Augsburg is a Bavarian university town and is the second oldest
documented town in Germany after Trier. Augsburg is best known for
the Fuggers and the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, on which Philipp
Melanchthon's Confessio Augusta was formulated and which is also the
founding document of the Lutheran Church. Augsburg is the seat of
government of the Bavarian administrative district of Swabia.
At the site of today's city of Augsburg, 15 BC. BC the Roman
army camp "Augusta Vindelicorum" was created by the Roman Emperor
Augustus. The civil use of the city, and only this counts for the
founding of the city, did not take place until 30 years later, from
AD 15. The Renaissance city on the Lech therefore celebrated its
2000th anniversary in 1985 30 years too early. In the course of a
few years, the place became an important city in the region. Today's
Maximilianstraße, a Renaissance boulevard, corresponds to the Roman
Via Claudia, which led to Verona. It still forms the main axis of
the old town today.
From the 13th century Augsburg was a free
imperial city. Free imperial cities were particularly widespread in
Swabia: Ulm, Nördlingen, Memmingen, Kempten, Ravensburg, Kaufbeuren
and Lindau. However, the most important free Swabian imperial city
was Augsburg. These cities submitted directly to the emperor,
because after the collapse of the Staufer dynasty in Swabia,
territorial power no longer exercised. A document from 1316
recognizes this imperial freedom for Augsburg and thus gave Augsburg
full customs, tax and court rights.
In the 15th and 16th
centuries, Augsburg developed into an important trading center in
Europe and produced the Welser and Fugger families, who for a
century were among the richest and most powerful families in the
world. The textile trade in particular contributed to the rise of
Augsburg. The Fuggers founded the world's first social settlement
(1516 - 1523), the so-called Fuggerei, which is still home to needy
Augsburgers today. Emperor Maximilian I held imperial diets in
Augsburg and thus created his political stage here.
The 16th
and 17th centuries are considered Augsburg's golden age. During this
time, the bankers of the imperial city financed the emperor, the
city was an art center of the first rank and known worldwide for its
products, which ranged from the work of silversmiths to printed
works and scientific equipment.
Architecturally, Augsburg was
shaped by the master builder Elias Holl (1573 to 1646). Many large
public buildings are from him. For example the town hall, the town
butcher's shop, the red gate and the armory. But Adrien de Vries
with his fountain must also be mentioned as a formative city
designer.
Augsburg's historic water management system has
been part of the UNESCO World Heritage since 2019.
1 Augsburg Synagogue, Halderstrasse 6, Halderstrasse 6 a,
Halderstrasse 8 . One of the few synagogues in major German cities that
survived the Nazi pogrom in 1938 and thus bears intact testimony to
Jewish life. It is without exaggeration one of the most important Art
Nouveau synagogues in Europe. In the center of the square synagogue
there is a 29 meter high dome, which enchants the visitor with its
oriental ornaments and transports them to another world. Jewish life in
Augsburg today: The Augsburg Jewish community is growing and growing.
The rabbi never holds his services in Augsburg in front of an empty
church. At the beginning of the 1990s, no one believed that the Jewish
community in Augsburg would continue to exist, which was very old
because young Jews either moved to Berlin or straight to Israel. At the
end of the 1980s someone would have been laughed at if they said: After
2000 the Jewish community in Augsburg will have more members than before
1933, when the Nazis came to power. And yet it happened. In 2006, the
Jewish Cultural Community (IKG) in Augsburg-Swabia had more than 1,300
members.
2 High Cathedral of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, Hoher
Weg, Stadtwerke stop. The core of the originally Romanesque cathedral,
which dates back to the 11th century, has been repeatedly rebuilt and
expanded over the centuries, for example with the addition of the mighty
Gothic choir, which characterizes the image of the cathedral from the
street. Since the cathedral was hardly damaged during the Second World
War, the interior is also well worth seeing. Excavations of a previous
church are located in front of the cathedral. Open: Visits outside of
church service times.
3 Basilica of St. Ulrich and Afra, Ulrichsplatz
19, stop Ulrichsplatz. The magnificent late Gothic basilica, completed
in 1603, also houses the bones of the Augsburg diocese saints Ulrich and
Afra in the lower church. Open: Visits outside of church service times.
4 St. Anna Church, Annastrasse, stop Königsplatz. Originally built as a
church of a Carmelite monastery, the church became evangelical after the
Reformation. Martin Luther stayed there in 1518 to meet the Roman envoy
Cajetan. Open: Visits outside of church service times.
5
Barfüsserkirche, Barfüsserstraße, stop Barfusserbrücke . The Gothic
building of a former Franciscan monastery was badly damaged in World War
II and only partially rebuilt, making it an impressive memorial. The
church has been evangelical since the Reformation. Open: Visits outside
of church service times.
6 St. Moritz, Moritzplatz, stop Moritzplatz.
In the midst of the hustle and bustle of tram traffic and the pedestrian
zone, the Moritzkirche is a small oasis of calm. This church was also
badly damaged in World War II. In the moritzpunkt, the catholic city
pastoral care has created a space to linger, read and talk. Open: Visits
outside of church service times.
Buildings
1 Perlach Tower, Rathausplatz, 86150 Augsburg. The
Perlach Tower was built in 989 as a fortified tower. After several
conversions, the tower was then rebuilt to its current appearance by
Elias Holl between 1612 and 1618 and increased to 70 meters. There are
258 steps to the viewing platform and every visitor receives a
certificate of ascent as a memento. When the foehn wind blows, a yellow
flag is hoisted as a signal, and you have a particularly good view of
the Alps. At 11 a.m., 12 p.m., 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., a carillon of 35 bells
plays pieces of music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or German folk songs.
Only on September 29 there is a puppet show in which Archangel Michael
stabs the devil on the hour. A smaller replica of the Perlach Tower
stands in the Japanese sister city of Amagasaki. Open: The Perlachturm
is closed until further notice due to renovation work.
The Fuggerei
is one of the most famous housing estates in the world. It was built for
needy citizens of Augsburg.
2 hotel tower. The tower can be seen from
afar and the people of Augsburg refer to it as the "corn on the cob"
because of its shape. It was built in 1972 and at 158 meters is the
tallest building in the city. In the lower part is the Dorint Hotel and
in the upper part there are private apartments. Every first Sunday of
the month, the Dorint opens the 34th floor for an exclusive brunch with
a view, unfortunately there is no other way to enjoy the view.
3
Rathaus, Rathausplatz 2 wikipediacommons. The town hall was built in
1624 and is 57 meters high. It is one of the most important Renaissance
buildings north of the Alps. The Golden Hall, which has been
reconstructed since 1985 after being destroyed in the war, is worth
seeing.
4 Red Gate, part of the former Augsburg city fortifications
Armory, Zeugplatz 4, 86150 Augsburg. Tel.: +49 (0)821-3243960, fax: +49
821-3243962, email: zeughaus.stadt@augsburg.de. Educational, meeting and
event location for seminars, exhibitions and film screenings. In the
building there is also the inn "Zeughausstuben" with a beer garden. The
house was built shortly after 1600 and served first as an armoury, then
as an artillery depot and from 1899 as the town's main fire station. In
1975 the fire brigade moved out and after the conversion in 1980 the
educational facilities moved in.
5 Fugger houses (Fugger city palace,
the inner courtyards are open to the public, there is a restaurant in
the Damenhof in summer; Maximilianstrasse) wikipediacommons. The Fugger
houses on Maximilianstrasse in Augsburg were built between 1512 and 1515
as the residence of the Fugger family.
Magnificent fountain in Maximilianstraße by Adrian de Vries and the Augustus fountain in front of the town hall.
6 "tim", State Textile and Industrial Museum Augsburg, Provinostraße
46, 86153 Augsburg (in the head building and the adjoining shed halls of
the former Augsburg worsted spinning mill AKS). Tel.: +49 (0)821 81001
50, fax: +49 (0)821 81001 531, e-mail: info@timbayern.de
wikipediacommonsfacebookinstagram. Open: Tue-Sun 9am-6pm. Price: €5
(adults), €4 (students, seniors, severely disabled), free (children,
students, journalists, teachers, youth leaders), €1 (Sunday).
Founded
in 1838, the worsted spinning mill was the first large industrial
company in Augsburg and from the middle of the 19th century it was the
largest worsted spinning mill in the area of the German Customs Union.
The area of the company, which was shut down in 2004, covers an area of
approx. 10 hectares, has been under monument protection since 2002 and
is one of the largest area monuments in Bavaria.
The museum, which
was opened to the public on January 21, 2010, cost €21 million and is
the first state museum in the administrative district of Swabia. It
shows the history of textile production in Bavaria since the Middle Ages
on an area of 2,500 square meters. Among other things, weaving
technology and historical looms in all variants can be seen, fashion
from three centuries, haute couture with associated stories, intelligent
textiles, artificial muscles, carbon fibers. The last textile workers in
Augsburg tell stories in listening stations.
The most important part
of the museum is the sample book collection of the Neue Augsburger
Kattunfabrik (NAK), comprising several million fabric samples.
nunó –
museum restaurant.
Arriving by bus: Line 31 in the direction of Neuer
Ostfriedhof and line 36 in the direction of Friedberg Ost to the
“Textilmuseum” stop;
7 Schaezlerpalais, Maximilianstraße 46. Tel.:
+49 821 3 24 41 02. The Schaezlerpalais was built in 1765-1770 by the
Augsburg banker Benedikt Adam Liebert. The most magnificent part of the
building is the rococo hall with a ceiling painting by Gregorio
Guglielmi. The German Baroque Gallery is housed in the historic building
with around 100 masterpieces from the 17th and 18th centuries, and the
Haberstock Foundation is another important art collection. The rococo
garden is open to the public. The "Schaezler bees" are also a special
feature: a colony of bees is housed in a former chicken coop; the honey
he produces can be purchased in the museum shop. The State Gallery in
St. Catherine's Church can be reached from the Schaezlerpalais. Among
her paintings is the portrait "Jakob Fugger the Rich" painted by
Albrecht Dürer. Open: Wed - Sun 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., closed Mon. Price:
Every Sunday free entry up to 27 years.
In the Maximilian Museum you
can experience history in the heart of the city of Augsburg.
The
Tuscan columned hall offers visitors constantly changing exhibitions.
8 Bahnpark Augsburg, Firnhaberstrasse 22c D-86159 Augsburg. Phone: +49
(0)821 450 447100, email: service@bahnpark-augsburg.eu . The Bahnpark
Augsburg is a fascinating technology landscape from the early 20th
century, e.g. with an exhibition of historic TEE trains. As if by a
miracle, the complete depot from the time of the Royal Bavarian State
Railways has been preserved to this day. Both the building and the
tracks are listed monuments. Locomotives are still repaired and
maintained in the historic steam locomotive workshop from the 1920s. The
listed turntable, built in 1922, is the linchpin in the railway park in
the truest sense of the word. On certain days, a "mini-train" runs
through the museum grounds with steam or electric locomotives. Open: May
to October, every Sunday and public holiday: 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Price: adults (from 15 years): €9, surcharge for steam days: €2.50.
9
Walter Art Museum, Bei Glaspalast 1 86153 Augsburg. Tel.: +49 (0)821 81
511 63, e-mail: office@kunstmuseumwalter.com. Open: Tue – Fri: 11 a.m. –
3 p.m. Sat, Sun, public holidays: 12 p.m. – 5 p.m. Groups from Tue – Sun
by appointment. Price: adults €6.00, reduced (pensioners, disabled,
military/civilian service) €5.00; students, euros, pupils €2.50.
With its almost 500-year-old magnificent fountain, Maximilianstraße
is a popular promenade both day and night.
A large part of the
pedestrian zone is located on Anna- and Bürgermeister-Fischer-Straße.
1 Zoological Garden, Brehmplatz 1 86161 Augsburg. Phone: +49 (0)821
567149-0 . is a popular destination for families with children. Open:
daily from 9:00 a.m., ends staggered (January, February, November,
December 4:30 p.m., March, October: 5:00 p.m., April, May, September:
6:00 p.m., June, July, August: 6:30 p.m.). Price: adults €14, 3 – 15
years €7, reduced €13, dog €4, slightly cheaper in winter.
2
Botanical Garden, Dr.-Ziegenspeck-Weg 10, 86161 Augsburg. Phone: +49
(0)8213246038. is a relaxing place for body, soul and spirit. Open: from
9:00 am the end is staggered (5:00 pm in winter, extends to 9:00 pm
between May and mid-August). Price: adults €3.50, reduced €3.
Haunstetter Forest
seven table forest
Wittelsbach Park
Augsburg Christkindlesmarkt: It is one of the most beautiful
Christmas markets in Germany and actually consists of several Christmas
markets spread across the city. It has been performed for more than 500
years.
Augsburger Plärrer: Traditional folk festival since 1878.
Protestant Cemetery, Haunstetter Strasse 36, 86161 Augsburg. Phone: +49
(0)821-576018, Fax: +49 (0)821-596484. With its six hectares, the
cemetery is the resting place for many Augsburg residents - not just
those of the Protestant faith. It was laid out in 1534, making it one of
the oldest cemeteries in the city. In 1648 it was acquired by the five
Protestant parishes of Heilig Kreuz, Zu den Barfussern, St. Anna, St.
Jakob and St. Ulrich and has been a Protestant cemetery ever since.
After the Thirty Years' War there was only the Catholic Herman Cemetery
and a Jewish Cemetery in Kriegshaber. Even in death, the Augsburgers
separated. - Some of the memorial stones in the cemetery are 200 to 300
years old, a kind of city archive in stone. For example Gutermann's
crypt by beavers from the 18th century. The tomb slab is made of
sandstone, decorated with a cornucopia, putti and metal inlays. Even the
inscriptions on the old tombstones are remarkable. In the past, names,
dates of birth and death were not enough; some inscriptions tell half
the life of the dead person. "Our dearest wife and mother Luise Oswald,
confectionery owner's wife" or "Johann and Amalie Osswald, brandy
distillery owners' spouses" are mourned in gold. But the individual
furnishings also catch the eye, for example on the tomb of the former
textile manufacturer Riedinger, which shows a copper sculpture with a
gear wheel and a beehive. A few names of famous Augsburgers who are
buried here: Anna Barbara von Stetten, Fritz Koelle, the last descendant
of Mozart, and Elias Holl (city architect).
Theatre
2 Open-air stage at the Red Gate, Am Red Gate 1, 86150
Augsburg. In the summer months, plays are performed by the Augsburg
State Theater.
3 Augsburger Puppenkiste, Spitalgasse 15, 86150
Augsburg. Phone: +498214503450 facebook. Well-known puppet theater with
marionettes, puppet theater museum, souvenir shop and café & restaurant.
City tours
Cherrytours Augsburg - My city tour (Cherrytours
GmbH), Dominikanergasse 18. Tel.: +49 821 50873507, e-mail:
office@cherrytours.de. City tours privately or in small groups for
individualists. Tours available daily, also in different languages.
Individual start and end points possible on request. Price: from 15 EUR.
Accepted payment methods: Cash, Master, Visa
Segway Tour Augsburg
(Seg Tour GmbH), Dominikanergasse 18. Tel: +49 821 50873506, email:
info@segwaytour-augsburg.de. City tour on different routes through
Augsburg with the electric standing scooter "Segway®". In addition to
the Classic Tour to the most famous sights, there is also a tour on the
"Water" theme to choose from. Also bookable for events, company outings
or bachelor parties. Price: EUR 85.00. Accepted payment methods: Cash,
Master, Visa, Amex, Apple Pay, Google Pay, EC.
Sightseeing
flights & balloon rides
Balloon rides Augsburg The only local
provider for balloon rides in hot air balloons over the city of Augsburg
is the provider Balloon rides Augsburg. This operates the Augsburg
balloon in the city colors and with the city skyline. There are several
launch sites around the city as well as within the city. The season runs
from April to October, with morning and evening tee times. There is a
list of dates with free places and dates on the website. Between 4 and 6
people ride in the balloon. Julius-Spokojny-Weg 2. Tel: +49 821 449 555
02, Email: info@ballontouren-augsburg.de Price: EUR 220. Accepted
payment methods: Cash, Master, Visa, Amex, Paypal, EC.
Bathe
3
Kuhsee, Oberländerstrasse . It's easy to spend a day on holiday in the
Kuhsee recreation area in Hochzoll.
4 Bärenkeller Bad, Oberer
Schleisweg 15. Have fun – on 25,000 square meters.
5 Die Fribbe,
Siebentischstraße 4. Family-friendly outdoor pool with children's
playground, paddling pool and sunbathing area.
Shopping
In the
pedestrian zone in the city center (Annastrasse,
Burgermeister-Fischer-Strasse) you will find the usual "big names" very
crowded, so you can compare prices without having to put up with long
walks. Many small and original shops are in the old town, formerly
"lower town", you go down one of the small mountains (Judenberg,
Milchberg, Perlachberg) and stroll through the streets. You can park
cheaply in the City-Galerie at Jakobertor, there is a large selection of
shops, but most also have branches in the city centre. Attention: August
8th is the Peace Festival in Augsburg. This is a public holiday when
shops are closed.
Augsburg is very well connected in terms of transport. The traveler
can easily reach Augsburg with all common means of transport.
By
plane
Munich Airport (IATA: MUC) . Munich Airport is recommended for
arrival. Augsburg is 86km away via the A92/A99/A8 motorways in about an
hour. An airport transfer costs around €35 per person. The journey
from/to the airport by train requires a change in Munich-Pasing or
Munich Hbf to the S-Bahn and takes about 1 hour 30 minutes.
Augsburg
Airport (IATA: AGB), Flughafenstraße 1, 86169 Augsburg (approx. 8 north
of the city). Phone: +49 (0)821 27 08 10, fax: +49 (0)821 270 81 19,
e-mail: info@augsburg-airport.de. Augsburg has a small airport, which
has not had any scheduled or charter flights since 2005.
Memmingen
Airport (IATA: FMM), Am Flughafen 42, 87766 Memmingerberg (approx. 90
southwest of the city). Phone: +49 (0)8331 972 50, email:
info@memmingen-airport.com. Memmingen Airport offers a number of
scheduled connections to Europe. Abroad but no domestic German
connections.
By train
Augsburg main station, Viktoriastrasse
1, 86150 Augsburg. The main train station is in the center of the city.
ICEs and all other trains stop here. The station is due to have an
underground tram stop by 2023 and will continue to have no escalators or
elevators until then. Large-scale construction work is also to be
expected, current information can be found here. Feature: free wifi.edit
info
The other stations are mainly served by regional trains and
are not very interesting for tourists. The Bayern ticket from Deutsche
Bahn AG is recommended for those traveling on a tight budget.
By
bus
The Augsburg long-distance bus stop is located near the motorway
in the north of the city at P&R Nord, Biberbachstrasse. There is a tram
connection there.
In the street
Environmental zones have been
set up in Augsburg in accordance with the Fine Dust Ordinance. If you
don't have the appropriate badge, you risk a fine of €100 when entering
an environmental zone. This also applies to foreign road users.
Entry
ban for vehicles of pollutant groups 1+2+3 (Info Federal Environment
Agency)
To get here, the A8 motorway is recommended for travelers
from the north, east and west. The autobahn was widened to three lanes.
The B2 federal highway has been expanded to four lanes between
Donauwörth and Augsburg.
Coming from the south, the journey via the
A96 and the 4-lane B17 is cheaper. This route is particularly busy
during the holiday season and on long weekends.
Augsburg is located
on the Romantic Road, one of the most popular holiday routes in Germany,
which runs from the Main to the Allgäu. The section from Augsburg along
the Lech via Landsberg am Lech and Steingaden to the federal border near
Füssen is the B 17 federal highway.
The old town of Augsburg, which is well worth seeing, and the city
center cannot be reached by car. Otherwise it is easy to get around in
Augsburg by car.
Public transport opens up the city area very
well. Stadtwerke Augsburg transport 150,000 people a day with their
buses and trams. The network is well developed and is constantly being
expanded AVV. In 2022, the tram will have an underground stop under the
main train station. For a trip within zones 10 & 20 (de facto the entire
city) one price level (€1.80) has to be paid for a distance of up to
four stops and two price levels (€3.60) for longer journeys. The day
ticket for zones 10 & 20 currently costs €8.20 - so it's worth it from
the third trip. The day ticket can take 4 children free of charge and
additional passengers for €2.80 per person (max. 4) (prices 02/2023)
A bicycle ticket is required for bicycle transport, the price of
which corresponds to a children's ticket price level 2 (€2.00). However,
this is valid for the entire day and does not have to be purchased for
each trip.
Those who want to explore Augsburg by bike will find
plenty of cycle paths.
Bike & car sharing
Stadtwerke Augsburg
also offer bike and car sharing. However, car sharing is only worthwhile
for longer stays, since registration with a driver's license in the
customer center is required here. Bike sharing is easy with the nextbike
app (iOS / Android). However, a credit card or PayPal is required for
immediate processing. Activation by direct debit takes about 2-3 working
days. Bike hire costs €1 for 15 minutes, but never more than €15 per
day.
In addition, 1,700 e-scooters from the four companies Dott,
voi, TIER and Lime are available (as of December 2020).
Earlier spellings of the city from various historical maps and
documents were:
Ancient Augusta Vindelicum
14th century Uzhburk
The founding year of Augsburg is 15 BC, because in that year a
legionary camp, which later also served as a supply depot, was built in
the area of today's district of Oberhausen. Emperor Augustus had
commissioned his two stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius, to do this.
According to this founding date, Augsburg would be the second oldest
city in Germany after Trier, which can be evaluated according to various
criteria (see article Oldest cities in Germany). What is certain is that
after Augusta Treverorum, today's Trier, it was one of the largest Roman
settlements north of the Alps.
The settlement of Augusta
Vindelicum (see origin of the name) formed around the camp, which was
built before the turn of the century, in the first century. Emperor
Hadrian granted Roman city rights in 121 AD. From around 95 AD, Augsburg
was the capital of the Roman province of Raetia, which stretched as far
as northern Italy. It is unknown when exactly Augsburg became the
provincial capital; However, some archaeological findings indicate that
Kempten (Cambodunum) continued to have this function until the late 1st
century AD.
According to new research, the Neckar-Odenwald-Limes
was not laid out until AD 98 under Emperor Trajan, at the same time as
the construction of the Roman trunk road from Mainz via Bad Cannstatt to
Augsburg, which was secured for that year. A connection between these
two strategic construction projects and the relocation of the capital of
the province of Raetia from Kempten to Augsburg is obvious, but has not
yet been positively proven (compare: Kinzig (Rhein)#The historic Roman
road).
In 260 AD the Germanic Juthungen invaded Italy and Raetia
and deported thousands of Italians. On their way back, however, they
were defeated by the Roman governor in a two-day battle and put to
flight, as the Augsburg victory altar found in 1992 shows. In 271, after
repeated advances by the Juthungs and other tribes, the city was
besieged.
After the Roman province of Raetia was divided in 294,
Augsburg became the capital of the province of Raetia Secunda, which was
invaded by the Alamanni around 450 after the end of Roman rule. However,
as tradition from the 6th century suggests, the settlement continued to
exist.
Augsburg may have been the seat of a bishop as early as
late antiquity, even if there is no written or archaeological evidence
of this. Traditions about a Bishop Narcissus of Girona around 300, in
whose time the alleged martyrdom of Afra of Augsburg fell, are
uncertain. The medievalist Bernhard Schimmelpfennig has worked out that
it is very likely that this was originally a male Roman saint named
Afer, who probably became a woman named Afra through a prescription.
Early development
It is unclear whether Augsburg continued to
exist as an administrative seat without interruption between antiquity
and the Middle Ages. However, the settlement and the Christianity of its
population are attested for the 6th century, as can be seen from the
mention of the worship of the city saint Afra in the Vita sancti Martini
of Venantius Fortunatus from 565 and from archaeological finds.
At the time of Charlemagne, Augsburg was affected by fighting between
Bavaria and Franconia. Bishop Simpert, who was appointed by Karl, made a
valuable contribution to the reconstruction of the city. The importance
of Augsburg grew again towards the end of the early Middle Ages, when
King Otto I, with the help of Bishop Ulrich von Augsburg, defeated the
westward-striving Hungarians in the battle of 955 on the Lechfeld south
of the city.
On June 21, 1156, Augsburg received city rights
again from Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, which was extended almost a
hundred years later in 1251 by the right to use a seal and to tax its
citizens. Barbarossa's Augsburger Schied 1158 (two years after Augsburg
was granted city status) marks the official founding day of Munich.
Elevation of Augsburg to the status of imperial city
The high
point of these developments was the imperial immediacy, which was
granted by King Rudolf von Habsburg on March 9, 1276 with the privilege
of own statutory rights. The city law was summarized in the city book of
1276. The now expanded independence of Augsburg led to violent disputes
with the bishopric as the secular dominion of the prince-bishop, which
culminated in the relocation of the bishop's main residence to Dillingen
on the Danube in the 15th century. According to Eberhard Isenmann, the
development of Augsburg into an imperial city was completed in 1316 when
Ludwig the Bavarian guaranteed the city's inalienability from the
empire.
As a result, more and more patrician families took
control of the city, which did not always go smoothly: in 1368 there was
a revolt by the city's craftsmen, which led to the introduction of a
guild constitution. Eleven years later, Augsburg joined the Swabian
League of Towns, which disintegrated again in 1388.
As a result
of the guild constitution and the associated regulation of all craft
activities, the power of the guilds grew steadily and they were involved
in the city government until 1547. The Augsburg stock exchange had been
founded seven years earlier, in 1540. The city developed due to its
central location on old trunk roads, the Via Claudia Augusta, the Via
Julia and the Via Imperii, to an important commercial city with
connections to the Hanseatic cities on the North and Baltic Seas, as
well as to Italy.
The climax of this period is the dictatorship of Ulrich Schwarz, who
took over the mayor's office in 1469 with great political visions. At
first he succeeded, among other things, in giving the previously
underrepresented lower guilds a say in the city government and in
freeing Augsburg from over-indebtedness. However, when the patricians
opposed him, he resorted to brutal means and had the Vittel brothers
executed the death penalty, which led to his own downfall and his
execution in 1478.
With the arrival of Günther Zainer, Augsburg
book printing began to flourish. In 1468 he printed S. Bonaventurae
meditationes vite domini. In addition to spiritual literature, the
typographer sold folk books in German, devotional writings,
pharmacopoeias and calendars. In 1471, Zainer created Type 3, one of the
first German Antiqua fonts. Erhard Ratdolt perfected antiqua design
related to Venice. Further open shops ensured that the city was one of
the most well-known publishing locations in Europe at the turn of the
15th and 16th centuries. Last but not least, Johann Schönsperger
contributed to this. Since the imperial city did not have a university
and sales opportunities outside of the scientific or ecclesiastical
sector were only opened up to the secular public, between 1480 and 1500
around 75 percent of the books produced in Augsburg were printed in
colloquial language. The German Aesop brought it to 22 editions at the
time. Schönsperger's Theuerdank is considered one of the greatest
products in Renaissance book printing.
After individual cities of
the empire had already received the right to mint coins in the 13th
century, the Augsburg council also tried to obtain this privilege. The
Augsburg town clerk Konrad Peutinger was sent as head of the town
administration and as imperial councilor in the spring of 1521 to the
Diet of Worms, which was held under the reign of the young Emperor
Charles V. He should not only have the old privileges renewed there, but
also apply to receive the right to mint money for the city, which he
succeeded in doing. On May 21, 1521, Emperor Charles V signed the
corresponding document in which the city of Augsburg was granted
permission to mint its own coins. In the same year the embossing
activity was started. The imperial city coinage of Augsburg ended in
1805, when Augsburg lost imperial freedom and fell to Bavaria.
Even before the final demise of the guild rule in 1547, Augsburg
developed into one of the most important trading and economic centers in
the world from the beginning of the modern era to the end of the
Renaissance, which was mainly due to the influence of the merchant
families Fugger and Welser. During this time, Augsburg was one of the
largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire, along with Cologne, Prague and
Nuremberg.
From 1500 the city belonged to the Swabian Empire. After the Diet of
Augsburg in 1518, Martin Luther had to answer for his theses in the
Fugger Houses before Cardinal Thomas Cajetan, who had been commissioned
by the Pope. He arrived in the city on October 7th and left on the 20th
of the month. Negotiations with Cardinal Cajetan took place on October
12, 13 and 14. During his stay, Luther lived in the Carmelite monastery
of St. Anna, where the Augsburg mayor's son and Carmelite Christoph
Langenmantel stayed, who looked after him in a friendly manner and
advised him. When Martin Luther refused to revoke his theses, there was
an urgent risk of his arrest. Christoph Langenmantel led him secretly
through a secret gate in the city wall on the night of October 19th to
20th, so that he could escape. Luther from Wittenberg sent him a letter
of thanks dated November 25, 1518. In 1529 Augsburg was one of the
representatives of the evangelical minority at the Reichstag in Speyer,
but did not take part in the protest. Their citizens demanded the
unhindered spread of the evangelical faith, which was formulated at the
Diet of Augsburg in 1530 with the Augsburg Confession by Philipp
Melanchthon. The Confessio Augustana represents the confessional and
founding document of the Lutheran Church.
Between 1524 and 1573
there was an important Anabaptist community in the city of Augsburg,
which gained notoriety above all through the Augsburg Martyrs' Synod in
August 1527, an international gathering of delegates from different
Anabaptist circles. Significant figures of the Augsburg Anabaptists were
Jakob Dachser, Hans Leupold and Pilgram Marbeck. Most of the synodals
later died as martyrs for their beliefs.
On July 22, 1534, the
City Council decided that only preachers “installed” by it were allowed
to preach in the city. Catholic worship was restricted to the eight
churches of the monasteries. Smaller churches and monastery churches
were closed. With this religious mandate, the council formally claimed
church sovereignty in the city.
In 1548, Emperor Charles V
initiated a new patrician city constitution and issued the Augsburg
Interim. With the new city constitution, the city introduced a parity
system of government and administration (equal rights and exact
distribution of offices between Catholics and Protestants - see Parity
Imperial City). The Augsburg imperial and religious peace of 1555 also
calmed the coexistence of the citizens in the city. 28 years later – on
February 14th. / February 24, 1583 greg. – the Gregorian calendar was
introduced in Augsburg; This led to a fierce calendar dispute that
culminated in June 1584 with the expulsion of the Lutheran theologian
Georg Mylius.
During the Thirty Years' War, the Fugger town was garrisoned by eight
companies of Bavarian troops in 1628, at a weekly cost of 8,950
guilders. From 1629, under the occupation, the edict of restitution was
enforced against the Protestants, and the Protestants were removed from
the city council and the schools. On April 19, 1632, the Swedish army
under King Gustav Adolf was at the gates and demanded the surrender of
the city. On April 20, the city council agreed to the voluntary
surrender in exchange for the free withdrawal of the occupying Bavarian
troops. The new commander was initially the son of the Swedish
Chancellor Oxenstierna and after him Johann Georg aus dem Winckel. The
Protestant citizens got their old rights back. At the beginning of 1634
there was hardly any food left in the city because the surrounding area
had been completely devastated and plundered by troops passing through.
In the middle of 1634, two more Swedish armies under Bernhard von
Sachsen-Weimar and Gustaf Horn used the city and the surrounding area as
a camp and starting point for their operations in the battles for
Regensburg and Landshut. After the crushing defeat of the Swedes at
Nördlingen, Augsburg was encircled and sealed off by Imperial and
Bavarian troops in the autumn of 1634 with the intention of starving the
city out. All access routes were blocked, and repeated attempts were
made to shut off the water supply. A famine developed in the city with
horrific circumstances and 5,000 dead at the end of 1634. After that,
only Protestant citizens were cared for. After attempts by the Swedish
commander to secretly get groceries from Ulm also failed, the city
capitulated on March 13, 1635. Augsburg's population had fallen by
two-thirds since the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. Under the new
Bavarian city commander, Otto Heinrich Fugger, the religious situation
at the time of the restitution edict was restored, and the city had to
pay compensation of 300,000 guilders. In the following 12 years,
Augsburg was no longer so badly affected by the war. Only towards the
end of the war in September 1646 was Augsburg again the target of a
combined Swedish-French army under the generals Carl Gustav Wrangel and
Turenne. The city was shelled so hard that the citizens were again
willing to hand over the city to the Swedes. However, the Swedes gave up
the siege when a Bavarian relief army under General Johann von Werth
approached. Augsburg was also marginally affected by the last major
field battle of the war in mid-May 1648. After the Battle of
Zusmarshausen, the Imperial-Bavarian troops fleeing the Swedish-French
troops retreated to the city walls. The imperial general Melander,
mortally wounded in the battle, died in Augsburg.
The times of
the Thirty Years' War are reminiscent of the Sweden Tower with the
statue of the Stoinernen Ma and the Schwedenstiege, both of which were
part of the Augsburg fortifications.
After 1653, the election of the German king took place again in
Augsburg in 1690.
In the 18th century, the art of making
instruments flourished again in Augsburg. It is closely associated with
the name of Georg Friedrich Brander (1713-1783), whose products were
well received throughout Europe. On the music side, Johann Andreas Stein
and his daughter Nannette Streicher made an important name for
themselves: the former was one of the favorite piano builders of the
Mozart family, the latter learned this craft from her father, but moved
to Vienna around 1800, where she ran her own musical salon and a.o. had
a lively exchange of letters with Ludwig van Beethoven, who would
probably never have written his best works without their instruments. In
the 18th century, Augsburg was also one of the most important printed
matter centers in Europe. On December 13, 1703, during the War of the
Spanish Succession, Augsburg was occupied by Bavarian troops under
Elector Maximilian II Emanuel, who, however, had to vacate it again in
1704.
1784/1785 there were weaver riots, which finally culminated
on January 29, 1794 in the weavers' uprising. The background to the
dispute was the emerging textile industry with its calico manufactures,
which threatened the weaving trade. In 1771, Johann Heinrich Schüle
built the first factory on the European continent, the Schüle
Kattunfabrik in Augsburg.
With the Peace Treaty of Pressburg (December 26, 1805), Augsburg,
which had already been occupied by Bavarian troops on December 21, lost
its imperial freedom and fell to the Kingdom of Bavaria. Until then it
had been ruled by seven patrician families. From 1809 the city received
its own police chief and was directly subordinate to the district
administration. That's why they were called "district". After renaming
the circles into government districts and the district offices into
rural districts (1938), this became "county-free" because these cities
outside of the rural district associations were directly under the
government.
In 1839 the first railway connection between Augsburg
and Munich went into operation. As part of the Ludwig-Süd-Nord-Bahn
project started in 1843 with the Augsburg-Nuremberg and Lindau-Augsburg
line, the first terminus station was abandoned and a new through station
was used from 1846: Augsburg's main station, which is still in operation
today. The oldest Augsburg train station hall now serves as part of a
tram depot and is the oldest surviving station building in a major
German city, while the main station has the oldest station building
still in use in a major German city.
In 1862 the district office
of Augsburg was created, which later became the district of Augsburg.
During the regional reform in 1972, this was combined with the former
district of Schwabmünchen, part of the former district of Wertingen, and
some places in the districts of Donauwörth and Neuburg an der Donau. The
district of Augsburg acquired its current size when the municipality of
Baar was spun off to form the district of Aichach-Friedberg in 1994.
Augsburg remained the seat of the district, but the city itself was
always independent of a district.
In the 19th century, Augsburg
once again gained importance as a center of the textile industry and
mechanical engineering. In addition to the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg
Nürnberg, known today only under the abbreviation MAN, where Rudolf
Diesel developed the diesel engine from 1893 to 1897, Messerschmitt AG,
for example, had its headquarters here since 1927. In addition, the most
important German daily newspaper of the time, the Allgemeine Zeitung by
Johann Friedrich Cotta, was published in Augsburg.
At the end of
the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, technical progress was also
noticeable in the Fugger town: after horse-drawn trams had been
introduced on rails in 1881, electric trams went into operation in 1898.
The demolition of the medieval weaver's house led to violent protests
during a period of rapid growth.
In April 1919, in connection
with the Munich Soviet Republic, there was also a Soviet Republic in
Augsburg for a short time, based on the Soviets (Russian for
"councils"), but this had to give way on Easter Sunday under military
pressure from the Bavarian government headed by Johannes Hoffmann, who
had moved to Bamberg .
In the Reichstag elections on March 5, 1933, the NSDAP received 32.3
percent of the votes in Augsburg. With the beginning of the "National
Revolution in Bavaria" on March 9, terror against political opponents
also began in Augsburg. At the end of March 1933, the city council
elected in 1929 was dissolved and re-staffed based on the results of the
March 5 Reichstag election, but without the KPD city councillors. In
May, the SPD, which had already been excluded from almost all city
committees, left the city council under pressure from the National
Socialists, and the BVP followed on July 5. The members of the DNVP
joined the NSDAP parliamentary group.
In the city council meeting
on April 28, 1933, the second mayor of the SPD, Friedrich Ackermann, was
formally retired and Josef Mayr, who had previously held the office on
an acting basis, was elected the new second mayor. On July 31, the mayor
Otto Bohl (BVP) was dismissed and replaced by Edmund Stoeckle (NSDAP),
the mayor of Lindenberg im Allgäu, at the city council meeting on August
3. Apparently, Stoeckle could not gain the confidence of the party
leadership and was replaced by Josef Mayr in December 1934. The seizure
of power in the city was thus complete. With the reorganization of the
Reich in 1933, Bavaria was divided into six districts. Augsburg became
the capital of the district of Swabia.
As early as March 9, 1933,
communist functionaries were taken into "protective custody". While the
arrests were initially aimed at communists and social democrats,
Jewish-Germans and other unpopular people, as well as members of the
BVP, were quickly arrested. The fire in the singer's hall (in today's
Wittelsbacher Park) on April 30, 1934 was also the reason for a wave of
arrests.
At the beginning of 1933 there were 126
Jewish-German-owned companies in Augsburg, including 20 industrial and
55 wholesale companies. Their total number fell to 79 as a result of the
reprisals in 1938. During the November pogroms, on the morning of
November 10, 1938, the synagogue built in 1917 was set on fire. As a
result, Jewish-German shops and private homes were vandalized and male
Jewish-German citizens were taken to concentration camps (KZ) in order
to force them to emigrate and confiscate their assets (Aryanization). In
1985, the synagogue was reopened after a long restoration and has since
been partly used as a Jewish museum. A memorial stone in the Jewish
cemetery commemorates the approximately 400 Augsburg Jewish-German
victims of the Holocaust. In addition to many other resistance fighters
such as Bebo Wager, the SPD member of parliament Clemens Högg was also
killed during the Nazi era.
During the Second World War, several
satellite camps of the Dachau concentration camp were set up in Augsburg
and in the surrounding area to decentralize the armaments production of
the Messerschmitt AG aircraft factory. The Haunstetten concentration
camp subcamp was built in February 1943 in this district in the area of
a former gravel pit, 2,700 male concentration camp prisoners were
imprisoned there and, after being destroyed in bombing raids in April
1944, it was re-established as the Augsburg-Pfersee subcamp in an air
communications barracks, as the main camp of the Subcamp complex in
Swabia. There was also a camp for 1,000 prisoners in Gablingen, as well
as the Horgau subcamp. 235 prisoners were murdered directly in Augsburg
by SS men or died from the catastrophic living conditions and were
buried in the West Cemetery, which is commemorated by three
commemorative plaques. In the spring of 1945, 2000 prisoners were driven
from the Pfersee barracks to Klimmach on a death march, many of them
dying. In the district of Kriegshaber, 500 Hungarian Jewish women were
interned for work in the Michel works.
Augsburg suffered severe
damage from air raids during the Second World War, since the city, with
the production facilities of important armaments companies (including
Messerschmitt and MAN), was a military target for Allied bomber groups.
The consequences are still noticeable today, on the one hand through the
irretrievable loss of valuable cultural assets, on the other hand
through the dangers emanating from duds still in the ground. Most
recently, in December 2016, a dud had to be cleared, evacuating 54,000
people. Augsburg was bombed more than ten times (see air raids on
Augsburg), two of them in attacks of greater impact: on April 17, 1942
the target was MAN's submarine engine production, on February 25 and 26,
1944 the attack was intended as part of the Area Bombing Directive of
the city center, the Messerschmitt works and the main station as a
southern German railway junction.
On April 28, 1945, units of the
7th US Army moved into Augsburg – thanks to the successful Augsburg
freedom movement without fighting – and thus liberated Augsburg from
Nazi rule. They set up a base here with several barracks, which was only
completely abandoned in 1998 when the last troops left (see US garrison
Augsburg).
The old town with its important buildings was largely rebuilt after
the end of the war, with some work continuing to this day. The
renovation of the Golden Hall, which opened in 1985 to mark the city's
2000th anniversary, was only completed in 1996. As the capital of the
administrative district of Swabia, Augsburg was integrated into the
political system of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Free State
of Bavaria.
Due to the construction of the Rosenau Stadium, the
city gained great importance for numerous sporting events in the
post-war period, including the venue for the German Athletics
Championships in 1953 and the German Athletics Championships in 1963 as
well as other athletics country comparisons. The high point of these
events was the canoeing and kayaking competitions on the Eiskanal, as
well as some basketball, soccer and handball preliminary rounds of the
1972 Olympic Games, which were held in Augsburg. The final assembly of
the ecumenical Whitsun meeting, which took place in Augsburg in June
1971 and is considered the first joint church congress of Protestant and
Roman Catholic Christians and thus the precursor of the ecumenical
church congress, was also held in the Rosenau Stadium.
In October
1970, the university was opened as the successor to several other
universities and began work with the economics and social science
department. With the establishment of further faculties and the
construction of a campus from 1974 onwards, its importance grew
steadily, so that today around 20,200[87] students are enrolled there.
After the municipal healthcare system had been very decentralized
and inconsistently organized for many centuries, the inauguration of the
central clinic, now called the University Clinic Augsburg, marked a
significant turning point in 1982: Since then, all emergencies and
operations have been treated centrally in one hospital; the smaller
clinics have specialized (see health care in Augsburg).
The city
experienced a severe natural disaster with the Whitsun floods in 1999,
when the Lech and Wertach burst their banks after days of rain and the
simultaneous snowmelt in the Alps. When a weir finally collapsed, entire
parts of the city were flooded, resulting in millions of euros in
damage.
After Augsburg hosted the 5th German Fire Brigade Day in
1862, the 27th German Fire Brigade Day also took place there from June
20th to 25th, 2000.
Recently, Augsburg has been shaken by crises
several times due to the insolvency of important companies and today has
an unemployment rate that is above the Bavarian average. Various
setbacks such as the failed expansion of the airfield into a large
regional airport and the failed settlement of a BMW plant contributed to
this. Augsburg has attracted attention in recent years through major
cultural events such as the Mozart or Brecht years.
In 2011,
Augsburg was one of the venues for the Women's World Cup.
Supposedly, Cisa (dea Ciza) was the city goddess of Augsburg.
Marginal notes in the Excerptum ex Gallica Historia (around 1135) from
Ursberg Abbey give a detailed account of the unsuccessful Roman siege of
the town of Cisaris, later Augsburg, which was built by Swabian tribes
between Lech and Wertach. The city was therefore named after a sanctuary
of the goddess Cisa. In this text, the local names Kriegshaber are
derived from a Greek Avar, Hafnerberg from a military prefect habeno
(also: Hebeino) and Pfersee from a military tribune Verres (also: Verus)
(see also: Derivation of the name Pfersee).
The text from the
12th century turns out to be a diffuse compilation with a clear focus on
the imaginative interpretation of probably pre-Alemannic local names
that are no longer understood, which is not unusual for the study of
legends. Only the goddess Cisa remained in the discussion, certainly
because Jacob Grimm expressly emphasized the "value of the strange
tradition" in his German Mythology.
Whether an Alemannic cult can
be assumed at the site of today's Kitzenberg near the Basilica of St.
Ulrich and Afra cannot be scientifically proven either. In Augsburg, at
least since the late Middle Ages, a provincial Roman head of Medusa was
known, which was walled into today's Ulrichskirche and is now in the
Roman Museum. A depiction of the Cisa can be seen on the weather vane of
the Perlach Tower; furthermore, according to legend, some
representations on the bronze doors of the cathedral point to the
goddess.
The "Stoinerne Ma" ("Stone Man") is a life-size stone figure on the
eastern Augsburg city wall in the area of the so-called
"Schwedenstiege", which is in the immediate vicinity of the
Galluskirche. It probably represents a one-armed baker with a loaf of
bread and a shield. In the area of the feet there is a snail-shaped
pedestal.
According to the legend, it is about the baker "Konrad
Hackher", who is said to have baked bread from sawdust during a long
siege of the city and threw it over the city wall into the moat clearly
visible to the besiegers. The impression that there was still enough
bread in Augsburg to be thrown over the wall is said to have demoralized
the besiegers so much that they shot him with a crossbow out of anger.
One hit severed his arm, and they broke the siege soon after.
Historically, the event belongs to the Thirty Years' War, more precisely
to the siege of Augsburg during the years 1634/35, when Catholic
Bavarian troops under Field Marshal von Wahl wanted to recapture the
city occupied by the Protestant Swedes. The baker's act is not reliably
documented.
However, there are facts beyond this legend: In his
meticulously researched contribution to No. 54 of the "Zeitschrift des
Historischen Vereins für Schwaben", published in 1941, Eduard Lampart
defines the figure, which was then still standing on the corner of the
Pulvergäßchen/Unterer Graben, as a handicraft made from several things
that originally did not belong together Split. It is likely to be finds
made during earthworks in the city, which were carted over generations
to the corner house mentioned, because it was the seat of the incumbent
"municipal building supervisor" until 1810. We owe it to one of the
builders that the figure was erected between the beginning and middle of
the 18th century. It was only later that she was credited with
portraying the historically unproven baker-hero Hacker. The corner house
was hit by several bombs during the Second World War and so the stone
figure was moved to its current location at the Schwedenstiege after the
war. There it is often headed for by walkers who stroll along the city
wall. Since touching the nose of the stone figure is said to bring good
luck, this custom is particularly popular with couples.
In the wall of the property at Bei den Sieben Kindeln 3 (♁⊙) there is
a stone relief from Roman times that depicts six playing, naked children
standing around a coffin.
Legend has it that the memorial plaque
was commissioned by a Roman officer to commemorate the drowning of one
of his children (hence it says "seven" children, although the plaque
only shows six: the seventh child drowned and lies in the coffin) .
According to current knowledge, the slab represents Erotes and once
formed the long side of a so-called Erotes sarcophagus.
The urban area had always been expanded beforehand through the incorporation of surrounding communities, but it only took on larger dimensions in the 20th century. The incorporations can be assigned to two waves: A first before and during the First World War, a second in 1972 in the course of the Bavarian municipal reform. Augsburg's Mayor at the time, Hans Breuer, would have liked to incorporate more surrounding towns, but failed due to the resistance of the local population. On July 1, 1999, a corridor was exchanged with the neighboring town of Gersthofen to set up a postal logistics center.
The city lies on the rivers Lech, Wertach and
Singold. The oldest part of the city as well as the southern
quarters are located on the northern foothills of a high terrace
that arose between the steep hillside of Friedberg in the east and
the high Riedeln on the western edge of the hill.
In the
south extends the Lechfeld, a post-glacial gravel plain between the
two large rivers Lech and Wertach, in which rare primeval landscapes
have been preserved. The Augsburg city forest and the Lechtalheiden
are among the most species-rich Central European habitats.
Augsburg borders the Augsburg - Western Forests nature park, a large
forest area. In addition, the urban area itself is heavily greened,
which is why the city was the first German city to be recognized as
the greenest and most livable city in the European competition
Entente Florale Europe in 1997. The city is the largest communal
forest owner in Bavaria and the third largest in Germany.
The city is surrounded in the east by the
district of Aichach-Friedberg and in the west by the district of
Augsburg. Due to the elongated city area in north-south direction,
many cities and municipalities border on Augsburger Flur.
The
agglomeration is formed by Friedberg (district of
Aichach-Friedberg), Königsbrunn, Stadtbergen, Neusäß and Gersthofen
(all district of Augsburg), starting in the east and following
clockwise, all of which with their settlement core border directly
on the built-up area of Augsburg.
In addition, the
municipalities of Rehling, Affing, Kissing, Mering and Merching (all
districts of Aichach-Friedberg) as well as Bobingen, Gessertshausen
and Diedorf (all districts of Augsburg) border the city (clockwise
from the north).
The urban area consists of
42 urban districts, which form 17 planning areas. This type of urban
structure has existed since 1938. The total area is 147 square
kilometers (39th place among German cities).
The districts
are partly formerly independent communities, partly newly
established residential areas. Some districts have spatially
separated settlements (residential areas) with their own names.
Districts not mentioned in the administrative structure are the
Augsburg old town as part of the inner city and the Augsburg textile
district, which is partly in Spickel-Herrenbach, partly in the inner
city.
The former barracks and residential areas of the US
Army kept their names after the troop withdrawal in 1998, including
Centerville, Cramerton, Reese, Sheridan, Sullivan Heights and
Supply-Center. Many of these barracks are now residential areas.
The city lies on three rivers: the Lech is the largest
flowing body of water and is widened by the tributary of the
Wertach, which flows north of the Wolfzahnau nature reserve. The
third Augsburg river, the Singold, has its source in the Ostallgäu
and flows into the widely ramified artificial stream and canal
system in the city. The numerous canals in Augsburg - most of them
flow through the Lechviertel in the old town - are spanned by 500
bridge structures. They are part of the site “The Augsburg Water
Management System”, which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage
List on July 6, 2019.
The factory canal into which the
Singold flows is derived from the Wertach in Göggingen, flows north
as the Wertach Canal, Holzbach or Senkelbach and returns to the
Wertach after the Augsburg balloon factory.
At the
Hochablass, the Hauptstadtbach and the Neubach are diverted from the
Lech, which merge again after a few hundred meters, to briefly flow
downstream into the Herrenbach, which flows north (downstream
Proviantbach with its outflows and feeders, Hanreibach and
Fichtelbach) and the Kaufbach, which flows west forks. The Kaufbach
feeds the Schäfflerbach and the city ditches and inner city canals,
which flow together again to the north on the grounds of the
UPM-Kymmene and as a city stream in the western area of the
Wolfzahnau flow again with the Proviantbach to reach the Lech a few
meters before the Wertach confluence . The Mühlbach flows through
the Pfersee district.
The Brunnenbach, the Reichskanal and
the Lochbach (a Lechkanal) flow through the city forest. They branch
out into other small streams to unite again shortly before the inner
city.
The Kuhsee and the smaller Stempflesee are located in
the alluvial forest that the Lech flows through. In the north of
Augsburg there are the Autobahnsee, the Kaisersee and the
Europaweiher at the Augsburg Garbage Hill. The Wertach reservoir,
the Lautersee and the Ilsesee (local recreation area) are located in
the south of Augsburg.
The nature reserves in the south of
Augsburg serve the Augsburg drinking water supply. The city forest
and the Lechau forest near Unterbergen are therefore designated as
drinking water protection areas. The water drawn from there with a
degree of hardness of 13.5 ° dH (medium hard) supplies the cities of
Augsburg, Neusäß, Friedberg and Stadtbergen.
After the large-scale incorporations of
the 1970s, the city is one of the greenest cities in Germany with
around a third of green and forest areas.
The Augsburg city
forest - with about 21.5 square kilometers the largest Bavarian
alluvial forest - forms a closed forest area in the southeast and is
of high regional importance for nature conservation and as a local
recreation and leisure area. There are seven landscape protection,
four FFH and two nature protection areas in the urban area (as of
May 2016).
The south-west of the city is covered by parts of
the Augsburg-Westliche Wälder nature park. This 1,175 square
kilometer nature park is the only one in Bavarian Swabia. It is
bounded in the north by the Danube, in the east by the slopes of the
Wertach and Schmutter and in the west by the Mindel. In the south it
extends to the edge of the Unterallgäu.
The city is
nationwide as a model city for environmentally friendly lighting.
Measures against light pollution in the area of public lighting
have reduced electricity consumption and thus carbon dioxide
emissions by 20 percent, which leads to annual savings of 250,000
euros.
In a study by the Geers Foundation in 2011, Augsburg
had the second best value of German cities with over 250,000
inhabitants after Münster - only 17.0 percent of the city area was
exposed to a daily average of more than 55 decibels.
In
November 2013, Augsburg was awarded the German Sustainability Prize
as the “most sustainable city in 2013”.
The city
lies in the transition between the humid Atlantic and the dry
continental climate on the Lechfeld plain in a slight valley
location. Other weather-determining factors are the Alps as a
Central European and the Danube as a regional weather divide.
Therefore the weather is relatively changeable. Over the past six
decades, Augsburg has seen an increase in temperature, a decrease in
precipitation and an increase in the occurrence of extreme values.
The weather periods vary between moderate, not too cold winters
and warm, not excessively hot summers. Large amounts of snow, which
protect the vegetation during periods of frost, usually do not fall
until January and last until mid-March. Larger amounts of
precipitation are recorded in early summer, mostly from westerly
winds. Longer dry periods occur in midsummer and early autumn.
The foehn brings warm and dry air currents from the south into
the lower Alpine foothills to Augsburg all year round. Associated
with this is good visibility, so that the Bavarian and Allgäu Alps
can often be clearly seen.
The average annual temperature is
around 8.4 degrees Celsius, and the annual rainfall is around 850
millimeters. During the hot summer of 2003, a temperature of 36.0
degrees was measured on August 13, the absolute maximum value since
the beginning of temperature observations is 37.1 degrees on July
27, 1983. The lowest registered temperature was -28.2 degrees,
measured on February 12, 1929.
Due to its location in the
most thunderstorm-intensive state of Bavaria, Augsburg is often
affected by violent storms, which lead to enormous Lech and Wertach
floods. This had the greatest impact in 1999 when a weir broke on
the Wertach and entire parts of the city were flooded.
On
autumn days it is often foggy in Augsburg because of its location in
the valley of the Lech. After Munich, Augsburg is the snowiest city
in Germany.
At the time of the Roman Empire, more than 10,000 people lived in
Augsburg. The number of inhabitants hardly grew in the following
centuries. Around 1500, Augsburg, with a population of around 30,000
people, was one of the largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire after
Cologne and Prague.
With industrialization in the 19th century,
Augsburg experienced strong population growth. In 1806 around 26,000
people lived in the city, in 1895 there were over 80,000 and 180,000
inhabitants in 1939. During the Second World War the city lost around 20
percent of its population (38,958 people), so that in 1945 146,000
people lived in Augsburg. The population reached its pre-war level five
years later, partly due to the large number of German refugees from
Central and Eastern Europe.
The resident population increased
from 267,121 on January 1, 2010 to 290,743 on June 30, 2016 (+8.8%) and
reached 295,895 on December 31, 2017. Since May 2011, the number has
always been above the value of the previous month. The mark of 290,000
inhabitants was exceeded in April 2016. In the 2010s, Augsburg was the
23rd largest German city. A forecast published in 2012 predicts that
Augsburg's population will increase by 3.9 percent by 2025, making it
the third-strongest population growth of all major German cities.
Between 1988 and 2018, the independent city grew from 247,731 to
295,135 by 47,404 inhabitants or 19.1%.
On January 1, 2008, Augsburg had 267,836 inhabitants with their main
and secondary residence and 264,265 without the secondary residence. In
November 2008, 9,181 of the city's 138,300 employable citizens were
unemployed, which corresponds to an unemployment rate of 6.5 percent. In
February 2010, the unemployment rate in Augsburg was 6.2 percent, in the
district of Augsburg it was 4.0 percent. The rate for the entire region
was 5.4 percent. Almost 500,000 people live in the Augsburg metropolitan
area, which includes the neighboring suburbs.
At the end of 2017,
the proportion of foreigners was 21.8 percent (64,627 inhabitants)
rather high compared to major German cities. Most citizens of non-German
origin live in the planning areas of Oberhausen, Spickel-Herrenbach,
Hochfeld and Lechhausen as well as Jakobervorstadt and come mainly from
Turkey, Italy and the former Yugoslavia. The Suryoye make up a
significant proportion (also referred to as Arameans, Assyrians or
Chaldeans). The first Suryoye came to Augsburg from south-eastern Turkey
(Tur-Abdin) as guest workers in the mid-1960s. When the situation for
this Semitic Christian minority in their area of origin in ancient
Mesopotamia deteriorated, many came to Augsburg as refugees. They come
from Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. Most of the Suryoye who came
to Augsburg belong to the Syrian Orthodox Church. Recently, however,
Suryoye, who belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian
Church of the East, have come to Augsburg as refugees from Iraq and
Syria. The Suryoye still speak an Aramaic language, namely New East
Aramaic. This language is spoken in two dialects, the Surayt dialect
(also known as Turoyo) and the Suret dialect.
Around 50,000 late
resettlers also live in Augsburg. They are German citizens, most of whom
were born in the former Soviet Union. Overall, about 45 percent of the
city's population has a migration background (including foreigners, as
of 2018).
The age structure is in line with the German average,
with 16.0 percent (43,213 people) of the residents with their main and
secondary residence being under the age of 18. 52.2 percent (140,592
people) of all residents are female, 47.8 percent (128,857 people) are
male.
Due to the positive migration balance, Augsburg's
population is growing. The highest increases were in autumn due to the
influx of 18 to under 25 year olds. Along with the increase in the 25 to
under 40 age group, the proportion of children under the age of 10 has
also increased since 2011, with the number of births also increasing
steadily since 2012. The population growth is due to an increasing
surplus of external migration. The number of people who have moved to
Germany has increased steadily since 2010 from 17,482 to 25,618 people
(+45.5%) in 2015. Since the number of outward emigrants increased less
rapidly during this period (by 25.0% from 16,136 to 20,169), the annual
increase in migration has increased from 1,346 in 2010 to 5,449 in 2015.
The number of immigrants from EU countries more than doubled from 2,059
to 5,665.
The young immigrants prefer city districts close to the
city center, where the highest proportion of single households can also
be found. The average household size is falling, primarily due to the
increase in single-person households. The city of Augsburg loses most of
all due to the emigration of 30 to under 50-year-olds, who (with their
children) mainly migrate to the Augsburg area. The number of deaths in
the city of Augsburg has been higher than the number of births since
1968. Despite the decline in the birth rate and the negative migration
balance among young families, the number of single parents rose.
The population of Augsburg is aging due to increasing life expectancy
and the aging of the particularly large age groups. In comparison to
other cities, however, Augsburg has a low percentage of people over the
age of 65 and a low old-age dependency ratio. Due to the above-average
immigration of 18 to under 30-year-olds, Augsburg has the highest
percentage in this age group in comparison to other cities. Augsburg has
only a relatively low fertility rate, which is why the youth quotient is
comparatively low.
In addition to the Christian, Jewish and Islamic communities, which together make up the majority of religious life in Augsburg, there are many small faith communities. In addition, since 1911 there has been an ideological community in the form of the Bund für Geistfreiheit Augsburg.
Since 1999, annual data on religious affiliation have been available
from the municipal population register. Until 2003, an absolute majority
of Augsburgers were members of the Catholic Church: At that time, 50.2%
Catholics, 17.4% Protestants and 32.4% people with other or no
denomination or religion lived in the city.
According to the 2011
census, 46.0% were Catholic, 16.8% were Protestant and 37.3% were
non-denominational, belonged to another religious community or made no
statement. This census also included figures for other religious
communities. At that time, 4.1% of the population were
Christian-Orthodox, 0.5% were Jewish, 0.5% were members of a Protestant
free church and a further 6.1% belonged to other public religious
communities recognized in Bavaria (including the Alt- Catholic Church
and Jehovah's Witnesses). According to calculations based on the figures
from the 2011 census, the proportion of the Muslim population in
Augsburg was 8.8%.
Since then, the number of Protestants and
Catholics has continued to fall. As of December 31, 2021, Augsburg had
299,638 inhabitants, of whom 35.9% were Catholics, 13.1% were
Protestants and 51.0% of the inhabitants belonged to other or no
religious communities. In 2021, 2836 residents (1% of the total
population) left the churches. The number of people leaving the church
in Augsburg in 2022 has reached a record high.
The first data on the beliefs of the city's residents were obtained
in 1833 as part of a census. 61% Catholics, 38% Protestants and 0.4%
non-believers or atheists lived in the city.[36] This ratio changed in
particular through the incorporation of Catholic suburbs in favor of the
Catholics, so that the proportion of the Protestant population around
1950 was only around 23 percent. In the 1987 census, 66.5 percent were
Catholic and 18.7 percent were Protestant.
Augsburg is the
bishop's seat of the Catholic diocese and the seat of the Evangelical
church district of Augsburg.
The city was probably already since
the 4./5. Century seat of a bishop. Around 738 the diocese of Augsburg
was renewed. From 1518 the teachings of Martin Luther found followers in
Augsburg. The doctrine spread more and more and finally led to the
official introduction of the Reformation by the city council in
1534/1537. The city then took part in the Schmalkaldic War, and in 1548
an Imperial Diet was held in Augsburg, which regulated the practice of
religion for a transitional period (Augsburg Interim). Seven years later
(1555) the Augsburg Religious Peace finally achieved equality for both
denominations. In memory of this and Luther's visits to Augsburg, the
city is now one of the German Luther cities. The Reformation Anabaptists
were also able to establish a relatively strong community in the city in
1524. In 1527 the supra-regional so-called Augsburg Martyrs' Synod took
place in Augsburg.
The Catholic population then continued to
belong to the diocese of Augsburg, which was then assigned to the
archdiocese of Mainz. After the city was transferred to Bavaria, the
previous allocation initially remained. In 1821 the diocese of Augsburg
and with it its parishes were assigned to the newly established
archdiocese of Munich and Freising (see also the list of the bishops of
Augsburg).
At the latest after the Peace of Westphalia, the
Protestant parishioners received the churches of St. Anna, St. Ulrich,
Barefoot and St. Jakob. They were subordinate to the city council. After
Augsburg's transition to Bavaria, the congregations became part of the
Protestant Church of the Kingdom of Bavaria, which initially comprised
Lutheran and Reformed denominations.
The city then became the
seat of its own deanery, which in 1827 first belonged to the
consistorial district of Bayreuth, from 1876 to the consistorial
district of Ansbach and then from 1923 to the church district of Munich.
It has been part of the Augsburg church district since 1971. In addition
to the parishes in the city, the Deanery of Augsburg also includes
parishes outside the city area, primarily in the districts of Augsburg
and Aichach-Friedberg.
The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 confirmed
in Augsburg the parity system of government and administration
introduced by the city constitution of 1548 (final equality and exact
distribution of offices between Catholics and Protestants). This
agreement was to last until it was mediated in 1805 and is still
celebrated today at the Augsburg High Peace Festival.
After the
end of the Anabaptist movement, free church congregations were
constituted again in Augsburg in the 19th and 20th centuries. It all
started with the Mennonites, who held worship services in Augsburg from
1870 onwards. In 1863 the United Methodist Church received the rights of
a "private church corporation". Around 1925 the Baptists (in the
Federation of Evangelical Free Churches) began their work, starting from
the mother church in Munich. Since 1968 there has also been a free
evangelical congregation in Augsburg, which now has four congregations.
The Orthodox Churches of Southern and Eastern Europe and the Middle
East also have congregations in Augsburg. The Suryoye (also known as
Assyrians or Arameans) inaugurated their own church in Lechhausen in
1998, the Marienkirche on Zusamstraße is one of the first Syrian
Orthodox buildings in Germany. The approximately 6,000 Syriac-Orthodox
Christians (pronounced as Suryoye) in Augsburg come mainly from the
south-east of Turkey (Tur Abdin) and Syria, speak the language of Jesus
(Syrian-Aramaic) and have their roots in Mesopotamia. These Christians
first came to Europe as guest workers, then from 1980 mostly as asylum
seekers, since they were discriminated against and persecuted in Turkey.
The Greek-Orthodox parish with over 6000 parishioners was able to buy
the Gospel Church in the former anti-aircraft barracks after the
withdrawal of the American troops and renamed it after the patron saint
Agios Panteleimon.
The Russian Orthodox Church in Honor of the
Icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Mourners”, which belongs to the
Russian Orthodox Diocese of the Orthodox Bishop of Berlin and Germany,
is located in the Pfersee district. The congregation in Augsburg has
existed since the 1930s and now has around 120 members (2011).
There are also a large number of other Christian religious communities,
for example, also in Pfersee, the Apostle Junia Church of the Old
Catholic community, the New Apostolic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints or Jehovah's Witnesses.
The Muslims form the second largest religious community in Augsburg.
There are a number of prayer and club rooms in the city, which are run
by different communities with their own goals and priorities.
The
majority of Islamic citizens are first to third generation immigrants
from Turkey (see demographics). In addition, there are also associations
and associated places of worship for Arab, Bosnian and Iraqi Muslims, as
well as two Alevi cultural centers.
It can be assumed that the first Jews came to Augsburg after the
Jewish War in the first century and the destruction of the Jerusalem
Temple by the Romans. There are documentary mentions from the 9th
century. The Jews already had their own street near St. Leonhard's
Chapel in 1241 and their own court up until 1433.[58] On November 22,
1348, two members of the influential Portner family attempted a coup to
seize power in the city. Since this uprising coincided with a pogrom
against the Jews and the Portners had borrowed from Augsburg Jews to
purchase their properties, it has been suggested that they might have
helped foment the pogrom themselves to take advantage of the chaos in
the city and get rid of their creditors. Even if the coup failed and the
ringleaders were expelled from the city forever, the incumbent council
could not or did not want to prevent the murder of the Jews. The
Augsburg Jewish community was thus the first large community in the
Roman-German Empire to fall victim to the persecution of the Jews at the
time of the Black Death. On the decision of the city council of July 7,
1438 that the Jews "should no longer be allowed to leave the town then
from that day onwards for two years", they were expelled from the city
and settled in front of the city gates in the village of Kriegshaber at.
Under the protection of the Margraviate of Burgau, the Kriegshaber
synagogue was the center of the Jewish community for almost three
hundred years. A large Jewish cemetery from this period has also been
preserved in Kriegshaber.
The history of the Jewish community in
Augsburg began again in 1803, when the city first granted three Jews
(the bankers Aron Elias Seligmann, later Freiherr von Eichthal, Jakob
Obermayer and Henle Ephraim Ullmann) citizenship for an annual fee and a
substantial loan amount, although the urban merchants had put up
considerable resistance.
The number of Jewish families then
increased only slightly (79 people in 1840 and 128 people in 1852),
since their settlement was still strictly managed. The defeat of the
conservative Catholics in the municipal elections of 1857 brought about
a decisive turning point, as a result of which the first Jewish
community was founded in Augsburg in 1861. Until then, religious
instruction was given by the teacher in the then still independent
suburb of Pfersee, while the responsible rabbinate was Kriegshaber.
Three years before the government approved the community, the house
at Wintergasse A 13 was bought for 13,000 guilders in 1858 and initially
converted into a synagogue and later extended to include apartments for
rabbis and teachers; its inauguration took place in April 1865.
As a result of this development, the Jewish population in the city
increased rapidly in the second half of the 19th century, so that in
1895 1,156 Jews lived in Augsburg. In the meantime, a Jewish cemetery
(1867) and lively club life (a men's, a women's and a dining club, each
with charitable purposes) had come into being. The Jewish
industrialists, bankers, traders and merchants played an important role
in the city's economic life and almost all belonged to the upper middle
or upper class.
Already at that time, more and more members of
the community were demanding the construction of a new synagogue, which
was also necessary due to pressure from the city: the old building was
in a dilapidated condition. In 1903, for example, a garden estate on
Halderstraße was acquired, for which an architectural competition was
announced in 1912. In the years 1914 to 1917 the plans of Fritz Landauer
and Heinrich Lömpel were finally realized.
When the National
Socialists seized power in 1933, the Jews of Augsburg also suffered more
and more from reprisals: within five years, almost all Jewish companies
were closed or Aryanized.
The suppression of the Jews reached its
temporary peak during the November pogroms in 1938 in the early morning
of November 10, 1938: around 30 NSDAP members destroyed the interior of
the synagogue and set fire, which, however, was extinguished again
because of the surrounding residential and communal buildings and a gas
station , so that the building itself was preserved and during the
Second World War it was used as a backdrop store for the city theater.
An anti-aircraft artillery observation post was installed on the dome of
the synagogue.
Although many Jews had emigrated since 1933, the
number of Jews in the city had not decreased significantly due to the
influx of Jewish citizens from rural communities. 356 to 450
parishioners were deported in seven transports to Auschwitz, Piaski,
Riga and Theresienstadt. Only a few Augsburg Jews survived the Shoa.
After the end of the Second World War, only a few former Augsburg
Jews returned to the city, including Ludwig Dreifuss, who was appointed
the first post-war mayor by the American military government. In 1946
the Jewish religious community in Augsburg-Swabia was founded, which did
not grow much for a very long time. Hans Erich Fabian, first chairman of
the Berlin community, spoke of southern German problems with regard to
the conflicts that arose between the few German Jews who had returned
and the overwhelming majority of Eastern European Jews, especially in
southern Germany. It was feared that the German-Jewish traditions would
not be able to assert themselves. The disputes were particularly
vehement in Augsburg, where 32 German Jews refused to grant community
membership to the 60 Jews without German citizenship. The Central
Council took a clear position on this: community membership is
independent of nationality and place of birth. Years later, these Jews
received two out of nine seats on the board. In 1987 the congregation
had 247 members. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, this
changed rapidly due to the influx of numerous quota refugees from the
former Soviet Union, so that the community - which is responsible for
all of Swabia - today has around 1800 people.
With the founding of the Wat Buddha Augsburg association (about 130
members), a temple was set up in the Göggingen district in 2002, which
is mainly used by migrants from Thailand. Every first Sunday of the
month, the ceremony is webcast from the Maha Dhamma Kaya Cetiya Temple
near Bangkok. Believers from outside also travel to this date. The club
has since moved to Königsbrunn.
Since January 2000, the Buddhist
group Zen in Augsburg has been meeting every Wednesday and Sunday for
regular meditation in Augsburg. Teaching and practice follow the
traditional Japanese Rinzai Zen tradition.
On September 23, 2008, the city was awarded the title of “Place of
Diversity” by the federal government.
city administration
At
the head of the city of Augsburg, as the chairman of the council, there
was evidence that since 1266 the city administrator, who was
occasionally also referred to as mayor, led to the fact that both titles
were sometimes used at the same time. It was not until 1548 that the
title was finally assigned to Stadtpfleger. These officiated for several
years and were then elected for life, which is why there were several
city officials at the same time.
After the transfer to Bavaria, a
magistrate with two mayors was appointed in Augsburg, who was supported
by an additional board of municipal representatives from 1818. In 1919,
this two-chamber system was abandoned in favor of the establishment of a
"city council", which has since been headed by the "First Mayor", who
usually has the title of Lord Mayor (see list of Lord Mayors of
Augsburg).
On March 16, 2008, Kurt Gribl (CSU, at the time of the
election he was not a party) prevailed in a run-off against incumbent
Paul Wengert (SPD) and took over the office of Lord Mayor on May 2,
2008. In the local elections on March 16, 2014, incumbent Gribl ran
again as mayoral candidate for the CSU. He prevailed against his
challengers with 51.8% without a runoff and was thus confirmed in
office.
On March 29, 2020, Eva Weber (CSU) was the first woman in
the history of the city to be elected mayor. She won the runoff election
with 62.3% against Dirk Wurm (SPD), who received 37.7% of the votes.
On June 28, 2021, the Digital Council of the City of Augsburg was
constituted. It was brought into being on the initiative of the mayor
and now serves as an interface between administration and city society.
Augsburg is located in constituency 252 Augsburg-Stadt, which also
includes Königsbrunn in the Augsburg district of the same name.
In the elections to the 17th German Bundestag in September 2009,
Christian Ruck was directly elected by the CSU with 42.2 percent of the
votes. Miriam Gruss for the FDP, Heinz Paula for the SPD, Alexander
Süssmair for the Left Party and Claudia Roth for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen
also entered the Bundestag via the state list.
After Christian
Ruck and Heinz Paula did not stand in the elections to the 18th German
Bundestag, only Claudia Roth from Bündnis 90/Die Grünen was re-elected.
Volker Ullrich (CSU) won the direct mandate, for the SPD Ulrike Bahr was
elected via the state list. Alexander Süssmair and Miriam Gruß were not
re-elected.
In the 2021 federal election, Volker Ullrich (CSU)
again won the direct mandate with 28.1%. With him, Ulrike Bahr for the
SPD, Claudia Roth for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Maximilian Funke-Kaiser
for the FDP entered the Bundestag via the respective state lists.
In Bavaria, Article 18a of the Municipal Code allows the citizens of
the municipality to initiate citizens' petitions within the framework of
direct influence at the municipal level. Successful collection of
signatures will be voted on by way of referendum. In Augsburg, the
citizens were called to the ballot box in the following matters:
In 1995, the building contractor Ignaz Walter intended to build an
underground car park close to the center under Fuggerstraße. A citizens'
initiative spoke out in favor of the construction, another was opposed
to it. In January 1996, 63 percent of those voting decided to reject the
underground car park, while a minority of 37 percent wanted the building
to be built. Voter turnout was 36.3 percent.
A few months later, the
construction of the so-called "loop road" including the bypass at the
Red Gate caused a stir. Various citizens' initiatives, which presented
noise pollution from traffic and an impairment of the living
environment, collected the necessary signatures for a citizens'
petition. The Augsburg city council opposed the rejection of the
initiatives with the improved concept of a "city-friendly" tangent. It
received 80 percent "Yes" votes in a referendum in June 1997. 32.5
percent of those entitled to vote went to vote on the loop road that was
built afterwards.
In 2007, concrete considerations by the Augsburg
city administration and the municipal transport company for the redesign
of the Königsplatz became the subject of a citizens' petition. As part
of the planning for the Augsburg mobility hub, the central bus stop
system was to be enlarged and modernized. An intervention in the
adjacent green area, including the clearing of trees, was intended. The
opponents initially demanded an ideas competition for an overall traffic
concept before a conversion. On November 25, 2007, the referendum on the
conversion took place. 53.2 percent of the citizens voting opted for
this competition. Voter turnout was 24.2 percent.
After the
competition, the city government of CSU and Pro Augsburg decided in
favor of a car-free Königsplatz, achieved by relocating the main traffic
axes. Citizens mobilized against this plan, demanding the construction
of a tunnel on Königsplatz. In the referendum on November 21, 2010,
those entitled to vote were able to vote separately on a council
request, the referendum request and a key question. The city council
alternative, which provides for a precautionary “relief road” if
necessary, was preferred by voters with 73.9 percent “yes” votes. The
construction of a tunnel not only failed due to the required quorum of
19,391 votes, but would also have been rejected by a majority of 68.1
percent of the valid votes counted. Voter turnout was 28.8 percent.
Sometimes the local politicians react to resistance from the population
even without a referendum if there are signs of strong signature support
from sympathizers for a project. The construction of the new city
library in Augsburg was realized in a short time after years of delay
for financial reasons and the intended sale of the old city baths was
stopped due to the will of the citizens.
Another example of this
is the Radentscheid, which was averted in the summer of 2021 by a
contract in which essential demands were accepted by the black-green
city government.