000 households. 50.1 percent of the citizens were Protestant
and 25.8 percent Catholic. 24.1 percent have another faith or are not
religious.
The following overview shows the population according
to the respective territorial status. Up to 1818 these are mostly
estimates, after that they are census results (¹) or official updates
from the State Statistical Office. From 1871, the information refers to
the "local population", from 1925 to the resident population and since
1987 to the "population at the place of main residence". Before 1871,
the number of inhabitants was determined according to inconsistent
survey procedures.
Blazon: “Quartered and covered with two diagonally crossed rods (rod
hooks), the right one black, the left one silver; 1 and 4 em of silver
and black; 2 and 3 in gold, with a board tipped twelve times with silver
and red, a red-crowned, red-tongued, and red-armoured black lion.”
Coat of arms: In December 1457, Margrave Albrecht Achilles, who was also
Elector of Brandenburg, bestowed the city of Bayreuth with the city's
coat of arms, which is still valid today. Two fields (1 and 4) show the
black and silver Hohenzollern coat of arms. The black lion in gold with
a white and red border was the official coat of arms of the burgraves of
Nuremberg and originally came from the von Raabs family. Along the two
diagonals are two rods, clearing tools with a slightly curved handle.
They refer to the ending -reuth in the place name.
Officially, the
city coat of arms is described as follows: "The city coat of arms
consists of two fields in gold, each with a black lion, and two square
black and white fields, also placed across corners. The two fields in
gold are bordered by a frame divided into red and white fields. A white
hook goes over the two lion fields and a black rod hook over the two
black and white fields. Above the coat of arms is a helmet with two
crossed horns in white and red, between them a black lion with a golden
crown, standing on a hat cuff. The helmet cover is red and white
alternating." The full coat of arms: "On the left-facing helmet with
red-silver cover, a red hat with a silver cuff and two buffalo horns,
each six times red-silver, between them a left-facing, gold-crowned
black lion, covered with the black and silver crossed rods."
More than 60 clubs offer the opportunity to get involved in almost
100 sports. The most successful club in the city is currently the air
sports association Bayreuth (LSG) with its gliding national league team.
In 1999, the world championships in gliding took place at Bayreuth
airfield. In 2002, 2015 and 2018, the LSG glider pilots won the
Bundesliga, in 2015 and 2018 even the IGC World League. In 2003, 2005,
2008 and 2010 they became runners-up. The Bayreuth Hurricanes street
hockey team has also won several German championship titles, becoming
German Vice-Champion three times (1998/2004/2006) and even winning the
title of German Champion five times (1996/1997/2001/2005/2007). The Medi
Bayreuth basketball team, which was founded in 1999 as BBC Bayreuth and
has been represented in the basketball Bundesliga again since the
2010/11 season, plays in the first Bundesliga alongside the air sports
community and the Hurricans. The handball team from HaSpo Bayreuth and
the volleyball team from BSV Bayreuth are in the Bayernliga and the EHC
Bayreuth ice hockey team was in the Oberliga Süd at the start until
2016. For the 2016/17 season, EHC Bayreuth was promoted to DEL2. Since
the 2014/15 season, the HaSpo Bayreuth Ladies I team has been playing
under their coach Thomas Hankel in the 3rd Bundesliga East for women.
The 6th place in the table was achieved in the first season. One can
practice wheelchair dance in the wheelchair dance group of the RSV
(Wheelchair Sports Association) Bayreuth.
The oldest and largest
sports club in the city is the Bayreuth Turnerschaft (BTS), which was
founded in 1861 as the Bayreuth Gymnastics Club. Southwest of today's
Hindenburgstraße, a sports field was laid out in 1911 in the "Unteren
Au" and a games and sports department was founded. In 1920, an athletics
department and a girls' gymnastics department were added. In 1969, BTS
exchanged its premises with the Maisel Brothers brewery for their former
ice pond (“Schoberthsweiher”) in the Kreuz district, where a new sports
facility was inaugurated on July 10, 1976. The BTS volleyball players
went to Rudolstadt in Thuringia in December 1966. It was the first time
since the Berlin Wall was built that a West German team was allowed to
enter what was then East Germany.
The most important football clubs
are the SpVgg Bayreuth and the former 1. FC Bayreuth. For the former,
the high point was second place in the 2. Bundesliga Süd in 1979, which
entitled them to play in the promotion games to the Bundesliga. On
January 12, 1980, they defeated Bayern Munich 1-0 in the DFB Cup. SpVgg
played in the 2nd Bundesliga for a total of twelve years (six of them in
the single track), most recently in the 1989/90 season. SpVgg has been
playing in the 3rd division since 2022 and is returning to professional
football after a 32-year absence. Before World War II, 1. FC Bayreuth
dominated football in Bayreuth. For the 1926/27 season, the team was
promoted to the Bavarian district league, which was the highest division
at the time. In 2003, the football department of 1. FC merged with FSV
Bayreuth.
Sport also had its heyday in Bayreuth in the late 1980s and
early 1990s. The basketball players from Steiner Bayreuth were two-time
German Cup winners (1987/1988 and 1988/1989), in the 1988/1989 season
they also brought the German championship to the Wagner city, the ice
hockey team of the swimming club Bayreuth (SVB) was two-time German
champion of the second federal league South and also played for a year
in the Ice Hockey Bundesliga. Furthermore, the table tennis team from
Steiner Bayreuth - at that time the club was still called TTBG
Steiner-Optik Bayreuth - was first class (since 1983 Second Bundesliga,
1984/85, 1986/87 and 1987/88 1st Bundesliga, 1988 withdrawal). The table
tennis players of 1. FC Bayreuth were also represented in the 1.
Bundesliga from 1994 to 1997. In 1992 the cheerleaders of the Bayreuth
Broncos American football team took first place at the German
Cheerleading Championships in Düsseldorf
The oldest still existing
club in the city is the United Shooting Guilds of St. Georgen from 1720
and Bayreuth from 1623. The unions of the shooters in the late Middle
Ages had created the desire for defense and protection of the citizens
and their cities, with sporting competition even back then was valued.
While the margraves encouraged the guilds, they were repeatedly banned
in later times. The Bayreuth riflemen first fired at the moat on today's
Dammallee. In 1851 they built their "shooting range on the Dürschnitz"
on Schützenplatz, which was demolished again after the inauguration of a
new shooting range in the Saas in 1905. In 1935 they had to move to
Dörflas, and in 1938 the association was banned by the National
Socialists.
The shooting range of the Sankt Georgen riflemen was
initially behind the order church and was later moved to a sand pit far
outside the town; In 1811 they were able to move into their current
domicile on the Grüner Baum. In 1950, the Bayreuth (“Privileged”) and
the Sankt Georgen (“Brannaburg”) guilds were united after their
re-admission.
The Bayreuth chess club, founded in 1882, was at times
one of the strongest fighting German teams. As the Bavarian team
champion, he qualified for the German championship in 1957 and finished
fourth. In May 1934, Bayreuth was the scene of a world championship
match between Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine and Efim Bogolyubov. At
the end of the 1990s, the chess club merged into the chess community of
TSV Bindlach.
The shooting range of the Sankt Georgen riflemen was initially behind
the order church and was later moved to a sand pit far outside the town;
In 1811 they were able to move into their current domicile on the Grüner
Baum. In 1950, the Bayreuth (“Privileged”) and the Sankt Georgen
(“Brannaburg”) guilds were united after their re-admission.
The
Bayreuth chess club, founded in 1882, was at times one of the strongest
fighting German teams. As the Bavarian team champion, he qualified for
the German championship in 1957 and finished fourth. In May 1934,
Bayreuth was the scene of a world championship match between Alexander
Alexandrovich Alekhine and Efim Bogolyubov. At the end of the 1990s, the
chess club merged into the chess community of TSV Bindlach.
January, May, June, July, November and December: Young Master
Pianists (concert series by young pianists from various music academies
in the Steingraeber & Sons piano factory)
February/March: Bayreuth
carnival parade and carnival market. The first processions, so-called
cap rides, had taken place in the city since 1839. In the 1950s and
1960s, the kilometer-long train attracted up to 50,000 onlookers from
all over Upper Franconia, the around 50 carriages proclaimed wit and
ingenuity. It was no longer held after 1969, but experienced a modest
renaissance in the late 1980s.
April: Bayreuth Easter Festival
(benefit concerts for children with cancer)
May: Musica Bayreuth
June: Uniopenair
June: time for new music
June: Bayreuth folk
festival. The first folk festival was held from August 13th to 22nd,
1910 by the tourist office on the Mainflecklein, a second folk festival
did not take place until 1921. In the period after the Second World War,
the now annual event took place on today's Albrecht-Dürer-Straße between
the red ones Main and the railway line. In 1964 today's fairground was
opened on Äußere Badstrasse.
July: Afro-Caribbean Festival
July:
Bayreuth Citizens' Festival (every first weekend in July)
July: Sankt
Georgen swingt, a two-day music festival held in mid-July, during which
many performers/bands performed in backyards of the Sankt Georgen
district and on its main street. Since 2018, the event has been taking
place in Wilhelminenaue Park.
July: Bayreuth Piano Festival
July–August: Bayreuth Festival, Summer Night Festival, Festival of Young
Artists (former youth festival meeting)
August: Children's holiday
town of Mini-Bayreuth with a children's parliament on the grounds of the
SC Kreuz
September: Rock in Bayreuth
September: Bayreuth Baroque
(opera performances in the margravial opera house)
October: Bayreuth
pub festival: On November 3rd, 1993, the first pub festival took place
with ten bands on ten stages. At the 27th festival, there were 27
concerts on twenty stages in 2019, and all venues could be visited with
one ticket.
October: Bayreuth Museum Night (on the day before the
time change)
October: Since 2008, the city has been awarding the
Margravine Wilhelmine Prize of the City of Bayreuth for tolerance and
humanity in cultural diversity as part of the Bayreuth Future Forum
Symposium of the University of Bayreuth
November: On June 7, 1991,
the first Bayreuth Jazz Festival began with a performance by blues
singer Angela Brown. The Jazz November, which has been held annually
since 2006, developed from them.
Bratwurst, which is eaten in pairs with mustard in rolls, is
considered a culinary specialty of Bayreuth. They are sold at several
stalls downtown. The preparation of potato dumplings, called glees in
the local dialect, can be documented for the first time on August 22,
1707 in nearby Neustädtlein am Forst. The side dish made of raw and
boiled potatoes ("half and half"), which seemed exotic at the time, soon
became a typical dish in the Bayreuth region.
From around 1720, a
margrave ordered the creation of a standard jar to ensure that the same
amount of beer was in the mugs throughout the city. This was the hour of
birth of the "Eichala", whose name can be traced back to the standard.
The pitchers made by tin founders were checked every two years by the
calibration office in the inns. From about 1900 the Eichala were mainly
made with a lid, soon afterwards with the Bayreuth coat of arms and
since the 1930s with an acorn on the lid. They exist today in four
sizes: as a Maß (1 l), Schimmala (approx. 0.7 l), Seidla (0.5 l) and a
quarter-litre jug. Production of the popular Eichala was discontinued in
2022, and around 4,000 jugs were cast each year.
Every year on
January 6, known as the “Öberschtn”, people meet up in good company to
“drink starch”. According to a centuries-old Franconian tradition, you
can drink a "Seidla" strong beer or a "Schnäpsla" every month to
recharge your batteries for the new year.
In 1990, the British
heavy metal band Iron Maiden was not allowed to perform in Bayreuth. The
city administration canceled a planned concert in the Oberfrankenhalle,
citing the music style known as "brutalo rock".
In 2007, the number of people employed in Bayreuth was 57,600, of
which 41,200 were employees subject to social security contributions. Of
these, around three quarters were employed in the service sector, which
is attributed to the large number of authorities (Deutsche
Rentenversicherung Nordbayern), hospitals, schools and credit
institutions. The University of Bayreuth, with 1800 employees, was
replaced as the largest employer by Klinikum Bayreuth GmbH, which was
founded in 2003 and has 2300 employees.
Within the city limits,
Bayreuth generated a gross domestic product (GDP) of 4.527 billion euros
in 2016. In the same year, GDP per capita was EUR 62,352 (Bavaria: EUR
44,215 / Germany: EUR 38,180) and thus significantly above the regional
and national average. In 2017 there were around 66,300 employed people
in the city. The Bayreuth office of the Federal Employment Agency
determined in 2021 that 33.7% of the people working in Bayreuth (city
and district together) commuted in from other regions. At the same time,
27.4% of the workers living there leave the area every day as commuters.
In the 2016 Atlas of the Future, the independent city of Bayreuth
was ranked 65th out of 402 rural districts and independent cities in
Germany, making it one of the places with "great prospects for the
future". The unemployment rate was 4.4% in December 2018, above the
Bavarian average of 2.7%, but below the national average. In June 2022,
1750 unemployed were registered, which corresponded to a rate of 2.9%.
In the post-war period, all three federal roads leading through
Bayreuth were bundled in Richard-Wagner-Strasse. The B 22 running
through the lower Maximilianstrasse and the B 85 coming from the
Mühltürlein met at the western end of the market square, which they
crossed lengthwise together. Coming from Opernstraße, the B 2 was added
at Sternplatz. At the Dürschnitz, the B 2 and the B 85 left the road to
Nürnberger Straße and remained united until after Pegnitz.
Today,
the federal highways run through the city core ring. The inner city,
which has largely been converted into a pedestrian zone, is only touched
by the ring formed by the streets Wittelsbacherring, Hohenzollernring,
Cosima-Wagner-Straße and part of Birkenstraße.
In August 1969,
the city's first Green Wave was set up at Hohenzollernring. As early as
1994, Hellmut Schubert, who had worked for the city as a traffic planner
since the 1960s, suggested to the city council that a speed limit of 30
km/h should be introduced in the city area, with the exception of the
main traffic arteries, for ecological reasons. For the city center ring
he favored a one-way street regulation with a lane reserved for
cyclists, buses and taxis.
In 2020, an average of 29,000
commuters per day drove to work from outside the city, the majority of
them by car. The average distance between their place of residence and
Bayreuth was 11.7 kilometers.
Federal highways
A9 E45: Berlin - Leipzig - Bayreuth - Nuremberg -
Ingolstadt - Munich
The Leipzig – Nuremberg section was completed
in 1937.[385] This makes it one of the oldest autobahns in Germany with
national importance. The six-lane expansion in the Bayreuth area was
completed in 2006, and it was enclosed over a length of 360 m in the
Laineck district. In the urban area there are two junctions
Bayreuth-Nord and Bayreuth-Süd, which means that the section in between
also has a function as a city motorway.
A70 E48: Schweinfurt -
Bamberg - Bayreuth
Construction of this supplementary route began in
1937, but it was not until November 21, 1958 that the first section from
the Bayreuth/Kulmbach triangle to the Kulmbach/Neudrossenfeld junction
could be put into operation as a single-lane motorway with two lanes.
The final completion to Bamberg was not completed until 1996. The A 70
does not touch the city area, but can be reached quickly via the A 9 and
the Bayreuth/Kulmbach triangle.
B2: Rosow - Berlin - Potsdam - Lutherstadt Wittenberg - Leipzig -
Gera - Hof - Bayreuth - Nuremberg - Roth - Donauwörth - Augsburg -
Munich - Mittenwald
B22: Würzburg - Bamberg - Hollfeld - Bayreuth -
Weiden i.d.Opf - Cham
B85: Berga - Weimar - Saalfeld - Kronach -
Kulmbach - Bayreuth - Amberg - Schwandorf - Cham - Passau
St 2163: Bad Berneck - Goldkronach - Bayreuth - Mistelbach -
Hummeltal - Pottenstein - Leupoldstein - Betzenstein - Plech - Neuhaus
an der Pegnitz
St 2181: Bayreuth - Weidenberg - Warmensteinach -
Fichtelberg - Mehlmeisel - Brand - Ebnath - Erbendorf -
Windischeschenbach - Raft - Waldthurn - Altenstadt near Vohenstrauß
From Bayreuth main station, the main routes run north to
Neuenmarkt-Wirsberg (and from there on to Bamberg or via the Schiefe
Ebene to Hof), south-east to Weiden and south to Schnabelwaid
(connecting to Nuremberg via the Pegnitztalbahn). The only remaining
branch line is the line to Warmensteinach, which has only been operated
as far as Weidenberg since 1993. The routes to Hollfeld and Thurnau (–
Kulmbach) that used to lead to the western and north-western environs
have been completely dismantled. The railway lines around Bayreuth are
all single-track and not electrified.
Class 610 diesel railcars
equipped with tilting technology have been running between Bayreuth and
Nuremberg since May 23, 1992. They were purchased by the then Deutsche
Bundesbahn specifically for the winding route. These were later replaced
by the 612 series.
When the timetable changed on June 10, 2001,
the newly created ICE line 17 (Dresden - Nuremberg every hour, every
second train via Bayreuth) was put into operation. Class 605 ICE TD
multiple units with tilting technology ran for two years. Since the
timetable change in 2006/2007, Bayreuth has no longer been connected to
the Deutsche Bahn long-distance network.
As an alternative, the
IRE Franken-Sachsen-Express offered a direct connection via Hof and
Plauen to Dresden from December 2006 to December 2013 (every two hours
since December 2007). Class 612 diesel railcars with tilting technology
were used. There was also a direct regional express connection with such
railcars via Lichtenfels and Bamberg to Würzburg.
Since June 12,
2011, the transport company agilis has been serving the newly created
diesel network in Upper Franconia on behalf of the Bavarian Railway
Company and thus the local rail transport in the Bayreuth area.
Since December 2013 there have been no more direct connections from
Bayreuth to Dresden and Würzburg.
National connections (Deutsche
Bahn AG):
RE Bayreuth Hbf - Pegnitz - Nürnberg Hbf (largely every
hour)
RE Hof Hbf - Münchberg - Bayreuth Hbf - Nürnberg Hbf (largely
every 2 hours)
RE Bamberg - Lichtenfels - Kulmbach - Bayreuth Hbf
(mainly every 2 hours)
Regional train connections largely every
hour (agilis):
RB Bad Rodach - Coburg - Lichtenfels - Kulmbach -
Bayreuth Hbf
RB (Hof Hbf -) Marktredwitz - Kirchenlaibach - Bayreuth
Hbf
RB Weidenberg – Bayreuth Hbf – Weiden (Oberpf)
The city bus lines are operated by Stadtwerke Bayreuth, some of which
also have vehicles from private bus companies. Buses on routes 301 to
316 run Monday to Friday, mostly every 20 or 30 minutes. During the
winter semester, they commute between the central bus stop (ZOH) and the
university campus, sometimes just a few minutes apart. By overlaying
lines with simultaneously staggered travel times, the main station and
some parts of the city are served at shorter intervals. At times of low
demand (evenings, Sundays and public holidays), routes 321 to 326 are
reduced to six routes every 30 minutes. Suburbs with low demand are
served hourly with call-collective taxis during these times.
The
network is largely star-shaped with the central bus stop ZOH, but also
offers transfer options outside the ZOH. With the line 316, which runs
every 30 minutes, there is a fast direct connection between the
university and the main station. Between 1950 and 2007, the ZOH was on
the market square, in the middle of Maximilianstrasse. On October 27,
2007, it was relocated to nearby Hohenzollernplatz, where stops for
regional buses could also be set up. A dynamic passenger information
system provides information about the next departures and current
timetable changes and diversions. Network-wide timetable information and
tickets are available from Mondays to Saturdays in the customer center
there.
On January 1, 2010, local public transport (ÖPNV) was
integrated into the Verkehrsverbund Greater Nuremberg (VGN). The entire
city of Bayreuth corresponds to VGN tariff zone 1200, in which price
level D applies. For journeys beyond the city limits, the VGN tariff
zone regulations (price levels 1 to 10) apply. As a transport company in
the VGN, the Stadtwerke allow bicycles to be taken on the city buses.
After 8 p.m., it is also possible to get off between two regular stops
after prior notification to the driver, provided this is permitted under
traffic law. Mobile tickets can also be purchased for the Bayreuth city
buses via the VGN mobile phone app. Bayreuth was the first university
town in Bavaria to introduce the semester ticket for all students at the
University of Bayreuth and the University of Protestant Church Music in
the 1994 winter semester. This local regulation could be maintained
despite the VGN entry.
Regional traffic is served by DB/OVF. In
addition to the VGN, Bayreuth is also a member of the German-Czech
transport association EgroNet.
A network of cycle paths is partially available, the signs for which
are often of a supra-local nature (example: Haidenaab cycle path). Due
to its direct location on the 600-kilometer-long Main Cycle Path,
Bayreuth is the destination for several tourist cycle routes.
A
large proportion of the approximately 13,500 students at the University
of Bayreuth use bicycles as their everyday means of transport. The
city's topography and the lack of continuous safe routes create
difficulties and sometimes lead to problematic solutions. In many
places, cyclists are directed onto footpaths and sidewalks, or even
forced to use them by signage, creating conflicts with pedestrians.
Parks usually have to be bypassed, but crossing the Hofgarten has been
permitted in two ways since 2012. The pedestrian zone in the city center
can largely be used by bicycles. A section of the route from the
university to the city center (Univercity) is signposted as a bicycle
route.
Taking bicycles on DB regional trains departing from
Bayreuth and on VGN buses is subject to a fee, where possible.
Bayreuth airfield is used for commercial aviation, individual
business travel, general aviation and air sports. Until 2002, the
Frankfurt-Hof airline made a stopover in Bayreuth three times a day.
The airfield at Bindlacher Berg is also one of the most important
bases for gliding in Germany, e.g. the world championships took place
here in 1999. For the air sports community Bayreuth, the airport is the
starting point for flights in the German gliding league. The club also
conducts training in gliding and powered flight here.
The municipal supply and service company Stadtwerke Bayreuth, founded
in 1939, is responsible for the electricity, natural gas, district
heating and drinking water supply.
Between 5 and 5.5 million
cubic meters of water are used in Bayreuth each year, depending on the
weather. The drinking water for the city is mainly collected, stored and
monitored in two elevated tanks on the Hohe Warte and a third on the
Eichelberg. From there it flows into the 340 km long urban pipe network,
whereby the difference in altitude usually creates the necessary
pressure and pumping stations are only required for high-altitude areas.
About half of Bayreuth's drinking water, mainly surface water from
the Ködel dam near Kronach, is drawn from the long-distance water supply
in Upper Franconia and collected in the larger of the two elevated tanks
(capacity 10,000 cubic meters) on the Hohe Warte, which was put into
operation in 1980. The older tank there (capacity 4,000 cubic meters) is
supplied with one million cubic meters of water annually from the main
collector at Löchleinstal near Warmensteinach, from the Fichtel
Mountains, where it has already been cleaned and decalcified. The
elevated tank with treatment plant on the Eichelberg receives its water
from seven wells near Seybothenreuth and Lehen. In the west of the city
is the Eichelacker well field, which supplies water to the pumping
station of the same name, located exactly between the pressure zones
Hohe Warte and Eichelberg on the edge of the Altstadt district.
The municipal sewage treatment plant was built in 1960 and has since
been expanded and modernized. The sewage network is around 400 km long,
of which 303 km in 2017 were mixed sewers for process water and
rainwater. The catchment area also includes parts of the communities of
Eckersdorf, Haag and Creußen. The annual amount of waste water is 13
million cubic meters, the efficiency of the treatment plant is 99%. In
the summer of 2021, the Medical University of Innsbruck analyzed the
wastewater. It turned out that the average resident of the catchment
area smoked four cigarettes a day and consumed an amount of alcohol
equivalent to half a liter of beer. The value for methamphetamine
(“crystal meth”) proved to be above average at 174 mg per day and 1000
people.
The gas works built on Birkenstraße in the 1890s produced
coal gas from hard coal for around 70 years. From 1965 the city's own
production ended with the gradual conversion to long-distance gas, and
the city center was supplied with natural gas from 1971. The
Stadtwerke's district heating network comprises two areas in the
northern city center and the barracks district.