Göttingen is a university town in southern Lower Saxony. With a
share of around 20 percent students in the population, urban life is
strongly influenced by the education and research activities of the
Georg-August University, the oldest and second largest university in
Lower Saxony (after the Leibniz University in Hanover), and two
other universities.
The village on the Leine River, first
mentioned in 953 as Gutingi, developed in the vicinity of today's
St. Albani Church. The market town of Gotingen, which was founded
later, gained city rights around 1230, while the original village of
Gutingi remained outside for a long time and eked out a shadowy
existence. Goettingen became a big city in 1964 and is one of the
nine regional centers of Lower Saxony. The district seat and largest
city of the district of Göttingen was integrated into the district
of the same name in 1964 as a previously independent city by the
Göttingen Act passed by the Lower Saxony state parliament, but is
still treated on an equal footing with the independent cities.
Göttingen is located in the south of the European Metropolitan
Region (EMR) Hanover-Brunswick-Göttingen-Wolfsburg.
According
to the city, the number of inhabitants in 2020 was 131,436, of which
118,480 had their main residence in Göttingen.
By plane
Hanover Airport (IATA: HAJ) is the nearest international
airport: 70 - 90 minutes by train (change in Hanover required), 140km by
road.
To the international hub Frankfurt Airport (IATA: FRA):
Direct connection with the ICE in 2 hours (rarely) or 2:30 hours (change
in Frankfurt Hbf), 240km by road.
By train
long-distance
Göttingen train station is on the north-south route of Deutsche Bahn and
is very well integrated into the German and European long-distance
transport network. During the day mostly hourly connections to and from
Berlin (2.5 hours) via Braunschweig (1 hour)
Hamburg (2 h) via
Hanover (approx. 30 min.)
Frankfurt am Main and Kassel Wilhelmshöhe
(approx. 20 min.)
Munich (3.5 h) via Nuremberg and Fulda.
regional transport
In regional traffic, the metronome offers the most
important connection coming from the north of Uelzen (2.5 hours) via
Hanover, Alfeld, Kreiensen and Northeim. The section of the Hanoverian
Southern Railway between Elze and Alfeld (Leine) with the ridge of the
Seven Mountains to the east of the line is particularly attractive for
travellers, and overall the journey through the Leine Valley, on which
you can see the Leine flowing alongside the railway line in a partly
meandering way. You can also reach Göttingen via Kreiensen from the Harz
Mountains, from Seesen and Goslar.
From the south you can take
the Cantus from Kassel main station (1 h) via Hann. mouths.
Those
who come by train from the west from Paderborn should particularly enjoy
the journey from Ottbergen to Göttingen: after leaving the Weser Valley
(near Bodenfelde), the railway line crosses the somewhat isolated
Schwülmetal to Adelebsen on the southern edge of the Solling and then
continues via Lenglern Direction Leinetal - a worthwhile drive through
small villages and beautiful landscapes. However, this is not a route
for those in a hurry, but a really comfortable ride due to the many
level crossings without barriers.
A regional express runs every
two hours in the direction of Glauchau via Leinefelde, Erfurt, Jena and
Gera.
By bus
regional buses
There are regional bus
connections with the VSN from Eichsfeld, especially from Duderstadt and
Gieboldehausen, but also from the villages west of the city such as
Jühnde and Dransfeld. The central bus station (ZOB) for all regional bus
lines is on the east side of the station.
long-distance buses
Almost all long-distance bus companies active on the market head for
Göttingen, mostly on north-south connections. But there are also
east-west connections. Current connections can be found in the bus line
search. Since autumn 2015, the long-distance bus stop ZOB has been
located directly at the central bus station on the bus platform in front
of the north side of the Old Zoological Institute. The bus stop at the
Kaufpark that existed until then no longer exists.
In the street
Göttingen is very easy to reach on the north-south axis through the A7,
which runs directly past. The symbol: AS 73 Göttingen/Dransfeld/Rosdorf
leads directly to the city center via the B3 (Kasseler Landstrasse). The
symbol: AS 72 Göttingen Nord leads to the northern part of the city
(Weende), to the northern area of the university and to the clinics. In
the southern city districts, leaving the motorway at the Göttingen
service area can be cheap, from where there is a connection to the
Mengershausen-Rosdorf country road that is hardly signposted but
conforms to the StVO. From the Harz mountains in the east, the B27 leads
to Göttingen via Gieboldehausen and Waake. The A38 connects the Leipzig
area and the Obereichsfeld area, and joins the A7 south of Göttingen.
From the Ruhr area you drive via the A44 to Kassel and then via the A7.
By boat
The line can be used by water hikers from Friedland, with
restrictions even before that. After Göttingen, it is navigable up to
the nature reserve north of Northeim, after which the boats have to be
transported to the weir at Salzderhelden. However, numerous portages are
necessary even in the early section, three in the city of Göttingen
alone.
By bicycle
The Leine-Heide Cycle Route follows the
course of the Leine from its springs in Leinefelde in Thuringia over
265km to Schwarmstedt, where the Leine flows into the Aller, then for a
further 146km across the Lüneburg Heath to Hamburg. Göttingen is located
at about kilometer 52 of the cycle path and is cycled directly through
the Leineauen without seeing much of the city. Cyclists who want to
visit the city can follow the directions in the Radreise-Wiki. The
section of the Leine Cycle Path north of Göttingen is unfortunately one
of the least attractive sections of the entire cycle path, only after
Northeim do the surroundings and the route become worth seeing again.
The Weser-Harz-Heide cycle path branches off from the Weser cycle
path in Gimte an der Weser and leads over the Hohen Hagen and Dransfeld
to Göttingen in 33 km. Like the Leine cycle path, it does not touch the
city center (see there for access information). In 37 km, the 400 km
long tourist cycle path leads from Göttingen to Duderstadt and from
there over the Harz Mountains to Lüneburg.
On foot
Coming from
the Harz mountains, the E6 European long-distance hiking trail continues
southwards, first through the Untereichsfeld and then through the middle
of Göttingen. From Mackenrode you climb the steep edge up to the
Mackenröder peak in the Göttingen Forest and then approach the city of
Göttingen via the Kerstlingeröder Feld, the Kehr, Bismarckturm and the
Hainberg down via the Schillerwiese park. Past the Albani Church you
reach the Kornmarkt with the town hall and Gänseliesel (for detailed
directions, see the hiking section). The E6 leaves Göttingen to the
south via the Kiessee in the direction of Rosdorf and then on to Hann
Münden.
From the Loccum-Volkenroda pilgrimage route, which runs
about 15km to the west, there is a trip from Dransfeld to Göttingen with
the destination Jacobikirche.
The Via Scandinavica, a
Scandinavian Way of St. James, ends with its German section coming from
Fehmarn in Göttingen.
Accessibility
There are numerous sights in Göttingen that are only
partially accessible or not at all barrier-free. In some cases, this is
already noted for sights and gastronomic offers in this travel guide,
see also here. Special brochures from the Disability Advisory Board of
the City of Göttingen on the subject of tourism, health and gastronomy
provide detailed information.
On foot
The core zone of the old
town of Göttingen is a pedestrian zone. The distances within the old
town and to the train station are short and can usually be easily
covered on foot. The Ostviertel and Südstadt, where some hotels are
located, are also close enough to walk. Longer distances can be easily
covered in Göttingen with the regular buses, and there are also numerous
taxi ranks around the city center.
taxi
Puk Minicar. Phone:
+49(0)551 48 48 48, email: info@puk-minicar.de. Cheapest taxi company in
Göttingen, order by phone.
Central taxi stops: Next to the Old Town
Hall, next to the New Town Hall (Sternstraße), in front of the Deutsches
Theater, at the front east side of the station entrance and at the rear
station entrance, west side and Lokhalle.
city buses
The bus
route network of the city of Göttingen was completely renewed on
November 1st, 2014. Detailed information can be found on the website of
the Göttingen public transport company or in the GÖVB customer center,
Markt 3. Most bus routes touch or pass through the inner city area of
Göttingen. The disadvantages of a high frequency of bus passages in the
pedestrian zone are offset by the advantages of an excellent connection
between the city center and the outskirts.
The inner-city lines
run every 15 minutes during business hours on weekdays and every 30 - 60
minutes outside of these hours. Central bus stops: ZOB at the train
station, bus stop Jüdenstraße (heading north and east), bus stop Altes
Rathaus (heading south and west).
Park
Except on the Saturdays
in Advent or on Corpus Christi or Reformation Day/All Saints' Day, when
there are public holidays in the neighboring federal states and the
crowds flock to Göttingen to shop, there are no major parking problems
in Göttingen's city center. On Saturdays, a Park&Ride service to the
city center is offered from Schützenplatz on Godehardstraße. If you want
to be on the safe side on these days, head straight for it. In the city
center there are a few multi-storey car parks or parking spaces directly
outside the city wall; the number of free spaces is displayed via a
traffic control system on the main streets around the city centre.
Parking at Stadthalle and Albanikirche Access via Friedländer Weg or
Bühlstraße/ Theaterplatz. A search for a parking space through the
surrounding inner city streets is not recommended due to various
restrictions (resident parking and many one-way streets).
Entry
to Göttingen from the south (B27/ from Friedland):
At the
intersection at the New Town Hall (B27 turns left here) the following
options:
Straight ahead to the multi-storey car parks in the Kaufland
multi-storey car park, Multi-storey car park Hospitalstraße (turn left
next)
Turn left, on the four-lane Bürgerstraße there are two smaller
car parks on the Stadtwall with a short walk to the city center.
From the A7 exit Göttingen/Dransfeld
F* Kasseler Landstraße (B3)
towards the city.
Immediately before the train station underpass,
turn left into the car park at the train station.
Under the railway
station underpass and straight ahead at the next crossing, immediately
after that the Groner Tor multi-storey car park is on the left.
By bicycle
In Goettingen there are a number of bicycle lanes that are
intended to enable continuous, unrestricted travel from the north
university to the city center and from there to the Kiesseecarree in the
south of the city. But be careful: There is no automatic right of way,
but you still have to pay attention to the right-before-left in most
cases.
Furthermore, many streets are equipped with bicycle lanes,
large streets often have bicycle lanes. Nevertheless, the traffic
situation for cyclists is often difficult, also due to cycle paths that
can be used on both sides, unclear situations at exits and confusing
intersections.
In some cases, one-way streets are open to
cyclists traveling in the opposite direction. The inner city ring around
the pedestrian zone is open to cyclists, but not always unproblematic
due to bus and delivery traffic or pedestrians, who also mistake these
streets for the pedestrian zone.
Bicycle parking garage at the
train station, Bahnhofsplatz 3. Tel.: +49(0)551 79 10 10. The bicycle
parking garage also includes a bike rental service (opening hours as in
the parking garage) and a bike shop (marcobikes), opening hours Mon-Fri
10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sat 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. Open: Mon-Sat 5.30am-10.30pm, Sun
and public holidays 8am-11pm. Price: Parking fee 24 hours €1.00/€1.20,
week €5.90.
Bicycles can be taken on the buses of the Göttingen
public transport company all day long, depending on the occupancy of the
respective bus.
Regional public transport
Verkehrsverbund
Südniedersachsen (VSN) - The VSN service center is in the Ceres pavilion
on the forecourt of Göttingen train station at the ZOB. Bicycles can be
taken on the VSN buses free of charge. For the affiliated railway
companies you have to buy a bicycle day ticket for €4.50.
Gas
stations/ e-mobility
There are petrol stations on all access roads.
There are several charging points for electric cars at the Kaufpark car
park. Coming from the Autobahn Symbol: Use AS 73
Göttingen/Dransfeld/Rosdorf.
Göttingen got its current size through the incorporation of several
surrounding villages that surrounded the former Gutinigi, today's inner
city. In the city center you will find the pedestrian zone with the side
streets, often preserved half-timbered architecture, surrounded by the
ramparts.
The expanded core city consists of the districts
Weststadt, the area between the former village of Grone and the railway
line or Leine. The Saline Luisenhall is located at the transition from
Weststadt to Grone. In the western part of the city you will also find
larger industrial and commercial centers as well as the green belt on
the Leine. The Leineradweg leads along the edge of the west town.
Südstadt, south of the city center, beginning with the dominating
building of the New Town Hall and separated from Geismar further south
by an allotment garden belt. In the southern part of the city there are
mainly residential areas, but also some institutes of the university
(physics, mathematics) and the Göttingen branch of the German Aerospace
Society. Travelers with a mobile home will find the mobile home parking
space on the Leine Canal, which flows through the southern part of the
city.
Oststadt, which consists of the old Ostviertel called
Professorenviertel and the adjoining residential areas, which extend up
the slope of the Göttingen Forest. A walk through the old residential
area, where you will not only find some institutes of the university
(e.g. pedagogical seminar in Baurat-Gerber-Straße) and the Max Planck
Institute for the Study of Multireligious and Multiethnic Societies,
shows some lavishly decorated ones City villa, secluded gardens and the
occasional creativity of contemporary property developers in pushing the
plot development to the limit. The Schillerwiese, the city's most famous
park, is located in the middle of the eastern quarter.
Nordstadt,
then to the wall, it encompasses the entire area of the central campus
of the university, then further north the residential areas between the
former main road and the clinic, many dormitories and apartment
buildings for students. Worth seeing here, among other things, is the
large area of the old clinic, which is now used by various seminars and
institutes of the university and is adjacent to the much newer complex
of the central campus.
Some of the incorporated villages now
merge almost seamlessly into the urban area:
Grone in the west
consists of the center of the old village of Grone and the large
settlement area of Grone Süd. The B3, the Kasseler Landstraße, divides
these two parts. There are also a few hotels on this road that are
particularly suitable if you come spontaneously from the A7 and are only
looking for a place to stay.
turn north. In the last 20 years, a
large new area of the university has emerged in the east of Weende, the
so-called north campus. The Weende Nord settlement continues to expand
northwards and soon touches the southernmost, also constantly growing
settlements of Bovenden, which is no longer part of the city area.
Geismar with the Treuenhagen settlement in the south of the city and the
extensive residential areas that stretch up the slope to the Göttingen
city forest above the old village. Geismar's newest residential area,
the Zietenterrassen at the top of the mountain, was built on the site of
the former Bundeswehr Zieten barracks after it was dissolved in 1994.
The old barracks buildings from 1936 were preserved and extensively
converted into upscale apartments, surrounded by a large new development
area. Geismar forms the southern city limits of Göttingen.
The
following villages are still independent in terms of location, but
belong to the urban area:
Groß Ellershausen, directly to the west of
the autobahn, from which you can already see the large complex of the
Göttinger Tageblatt newspaper and adjacent, ideal for an overnight stay
in transit, the Hotel Freizeit In. Behind it lies the old town center
and new housing estates. Groß Ellershausen is circled in a wide arc by
the route of the former Hanoverian Southern Railway, which is now the
Weser-Harz-Heide Cycle Path. Groß Ellershausen forms a village together
with Hetjershausen and Knutbühren.
Hetjershausen is the westernmost
district of Göttingen and is elevated above the Leine Valley on the
slopes of the Leine Uplands. The formerly agricultural village has grown
through several new housing estates and is primarily a place of
residence for commuters into Göttingen.
After Deppoldshausen,
Knutbühren is the smallest district of Göttingen and has retained its
village character with its half-timbered houses on only three streets.
The village is elevated above Hetjershausen in the Leine Uplands.
Esebeck is located in the north-west corner of the city of Göttingen.
The village, in which some farms have survived, forms a town together
with Elliehausen.
Elliehausen is also west of the Autobahn, but is
closely adjacent to the Autobahn. Although Elliehausen also has an old
village center, it has grown significantly in the last two decades due
to large new building areas.
Holtensen is separated from Weende and
the rest of the city by the Leine and the motorway feeder road, and
since the motorway was widened to six lanes it can only be reached from
the south or east. The town center hasfor example. retained its village
character, newer residential areas are mainly on the Holtensen
associated Holtenser Berg.
Deppoldshausen is the smallest and most
remote district of Göttingen. The small settlement goes back to an
earlier outwork of the Lords of Plesse, later it became the property of
the Weende monastery. Located high up in the Göttingen forest above the
north university, only one road leads to Deppoldshausen, which together
with Weende forms a village.
Nikolausberg is a good 200 m higher than
the city center of Göttingen above Weende and the North University. The
formerly very small mountain village today consists mainly of
settlements from the post-war period with upscale buildings. Of tourist
interest are the monastery church, the remains of an Augustinian
monastery from around the 12th century, and the Rieswarte, also called
Nikolausberger Warte, which was built around 1440 and whose crew was
responsible for monitoring the country road to Katlenburg. Two important
institutes are based on Fassberg, which belongs to Nikolausberg: the Max
Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and the Max Planck Institute
for Dynamics and Self-Organization.
Roringen is also elevated above
Göttingen, but a few kilometers east of the town center on the B27,
which cuts through the town. The old town center is on the slope of the
Bratental, on the other side of the slope you can see Nikolausberg
above. The Bratental nature reserve thus connects both places. The
Roringer waiting room just outside of town was one of the historical
waiting rooms of the Göttingen city fortifications.
Herberhausen is
located in a basin formed by the Lutter in the Göttingen Forest
surrounding the village. In Herberhausen, the classic village image is
still clearly preserved, even if here, as in almost all parts of the
city, the new development areas that stretch up the slopes in
Herberhausen cannot be overlooked. Herberhausen can be reached via a
cul-de-sac that branches off the B27 towards Harz at the Knochenmühle.
In the disused quarry in Herberhausen you can find the typical ripple
marks of a primeval seabed.
The most famous sight of Göttingen is certainly the city's landmark,
the Gänseliesel on the fountain of the same name in front of the old
town hall on the market square (Kornmarkt) in the pedestrian zone. The
goose girl, who - still young - turned 110 in 2011, is considered the
patron saint of the poor.
It is an old custom for newly elected
doctors from the university to kiss the Gänseliesel and decorate it with
flowers. With a bit of luck, you will come across trains with brightly
decorated handcarts or similar vehicles, on which the new doctors are
driven by relatives and friends after their successful disputation to
Gänseliesel and now have to climb the not-so-easy climb to Gänseliesel
high on the fountain. It is not uncommon for this to end with an
involuntary bath in the well...
A curiosity on the side: It was only
in 2001 that the ban on kissing, which had existed since 1926 but had
always been disregarded, was lifted.
The Gänseliesel is also a
general meeting place in Göttingen, and when the weather is good, the
area surrounding the fountain is always "occupied" by numerous locals
and tourists who take a short break here, mostly with an ice cream in
hand. However, if you want to see the original, you have to visit the
Municipal Museum: After various damages, only a replica can be seen on
the fountain.
Downtown
Within the city center there are six churches used as
places of worship, a synagogue and a church building that is now used as
a library:
1 St. Albani (at Albaniplatz opposite the Stadthalle).
Phone: +49 (0)551 581 17, email: info@st-albani.de . The Evangelical
Lutheran Church is located near Cheltenham Park and on the edge of the
city wall (abandoned there). It probably dates from the year 953 and is
thus the oldest church in Göttingen, originally built as the village
church of Gutingi. The three-aisled hall of the church dates from the
15th century.
2 St. Jacobi (Weender Straße near the navel) . St.
Jacobi is a Gothic hall church whose tower is 72 m high and clearly
towers over the center of Göttingen. Built from 1361 - 1433, it
impresses above all with its winged altar with a festive side (opened)
and an everyday side (closed) and the red-white-grey painting of the
interior and the columns, which appear crooked to the viewer due to an
optical illusion. This unusually colorful coloring corresponds to the
design of the church from around 1470. Another special feature of the
church is a five-part window cycle from 1997, on which the 22nd Psalm
was implemented in color and light by the artist Johannes Schreiter.
From March to December, visitors can hear 30 minutes of organ music from
the Paul Ott organ every Friday at 6:00 p.m. also in the Advent season.
3 St. Johannis (Johannisstraße, behind the old town hall). Phone:
+49(0)551 789660, email: johannisgemeindegoettingen@web.de . The St.
Johannis Church, which towers over the old town with its two different
towers, is not only worth seeing but also worth hearing. (Almost) every
Saturday at 11 a.m. you can hear the tower horns from the northern tower
delighting the hurrying Saturday shoppers with a few hymns. It's worth
stopping and listening. You can also see the tower players, preferably
from the Stadtsparkasse next to the old town hall. Concerts are held in
the church all year round, and during Advent there is a large crib
exhibition in the nave.
4 St. Marien (in the new town) . Built from
1290 as part of the new town of Göttingen, the small church, which is
preserved today in the interior as it was in 1512, is somewhat hidden on
the western outskirts of the old town. It only really becomes apparent
when you walk from Groner-Tor-Straße through the small passage under the
tower of the old town gate between the Kommende and the church building
from Groner-Tor-Straße to Neustadt. Like the (built in 1318), the former
order building, the Marienkirche is part of the history of the Teutonic
Order, which managed its possessions around Göttingen from here.
Significant sights are the remains of the Marienalter from 1524, and the
Mahrenholz-Furtwängler organ from 1926 is worth hearing. Open: daily
from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
5 St. Michael, Turmstraße 6 (Municipal Office)
(access via Kurze Straße). Tel.: +49(0)551 547 950. St. Michael's is the
only Catholic church in the city centre. The church, today looked after
by Jesuits, is open throughout the day as a city church. St. Michael,
built 1787-1789 as the first Catholic church of the Reformation in
Göttingen as a simple hall church, with a later (1892/93) erected 27 m
high tower, blends inconspicuously with its front into the row of houses
on Kurzen Straße in the south of the old town a. Inside, the church has
shone in cold white tones since 2015, the furniture and walls are
unfussy - the nave has undergone a very modern design in a complex
renovation. However, the archangel St. Michael (from 1986), the church's
namesake, who watches over the church and the street with his sword on
the outside facade, has not changed. During the Advent and especially
Christmas season, a large nativity scene can be seen in a garage at the
back of the churchyard. Straw-strewn paths and sheep along the way lead
visitors there. The inner courtyard of the municipality offers a shady
place to take a break in summer. Open: all day.
6 St. Nikolai (on
Nikolaistrasse) . The university church is located in the Nikolai
district, which is named after the church. After the towers collapsed in
1777, the Gothic hall church had to remain towerless because the
community had no money for a new building - and it has remained so to
this day. In 1802 the church was temporarily profaned. St. Nikolai
became the university church in 1822 due to a petition from the student
body, who had complained about the lack of a university church, since
the Paulinerkirche, originally the university church, had been converted
into the university library since 1803. Today, alternating university
teachers from the theological faculty or evangelical pastors from the
student community preach every Sunday at 11:30 am. The Nikolaikirche is
also used for concerts, including by the university choir.
The 7
synagogue is also located in the city center, directly on the wall in a
courtyard on Angerstraße. In winter, or when the trees are leafless, you
can see them from the wall. The synagogue built in 1825, a small
half-timbered building of only 64 square meters, originally comes from
Bodenfelde on the Weser. There it survived the Reichsprogromnacht in
1938 because it had already been sold by the Jewish community in 1937
and used as a barn at the time. It was not until 2008 that the building
was moved to Göttingen in a costly operation, where it is now used again
as a synagogue by the Jewish community in Göttingen.
8 Pauline Church
(in the Papendieck) . The former church is now part of the historic
building of the Lower Saxony State and University Library in Göttingen,
which can usually be viewed as part of exhibitions Tue - Sun 11 a.m. - 6
p.m.
Other places of worship in the city
9 St. Paulus (in the
east quarter), Wilhelm-Weber-Str. 13-15 Phone: +49(0)55158879, email:
st-paulus@t-online.de. St. Paul's is located in the eastern part of the
city and towers over it with its bell tower, which can be seen from
afar. With the consecration of the neo-baroque church in 1929 in the
name of the Apostle Paul, the connection to the now secularized Pauline
Church was established. The ceiling painting of the church, which was
created in 1936, is worth seeing. Since 2008, the parishes of St. Paul,
St. Vinzenz in Weende and St. Francis in Bovenden have formed one
parish. From St. Paulus, a remnant of Catholic customs is still
preserved today with the great Corpus Christi procession. Open daily 8
a.m. - 5 p.m. If you want to explore St. Paulus on a city tour, you can
do so, e.g. B. Do well from the botanical garden: Take the "back exit"
of the old garden up to the institute buildings and then leave the
garden directly in a curve in Wilhelm-Weber-Straße. Follow this up,
cross the next cross street and then St. Paulus is already on the left.
10 St. Vinzenz, At-der-St.-Vinzenz-Kirche 5. Tel.: +49(0)551 31969.
11 DITIB Mosque (Turkish-Islamic Community), Königsstieg 4.
12 Al
Taqwa Mosque (Islamic Cultural Center), Güterbahnhofstrasse 14. Tel.:
+49(0)551 70 200 144.
Palatinate Grona (memorial stone, on the Kleinen Hagen near the Friedenskirche) . Palatinate Grona was an imperial and royal palace that was first mentioned in a document in 915. It had its heyday in the 10th and 11th centuries, particularly under Emperor Henry II, who died here in 1024. The castle, which was already destroyed at the beginning of the 13th century, was rebuilt by the Lords of Grone, but destroyed in 1294 in a feud with the citizens of Göttingen and used as a quarry in the course of the 14th century and completely demolished. Today only a memorial stone on the Hagenberg above the steep slope to the Leine reminds of the location of the Palatinate, some documentation boards can be found in the tower of the Friedenskirche, which is only 100 m further west.
Accouchierhaus, Kurze Geismarstr. 1. The Accouchierhaus (accouchement
(Fr.) = childbirth) was the maternity home of the university, which was
put into operation in 1791. It offered poor women in particular the
opportunity to give birth to their mostly illegitimate children under
hygienic, medically supervised circumstances. However, the focus was not
so much on social considerations (even if this was certainly one of the
decisive factors in terms of the increasing welfare for the poor), but
above all on the training of doctors and midwives. The women, on the
other hand, had to do light work to cover the costs until shortly before
the birth and also afterwards. Today the building is used as a
musicology seminar. Architecturally worth seeing is the stairwell with
its ring railing in the middle inside the building. The former
Accouchierhaus is usually freely accessible during the semester. There
is also the opportunity to visit the university's collection of musical
instruments (see university museums and exhibitions).
Old Town
Hall (at the Kornmarkt/historic market square) . The dominant building
from 1270 on the Kornmarkt in Weender Straße has fulfilled a number of
functions over the centuries: in addition to its time as the town hall,
it was also a prison and archive at times. Today it only fulfills
representative functions and is also the seat of the tourist
information. The historic council hall with the wall painting by Hermann
Schaper is freely accessible (but not barrier-free) even without a
guided tour. Also worth seeing is the Dorntze, the medieval meeting
room, which is now used by the registry office as a wedding room. The
historic heating system of the town hall and numerous other details can
be viewed as part of a guided tour.
Bismarck Tower (near the
Hainholzhof/on the Kehr). Tel.: +49(0)551 400 3522 (only during opening
hours) . The 31.5 m high observation tower in the Göttingen city forest
on the Kleperberg was inaugurated in 1896. From its two viewing levels,
which can be reached via 180 steps, you have a wide view over Göttingen
and the Leine Valley, to the south you can see the same, to the west the
Gauss Tower on the Hohen Hagen and, when visibility is good, to the east
the Brocken in the Harz Mountains. It can be reached on foot from the
Schillerwiesen on various paths uphill to the southeast through the city
forest at Hainberg and Kleperberg. By car, follow Bismarckstrasse to
Hainholzhof. Open: April - September on Saturdays, Sundays and public
holidays from 11.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Price: adults €2, children 1€.
The greenhouses of the old botanical garden, which are located
within the city wall, represent the historical nucleus of the extensive
botanical facilities of the Georg-August University. The Viktoriahaus
and the historic Farnhaus are particularly worth seeing. More on this in
the University and Science travel guide.
Graezelhaus, Goetheallee 8 .
The large baroque building, built in 1741, was the home of a cloth
manufacturer and is considered one of the most elegant buildings of the
time. Today, with the Kartoffelhaus, it houses an institution in the
Göttingen gastronomy and pub scene.
Junkernsschänke. Even though it
has been badly hit gastronomically in recent years, the half-timbered
house from the mid-15th century remains one of the most beautiful
buildings in the center of Göttingen, which is well worth seeing both
from the outside because of the many carvings and from the inside. The
Junkernschänke is considered one of the oldest wine taverns in Germany,
was partially destroyed in World War II, but rebuilt shortly afterwards.
In 1983, the facade was painstakingly reconstructed with the carvings
based on biblical motifs. After a long period of renovation due to the
danger of collapse and the restaurant business being interrupted several
times, the Junkernschänke is open again.
locomotive hall. The
locomotive hall built in 1917 as a locomotive hall on the west side of
the station, which was used, among other things, for the maintenance of
the steam locomotives on the Hanoverian southern railway, was finally
saved from final demolition after many years of decay and today houses
the Cinemaxx and an event center.
The Rohnsches Badehaus in
Cheltenhampark was built in 1820 as a warm bath by C.F. Rohns built. The
12-cornered pavilion, designed according to an antique model, currently
houses an antique shop.
Historical observatory: home of Carl
Friedrich Gauss, who became the first director of the university's
observatory, completed in 1816.
Saline Luisenhall, Greitweg 48, 37081
Goettingen. Phone: +49(0)551 384 870, email: info@siedesalz.de.
Luisenhall is the last pan saltworks in Europe that is still in
operation. Founded in 1850, it changed hands several times and could
only be operated economically from 1881, when the son of the Göttingen
manufacturer Levin took over the saltworks. Since then, the salt works
have been family-owned. Production is still carried out using the
facilities from the 19th century, which are listed monuments. Even if
the production volume may seem ridiculously small compared to the
production volumes of large salt pans, the company is successful with
the sale of salt products (including various grain sizes) and the
bathhouse (see Sports and Leisure below). Sale of Luisenhall salt in the
Saline bathhouse and in many of the city's supermarkets (tegut,
Karstadt-Feinkost). Open: Viewing possible on request. Mon to Thu 07:30
- 16:00, Fri 07:00 - 15:00.
There were numerous mills in the city of Göttingen along the Leine
Canal, some of which are still preserved today:
The Odilienmühle
wikipediacommons (also Small Mill) is located directly inside the wall
at the level of the Bismarckhäuschen at Hospitalstraße 35. The building
dates from 1766 and the mill was in operation until 1945. Access from
the city via Dustere Straße or Hospitalstraße. Today the Sausalitos
restaurant is located in the building.
The Great Mill, also known
as the Old Mill or Stockleff Mill, is located on the Waageplatz. The
mill was built in 1305 and was in use until 1882. The building that is
still preserved - most of it was demolished in 1967 for the construction
of the city baths that used to be in the immediate vicinity - is a
listed building. As part of the establishment of so-called Knowledge
Houses by the city and university, the Great Mill is to be restored and
set up as a kind of museum.
The Walkemühle is the first mill
built at the end of the 13th century on the Leine canal in the direction
of flow. It is located outside of the city center on the edge of
Südstadt, just a few steps from the mobile home parking space, and is
now integrated into the Eiswiese bathing paradise.
The memorial for the old synagogue that burned down in 1938 can be
found at the intersection of Obere Masch and Untere Masch on the western
edge of the city center (within the ramparts).
Bismarckstein. The
so-called fire altar was inaugurated in 1903. It arose as a result of a
demand by the German student body, who propagated the establishment of
columns of fire in honor of Bismark. Also known as the "elephant toilet"
in the Göttingen vernacular, the walls on the Klausberg were
controversial for a long time, but were then renovated and have been
open to the public again since 2005. The Bismarckstein can be reached as
part of a hike through the Göttingen city forest or a walk through the
upper streets of the Ostviertel (accessible via the upper Nonnenstieg).
Gauss-Weber memorial on the city wall at the Geismartor, unveiled in
1899. The double statue of the two great Göttingen scientists Carl
Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber is located in the ramparts on the
corner of Bürgerstraße/Kurze Straße and thus directly under the route of
the first telegraph, the the two installed in 1833.
The Heinz Erhardt
memorial at the crossing at the Auditorium Maximum is an unusual, but
unfortunately also inconspicuously placed memorial. It is reminiscent of
the Heinz Erhardt film The Motorists, shot in Göttingen. At the same
time, the figure is the only reminder of the film city of Göttingen, in
which, in the 1950s and 1960s, numerous other well-known films, such as
Royal Highness, Roses for the Public Prosecutor and Dogs, Wanted, were
shot in the 1950s and 1960s by Filmaufbau GmbH Göttingen, in addition to
a number of Erhardt films your live forever.
Lichtenberg sculpture at
the Old Town Hall
Riding stable gate at the square of the Göttinger
Sieben. The gate is the last remnant of the university riding stables
that used to be on Weender Strasse (today's Carree shopping center) and
were demolished in 1968 in the course of "modernisation". The portal of
the listed building was first stored and then rebuilt in 1974 on the
parking lot of the university's humanities center (central lecture hall
building/central canteen). Today it can only be found somewhat hidden
behind the new learning and study building of the university.
Memorial to forced laborers on the forecourt of the Lokhalle,
information on the history of the approximately 6,000 forced laborers
who had to serve in Göttingen during World War II.
Although Göttingen has a large number of small museums and
exhibitions, many of them are currently only accessible for very limited
periods as university facilities. The university and city administration
are planning to set up a knowledge house in the Old Auditorium Maximum,
in which exhibits from many small but worth seeing collections of the
university are to be presented. At the moment, however, travelers to
Göttingen still have to pay very close attention to the very limited
opening times if they want to visit the exhibitions or museums. Outside
of the university area, there are only a few museum sights in Göttingen.
City Museum, Ritterplan 7/8, 37083 Goettingen. Tel.: +49(0)551 400
2843, e-mail: museum@goettingen.de. Open: Tue-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat+Sun
11am-5pm. Mon closed. Several areas of the Municipal Museum are
temporarily closed due to renovation work. However, the exhibition of
sacred art is accessible.
Bismarck cottage . It is the last tower of
the medieval city fortifications on the wall, but today it is best known
as the student apartment of the later Chancellor Otto von Bismarck for
about six months from 1832 to 1833. According to legend, Bismarck should
come here outside the city limits because of inappropriate behavior " to
have been "banished". A visit to the Bismarck house can be combined with
a tour of the ramparts. Open: Tue 10 a.m. - 1 p.m., Thu and Sat 3 p.m. -
5 p.m.
University museums and exhibitions
Under the heading
Sunday Walks: Art – Culture – Nature, six university collections are
open every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.: Geosciences Museum, Art
Collection, Zoological Museum, Ethnological Collection, Collection of
Plaster Casts of Antique Sculptures, Collection of Musical Instruments.
All are presented in detail in the Guide to the University and Science
in Göttingen.
Forum Knowledge, Berliner Strasse 28, 37073
Goettingen. Tel.: +49 (0)551 39 26 600, e-mail: info@Forum-Wissen.de.
Mixed exhibition, fusion of decentralized exhibitions in the various
university departments. Some interactive elements of the exhibition
require a device with NFC. All explanatory texts are written in German
and English (black text). There is an audio tour. The exhibition rooms
are barrier-free and can be reached by elevator. Open: Tuesday – Sunday:
10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Price: Admission free.
Geoscientific Museum of the
University of Göttingen, Goldschmidtstraße 1-5, 37077 Göttingen.
Dinosaur tracks, fossils, meteorites - various permanent exhibitions
from the fields of mineralogy, paleontology and geology.
Plaster cast
collection - More than 2000 exhibits in the Archaeological Institute of
the University, as well as the coin collection.
Art collection of the
University - Kupferstichkabinett, collection of paintings, collection of
international video art
Zoological Museum- Small museum with a large
skeleton of a sperm whale
Ethnological Collection - on Theaterplatz,
with the Baron Asch collection from the arctic region, the collection of
feather headdresses from South American Indians and the extensive
Cook/Forster collection, which originate from James Cook's three South
Sea expeditions between 1768 and 1780.
The University's musical
instrument collection in the Accouchierhaus.
Other collections
and buildings
The former university prison, the Karzer in the
building of the university auditorium on Wilhelmsplatz, can be visited
as part of a city tour.
Astrophysics collection: The small collection
with numerous original devices by Carl Friedrich Gauss can usually only
be viewed as part of public tours in the Institute for Astrophysics.
Collection of mathematical models: 500 mathematical models from 1780 to
1930 made of plaster, cardboard, wood, metal, as well as mathematical
devices and calculators.
Computer Museum, Am Faßberg 11 (Tower 6).
Museum of the GWDG, collection of historical calculators. Open: Mon-Fri
7am-9pm; Sat, Sun 10:00-18:00. Price: free.
There are two central places if you want to arrange a meeting point
in Göttingen's pedestrian zone: The Gänseliesel (see above) on the
Kornmarkt at the Old Town Hall or the Nabel a little further north on
Weender Straße.
Kornmarkt at the old town hall. The square in
Göttingen, where not only the Gänseliesel resides on his fountain, but
also (unfortunately very hidden after the construction of an oversized
gastronomy border) the figure of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg can also be
found. Another attraction is the four-church view (you can find the
plate in front of the entrance to an optician in the south of the
Kornmarkt): If you stand on the metal plate embedded in the floor and
slowly turn around your own axis, you can see the Recognize the towers
of four inner-city churches: St. Michael in the south, St. Johannis in
the west, St. Jacobi in the north and St. Albani in the east.
In
itself just a simple street crossing, the navel is the meeting point of
the most important north-south axis Weender Straße, the main pedestrian
zone, with the street in the east-west direction Theater-Prinzenstraße
(-Goetheallee). Since the creation of the pedestrian zone in Göttingen
in the 1970s, the city administration has continuously practiced the
design of urban spaces. First a fountain, in the years that followed
(with the exception of an equestrian statue for a deserving city
planning officer) pretty much everything was installed in street
furniture that the market and the city budget gave and still gives.
Planet Trail: Visitors who travel to Göttingen by train are guided
from the train station to the city using the planet trail with a high
level of education. This consists of 10 bronze steles spaced to scale,
on which the planets of our solar system are illustrated and explained.
It begins with the sun at the entrance to Goetheallee from the train
station, extends with the planets Mercury, Earth, Venus and Mars across
Goetheallee, Jupiter just before the pedestrian zone on Prinzenstrasse
(at the navel) and Saturn in front of the Deutsches Theater. Then - as
in the solar system - it goes further outside at greater intervals,
Uranus can be found after some walking at Eichendorffplatz, Neptune
after another hike uphill at the intersection of Herzberger Landstrasse
and Ewaldstrasse. According to the latest findings, these are all
planets in our solar system. However, the steles date from 2003, i.e.
from the time before Pluto was demoted as a planet, and so his stele can
also be found on top of the Kleperberg, at the foot of the Bismarck
Tower. The fact that the small planet itself was removed from the stele
by unknown persons is perhaps due to its degradation...
Börner-Viertel: The Börner-Viertel is a small passage in the old town,
Rote Straße and Barfusser Straße are connected via two small inner
courtyards. Here is the Gaudi restaurant and a cafe in the middle of it
all. In good weather you can also sit outside.
Christian-Gottlieb-Heyne-Ufer on the Leine Canal: The 3 km long Leine
Canal runs hidden through the city area, laid out in the 13th century
for the mills in the city area. The section of the shallow canal between
Groner Strasse and Goetheallee is worth a short walk, where a narrow
footpath leads along the bank through quiet residential areas and offers
a view of beautiful backyards and some old, restored buildings such as
the Heyne- House and the Pauline Church releases. In earlier times, this
was rather an unsightly corner of the city where the executioner lived,
where the brothels were and where the sewage was discharged directly
into the sewer, which often became a stinking body of water because of
the shallow gradient. Today, on the other hand, the area should not be
missed on a city tour.
Old Botanical Garden, Lower Karspüle. It is located directly on the
old ramparts between the Unteren Karspüle within the ramparts and
Nikolausberger Weg or Wilhelm-Weber-Straße outside the ramparts. There
are entrances from all three streets, but the most impressive is
certainly the access via the Lower Karspüle, where the old botanical
institutes and the historic university greenhouses are located, which
can also be visited. You enter the old botanical garden from the
institute premises through one of the three tunnels under the old wall,
which in itself is a special experience. (More about the botanical
plants under Göttingen/University and Science.) The Café Botanical
offers a suitable setting for a break after a tour of the botanical
plants, which are well worth seeing Investments. Open: March-Nov. daily
8 a.m. - 6.30 p.m., Dec. - Feb. daily 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Greenhouses:
daily 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Experimental botanical garden, located in the
northern part of the university, adjacent to the buildings of the
chemistry and geosciences faculties. The garden is the scientific
experimental garden of the university and the successor to the old
botanical garden, which will continue to be preserved.
39
Bartholomäusfriedhof, between Güterbahnhofstraße and Weender Landstraße,
was used as a cemetery from 1747 to 1881. After being left to decay for
many years, it has been restored in recent years and is now used as a
green space. Two mausoleums and some graves of well-known citizens and
professors of Göttingen could be preserved, such as the grave of Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg, Abraham Gotthelf Kaestner and the publisher Anna
Vandenhoeck.
Cheltenhampark is just outside the city walls adjacent
to the town hall and is the central green space for the city centre.
With a swan pond, two children's playgrounds, herb beds and numerous
lawns, it is one of the central addresses for lunch breaks or family
afternoons in the countryside, for students to study and celebrate, for
barbecues and much more. Slackliners will find some permanently
installed posts for their hobby here (west of the Schwänchenteich).
Forest botanical garden, between Robert-Koch-Strasse and Fassberg
wikipediacommons. Around 800 different species of trees and shrubs grow
on 17 hectares in the University's forest botanical garden. Adjacent is
the plant-geographical arboretum, in which trees and shrubs are arranged
according to their geographical occurrence. Open: freely accessible.
Geopark, Faculty of Geosciences and Geography, North University,
Goldschmidtstr. 3-5 (accessible at all times). In the Geopark, which
wants to make the dynamics of the earth's crust and the history of the
earth comprehensible to its visitors, there are fossilized tree stumps
(stubben) of sequoia trees as well as large, spectacular rock formations
from different regions and geological ages. The "Arthus Round" made of
polished stone slabs is an example of the many artistically designed
exhibits that complement the Geopark.
Kiessee, a local recreation
area in the south of the city. The lake, which was created from a former
opencast gravel mine and is not open to bathing, has a water surface of
approx. 15 hectares and a shoreline of approx lawns. Various sports boat
clubs have their jetties on the west bank, and there is also a boat
rental with rowing and pedal boats. In addition to the restaurant with
its terrace directly on the lake, there is also a kiosk and a beer
garden. There is also another small playground. Various tributaries to
the lake and newly created paths in the southern area of the lake have
created a biotope for a wide variety of bird species. There are also
various species of fish in the lake and a small population of turtles on
the bird island in the south of the lake, which you can see on a boat
tour when they sunbathe on the shore. In winter, after sufficient
periods of frost, the Kiessee offers a large ice rink, with ice skate
rental and a mulled wine stand. Access to the Kiessee via the Sandweg
(closed at high tide), but there are only a few parking spaces. Bus
lines 61 and 130 stop at Kiessee.
Medieval city garden, in the old
town, on the property at Rote Straße 34, freely accessible from
Mauerstraße during the day. A garden was laid out on the property of the
original building, which was probably built around 1260 and restored to
the form it was in 1734 over the course of years of renovation work, as
was presumably common in the more affluent houses at that time. A
palaeobotanist selected the plants and the foliage for the edging. These
are aromatic and medicinal plants that were preferred in the Middle
Ages. There is also a small seating area for a shady break in the
garden.
Rosarium, created in 1930. It is located outside the western
city wall directly adjacent to the Albani cemetery and was less and less
maintained during the war and post-war years and increasingly fell into
disrepair through vandalism and theft until an initiative in 1999 for
restoration and replanting. Today, on a total area of 1300 m², there are
a good 450 m² of rose beds with 400 rose plants of 100 different
varieties, with some very old varieties being able to be preserved. The
freely accessible area in the Teichweg offers beautiful resting and
resting places.
Schillerwiese, popular park in the east district
below the city forest, good-weather meeting place for the people of
Göttingen, especially for families and students, but otherwise a diverse
crowd on the meadows, benches, at the climbing forest playground and
Plätscherbach, tennis court and mini golf course. kiosk, toilet.
Wall
systems, the medieval city wall is almost completely preserved as a park
and footpath around the old town. exits from the Goetheallee rampart
directly at the train station, from the Deutsches Theater rampart or
from the Albanikirchhof rampart.
Game reserve at the Kehr am
Hainholzhof on the Kleperberg, near the Bismarck Tower and the Hainberg
Observatory. Small game gate with deer and wild boar, accessible at all
times. Beer garden with kiosk, open April - October Tues-Sat from 12
p.m., Sun and public holidays from 10 a.m. In winter only open on
weekends. Morning pint with live music every first weekend in June,
July, August and September. From the game reserve hike through the city
forest back to the center or on numerous hiking trails through the city
forest of Göttingen.
As the city that creates knowledge, Göttingen is not only the seat of
the large Georg-August University and several technical colleges, but
was also the seat of the Max Planck Society until 1961 and is now home
to five Max Planck Institutes.
In addition, numerous other
research institutions have their headquarters or individual institutes
in Göttingen, such as the German Primate Center, a department of the
German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Institute for Sugar Beet Research and
the Academy for Ethics in Medicine. Numerous scientific events, research
institutions, collections and libraries are also open to visitors.
Detailed information about the history and sights of the science
location Göttingen can be found in the Göttingen/University and Science
travel guide.
Günter Grass, the writer and graphic artist who died in 2015, was
closely connected to Göttingen through his publishing house, the
Göttinger Steidl-Verlag, in the last 20 years of his life and often
visited the city. During this time he donated two sculptures he created,
each of which was unveiled in his presence:
The sculpture "Butt im
Griff" at the Paulinerkirche in Papendiek was erected in 2004 and is
based on a design by Grass. However, the 2.30 tall bronze sculpture is
not a one-off, but is in the same form in Sønderborg, Denmark.
The
sculpture "Göttinger Sieben" wikipediacommons was erected in 2011. It is
made of steel and is located on the university campus. It was donated by
Grass together with his publisher Steidl and is intended to commemorate
the Göttinger Sieben.
Light installation at the district building At
Geismartor, today's Hiroshima Square, there are two light installations
worth seeing when it's dark: On the district building at the
intersection of Bürgerstrasse and Reinhäuser Landstrasse, a permanent
light installation with changing colors can be seen.
Starting point
of the laser telegraph On the Volksbank building across the
intersection, a laser telegraph is used every evening to trace the route
of the electromagnetic telegraph, the Gauss-Weber telegraph, with which
Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber made the first telegraph in 1833
Messages were transmitted between her two workplaces in the observatory
and the then physics institute at the Paulinerkirche using a 1.2 km long
wire over the roofs of the city center. Every evening on the hour after
sunset, the laser sends messages encrypted according to a code developed
by Gauss and Weber. Go out in the evening with pen and paper and decode
the message!
In some places, glass plates allow insights into finds from completed
archaeological excavations or from other historical periods:
An old
sandstone gully can be seen in the Sparda Bank (Groner Straße 24).
At
Jack Wolfskin in Langen Geismarstraße 41 there are fireplaces from the
15th century under glass in the floor.
In the Cinemaxx in the
Lokhalle, you can see the old working pits of the straightening plant
under the bars.
You can get a glimpse of old fountains at the
district house (Bürgerstraße), on the university campus on the way to
the new university library (SUB) and in the Lichtenberghof in Papendiek
14.
Plaques
Chancellors, crowned heads, Nobel Prize winners,
even a Red Chinese field marshal: thanks to its university, Göttingen
was home to many famous people. Some, like Bismarck, were not yet
prominent at the time of their stay in Göttingen, others were. Several
hundred commemorative plaques are on the former residential buildings,
scattered throughout the city. There is an overview here (sorted by
name, not by street). The greatest density is found in the center within
the wall and in the adjacent Gründerzeit quarters to the east.
Movie theater
There is no longer any trace of the fact that
Göttingen was a film town in the 1950s and early 1960s. The originally
broad offer for those interested in cinema and film has now rapidly
melted down. In addition to the usual mega-cinema in the Lokhalle, only
the small program cinema in the Lumière now offers a program that
deviates from the cinema mainstream.
Lumière, Geismar Landstrasse
19. Tel.: +49(0)551 484 523, fax: +49 551 487 098, e-mail:
info@lumiere.de . The small cinema on Geismar Landstraße in the
immediate vicinity of the observatory stands out not only for its
sophisticated program cinema but also for numerous fixed events in the
Göttingen cultural scene: children's theater days and figure theater
days, silent film screenings with piano accompaniment and as the "home
theater" of the Göttingen Comedy Company, one beyond Göttingen
well-known improv theater group. The theater cellar located under the
Lumière and the Café Kabale (with beer garden in summer) also housed in
the building complement this alternative cultural center in the south of
the city.
CinemaxX, Bahnhofsallee 3, 37081 Goettingen. Tel: (0)40 80
80 69 69.
Cinema in the ZHG of the university Alternatives to the
classic cinema are the cinema screenings in the central lecture hall
building of the university (no screenings during the semester breaks),
the annual highlight of which is the St. Nicholas party with Rühmann's
Feuerzangenbowle.
Deutsches Theater Goettingen, Theaterplatz 11, 37073 Goettingen.
Phone: +49 (0)551 49 69 11 . with three venues in the big house, DT
Studio and DT Keller, located on the wall at the transition from the old
town to the eastern quarter.
Young Theater Goettingen,
Hospitalstrasse 6, 37073 Goettingen. Phone: +49 (0)551 49 50 15 . with
productions by modern authors, own children's and youth theater area.
Located at the weekly market in the southern inner city, surrounded by
numerous lively nightlife spots.
ThOP - Theater im OP,
Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3, 37073 Goettingen. Phone: +49 (0)551 39 7077 . The
student hands-on theater in the unusual ambience of a former operating
room on the site of the old university hospital. Access to the ThOP is
via the Heinrich-Düker-Weg! Price: €9, reduced €6.
Apex, Burgstr. 46,
37073 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 (0)551 44 771. Cabaret, art club and
gastronomy - a unique part of Göttingen's cultural life, not only in the
evening. Lectures, cabaret, music, e.g. B. Lazy Sunday Afternoon
irregular Sundays at 5 p.m. with the New Orleans Syncopators or the jazz
session every fourth Thursday of the month.
Clavier-Salon,
Stumpfebiel 4. Small and fine, the Clavier-Salon in the city center
enriches the city's cultural offerings. Initiated and organized by the
well-known Göttingen pianist Gerrit Zitterbart, a sophisticated piano
program is offered in the small former shop in an old half-timbered
house in the city center. Just 60 listeners can enjoy concerts in the
"Clavier am Kamin" series with Zitterbart himself or his students at the
Hanover Music Academy. It is played on various historical or modern
grand pianos, including some fortepianos.
City tours and round
trips
Tourist Information, Kornmarkt, 37073 Goettingen. Phone: +49
(0) 551 49980 30.
The tourist information offers regular city
tours:
Around the Gänseliesel: 90 minutes, sights in the city center
from the more than 1000-year history of the university town. From April
to October regularly Fri, Sat, Sun, public holidays, also on the
Saturdays in Advent at 11.30 a.m. in the hall of the Old Town Hall.
Irregular special tours (current dates):
Drinking habits and social
gatherings - a tour for night owls
Admonishing legacy - Goettingen
under National Socialism
Great moments in mathematics - Carl
Friedrich Gauss.
Those who prefer to see the city from a slightly
higher perspective should join a city tour with Miss Marple, the London
bus. The 1.5 hour trip takes place irregularly, dates can be found at
the tourist information. The 31 Londonbus stop is behind the Old Town
Hall.
For cyclists, the Radreise-Wiki offers directions with a GPS
track for a small city tour around and through the old town, which is
also suitable for touring cyclists with luggage.
To swim
10 Badeparadies Eiswiese, Windausweg 6, 37073 Göttingen
(bus lines 61, 91, 92, regional bus 130). Tel.: +49 551 50 70 90. The
facility (8400 sqm) with various swimming and fun pools, outdoor pools,
brine pools, slides (including tire white water slide) and a large sauna
area is located in the south of the city, on the edge of the local
recreation area Kiessee. Open: Mon-Fri 10:00 - 22:30; Sat, Sun, public
holidays 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 p.m. Price: Different time tariffs for the
different areas, water world: 1 hour adults €3.50, reduced €2. Edit info
11 Freibad Weende, Am Weendespring 1, 37077 Göttingen (in the north of
the city). Tel.: +49 551 314 36. Open: Mon–Fri 6:30 a.m.–8:00 p.m., last
minute from 6:30 p.m., Sat, Sun + public holidays 9:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.
Price: adults €3, children 1.80€. info edit
12 Freibad am Brauweg,
Brauweg 60, 37073 Göttingen (in the southern part of the city). Phone:
+49 551 50 70 91 90 . 10 m diving board. Open: Mon–Fri 6:30 a.m.–8:00
p.m., last minute from 6:30 p.m., Sat, Sun + public holidays 8:00
a.m.–7:00 p.m. Price: adults €3, children €1.80.
13 Naturerlebnisbad
Grone (in the western part of the city.). Tel.: +49 551 6 17 42. Open:
Mon–Fri 9:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m., last minute from 6:30 p.m., Sat, Sun +
public holidays 9:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m. Price: adults €3, children €1.80.
14 Saline Luisenhall, Greitweg 48, 37081 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 551
9972840 wikipediacommons. The only still existing salt pan in Europe is
not only an industrial monument that can be visited and a production
facility for table salt of a special quality, but also a bath house.
Brine bathing in water with 33% salt content, natural brine steam bath,
applications. Because the bathhouse is small, only six bathers are
present at a time, which allows for an extremely quiet and individual
setting, but usually also requires a reservation.
running routes
around the ramparts
through the Schillerwiese and into the Göttingen
Forest
around the gravel lake
from the Drachenwiese out into the
Feldmark to the Reinshof test farm of the university and on to the
Rosdorf quarry pond
through the Leineauen - along one river bank and
back along the other, so you stay in the city area and can still walk in
the countryside.
winter sports
Admittedly, Göttingen is not
the top address for winter sports in the region. However, if the weather
cooperates, there are a few opportunities for winter sports in the city
or just outside its gates. Travelers who stop off in Göttingen in winter
and are looking for a really wide range of winter sports should not miss
the opportunity for a flying visit to the Harz Mountains.
From
the end of November to mid-January you can skate at the Lokhalle every
day from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., on weekends from 11 a.m. in the Lokhalle on
Bahnhofsallee. Tel. +49 551 99958 0. The open-air ice rink in nearby
Nörten-Hardenberg offers a longer ice skating season. Provided the
weather is right, you can also skate on the Göttinger Kiessee: Ice skate
rental and gastronomic offers are also available on the lake, which is
officially released when the ice cover is appropriate.
Ski
cross-country skiing on the Kerstlingeröder Feld Surprisingly, good
conditions for cross-country skiing can often be found in Göttingen's
high altitudes, especially on the Kerstlingeröder Feld: even if it's
cloudy and gray down in the Leinetal, you often find one up here -
provided there is enough precipitation closed blanket of snow on which
you can do your rounds across country undisturbed. Car park at the
Hainholzhof A suitable starting point is the car park at the Hainholzhof
(Kehr).
Various
17 Schillerwiese tennis courts. Tel.: +49 551
3848021. four clay courts where you can play without being a member of a
club or association. Individual lessons can be booked by telephone at
TSC Göttingen. Open: May to October.Edit info
You can fly 18 kites
and go buggy kiting (on a small scale) - provided you have your own
equipment - on the Drachenwiese in Göttingen. On the Reinhäuser
Landstraße (B27) on the southern outskirts (direction Friedland),
immediately after the gas station is the Drachenwiese on the right.
Buggy kiters / kitesurfers drive the Reinhäuser Landstraße a bit further
out of town and after the town sign take the first dirt road on the
right and can thus drive up to the hill of the meadow.
Through parks and the city forest up to the Bismarck Tower (approx.
3.5 km one way): From the Gänseliesel you follow the Rote Straße and
Wendenstraße up to the Albani Church and cross the street above the
church and enter Cheltenham Park. Passing the Rohn'sches Badehaus, keep
left at the following crossroads and get onto the Schildweg, which you
follow to the left uphill to the intersection with the Friedländer Weg,
which you cross at the pedestrian traffic light. Continue along the
opposite Hainholzweg for about 200 m and now follow the path that
branches off from the left footpath into a green area, which is
interrupted after another 100 m by the transverse Merkelstraße. Cross it
and you are now on the Schillerwiese, one of the largest green areas in
Göttingen, where you continue uphill on the right, eastern edge. After
crossing the Calsowstraße and the winding Bismarckstraße, you turn
slightly to the right into an uphill valley, the Lange Nacht, from which
you can turn right after about a kilometer to the Bismarckturm, the
observation tower open from April to September. The way back is done the
same way or you can simply take one of the many small paths leading down
from the tower, which all sooner or later meet Bismarckstraße, which you
can follow down to Schillerwiese again.
Hike around the
Kerstlingeröder Feld in the Göttingen Forest. The former maneuver area
of the Bundeswehr (which was stationed in the Zieten barracks, today
Zietenterrassen, until 1994) lay completely fallow for many years after
the end of military use, so that nature was able to reclaim the area
undisturbed. As a result, a biotope for rare plants and animals has
developed on the 195 ha of the field, which is rather unusual in this
form - large, agriculturally unused pastures, forest and meadow orchards
merge into one another. Special features include an area with calcareous
grassland, various species of orchids and wild roses, several species of
birds that are on the Red List, and over 400 species of butterflies. How
to get there: By car via Bismarckstrasse to Kehr and then on foot. With
the city bus line 21, 71, 72, 73 to the stop Grete-Henry-Str. or Vor dem
Walde (line 21), then continue on foot. The Kerstlingeröder Feld is also
well suited for bike tours - if you don't shy away from the journey up
to the Göttinger Forest. (Tip: Taking bicycles on the GöVB city buses is
free of charge!)
If you want to visit a city with children, you need enough
playgrounds for the smaller ones and interesting attractions for the
older children. A visit to the city center of Göttingen enables a good
change of attractions for parents as well as children, considering the
many small playgrounds and activity areas in the city.
Playground
at the Jacobi Church. A climbing frame with a fireman's pole, slide and
swing, paved with fall protection mats, is an attractive option for
children to let off steam and parents to rest on the adjacent small
stone wall. Seen from the pedestrian zone, the square is behind the
church, pleasantly shaded in summer. In the Schröder pub across the
street, parents can strengthen themselves in between.
Cheltenhampark
Playground A break from play on the Schwänchenteich playground can be
combined with a walk around the medieval ramparts and Cheltenhampark.
The easiest way to find this is from the Albanikirche or the Stadthalle,
turn into Cheltenhampark (beware of cyclists!), the playground is behind
the Rohn'sche Badehaus. Small playground at Cheltenhampark: If you walk
past the Schwänchenteich and through the grounds of the former Albani
cemetery, you will find a slide and a sandbox with some stone animal
figures to climb on.
Playground Schillerwiese in the Ostviertel
Models of optical illusions can be found on Theaterstraße between Nabel
and Jüdenstraße. An explanation of the respective phenomenon is right
next to it.
Sound experiment A little further up the Theaterstraße
you will find an experiment on sound: A call/listening column is in
front of the Academy of Sciences on the right-hand side, the experiment
partner goes a few steps further and finds the counterpart at the
Spieleburg. Now you can talk wonderfully over the distance.
In autumn
and winter, you should not miss deciphering the message from the
Gauss-Weber telegraph (see light installations) in the evening, no later
than two hours after sunset.
The planet path (see above) is also
interesting for many children because of its spatial dimension (at least
as long as you stay in the inner city area).
Furthermore, there
are some special toy and game shops in Göttingen and special educational
offers for children, of which the children's university in particular
(after registration, during semester times) can also be suitable for
children visiting Göttingen (see learning).
January
The series of events begins with the Wanderlust Festival:
Those who love to travel and other people interested in distant and
nearer countries get their money's worth at this two-day slide and
multivision festival in the central lecture hall building of the
university (ZHG). In addition to countries with wanderlust, lectures
from almost undiscovered German countries are also shown, and there are
usually a few reports from adventurers on bicycles or motorbikes.
Additional lectures on tropical medicine and travel photography and a
small exhibition area on travel equipment complete the festival.
April
International Improv Festival: Improv theater at its finest,
always with the local Goettingen Comedy Company and other, often
international, artists from the improv theater scene. The venues are
primarily the Lumiere and the Deutsches Theater, but the Theater der
Nacht in Northeim and other places in the surrounding area also offer
high-quality theater based on the audience's specifications.
The Tour
d'Energie cycling race for everyone, with a 45 km and a 100 km circuit,
now attracts around 3500 cyclists from all over Germany to Göttingen -
as one of the first races of the year in this category and with a
demanding route profile across the Weser and from Hemeln Returning via
the villages via the Hohen Hagen is worth the journey, even from afar.
An appealing supporting program in the finish area makes the tour a
worthwhile excursion destination for those traveling with you.
May June
The Göttingen Elk Prize is awarded annually in May, a
satirical prize decorated with a "magnificent certificate", a solid
silver elk brooch, 99 cans of original Göttingen elk cream soup and
€3,333.33 in cash. F. W. Bernstein, Otto Waalkes, Helge Schneider and
Franziska Becker are already in the illustrious circle of the "moose
pack". Location of the event: The Deutsches Theater (and after the award
ceremony the DT-Bisto).
Every year from Ascension Day to Pentecost,
the International Handel Festival offers events related to the work of
George Frideric Handel at various locations in and around Göttingen. In
addition to the large productions of one or more oratorios and operas by
Handel in the Stadthalle or in the Deutsches Theater, there is a wealth
of smaller concerts in churches, the popular open-air concert at the
Göttinger Kiessee, as well as children's and family programs, work
introductions, etc. Venues outside of Göttingen are e.g. the Ursuline
monastery in Duderstadt, the Fürstenberg porcelain factory and the
Muthaus of Hardeg Castle in Hardegsen.
July August
In July or
August, the open-air festival takes place in the KWP - the Kaiser
Wilhelm Park - as part of the Göttingen cultural summer, at which greats
such as Roger Chapman, Karat, Manfred Mann or the internationally known
Göttingen band Guano Apes have performed. Unique atmosphere in the
middle of the forest below the Bismarck Tower - located on
Bismarckstraße halfway between Schillerwiese and Kehr.
September
The summer ends in Göttingen in early/mid-September with the new music
festival Soundcheck Neue Musik, which offers newcomers an open-air stage
on Albaniplatz. More established artists perform e.g. in the Deutsches
Theater, in the Lokhalle and in the Stadthalle. The festival has been
taking place in Göttingen since 2012.
Autumn comes to Göttingen at
the end of September with the kite festival on the Drachenwiese in the
south of the city.
October
The Göttingen Literature Autumn
brings top-class authors from various fields to Göttingen in October.
The program of classical literature areas is supplemented by a large
scientific program and numerous events of the partner associations and
institutions. Venues include the Old Town Hall, the auditorium on
Wilhelmsplatz, the Apex on Burgstrasse, the German Theater, the Goethe
Institute on Merkelstrasse, the Adult Education Center, the Young
Theater, but also the Town Hall in Duderstadt and the Grenzlandmuseum
Eichsfeld.
Göttinger Literaturherbst (festival office), Hospitalstr.
12, 37073 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 551 507 669, e-mail:
info@literaturherbst.com.
November
The cultural highlight is
the Göttingen Jazz Festival in the Deutsches Theater.
pea soup meal.
in favor of the campaign Nobody should be alone always takes place on
the first Saturday in November in front of the old town hall.
December
The events in the Advent season are rounded off by the
Göttingen Christmas market around the old town hall and St. Johannis,
which as a special feature will remain in place after Christmas until
December 29th.
Other Advent sights are the crib exhibition in St.
Johannis and the large Advent crib and in particular the later Christmas
crib in St. Michael.
Of course, like any other German city of this size, Göttingen has
many well-known fashion chains, department stores and supermarkets to
offer. But if you really want to go shopping in Göttingen, avoid the
main pedestrian zone Weender Straße and instead stroll through the many
small side streets around the pedestrian zone. Johannisstrasse,
Burgstrasse, Lange Geismarstrasse, Prinzenstrasse, Wilhelmsplatz, Kurze
Strasse, Dustere Strasse... In all these small streets and alleys you
will find many original shops from retailers who have retained their own
profile and, in their diversity, make for a colourful, attractive
shopping spree offer: clothing, jewellery, kites, decorations, shoes,
toys, books, furniture and much more.
Department stores and
retail parks
1 Kauf-Park, hardware store, supermarket, drugstore,
sports shop, electronics store, pharmacy - if you come to Göttingen by
car, you should find everything you need out here in the retail park
right at the Autobahn exit Göttingen.
2 Karstadt, Groner Strasse 43,
37073 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 551 4090. The classic department store still
exists in Göttingen, right in the city center between Groner Straße and
Johanniskirche.
3 Carree, inner-city retail park with drugstore
chain, electronics store, supermarket and clothing stores. You can also
walk to the train station in less than 10 minutes.
Göttingen
specialties
Salt from the Saline Luisenhall - available in the tegut
markets and in the Saline
Göttinger Nobel-Bohne - coffee bean
dedicated to the Göttingen Nobel Prize winners, which is roasted in
Göttingen
4 Contigo, Lange Geismar Str. 51, 37073 Goettingen. Phone:
+49 551 48 53 71, fax: +49 551 59 462, e-mail: goettingen@contigo.de.
When it's freshly roasted, you can smell it from afar!
Göttingen
sausage specialties from the local butcher Sommer
Weekly market
The weekly market is located on the southern edge of downtown. A typical
weekly and farmer's market is held here every Tuesday and Thursday from
7 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Saturday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., which in Göttingen
is traditionally characterized by a wide range of ecologically produced
food.
In addition to numerous restaurants and snack bars, the gastronomy in
Göttingen is characterized by a wide range of cafes and pubs. The former
are more defined by "food", the latter often offer a selection of
dishes, but above all they are nice places for travelers to sit out a
rainy day somewhere or read the newspaper over a coffee. The cafés and
pubs are therefore listed separately here. They are still often a part
of Göttingen's nightlife.
Mettwurst (calf bladder or Stracke) and
the Goettingen bacon cake, which is traditionally baked for the guild
day of the district craftsmen's association in October, are typical of
the region.
Cheap
Bratwurst-Glöckle, Kornmarkt 1. Tel.: +49
551 59 883. A cheap lunch for many employees in the city center, for
former residents of Göttingen a bratwurst meal in the Bratwurst-Glöckle
is often a must when visiting the city - the (supposedly) best bratwurst
of the city is available here (the manufacturer of the sausages is
Fleischer Sommer). The small, narrow room with its few standing tables
is very unobtrusively located on Groner Strasse on the corner of
Kornmarkt. Open: Mon - Fri 10 a.m. - 7 p.m., Sat, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Training restaurant Schaltwerk am Wall, Lange Geismarstr. 72/73. Tel.:
+49 551 49 50 738. During the week only, they offer the classic lunch
menu at reasonable prices (main course between €4 and €8, including a
vegetarian dish). The atmosphere is rather sparse, and the quality of
the food can also vary depending on the level of training of the chefs -
nevertheless recommended, as the numerous regular guests prove.
Reservation useful. Open: Mon-Fri 12.00 - 14.00.
Pizzeria Napoli,
Goßlerstrasse 4, 37073 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 551 497 87 84. Take-away
and delivery service, with two small bar tables in the small building on
the corner of Goßlerstraße and Nikolausberger Weg, very close to the
central lecture hall building and the Humanities Center. However, if you
want to have a delicious pizza on hand, this is the place for you - not
only students have been drawn here for 25 years, especially for the
cheap lunchtime pizzas.
In the Göttingen pedestrian zone you will
also find the usual fast food restaurants, bakeries, Turkish snack bars,
North Sea restaurants etc. in sufficient numbers, e.g. T. also open in
the evenings and on weekends.
Canteens at the University of
Göttingen. you can also eat there as a guest, the range of dishes,
especially in the central canteen at Platz der Göttinger Sieben, is very
large and leaves nothing to be desired, also with regard to vegetarian
and vegan nutrition.infoedit
There are the following canteen
locations in the city area: central canteen, canteen at the tower on
Goßlerstraße, Mensa Italia on Roedererstraße, north canteen on the north
campus.
Middle
Bullerjahn, Markt 9, 37073 Goettingen. Tel.:
+49 551 30 70 100, email: info@gustodeluxe.de. the former Ratskeller in
the old town hall in a new guise. The old vault is brightly designed,
the menu lists, among other things, classic regional dishes, some with a
modern interpretation of average quality. Göttingen beer soup, kale and
jelly are served as well as salmon steak, schnitzel and tarte flambée.
Breakfast and coffee menu. Unfortunately, in the warm months, the
terrace with its expansive umbrellas dominates the front of the old town
hall, and the oversized outdoor lounge blocks the view of the statue of
the small Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (which will not bother the guest
of the Bullerjahn himself as much as the viewer of the old one town
hall).
Gasthaus Muskat, Hauptstraße 62, 37083 Göttingen (in the
Geismar district). Phone: +49 551 790 60 24, email:
info@gasthaus-muskat.de. Small, cozy restaurant in an old half-timbered
house right on the main street in the southern district of Geismar.
Open: 6 p.m. to approx. 12 a.m., days off: Sun and Mon.
Potato house,
Goetheallee 8 (in the venerable Grätzelhaus). Phone: +49 551 53 155 77,
email: info@kartoffelhaus-goettingen.de. potato dishes and more. Seating
in summer also outside on Goetheallee, in the Grätzelhaus.
Le Feu,
Weender Landstr. 23. Tel.: +49 551 37 06 17 70, e-mail:
goettingen@lefeu.de. Tarte flambée, across from the university's central
campus.
Pasta store, Rote Strasse 13, 37073 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 551
44 263. On the edge of the pedestrian zone, 100 m from Gänseliesel.
Pasta dishes between 5 and 9€, meat dishes between 10 and 14€. Narrow
guest room, sometimes noisy and restless. Good to be well fed, less to
sit comfortably. Very nice, shady courtyard in summer. Open: 11.30
a.m.-12.00 a.m., hot food served all day.
Potis, Kreuzbergring 70.
Tel.: +49-551-46048. Another Göttingen institution, the Greek in the
Ostviertel, has been delivering the same quality in the same ambience
for almost 50 years. Generations of academics, from freshman to
emeritus, have frequented this eatery.
Timberjack's Bar&Grill, An den
Weiden 3. Tel.: +49(0)551-5008350, e-mail: service@timberjacks.com.
Interesting gastronomy concept with an urge for perfectionism.
Restoration in the Canadian log cabin style, down to the knife points,
the water taps and the chirping of birds on the toilet. Solid steakhouse
and Texmex cuisine. With a hydraulic rodeo bull and a huge multimedia
wall. If public viewing of the Super Bowl, then here (if they offer it)
Open: daily 11 a.m. to midnight.
Upscale
Gaudi, Rote Strasse
16, in the Börner district. Tel.: +49(0)551 5313001. Mediterranean
cuisine. Nice ambience in the quiet backyard, fine cuisine. 15 points in
Gault Millau. Tip: If you're feeling a little hungry, it's better to
choose the associated tapas bar right next door, definitely more
comfortable and not so stiff.
Special gastronomy around Göttingen
All kinds of unique and award-winning gastronomy can be found in the
small villages around Göttingen, so that a visitor to Göttingen should
not limit himself to the city on his culinary journey.
Landgasthaus Lockemann, Im Beeke 1, 37075 Göttingen-Herberhausen
(Herberhausen district). Tel.: +49 551 20 90 20. Traditional inn, a
visit to which can be combined with a hike across the Kerstlingeröder
Feld.
Restaurant Biewald, where Daniel Raub cooks, who was the first
chef in southern Lower Saxony to be awarded a star in the Michelin Guide
in 2014 and who has been awarded 16 points by Gault-Millau year after
year (Daniel Raub).
Schillingshof. Tel.: +49 55 04 228. Also awarded
with 17 points in Gault Millau. Very well-kept, upscale atmosphere.
Open: (days off Mon + Tues).
Mother Jütte In Bremke, game and all
sorts of other meat dishes, especially the best fried potatoes far and
wide.
Cafes and pubs
Göttingen is a university town. That says
the most important thing about the pub scene. Pubs and cafés are
actually everywhere, the style varies a lot - the student, the
professional and the "upscale" audience has an impressive selection of
design options for after-work drinks, pubs to celebrate university
stress as well as for cultural experiences. Above all, cafés and pubs
are mentioned here, which are open both during the day and in the
evening and have a smaller or larger range of dishes. Pubs that are only
open in the evening can be found under Nightlife.
Cron & Lanz,
Weender Strasse 27. Traditional café with a reputation that extends far
beyond Göttingen. Especially known for Baumkuchen, but fine cakes and
chocolates are also offered. Guest rooms on the ground floor and upper
floor (upper floor not suitable for wheelchairs) with winter garden,
terrace in the courtyard, in summer also service on Weender Strasse. The
loveliest tables on the upper floor in the rooms facing Weender Strasse
are never free for long (a confirmed reservation request for the table
in the bay window above the entrance is considered by society to be on
par with an honorary doctorate from the university). If the behavior of
the service seems arrogant, that's on purpose. Not every guest should
feel equally comfortable. The more a guest deviates from the ideal type
(expelled widow of a Wehrmacht officer from the lower nobility), the
more clearly he gets to feel it, occasionally also from the other
guests. Romping around children are just as unwelcome as breastfeeding
mothers, backpacks, torn clothes or open laptops. May everyone decide
for themselves whether they want to do this to themselves (although the
hot chocolate with the butter biscuits served with it is really good).
Open: with out-of-home sales.
Cafe Hemer, Boettingerstr. 21, 37073
Goettingen. Tel.: +49 551 51 73 920. in an old transformer house from
1929 in the southern part of the city, offers cakes and bread from the
wood-fired oven as well as a beautiful small terrace directly on the
Leine canal and is very popular because of this location, especially
with families a small playground and a large adjoining meadow as well as
the small canal offer sufficient employment opportunities for children.
Open: Mon-Fri 7.30am-6pm, Sat 7.30am-6pm, Sun 1pm-6pm.
Esprit, Lange
Geismarstrasse. Tel.: +49 551 70 76 66 00. Cafe and bar, just a nice
place with a large selection of coffees, an even more extensive cocktail
menu and perhaps the best selection of single malts in Göttingen. You
have to like the somewhat bare, draughty ambience of the front area -
and many do - the rear area then offers a surprising amount of space
with very different seating options and near the bar, and above all the
beautiful beer garden in the backyard.
Gartenlaube, Markt 7. Tel.:
+49 551 47 373. Pub at the Old Town Hall. Small, two floors, nice quiet
backyard, outdoor seating in the summer at the front of the market.
Inside good for a beer in the evening, you rarely feel out of place even
as an "older semester".
Inti, Burgstr. 17 (Wilhelmsplatz). Tel.: +49
551 999 53 52. The Bolivian-inspired café with drinks and food almost
exclusively from organic farming offers many different seating options -
quiet corners for two, on the bar stool with a view from the large
windows or at one of the tables next to the Play area also for small
children. Despite the clear child-friendliness, the cafe also offers
space for those who need a rest.
P-Cafe, Nikolaikirchhof 11. Tel.:
+49 551 57699, e-mail: p-cafe@t-online.de. at Nikolai-Kirchhof (at the
entrance to the church), access from both Nikolai- and Dustere Straße.
One of the many cult status cafés in Göttingen - for those who like
things a little more chic, and especially for fans of live broadcasts of
Germany's Next Topmodell. Large outdoor seating under umbrellas and with
a basket full of blankets. Here, numerous tireless people defy the
weather in spring and autumn. Especially nice, but also very crowded on
Saturdays, when there is a flea market on the Nikolaikirchhof and the
flea market stalls almost reach the café tables. Small dishes,
baguettes, etc. The interior has more of a bar atmosphere.
Schröder,
Jüdenstraße (behind the Jakobikirche). For 20 years, people have been
chatting here at beer tables on the sidewalk against the noise of the
city buses driving past. Rather small interior, mainly student audience.
Suitable for parents with (no longer very small) children: On the other
side of the street is the playground at the Jacobikirche: so if children
are reliable enough not to run blindly across the street, they can relax
on one side of the street drinking his coffee while the kids across the
street have their romp break.
Villa Cuba., Zindelstrasse 2, 37073
Goettingen. Tel: +49 551 488 66 78. Restaurant, bar & café. Cuban food
and way of life - and listening to Maximo Lider as a continuous speaker
in the toilets on an endless loop. Very nice inner courtyard in summer.
Open: 10am-2am, Fri + Sat until 3am.
ZAK, at the weekly market. All
dishes are named after movies, you dine here "What women want",
"Terminator" and others. Good burgers. Especially crowded after work,
mixed clientele, many working people. Beautiful, heavily frequented beer
garden directly at the weekly market.
Cortes Cafe and Pastry Shop,
Kurze Geismarstrasse 27. Tel.: +49(0)551-48159. Exceptionally delicious
cakes and chocolates. Modern, pleasant atmosphere. An alternative for
those who don't want to do without the sophisticated art of
confectionery (the chef used to work for Cron&Lanz), but without the
Cron&Lanz étepetete.
Numerous institutions of Göttingen's nightlife are also open during
the day and are cafés and pubs or bars at the same time. Only the
cultural institutions or those explicitly limited to the evening and
night are presented here.
Disco and clubs
Tangent, Goetheallee
8a. Göttingen's oldest discotheque, right in the city center. The
Tangente is more dominated by student and older audiences. If you pass
through the black light-lit entrance "tunnel", you can hear music from
all 30 years of Tangente's life - from "Only 80s" to "Just 00s", but
also indie, mixes of doctors' pants and much more. Open: Wed, Fri, Sat
from 11 p.m.
Alpenmax, Weender Landstrasse 3-7. Phone: +49 551 37061
30 facebook. Rather for young people from the age of 18 or the younger
semesters among the older ones. Celebrate in a ski hut atmosphere not
far from the central lecture hall building of the university. Open: Mon
10 p.m. -4 a.m., Fri + Sat 10 p.m. - 5 a.m., Tue-Thu + Sun closed.
Musa, Hagenweg 2a. Tel.: +49 551 64 353. a cultural center in the
western part of town on the Leine, where you, even as an "older
semester", can dance both well-groomed and vigorously - on Monday
evenings with Salsa, Sunday evenings in the Tango Salon, Friday evenings
alternately at Rock against rheumatism or with PowerDance you don't have
to meet any criteria in terms of style or age to have fun here.
Nörgelbuff, Groner Straße 23. Long-lasting original in the city center,
resistant to all vicissitudes of life. Since 2007, the live club,
managed by the Rockbüro Göttingen, has almost corresponded to what its
founders aspired to in 1970 - a stage for live events, at that time
mainly folk, but also cabaret. Hannes Wader and Otto Waalkes, among
others, have already appeared in the buff. Today you can find a mixture
of live performances and disco events, music styles from ska and reggae
to wave and gothic.
Six Million Dollar Club, Neustadt 1.
Exil,
Prinzenstraße 13. Exile is shaped by lovers of rock, alternative, hard
rock, metal and gothic music. Various live concerts also take place
there regularly.
Bars, pubs and bars
Déjà Vu, Gartenstrasse
14, corner of Dustere Strasse. Phone: +49(0)551 55572 . Ultimate pub
until early morning. Open: 8pm-5am.
Irish Pub, Mühlenstraße 4. Tel.:
+49(0)551 45664, e-mail: email@irishpub-goettingen.de. Of course with
Guinness, whiskey and live music. Somewhat hidden in the small
Mühlenstrasse, an alley between Weender Strasse (pedestrian zone) and
Gotmarstrasse/Stumpfebiel near the Jacobikirche. Open: Mon-Fri + Sun
from 5 p.m., Sat from 3 p.m., open end every day.
Odd Short Street.
Phone: +49(0)551 43143 . For a nightcap on the way home when all the
other bars are already closed. Small, narrow, already open in the
afternoon, a few small tables in front in summer, regular guests there.
Cocktails, the whole bar program.
Trou, Burgstraße 20. Tel.:
+49(0)551 43 971, e-mail: info@trou.de. Quaint cellar pub on Burgstrasse
just around the corner from Wilhelmsplatz. Open: According to their own
statement "always open".
Buddah Lounge, Friedrichstrasse 1. Good pub
with correct prices and friendly staff. Entrance via Theaterstraße,
opposite the Spieleburg. Open: 6pm-2am.
Cheap
1 Goettingen Youth Hostel, Habichtsweg 2, 37075 Goettingen.
Tel.: +49 (0)551 576 22, fax: +49 (0)551 438 87, e-mail:
goettingen@jugendherberge.de commons. Non-motorized travelers can take
bus line 50 from the train station in the direction of Rohns or the 80
from the city center in the direction of Klausberg - or walk about 2.5
km uphill via Berliner Straße, Nikolausberger Weg, Nonnenstieg and
Ewaldstraße. Price: BB from €26.40
2 Hostel37, Groner Landstr. 7,
37073 Goettingen. Phone: (0)551 63 44 51 77, email: info@hostel37.de.
Really not a first-class location, but only 2 minutes to the
long-distance bus station, 5 minutes to the train station and very close
to the city center. Price: SR €35, bed in 6-bed room. 18€. Payment Types
Accepted: Debit Card, Credit Card, PayPal, AliPay.
3 Lang Bed
& Breakfast, Am Rischen 78, 37083 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 (0)551 79 05
387. B&B in a terraced housing estate between the Altdorf Geismar and
the new Kiesseecarree housing estate, on the southern outskirts of
Göttingen, a good 30-minute walk into town, bus connection. Price:
Single room from €24, double room from €46, breakfast €8 p.p.
4
camper port, wind way out. 28 parking spaces, another 12 alternative
spaces (also with electricity) in the parking lot of the neighboring
bathing paradise. Campers will find the camper port relatively close to
the city center (approx. 15 min. walk) at the Eiswiese bathing paradise,
quietly in the countryside directly on the Leine Canal. In summer it is
only a few meters across the small wooden bridge to the Brauweg outdoor
pool. The sanitary facilities of the bathing paradise and the Brauweg
outdoor pool, which is also directly adjacent, can be used for a fee.
WLAN (15 h/ 1€), access data at the cash register in the bathing
paradise. There is also a Greek restaurant right in the bathing paradise
(for late arrivals: hot food until 10 p.m.), just a few meters further
on the other side of the car park there is an Italian restaurant and a
bakery with a good breakfast menu, and a small health food store is
within walking distance. Price: €15 for a maximum of 24 hours, a maximum
of 3 nights.
Camping: There is no official campsite in Göttingen and
the immediate vicinity. Travelers with a tent will find the nearest
campsites in Reiffenhausen (approx. 12km south) and Hardegsen (approx.
15km north-west), in Dransfeld (approx. 12km west) and in Seeburg
directly on the Seeburger See (approx. 18km east of Göttingen ).
Middle
5 Hotel Astoria, Hannoversche Strasse 51-53, 37075 Goettingen.
Tel.: +49 (0)551 305 00, fax: +49 (0)551 305 01 00, e-mail:
info@astoria-goettingen.de. Functional hotel ambience, conference hotel,
152 rooms. Hannoversche Straße is the northern access road towards the
city centre; The hotel is located in an industrial area in the district
of Weende, easily accessible from the motorway. Good bus connection.
Price: Single room from €65, double room from €85.
6 Onkel Toms Hütte
Hotel Restaurant, Am Wendel 10/11, 37083 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 (0)551
707 110. In southern Göttingen, not far from the Kiessee, family-run
hotel with a popular restaurant serving home-style cooking. Also three
and four bed rooms. Access via Kiesseestraße and Großcurthstraße - you
will find the hotel on a bicycle road in a very quiet location in a
single-family housing estate on the edge of an allotment garden colony.
7 Hotel Rennschuh, Kasseler Landstr. 93, 37081 Goettingen. Phone: +49
(0)551 90090, email: hotel@rennschuh.de. Family business. Located on the
access road from the west to the city center, to the rear in a
residential area. swimming pool and sauna.
8 Hotel Central,
Jüdenstrasse 12, 37073 Goettingen. Phone: +49 (0)551 57 157, Email:
info@hotel-central.com. Pedestrian zone, access free for guests.
9
GDA Hotel Goettingen, GDA residential home Goettingen, Charlottenburger
Strasse 19, 37085 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 (0)551 7990, fax: +49 (0)551 799
28 00. The hotel in the GDA Wohnstift is located above Göttingen
directly at the Göttingen city forest and was set up in 2014 on a former
residential convent floor. City view rooms offer unobstructed views of
the city. The spacious one- or two-room apartments all have a pantry
kitchen and are completely barrier-free. Care aids can also be booked if
necessary. Nevertheless, the rooms have the character of a hotel and are
booked by external guests as well as guests of monastery residents.
Breakfast and other meals in the associated restaurant.
10 Novostar
Hotel Goettingen, Kasseler Landstr. 25d, 37081 Goettingen. Tel.: +49
(0)551 9977-0, fax: +49 (0)551 9977-400, e-mail: info@novostar.de. at
the entrance to the Autobahn exit Göttingen in the direction of the city
center (B 3), on the right-hand side. About 1.5 km to downtown. Feature:
★★★★. Price: Single room from €60, double room from €79.
Upscale
Best Western Hotel Am Papenberg, Hermann-Rein-Strasse 2, 37075
Goettingen. Tel.: +49 (0)551 30 550. Located on Hermann-Rein-Straße,
just a few minutes' walk from the clinic. Bus connection to the city
center.
Eden Hotel Goettingen, Reinhäuser Landstrasse 22a, 37083
Goettingen. Tel.: +49 (0)551 50 7200. A few minutes' walk south of the
city center on Reinhäuser Landstrasse, in a quiet, secluded location
within the surrounding rows of houses. Meeting area, restaurant,
swimming pool and sauna. Feature: ★★★★.
Freizeit In, Dransfelder
Strasse 3, 37079 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 551 90010. Well-known conference
and seminar hotel in the immediate vicinity of the A7 (exit
Göttingen/Dransfeld). Large sauna and spa area, children's villa,
various gastronomic offers. In the district of Groß Ellershausen,
approx. 3km to the city centre.
Gebhardts Hotel, Goetheallee 22-23,
37073 Goettingen. Phone: +49 551 49680 commons. Located on the city
wall, one of the most famous hotels in Goettingen - still called the
first house on the square by the people of Goettingen. Upscale stylish
hotel. Only a few minutes walk to the city center - and ideally located
for train travellers. In the house the Geogia-Augusta-Stuben, classic
German cuisine. Feature: ★★★★.
Intercityhotel Goettingen,
Bahnhofsallee 1a, 37081 Goettingen. Phone: +49 551 5211-0. a few
minutes' walk west of the train station on Bahnhofsallee directly at the
Lokhalle event center.
Hotel Stadt Hannover, Goethe-Allee 21, 37073
Goettingen. Tel.: +49 (0)551 547960, fax: +49 551 45 470, e-mail:
info@hotelstadthannover.de . just a few minutes' walk east of the train
station on Goetheallee. Price: Single room from €84, double room from
€118.
Göttingen is not only a university town with many students, but also
has a very large variety of educational institutions. Detailed
information on the study location can be found under
Göttingen/University and Science.
universities and technical
colleges
University of Goettingen, Wilhelmsplatz 1, 37073 Goettingen.
The University of Göttingen alone offers teaching for more than 24,000
students.
University of Applied Sciences in Goettingen
Private
college
A special feature in Göttingen is the numerous
educational opportunities for children and young people in the field of
science and research:
X-Lab, the Göttingen experimental laboratory
for young people with its futuristic-looking building on the north
campus of the university, with numerous courses for young researchers,
even during vacation times
Children's University - perhaps there is a
lecture at the Children's University taking place during your visit to
Göttingen? Registration required one week in advance - possible online.
School-lab of the German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Anyone looking for a temporary job in Göttingen has the following search options in addition to the usual job exchanges on the Internet:
Job placement by the Göttingen employment agency
In addition, you
can always find job offers on the bulletin boards of the university
institutes. An interesting way to spontaneously earn a little extra is
to take part in experiments as part of master’s theses, etc. Students in
the field of psychology and business administration in particular are
regularly looking for participants. Information about notices or the job
agency of the university linked above. The job offers are often not
limited to students.
Otherwise, during a longer stopover to earn
money, you can find the usual temporary jobs through advertisements in
the Göttinger Tageblatt or in the advertising newspaper Blick, or
through the employment agency. Longer-term unqualified jobs are
generally offered here in the same spectrum as in Germany: care for the
elderly, cleaning jobs, driving and packing jobs. It's a bit more
difficult in gastronomy because these are coveted jobs among the
numerous students.
Göttingen also has offers for mobile working.
Co-working offers as well as rentable offices and work rooms, such as
those from StartRaum and life science factory, help the self-employed
and start-ups in particular with networking and make it possible to have
professionally furnished business premises available at any time without
having to pay fixed costs.
Göttingen is not an unsafe city per se, but there are robberies here
too, and you should avoid some critical places, especially at night
alone: the ramparts, Cheltenhampark, e.g. T. also the central campus of
the university. Wilhelmsplatz has also increasingly developed into a
nocturnal trouble spot, occasionally Nikolaistrasse and the area around
the Iduna Center (Alpenmax) should also be treated with caution at
night.
Women who are out and about alone at night can take
advantage of the women's night taxi service, which is offered by all
taxi companies and Puk minicars in Göttingen (mention this when ordering
a taxi to be on the safe side). Here you can drive at reduced prices,
this also applies to children under 12 years of age.
Police
Police Inspectorate Göttingen, Operations and Patrol Service 1, Groner
Landstr. 51, 37081 Goettingen. Phone: +49 551 491 21 15, Fax: +49 551
491 215 0.
City guard, Markt 3, 37073 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 551 491
62 15. Responsible for all incidents in the city center. It is located
on the Kornmarkt, in the row of houses to the right of the Old Town
Hall, opposite the statue of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.
Goettingen
Police Inspectorate, Operations and Patrol Service 2, Otto-Hahn-Strasse
2, 37077 Goettingen. Tel.: +49 551 491 22 15, fax: +49 551 491 22 50.
Responsible for the northern parts of the city and the north campus of
the university.
As the seat of a large medical faculty, Göttingen has numerous other
hospitals, practice clinics, competence centers and resident doctors in
addition to this one (headquarters clinic), so that a specialist doctor
should always be available during normal opening hours. For emergencies
for travellers, especially at weekends and at night, the most important
addresses in Göttingen for quick medical assistance are listed below.
Clinics
6 On-call practice in the University Hospital,
Robert-Koch-Strasse (Level 01). Tel.: (0)116 117. Outpatient medical
care in emergencies outside of the office hours of established doctors.
Open: Mon, Tue, Thu 6.30pm-10pm; Wed, Fri 1.30 p.m. to 11 p.m., Sat, Sun
and public holidays 8.30 a.m. to 11 p.m.
1 University Hospital
Goettingen. Tel.: +49 (0)551 39 86 05. Emergency department.
2
possible Weende Hospital, An der Lutter 24, 37075 Goettingen. Tel.: + 49
(0)551 50340. Central emergency room: +49 (0)551 50 341255; Recommended
in accident-surgical emergencies, because care is often offered much
faster than in a hospital, where long waiting times are not uncommon.
Pharmacies
3 Pharmacy at the theater. Tel: (0)551 58411. Downtown
pharmacy, but also accessible by car, specializing in homeopathy
alongside the usual range.
4 Südstadt pharmacy. Tel: (0)551 706273.
Conveniently located in Südstadt off the B27.
5 Pharmacy in the
Kaufpark. Coming from the Autobahn exit 73, it can be reached quickly.
Open: Mon-Sat 8 a.m. - 8 p.m.
6 Hagenberg Pharmacy, Holtenser
Landstr. 62, 37079 Goettingen. Tel.: +49(0)551 613 63. Accessible from
the Göttingen Nord exit (72). Open: Mon-Fri 8:30 a.m. - 6:30 p.m., Sat
8:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
7 Goethe Pharmacy, Goethe-Allee. Only a few
minutes' walk from the train station towards the city centre.
Emergency services
The current pediatric emergency service can be
found on the website of this pediatrician.
Private medical emergency
service on +49 551 19 257
Dental emergency service, in the university
hospital, phone: +49 551 39 8604, daily until 9 p.m.; then ask the local
emergency service via the central telephone number +49 551 83 302.
Vet
Small animal clinic, Burckhardtweg 2, 37077 Goettingen. Tel.:
+49 551 39 3387. Open: Mon-Fri 9.00-11.00, Tue+Thu 4.30-6.30 p.m.
For
all health problems of accompanying pets: Veterinary Institute of the
University. Emergency service: In life-threatening emergencies day and
night after prior notification by telephone.
Tourist Information
Tourist Information, Old Town Hall, Markt 9,
37073 Göttingen. Tel.: +49 551 499 800, e-mail: tourismus@goettingen.de.
, centrally located in the city center in the old town hall, accessible
via the left side staircase, and also barrier-free accessible via an
elevator. In addition to information about the city, you will also find
the largest selection of Göttingen souvenirs in the city. Feature:
wheelchair accessible. Open: April to October, Mon-Fri 9:30 a.m. - 6
p.m., Sat 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sun and public holidays: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.;
November to March, Mon-Fri 9.30 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sat 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
City administration
City of Goettingen, Hiroshimaplatz 1-4.
Phone: +49 551 400-0. The city administration is located in the new town
hall, which is also where the local lost and found office is located (in
the pavilion to the right of the main entrance). Open: Mon-Fri 8am-12pm,
Thurs 2pm-5pm (general opening hours, individual authorities may vary).
Newspapers
The regional newspaper is the Göttinger Tageblatt, and
the HNA also has a Göttingen regional section.
City magazines are
leben37 and trends&fun.
Radio
In addition to the regional
studio of FFN, which is a real institution in Göttingen, there is also
Stadt-Radio Göttingen with a focus on what is happening in the city.
laundromat
Launderette Ritterplan, Ritterplan 3 (in the city
center opposite the Municipal Museum). Tel.: +49 172 583 97 32, e-mail:
info@derwaschsalon.de. Open: Mon-Sat 7am-10pm.
Launderette
Reinhäuser Landstraße, Reinhäuser Landstraße 150 (in the south of the
city). Tel.: +49 172 58 39 732, e-mail: info@derwaschsalon.de. Open:
Mon-Sat 6am-10pm.
Launderette Hannoversche Strasse, Hannoversche
Strasse 53a (near BOC, McTrek, Media Markt, GLOBUS). Phone: +49 551 38
36 6-0, email: info@mcclean-gmbh.de. Open: Mon-Sat 6am-10pm.
Launderette Annastraße, Annastraße 5 (near the blue tower, parallel to
Goßlerstraße). Phone: +49 551 38 36 6-0, email: info@mcclean-gmbh.de.
Open: Mon-Sat 6am-10pm.
Miscellaneous
Main post office next to
the train station, post office Groner Straße There is a small post
office in the city center on Groner Straße, diagonally across from the
main entrance to Karstadt.
City Library, Gotmarstr. 8 (at the
Johanniskirche). Phone: +49 (0) 551 400 2084, +49 (0) 551 400-2684.
(Freely accessible) premises, free WiFi, information on the information
boards on the 1st and 2nd floor. Open: closed on Wednesdays.
Free
WiFi via WLAN around the KAZ and the weekly market. Internet access is
provided by the cultural institutions in the KAZ and the weekly market
operators.
Kabel Deutschland has a total of six hotspots in the city,
where you can surf the Internet for free for 30 minutes a day.
Göttingen, the southernmost city in Lower Saxony, is
known worldwide especially for its old, traditional Georg August
University. Georgia Augusta is the largest and - opened in 1737 -
also the oldest still existing university in Lower Saxony. In
addition to the university, some Max Planck Institutes and other
important scientific institutions are also based in Göttingen. Due
to the large number of Nobel Prize winners who studied, taught or
researched in Göttingen, the city is also known as the city that
creates knowledge.
A good fifth of the inhabitants of
Göttingen are students at the university or one of the colleges,
which is reflected, among other things, in a high number of cyclists
and a distinctive, colorfully mixed pub and club scene. But the
cultural offerings are also shaped by science, from numerous
specialist lectures by the various faculties, series of lectures for
laypeople to an independent student theater stage. Anyone who wants
to experience science and student life live as a traveler has
various options almost every day.
Over the centuries, the
science location has had a beneficial effect on the settlement of
supplying and supporting industries and crafts. The positive mutual
influence between scientific knowledge and practical knowledge and
competencies promoted in particular the area of measurement
technology, which is represented today by Measurement Valley, an
association of local companies and universities. Companies such as
Sartorius and Mahr, both globally active companies in the field of
measurement technology, have their headquarters in Göttingen. Other
economic priorities include the optical industry, aluminum
processing and shipping companies and automotive suppliers.
The urban area of Göttingen has been inhabited since the early Neolithic period, as numerous finds of the Linear Pottery Culture show. One of these sites was extensively excavated by city archeologists during the construction of today's Kauf Park shopping center in the Grone district in the 1990s. There are also traces of settlements from the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Göttingen goes back to a village that can be archaeologically proven
as far back as the 7th century. This village was first mentioned in 953
under the name Gutingi in a document of King Otto I. With the document,
the later emperor gave the monastery of St. Moritz in Magdeburg property
in what was then Gutingi - and was located on the eastern edge of the
Leinetalgraben in the vicinity of today's St. Albani Church on a hill.
This church was consecrated to Saint Albanus at the latest at the
beginning of the 11th century and is thus the oldest church in
Göttingen, with the current building being a successor from the 14th and
15th centuries. Recent archaeological finds in the area of the old
village point to a trained craft and suggest far-reaching trade
relations. A small stream flowed through the village, the Gote, from
which the village took its name (“-ing” = “residents at”).
Palatinate Grona
While - apart from the archaeological finds - not
much is known about the fate of the village of Gutingi in the early
Middle Ages, the Palatinate Grona (Grone) two kilometers north-west of
the village is a place that stands out more clearly in history.
Mentioned as a newly built castle in 915, it was later expanded to form
the Palatinate. This Palatinate, located on the opposite bank of the
Leine on the southern spur of the Hagenberg, is considered to be a
specifically Ottonian Palatinate of medium rank with a total of 18
documented stays of kings and emperors between 941 and 1025. Grone was a
popular place to stay, especially for Emperor Heinrich II and his wife
Kunigunde. Henry II retired here seriously ill in the summer of 1024,
where he died on July 13, 1024.
The castle later lost its
function as a palace and was rebuilt into the castle of the Lords of
Grone in the 13th century. Between 1323 and 1329 it was destroyed by the
citizens of the city of Göttingen. The remains were removed in 1387 by
Otto the Quade because of his feud with the city of Göttingen.
On the road leading to the ford over the Leine, west of the
village of Gutingi, a Wik (= a commercial settlement) developed over
time, which continued the place name as "gotingi" and later received
city rights in 1230 as "Gotingen".
The now so-called old
village, which initially gave the town its name, was not the actual
nucleus of the new town; Rather, it was outside the first city wall
and can still be seen in the city plan as a separate area around the
Albani Church and today's Lange-Geismar-Straße. The circumstances
under which the city of Göttingen came into being cannot be
determined historically. It is assumed that Henry the Lion initiated
the founding of the city between 1150 and 1180/1200. In the period
between 1201 and 1208, Count Palatine Heinrich, Otto IV's brother,
is stated to be the lord of the city. At this time, Guelph rights of
ownership and rulership were already being exercised from Göttingen.
It was at this time that Göttingen citizens (burgenses) were first
mentioned, suggesting that Göttingen was already organized in a
specifically urban way. The Guelphs managed their possessions around
Göttingen from a farm north of the old village, on today's
Ritterplan, and later expanded into a castle, the "Ballerhus"
(balrus). The arable land that belonged to this farm is referred to
as "Bunde" (bound land) and is mentioned as such in late medieval
documents. The courtiers had their residence next to the manor. The
Jacobi Church, which was donated by Henry the Lion, and a farm
adjoining it to the south, which was sold by Duke Albrecht to the
Walkenried Monastery in 1303, were also closely connected to the
farm and later the castle. It is obvious that the inclusion of the
Jacobi Church and the adjoining courtyard may have extended the
entire castle complex in the south to what is now Speckstrasse and
near Weender Strasse.
However, Göttingen was not an imperial
city, but was subject to the Guelph dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg. The
sovereign governors had their residence in the castle, which was in
the north-east corner of the oldest city fortifications built before
1250 and which the name Burgstraße still reminds us of.
Nevertheless, the dukes had to grant the city certain freedoms and
make compromises. In the early days of its history as a city,
Göttingen was drawn into conflicts between the Guelphs and their
adversaries in southern Lower Saxony. The conflicts in the first
decades of the 13th century were beneficial to the political
interests of the citizens of Göttingen, and they were able to
skilfully exploit the political-military situation and allow
themselves to be courted. In a document from 1232, Duke Otto the
Child confirmed the rights that the people of Göttingen had
possessed at the time of his uncles, Otto IV and Count Palatine
Heinrich. These are probably privileges that facilitated trade,
protected local merchants and defined the powers of the
self-government in Göttingen. He promised that the city should not
fall into foreign hands. It can be assumed that by this time at the
latest, a city council provided by the citizens and thus a
practicable instrument of self-government existed. Names of
councilors are mentioned for the first time in a document from 1247.
The area initially protected by the old city fortifications included
the market, today's old town hall, the two main churches of St. Johannis
and St. Jacobi, the smaller St. Nikolai Church, and the most important
traffic routes Weender, Groner and Rote Strasse. Outside of this
fortification, in front of the inner Geismar gate, there was still the
old village, which was later called Geismar old village, with the church
of St. Albani. In the High Middle Ages, the village only partially
belonged to the Guelph dominions and therefore could not share in the
city privileges and the protection provided by the city wall.
The
city was initially protected by ramparts, at the latest by the end of
the 13th century by walls on top of the ramparts. From this old city
fortification only the wall tower and a part of the wall are preserved
in the Turmstrasse. The fortified area at that time covered a maximum of
600 by 600 m, around 25 hectares, and was therefore smaller than
Hanover, but larger than the neighboring Welf towns of Northeim,
Duderstadt and Münden. Permission to erect the wall was granted in 1362
by Duke Ernst of Brunswick-Göttingen, and construction ultimately took
200 years.[14] If you add the construction of external works ordered by
the sovereign and the necessary repair work and later improvements, the
construction time adds up to a total of 400 years. Huge sums of money
and effort were required to build the wall in the condition shown on old
engravings and plans. At first it formed a simple ditch with a low
mound, which was reinforced by fences and curbs, later by planks and a
low brick parapet. In its final state, the rampart had a strong
retaining wall and parapet, a wide moat composed of a chain of ponds, at
least 30 towers built on the outer edge of the ramparts, and a number of
ramparts and outer bastions. Four main gates arose in the context of the
respective gates of the old city wall and were called the outer gates.
The Gote stream, which flows south of the walls, was connected to
the Leine by a canal around this time. The watercourse of the Leine,
which was then called the Leine Canal, carried significantly more water
into and through the city.
In 1286, as part of the Guelph
inheritance divisions, Duke Albrecht the Bold received dominion over
southern Lower Saxony. He chose Göttingen as his seat of power and moved
into the castle in the northern part of the old town, the Ballerhus
(also Bahrhus). From this, outside the walls in the west on the opposite
side of the Leine Canal, a new town was laid out before 1300, a street
with buildings on both sides, only about 80 m long. With the
re-establishment, Albrecht intended to create a counterweight to the
economically and politically fast-growing city in order to
re-consolidate his power from this base. However, the duke could not
prevent the up-and-coming city of Göttingen from expanding further west,
since the city council of Göttingen managed to block all development
opportunities in the new town. After the project developed badly, the
city council of Göttingen bought up this unpleasant rival foundation in
1319 for only 300 marks. In the south of the new town, the St. Mary's
Church was first built as the parish church of the new town, which was
transferred to the Teutonic Knights in 1318 together with the adjacent
courtyards.
Two monasteries were also founded on the outskirts of
the old town in the late 13th century. In the eastern part of the old
town, on the site of today's Wilhelmsplatz, a Franciscan monastery was
initially built. According to the later town chronicler Franciscus
Lubecus, the brothers of the Franciscan order founded in 1210 are said
to have settled there since 1268, but possibly as early as 1246. In 1306
the church of the Barefoot Monastery ("Barefoot Church") was probably
consecrated, of which an altar retable dating from 1424 has survived.
The convent initially belonged to the Cologne Franciscan Province
(Colonia); In 1462 he was forced by the leadership of the order to
accept the rules of the observance and assigned to the Saxon Franciscan
Province (Saxonia). The monastery existed until 1533, after a sometimes
violent conflict between the city council, the population and the
Franciscans from 1529 onwards. The former provincial of Saxonia, Andreas
Grone (Fricke), was expelled from the city by the council in 1531
because of "inflammatory speeches". On July 23, 1533, under pressure
from the council, all the monks left the city in a solemn procession.
Their library of around 450 to 500 volumes was dissolved in 1545. Since
the Franciscans did not wear shoes as a sign of their poverty and
humility, their order was popularly called the Barefoot; hence the
street leading to the monastery got its present name Barfusserstrasse.
In 2015, excavations at Wilhelmsplatz unearthed numerous skeletons of
buried Franciscan brothers. During the Thirty Years' War, the
Franciscans tried to reactivate their monastery in Göttingen from 1628,
protected by the Catholic-Imperial garrison, and in doing so came into
competition with the Minorites; With the help of Emperor Ferdinand II
and Nuncio Aloisius Carafa, the Franciscans were able to assert
themselves. As early as February 1632, however, they had to flee
Göttingen and give up the monastery after the city had been recaptured
by Protestant troops.
In 1294, Albrecht the Fat allowed the
Dominicans to found a monastery in Papendiek, on the Leine Canal
opposite the Neustadt, with the Pauline Church, consecrated in 1331,
serving as the monastery church.
Jews were settled in the city in
the late 13th century. On March 1, 1289, the Dukes of Brunswick and
Lüneburg gave the Goettingen Council permission to accommodate the Jew
Moses in the city. The Jews mainly lived near the St. Jacobi Church in
today's Jüdenstrasse. In Göttingen, the history of the Jews was marked
by great suffering as early as the Middle Ages. After Duke Otto III.
handed over the right of jurisdiction over the Jews to the city, there
were repeated bloody pogroms and expulsions. From 1460 to 1599 no Jews
lived in Göttingen for more than 100 years.
The 14th and 15th
centuries were a heyday of economic power in Göttingen, of which the
works of architecture bear witness. In the first half of the 14th
century, the construction of the St. John's Church began as a Gothic
hall church. From 1330 a Gothic building replaced the smaller St.
Nicholas Church. After the completion of the work on the St. John's
Church, construction of the St. Jacob's Church began in the second half
of the 14th century. In the years after 1366, substantial parts of the
(currently old) town hall were built. The basic features of the building
as it is today only came about in the middle of the 15th century.
In the years around 1360, the ring of fortifications around the city
was redefined and now included the new town and the old village. In the
course of these construction measures, the four city gates were moved
further outwards and the area of the city grew to an area of around 75
hectares. From 1380 the spacious Göttingen Landwehr was established in
the surrounding area, initially with two irregular rings around the
city.
After the death of Albrecht the Fat in 1318, Göttingen passed to Duke
Ernst I († 1367) via Otto the Mild († 1344). The Principality of
Göttingen he governed formed a sub-principality within the Duchy of
Brunswick-Lüneburg. The Principality of Göttingen was the economically
poorest of the Welf principalities. Under Ernst's successor, Otto I (†
1394), Göttingen succeeded in further consolidating its status as an
autonomous city. Otto I, known as the Quade (the villain), is described
as a prominent representative of the chivalry of the time, whose hatred
was directed towards the cities, whose burgeoning power was a thorn in
his side. Accordingly, his reign was constantly marked by feuds and
foreign policy conflicts. Although the city of Göttingen was initially
put under severe pressure by him, he ultimately failed to further expand
his sovereignty, from which Göttingen's independence benefited. The
ducal district court on the Leineberg, located just outside the city
gates, came under the influence of Göttingen and was pledged to the city
by Otto in 1375. In addition to obtaining judicial rights, the city
succeeded in acquiring manorial rights from Otto. In April 1387, the
disputes between the city and Otto reached their climax: the people of
Göttingen stormed the ducal castle within the city walls, while Otto in
turn devastated villages and estates in the area. However, the citizens
were able to win a victory over the princely forces in July in an open
battle under the town captain Moritz von Uslar between Rosdorf and
Grone. In August 1387, Otto had to recognize the freedom of the
Göttingen goods in the area. In this respect, the year 1387 marked an
important turning point in the history of the city. After Otto's death,
Göttingen was able to further expand its autonomy under his successor
Otto Cocles (the one-eyed man), not least because the House of
Braunschweig-Göttingen died out with Otto Cocles and the open question
of inheritance and his premature abdication in 1435 led to a further
destabilization of sovereign power.
The relationship to the
Guelph sovereignty was characterized in the period that followed until
the end of the 15th century by a constant and successful suppression of
sovereign influence on the city. Even if Göttingen was not officially a
free imperial city, but always remained subject to the Brunswick dukes,
it was still able to achieve significant independence and was sometimes
listed in documents among the imperial cities and invited to
particularly important imperial diets.
After various other
dynastic divisions and changes of rulership, which began with the death
of Otto Cocles (1463), Erich was given rulership over the merged
principality of Calenberg-Göttingen. The city initially refused to pay
homage to the new ruler, whereupon Erich obtained an imperial ban on
Göttingen from King Maximilian in 1504. The ongoing tensions led to an
economic weakening of the city, so that the city finally paid homage in
1512. Soon after, the relationship between Erich and the city was
characterized by a peculiar peacefulness, which is attributed to the
fact that Erich was financially dependent on the city.
The basis
for the political and general boom in Göttingen in the late Middle Ages
was the growing economic importance of the city. This was mainly due to
the convenient location in the Leine valley on an old and important
north-south trade route. This favored the local industry, wool weaving
in Göttingen. In addition to the linen weavers, who belonged to the
inner circle of the Göttingen guilds but ranked at the lower end in
terms of social standing, the wool weavers settled in Neustadt. The wool
processed there came mainly from the area surrounding the city;
sometimes there were up to 3000 sheep and 1500 lambs. The wool cloths
were successfully exported to Holland and via Lübeck. From 1475, local
cloth production was expanded with the recruitment of new skilled
workers. These so-called new wool weavers brought new, previously unused
techniques to Göttingen and consolidated the city's position as an
export-oriented cloth-making city for three generations. Only towards
the end of the 16th century, when the cheap English cloths could hardly
be competed with, did the Göttingen cloth-making trade decline.
The merchants in Göttingen benefited from the good traffic situation
between the important trading cities of Lübeck and Frankfurt am Main.
The Göttingen market reached national importance. Large numbers of
foreign traders came to Göttingen four times a year for the annual fair.
The merchants who operated long-distance trade as suppliers for the
Goettingen market and as transit traders in supra-regional business
owned large fortunes in Goettingen.
Goettingen joined the
Hanseatic League. The city's first invitation to the Hanseatic Day is
dated 1351. However, the relationship with the Hanseatic League remained
largely distant. As an inland city, Göttingen was happy to use the
functioning economic network of the Hanseatic League, but did not want
to get involved in the politics of the entire association. Göttingen did
not become a paying member until 1426, and in 1572 it finally left the
Hanseatic League.
The 16th century began in Göttingen with economic problems that
eventually led to tensions. Open conflict between the craft guilds and
the council, which was essentially raised by the merchant class, erupted
in 1514 when the council wanted to levy new taxes to clean up the
budget. On March 6, 1514, the guilds stormed the town hall, imprisoned
the council and then chased it out of responsibility. Although the
council was able to regain its old position with the help of Duke Erich
I, the conflict continued to smolder and thus formed the breeding ground
for the introduction of the Reformation in Göttingen.
The
Reformation, which as a result of Martin Luther's posting of theses in
1517 and the Diet of Worms in 1521 gradually spread across large parts
of Germany and in particular the large cities, initially seemed to
bypass Göttingen. Even when the Peasants' War raged through Germany in
1524/25, things remained quiet in Göttingen. It was not until 1529,
twelve years after Luther posted his theses, that the Reformation began
in Göttingen. The reason for this was initially a scene of a very
medieval character: a Bartholomew procession. Such processions had
become rare in the large cities of Germany in those times. Up to this
point in time, however, the old church system was still undisputed in
Göttingen. The upheaval was initiated by the new woolen weavers, that
group of people who only settled in Göttingen from 1475 and were
therefore more open to the new ideas than the long-established
residents, i.e. to a certain extent formed the progressive element in
the city. These new wool weavers had formed a counter-demonstration to
the Bartholomäus procession and welcomed the procession on Groner Straße
with Luther's hymn "From deep distress I cry to you" and accompanied the
procession with other Christian psalms and satirical songs. In addition
to the religious aspect, the new woolen weavers also questioned the
existing system of rule in the city.
Events were now pressing,
the previous delay was followed by a surprising acceleration of the
upheaval: with the former Rostock Dominican Friedrich Hüventhal, a
Protestant preacher was now in the city. He gained increasing influence,
held a public sermon on the market square and, after controversial
negotiations with the council, was finally able to celebrate the first
regular Protestant service in Göttingen against the will of the Pauline
monks on October 24, 1529. This location had to be chosen because the
city council of Göttingen initially had no power of disposal over the
parish churches in the city. These were under the power of disposal of
Duke Erich I. He still adhered to the old faith and did not want to
allow evangelical sermons in the parish churches under his control.
Erich I had already joined the Dessau League, an anti-Protestant
alliance of northern German states, in 1525 and saw the relationship
between the city and its ruler severely disturbed by the introduction of
the Reformation in the largest city in his principality of
Calenberg-Göttingen. After the Göttingers summarized the church reform
and political innovations with a final recess on November 18, 1529,
Erich reacted promptly and harshly. He addressed the city in the harsh
form of a letter of feud. Hüventhal, who was no longer undisputed in the
city's reformation movement, had to leave the city as a result. However,
this did not mean the end of the Reformation in Göttingen, the people of
Göttingen brought the more moderate preacher Heinrich Winkel from
Braunschweig to the city. Around this time, Johann Bruns became one of
the key figures in church politics in Göttingen. Even before that, as
pastor of Grone, he had been one of the first in the region to preach
Lutheran; later he became syndic of the city. After the city council had
closed the parish churches in which Lutheran preaching was not allowed,
on Palm Sunday 1530 the newly drafted church regulations of Göttingen
were read out, which marked the end of the Göttingen Reformation. The
church ordinance was submitted to Martin Luther for correction and
approval and was published in a Wittenberg printers in 1531 with an
approving foreword by the reformer.
After the conclusion of the
Reformation with the new church order, the situation worsened again.
Duke Erich I won the support of the Estates at the Diet of Moringen for
demanding that the city return to the old church. For its part,
Göttingen took a step into imperial politics and decided on May 31, 1531
to join the Schmalkaldic League, an association of the Protestant
imperial estates to defend their faith.
In April 1533, the city
managed to get in touch with the duke and settled the controversy in a
treaty. Erich's wife Elisabeth von Brandenburg, who publicly converted
to the Protestant faith in 1538, was not uninvolved in this. After
Erich's death in 1540, she took over the guardianship of her son Erich
II and began from her body breeding in Münden to push through the
Reformation in the Principality of Calenberg-Göttingen. Elisabeth made
the pastor Anton Corvinus from Witzenhausen in Hesse superintendent for
the principality and had him draw up the Calenberg church ordinances,
which went to press in 1542.
After the defeat of the Protestants
in the Schmalkaldic War in 1548, they had to accept the Augsburg
Interim. As in many parts of the empire, this was difficult for the
people of Göttingen and they refused to enforce it. Duke Erich II
returned to his principality after a long absence, converted to the
Catholic faith in 1549 and began - much to the chagrin of his mother -
to enforce the interim. In Göttingen, this meant that the city had to
dismiss its superintendent Mörlin, who had turned too harshly against
the interim and against the duke. This dismissal can be seen as a first
step towards the elimination of urban autonomy in church affairs and
other areas of self-government in the late 16th and 17th centuries.
After the Imperial and Religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555 granted
the imperial estates the right to determine the confession of their
subjects, Erich II promised, although he remained true to the Catholic
faith, to leave the principality with the church order of 1542 and with
the Protestant teachings. In 1580, the city council of Göttingen signed
the Lutheran Formula of Concord of 1577.
After the death of Erich
II in 1584, who left no male successor, the principality fell to Duke
Julius von Wolfenbüttel, which means that the Principality of
Calenberg-Göttingen returned to the Principality of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Göttingen, which lost influence as early as 1582
due to the loss of the surrounding Lein villages to the dukes, had to
cope with several outbreaks of the plague in 1597, 1611 and finally in
1626, in addition to the economic decline that now set in.
In
1623, Göttingen was included in the Thirty Years' War, which had broken
out in 1618. Göttingen was surrounded by the fighting armies and had to
be temporarily garrisoned at the urging of the sovereign Friedrich
Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. His brother Christian, called the
mad Halberstadter, had drawn the Lower Saxony imperial district, to
which Göttingen belonged, into the war. In 1625, with the permission of
the sovereign, Göttingen began to expand the fortifications. The city
should need this, because in the autumn of 1625 the imperial general
Albrecht von Wallenstein besieged the city and made requests for
provisions and quarters. Wallenstein moved on and was content to lead
off the entire herd of about 1,000 cows in Göttingen as booty. Gottingen
strained its defensive preparations, but shortly afterwards Tilly, the
general of the Catholic League, was in front of the city in the summer
of 1626, having just before caused a bloodbath in neighboring Münden.
Tilly supposedly had Göttingen shelled for five weeks and the line
redirected by Harz miners, so that the town of Tilly had to open its
gates on August 3, 1626. Tilly took up residence at Weender Strasse 32,
the commander's house. After Tilly's victory over the Danish troops in
the Battle of Lutter am Barenberge, Tilly was able to secure his
position in Lower Saxony and Göttingen remained occupied by imperial
Catholic troops. Göttingen suffered greatly from the occupation and the
intolerable burden of contributions for the city, whereupon a large part
of the population left the city and up to 400 houses stood empty. The
balance of power did not change until six years later, and after the
Swedes defeated Tilly in the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631, Göttingen
was recaptured by Swedish and Weimar troops under Wilhelm von Weimar for
the Protestant side. In the autumn of 1632, Göttingen was threatened
again by troops from Pappenheim, but the city was then firmly in the
hands of Protestant troops. For the time being, however, this meant no
improvement in conditions for the city, and the occupation continued to
weigh heavily on the civilian population.
In 1634, with the death
of Friedrich Ulrich, the middle house in Braunschweig became extinct.
After the Welf inheritance was divided again, Göttingen fell to Georg
von Braunschweig and Lüneburg-Calenberg, who chose Hanover as his
residence. After his death in 1641, Göttingen had to endure the last
great siege by Piccolomini under Duke Christian Ludwig. The war was then
over for Göttingen, but the city had to bear the burden of the garrison
and the war costs for many years to come.
After the Thirty Years' War, the city's economic decline continued.
The export of cloth and linen had almost completely collapsed. The
number of inhabitants, which was still 6000 people in 1400, dropped to
under 3000 around 1680. The economic decline was followed by the
political one. The supremacy of the guilds in council and citizenship
was replaced by the rule of the sovereign. In 1690, Duke Ernst August
managed to transform the council into a princely administrative body
through the so-called city recess. In terms of foreign policy, the
situation changed. The principality of Brunswick-Calenberg, to which
Göttingen had belonged since 1634, was made an electorate by Emperor
Leopold I in 1692 under Duke Ernst August. From 1714, the Electors of
Brunswick-Lüneburg (Electoral Hanover) were also kings of Great Britain.
Ernst August's son, Elector Georg Ludwig of Hanover, was to ascend the
British throne as George I.
The Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg,
which was beginning to develop into a territorial power in central
Germany, did not have its own university until then. It was therefore
decided to found a new university that would serve to train the
theologians, lawyers and doctors needed in the country. The Hanoverian
state government decided to create these in Göttingen. The fact that
there had already been a grammar school, the Pädagogium, in the city for
some time, which could function as the nucleus of the new university,
spoke in favor of Göttingen. During the reign of George II August of
Great Britain, who gave the university its name, teaching at the George
August University was opened in 1734. The inauguration took place in
1737. The rapid success of the new foundation is not least due to the
commitment of the university's first curator, Gerlach Adolph von
Münchhausen. The university brought new impetus to the city and promoted
population growth. The face of the city changed rapidly as a result of
intensive building activity. A representative example of the
self-confidence of newcomers to Göttingen is still embodied in the
baroque Grätzelhaus on Goetheallee. New apartments, pubs and eateries
and hostels were opened (see London pubs). In order to improve the
cultural offer of the professors and students, a university riding
stable was built. In the years that followed, Göttingen gained a
reputation as a place of science throughout Europe and overseas, and
many famous scholars came to the city and worked there. The high
reputation of the university is based not least on the clever
acquisition policy of the newly founded university library. In addition,
the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen, which later became the
Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, was founded in 1751.
The Seven
Years' War meant new occupations for Göttingen between 1757 and 1762.
The French army billeted, but the university continued to teach. After
the war, the city walls in Göttingen were demolished and the city wall
became a promenade. The university town, which had been demilitarized to
this extent, was able to devote itself fully to university operations
again and entered its heyday.
During the wars waged by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Electorate of
Hanover was occupied by French troops without a fight in 1803. Göttingen
itself was spared from occupations and other burdens. This may have
something to do with the high reputation of the university. In 1805,
Hanover was briefly granted to Prussia. Göttingen was then occupied by
Prussian troops. After the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, the Electorate of
Hanover disappeared from the map. Göttingen became part of the Kingdom
of Westphalia with the royal seat of Kassel under Napoleon's brother
Jérôme Bonaparte. In the Kingdom of Westphalia, Göttingen was the
capital of the Leine department, which at times stretched as far as
Rinteln. As a result, Göttingen became the seat of several authorities
and courts with a central function, the prefecture had its seat in the
Michaelishaus. Foreign rule was not seen as oppressive over time.
Student numbers stabilized after an initial decline, and Göttingen
adapted to French rule, which lasted until 1813. After the collapse of
French rule in Germany, the Electorate of Hanover became a kingdom. From
1823, Göttingen belonged to the Landdrostei Hildesheim, the newly formed
intermediate authority.
In 1807, Carl Friedrich Gauss became head
of the university's observatory; he is one of the world's most respected
mathematicians and physicists.
The last known example of the
execution method of crushing limbs with iron clubs in Hanover dates from
October 10, 1828. In retaliation for the greedy murder of his father and
sister, Andreas Christoph Beinhorn from Grone was dragged to the place
of execution on a cowhide and there, on the Leineberg in Göttingen,
publicly wheeled from the bottom up - as a contemporary leaflet puts it
- "beaten with clubs and afterwards his body braided onto the wheel" (if
only for one day).
The national movement emerging in Germany was
accompanied by demands for political liberalization and democratization.
When the Paris July Revolution spread to Germany in 1830, Göttingen
experienced the so-called Göttingen Revolution in January 1831. While
the state of Hanover remained largely calm, a chain of various causes
led to a violent outbreak in Göttingen, as a result of which a
revolutionary council was formed under the leadership of Johann Ernst
Arminius von Rauschenplat and the municipal authorities of the city of
Göttingen were dissolved on January 8, 1831 . A free constitution for
the kingdom of Hanover and the overthrow of the government were demanded
of the king. The government was unyielding and sent troops to the city
on a larger scale. On January 16, the rebels had to capitulate. The
troops moved into the city and billeted there. The leaders of the
uprising, unless they had fled abroad, were sentenced to draconian
punishments. Peace only returned to Göttingen towards the beginning of
March 1831. The university, which the government closed on January 18,
reopened in mid-April. As a result of the uprising, the government made
far-reaching changes to the city constitution and replaced the old city
constitution of 1690 with a new one. The centuries-old political role of
the guilds ended, and they were replaced by representatives of a class
of bourgeois notables.
In 1837 - 100 years after the opening of
the university - the auditorium was inaugurated as the university's
representative and administrative building. On the square in front of
it, today's Wilhelmsplatz, a memorial was erected to the then sovereign
and benefactor, Wilhelm IV. Under his successor, King Ernst August I,
who ended the 123-year personal union between Great Britain and Hanover,
a conflict broke out in the same year. When he took office, he repealed
the liberal constitution that his predecessor had enacted in 1833,
prompting seven professors from Göttingen to protest. On December 12,
1837, Ernst August I dismissed the professors and expelled three of them
from the country. This event had an enormous impact - not only in the
Kingdom of Hanover, but throughout Germany. The Göttingen Seven, as they
were called from then on, were soon seen as the martyrs of a bourgeoisie
that was becoming more and more politically aware. The protest action
shook up the opposition in the kingdom. The resistance of the
bourgeoisie was partially successful: with the state constitutional law
of August 6, 1840, Hanover again received a constitutional constitution,
in which, however, the rights of the estates were severely curtailed in
favor of the monarch. Peace soon returned to Göttingen, but the
university, which had been suffering from declining student numbers
since the 1820s, increasingly lost its reputation.
After the
constitutional struggles, however, there was little relaxation in
political freedoms. Meetings had to be approved, lending libraries were
controlled, and the three expelled professors were not allowed to return
to Göttingen until 1848. The university members were of the opinion that
the strict police regime that prevailed in Göttingen was fatal for the
university.
The German Revolution of 1848/1849, which caused
riots and uprisings in many parts of Germany, did not result in any
major bloodshed in Göttingen. Only on the night of March 11-12, 1848 did
a minor argument erupt between the police and some corps students. As a
result, the students left the city in protest. Since the semester was
coming to an end anyway, this excerpt was not very convincing. In
Göttingen, a citizens' assembly and a militia were founded as
revolutionary institutions. However, the former disbanded at the end of
the year because it had failed with and because of its politicization.
The time after the March riots was a rather quiet time for
Göttingen. Political movements were calmer than before and the 1850s are
described as a time of sedate comfort. July 31, 1854 was a date of
paramount importance for the development of the city. On this day, the
railway line from Alfeld to Göttingen was opened and the Göttingen
station was inaugurated with a magnificent celebration. Now Göttingen
took a big step into the modern age, the number of inhabitants
increased, businesses settled in Göttingen and new residential areas
emerged outside the medieval wall.
The last public execution
under the court lime tree on the Leineberg took place on January 20,
1859. Friederike Lotze was the name of the delinquent sentenced to
death. On March 13, 1858, she had poisoned the master baker Sievert zu
Münden, who had promised her marriage and whose maid she was. She was
beheaded with the sword.
The city's relationship with its
monarch, George V since 1851, continued to be strained. Royal visits to
the city were rare, and when they were, they were to the university of
which he was proud. Georg distrusted the Göttingen bourgeoisie, which he
viewed critically as the opposition. Although no revolution against the
unconvincing monarch was planned in Göttingen, when Prussian troops
entered Göttingen on June 22, 1866, and a little later after the Battle
of Langensalza Hanover fell to Prussia, there was no significant
opposition in Göttingen to becoming Prussian.
Under Prussian rule, the people of Göttingen quickly adapted to the
new conditions. In particular, enthusiasm developed in Göttingen for
Otto von Bismarck, who was enrolled at the Georgia Augusta from 1832 to
1833. In the Göttingen urban area, a Bismarck stone was erected on the
Klausberg next to a Bismarck tower on the Kleperberg, as was the case in
many cities in Germany. Two commemorative plaques in the city of
Göttingen, one of them on his last student apartment in Göttingen, the
Bismarckhäuschen, commemorate the most famous Göttingen student of the
19th century. In the city of Göttingen, the pro-Prussian National
Liberal Party achieved strong support, while the pro-Hanoverian Welfen
party was more successful in the Göttingen district.
Industrialization started late in Göttingen. Only from the turn of the
century can one speak of an advance of industrial production methods in
Göttingen. Due to the proximity to the university, which in the meantime
had risen to become a stronghold of the natural sciences with worldwide
respect, the fine mechanical, optical and electrical engineering
industry developed in Göttingen, which now replaced the textile industry
as the most important branch of the economy in Göttingen.
The
urban population of Göttingen began to grow rapidly from the 1870s. In
1875 Göttingen had 17,000 inhabitants, in 1900 there were already
30,000. At that time, the majority of the population still lived in the
old town; only the members of the middle and upper classes, especially
the professors, settled east of the city on the heights of the Hainberg.
Only around 1895 did the population in the areas outside the old town
begin to grow more rapidly. During the time of the German Empire, the
mayors of Göttingen, Merkel and Calsow, began to expand the
underdeveloped public utilities and to modernize the city.
After
almost thirty years of discussion, the city decided in April 1914 to set
up a tram. Construction work began on June 29th. Rails were already
delivered but not installed. When war broke out on August 1st, work was
stopped and never resumed.
In Göttingen, the First World War was
welcomed enthusiastically. Many professors got carried away by the
national hysteria. Disillusionment soon set in. Businesses had to adjust
to the war economy, and food supplies became a problem. The war came
close to Göttingen insofar as a prisoner of war camp was set up in
August 1914 in the Ebertal below the Lohberg, in which up to 10,000
prisoners of war were housed at times. When the November Revolution
followed the defeat in the First World War in 1918, a soldiers' and
people's council was elected in Göttingen and a resolution was passed.
On November 10, the red flag was hoisted on the town hall by the worker
Willi Kretschmer. In fact, not much changed in Göttingen despite the
tumult; the city administration under Mayor Georg Calsow was able to
continue working almost undisturbed.
From the beginning of the
20th century until the National Socialist era, the subjects of
mathematics and physics at the university flourished. Mathematicians
such as Felix Klein, David Hilbert, Hermann Minkowski, Emmy Noether,
Hermann Weyl, Richard Courant and others, as well as physicists such as
Max Born and James Franck set standards, enjoyed a worldwide reputation
and spread the splendor of the city. The Nazis consciously accepted that
this should now be over.
The internal instability of the Weimar Republic was also reflected in
Göttingen. During the Kapp Putsch in the spring of 1920, a general
strike was decided in Göttingen. The military then demonstrated its
power and on March 15 marched into the city center and blocked the
streets. In the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic that followed,
the NSDAP quickly gained a foothold here. The local NSDAP group in
Göttingen was formed as early as spring 1922, and as early as the first
half of the 1920s, Göttingen was considered a stronghold of the National
Socialists, who recorded above-average electoral successes here. The
NSDAP and above all the SA were regularly present at mass marches on the
streets, deliberately provoking clashes with political opponents. As
early as March 1930 there were violent clashes between the SA and the
communist Red Front Fighters' Association. Fights between communists and
national socialists remained the order of the day in Göttingen.
As a result of the global economic crisis from 1929, large companies had
to close, unemployment rose and poverty increased in Göttingen. The
NSDAP thus received further support. On July 21, 1932, Hitler's
appearance marked the climax of the Göttingen Reichstag election
campaign. Despite the pouring rain, around 20,000 to 30,000 people
attended the event in Kaiser Wilhelm Park. In the subsequent election on
July 31, 51% of the people in Göttingen (in all of Germany it was only
37%), i.e. the absolute majority, voted for the National Socialists.
In contrast to the city of Göttingen, the National Socialists found
it much more difficult to gain a foothold in the surrounding
communities, which were to be incorporated as districts from 1963.
Especially in the then independent municipality of Grone, the Social
Democrats remained the strongest force even in the Reichstag elections
on March 5, 1933. Grone was one of four communities in what was then the
Brunswick-South Hanover constituency in which the NSDAP was not the
strongest force in this election.
Nevertheless, after the
National Socialists had ended the parliamentarism of the Weimar Republic
with the Enabling Act, they succeeded in April 1933 with a single
government decree, the Act for the Restoration of the Professional Civil
Service, to dismiss all opposing and "non-Aryan" civil servants or to
place them in the to retire early, as a result of which the university
alone suddenly lost almost a fifth of its professors.
Although
the electoral successes of the NSDAP in Göttingen declined slightly
shortly before the seizure of power, Hitler's appointment as Reich
Chancellor on January 30, 1933 was celebrated in Göttingen the next day
with a large torchlight procession attended by more than 2000 uniformed
members of the SA, SS and Hitler Youth participated. The takeover of
power in Göttingen went without incident. After the Reichstag Fire
Decree of February 28, the police took targeted action against the
Communists, and as early as March 5 the SA was able to hoist the
swastika flag unhindered on the town hall. On March 28, 1933, the SA
smashed the shop windows of Jewish shops and physically attacked Jewish
fellow citizens. Not far from Göttingen, in the Moringen workhouse in
the Northeim district, the Moringen concentration camp was established
in 1933 and served as a youth concentration camp from 1940.
Persons of Jewish "descent" were systematically pushed out of
administration, business and science. For the university, especially in
the fields of mathematics and physics, this led to a bloodletting from
which the natural sciences in Göttingen and throughout Germany would
only slowly recover after the Second World War.
At the same time,
there was a long-term impoverishment of intellectual life in the city
that was not immediately visible. In the wake of the book burnings, in
which German students in many university towns publicly burned books by
authors who were described as “un-German”, this soon became noticeable.
The book burning on May 10, 1933 was opened by the rector of the
Georg-August University, Friedrich Neumann. After a "fire speech" by the
German scholar Gerhard Fricke, the student groups led by the National
Socialist German Student Union in a torchlight procession from Weender
Tor to Adolf-Hitler-Platz, today's Theaterplatz. There the leader of the
student body, Heinz Wolff, held a short speech about the "un-German
spirit" in front of the pyre with a "Lenin" sign on top. After singing
the song "Flamme aloft" and the Horst Wessel song, the crowd dispersed.
In the course of the co-ordination of the student fraternities with
the aim of transferring them to the National Socialist comrades (the
Feickert Plan), there were disputes which were fueled by the city under
the National Socialist mayor Albert Grace and culminated in the riots in
Göttingen in 1934. Nevertheless, state power prevailed, and all
connections were either dissolved or converted into comrades by
mid-1936, accelerated by the nationwide effect of the Heidelberg
asparagus meal in May 1935. On May 12, 1936, Rudolf Hess decreed that no
party member or member of a Nazi organization was allowed to be a member
of a student fraternity at the same time.
During the November
pogroms from November 9 to 10, 1938, the Göttingen synagogue on
Maschstraße, which had already been devastated during the attacks in
March 1933, was burned by (systematically foreign) members of the SA and
SS and mobs. Of the almost 500 Jewish residents before 1933, around 220
were still living in the city in 1938. Almost without exception, they
became victims of attacks by the SA and SS. On September 30, 1938, the
license to practice medicine was withdrawn from Jewish doctors. In 1940,
the Göttingen sanatorium and nursing homes received the registration
forms, according to which the "destruction of life unworthy of life" was
carried out as part of Action T4 in 1941. In December 1941, the NSDAP
district leadership in Göttingen complained that the impending
deportation of Göttingen's Jews had already become known to the
population and that they were being overwhelmed with applications for
housing. However, there was no resistance to the actions. The last 140
members of the Jewish community in Göttingen were deported to the
extermination camps in 1942.
During air raids on Göttingen in
World War II, little damage was done compared to many other cities. From
July 7, 1944, the city suffered eight air raids, but these were mainly
aimed at the railway facilities. Destroyed were: the anatomy (today the
bus station), the entrance building of the station, the goods station,
the gasworks, the railway bridge over the Leine and the brewery. The
historic old town remained largely undestroyed. High-explosive bombs
destroyed half of Untere Maschstraße here, as well as the Luther School,
the Junkernschänke, the Rheinischer Hof and several residential
buildings on Jüdenstraße and Angerstraße. The Paulinerkirche, the
university library, which was then located on Prinzenstraße, and the
Zoological Institute (next to the Anatomy) were badly damaged, as was
the auditorium building at the Weender Tor, with a gas station (Iduna
center) and other buildings (today's courthouse) disappearing . The
Johanniskirche and the town hall were also damaged. Outside the old town
that was not burned down, residential buildings were destroyed in Grone
and Treuenhagen as well as on Kasseler Landstrasse, Arndtstrasse,
Emilienstrasse and Weender Landstrasse. A total of 107 deaths were
reported; in addition, 235 apartments were completely destroyed, and
many houses and public buildings were damaged. The nearby cities of
Kassel, Hanover and Brunswick were largely destroyed under massive
Allied bombing raids, and Kassel burned out visibly (under blackout)
several times at night.
On the Schützenplatz there was a camp for
workers from the East and on the Eiswiese on Sandweg there was a camp
for workers from the West, which was planned in 1942 by the Hanoverian
armaments department of the Albert Speer Ministry and then immediately
by the Küchenvereinigung were taken over.
Göttingen was
overcrowded with bomb escapees. Due to the well-equipped hospitals,
among other things, it had become a hospital town in the course of the
war, with 3,000 to 4,000 wounded soldiers at the end of the war. In view
of this, they were fortunate that Göttingen, which had been declared an
open city by General Otto Hitzfeld, was abandoned by all combat units
before the advancing American troops and was thus liberated on April 8,
1945 without major combat operations. Several houses in Geismar and
Wilhelm-Weber-Straße as well as the St. Paul's Church were damaged by
artillery fire that day. Overall, only 2.1% of Göttingen was destroyed
in World War II.
After the war, the city was added to the British
occupation zone, and the American units were replaced by British ones.
Gottingen was now in a zone triangle: neighboring Thuringia belonged to
the Soviet zone of occupation, Kassel in the south to the American zone.
Because of this location and because Göttingen survived the war largely
intact, it became a port of call for many interzone migrants and
refugees. The University of Göttingen was the first in Germany (just
before Heidelberg) to resume teaching in the winter semester of 1945/46.
Due to the war and post-war turmoil, the city's population suddenly
increased. Quite a few came via the nearby Friedland border transit
camp. While in 1939 there were still almost 50,000 inhabitants living in
Göttingen, in 1949 there were 80,000 when apartments were confiscated to
house expellees. At that time, Göttingen was one of the most densely
populated cities in Germany. During the industrialization process in the
19th century, the city had not already been expanded through
incorporations like other cities. In the first post-war years, the
western part of the city was primarily developed.
On April 12,
1957, there was another declaration in Göttingen: 18 German atomic and
nuclear physicists, including Nobel Prize winners such as Max Born, Otto
Hahn, Werner Heisenberg and Max von Laue, led by Carl Friedrich von
Weizsäcker, warned against the equipment of the Bundeswehr tactical
nuclear weapons, as brought up at the time by the chancellor of the
young Federal Republic, Konrad Adenauer. The initiative of the
Goettingen Eighteen, who saw themselves as the successors of the
Goettingen Seven mentioned above, was crowned with success, since
Adenauer's ideas were invalid from that point on.
Incorporations
and industrialization were made up for by the Goettingen Law of July 1,
1964. On the one hand, the communities of Geismar, Grone, Nikolausberg
and Weende were incorporated into the city with effect from July 4,
1964, on the other hand, the city of Göttingen was incorporated into the
district of Göttingen. Nevertheless, Göttingen received a special status
in the district, since the regulations for urban districts continue to
apply to the city, unless otherwise stipulated by state law. Göttingen's
urban area was more than doubled to 7371 hectares as a result of the
incorporation; the population increased by 31% from 83,000 to 109,000.
At the same time, large new development areas and new districts were
created in the incorporated outskirts.
The course was set for
development into a modern city. Larger planning projects in the 1970s
wanted to retain the character of the old university town. According to
the spatial plan, Göttingen was to act as the main center for the entire
southern Lower Saxony area. In the course of this project, large parts
of the old town, which was undestroyed and well preserved during the
war, were completely demolished as part of "area renovation" and
replaced with new buildings, multi-storey car parks or brownfield sites.
A decisive step here was the 1968 demolition of the university riding
stables on Weender Strasse, which had been built in 1735, which was
accompanied by violent protests from citizens and students. Between 1966
and 1975, the inner-city streets were largely developed into pedestrian
zones. The administration moved into their new town hall in 1978, for
which the riding stables originally had to give way, but which was built
at a completely different location south-east of the old town. Instead
of the town hall, a department store (today 'Carre') was built in the
Reitstallviertel. In addition, the art nouveau baths from 1906 were
replaced by the new municipal baths in 1968. It was demolished in 2004
after being vacant for a long time.
Like the city, the growing
university also modernized. The number of students rose from 4,680 in
the winter semester of 1945/46 to 30,000 in the early 1990s; thereafter
they declined again. Starting in 1964, today's campus and the humanities
center (GWZ) were built on the site of the former university sports
center north of the old town. The North University was set up between
Weende and Nikolausberg, in which a large part of the scientific
institutions are located. In 1973 construction began on a new university
hospital. In 1993 the architecturally sophisticated new building for the
state and university library was opened on campus.
With the
opening of the border in 1989 and the accession of the East German
federal states in 1990, Göttingen lost its peripheral location and has
been conveniently located in the middle of Germany ever since. However,
the change was linked to the fact that the German Armed Forces gave up
their base in Göttingen in 1993, and not only did the history of the
city as a garrison town come to an end (see 2nd Kurhessisches
Infanterie-Regiment No. 82), but also an important economic factor
disappeared.
The student riots that broke out in Göttingen in
1968 did not end here as quickly as elsewhere. At the beginning of the
1990s, Goettingen made the headlines because of the “shard
demonstrations” by the Autonomous Antifa and the spectacular alliance
demonstrations against right-wing extremism involving the radical
left-wing Black Bloc, whose masked participants appeared at the top of
the demonstrations, which reached into the middle-class spectrum. Since
1990, there have been numerous actions from this left-wing radical
movement that have attracted national media coverage.
The
determined action taken by large parts of the population of Göttingen
against right-wing demonstrations, often in the form of alliances in
which church groups as well as trade unions and autonomous groups from
the left-wing spectrum in Göttingen participate, has contributed to
right-wing extremism gaining little or no ground here could.
Nevertheless, there are regular NPD demonstrations, Nazi marches and
rallies with participants from all over Germany, which regularly
encourage many counter-demonstrators to take an active stance against
right-wing extremism. During such events, the far-right and
counter-demonstrators must be separated by a heavy police presence.
When a 65-year-old dud from the Second World War exploded on the
Schützenplatz in Göttingen on June 1, 2010, three employees of the
explosive ordnance disposal service died, two were seriously injured and
four were slightly injured; all were busy with the preparatory work for
bomb disposal.
The population development has shown growth since the Middle Ages,
which accelerated sharply at the beginning of the early modern period.
In 1986, a provisional high was reached with officially 133,796
registered residents, which had to be corrected downwards by 20,000
people after the 1987 census, to 114,698, since the excessive number was
based on an incorrect update. In the years that followed, the official
population rose to 128,419 (1997), then fell slightly and leveled off at
around 122,000 from 2004. This number remained roughly constant until
2013, when the census data were taken as a basis and Göttingen's
official number of registered main residents was revised down again by
around 5,000 people to 116,420 in June 2013. In the meantime, many
students had not de-registered when they moved out and were still
registered as having their main place of residence, which resulted in
too many residents. On the other hand, only about half of the students
in Göttingen are registered as main residents. At the end of 2019,
134,632 people had their main (121,150) or secondary residence (13,482)
registered in Göttingen. The State Statistical Office identified 118,911
residents on the same date.
Student numbers at the University of
Göttingen: summer semester 2004: 23,446, winter semester 2004/05:
24,398, summer semester 2005: 23,649, winter semester 2005/06: 24,400.
In 2014, this number was 27,456, of which 18,391 were registered as
primary or secondary residents in Göttingen. There are also other
universities such as the University of Applied Sciences and Arts or the
private University of Applied Sciences in Göttingen (both together with
1802 students enrolled at the Göttingen site), which results in a
student share of around 22% (2014).
Denomination statistics
According to the 2011 census, 43.4% of the
residents were Protestant, 15.6% Roman Catholic and 41.0% were
non-denominational, belonged to another religious community or made no
statement. The number of Catholics and especially that of Protestants
has since fallen considerably. At the end of 2021, of the 118,510
inhabitants (main residence only), 33.4% (39,601) were Protestant and
13.3% (15,712) Catholic. 53.3% were non-denominational, belonged to
another religious community or made no statement.
History
The
area of the city of Göttingen initially belonged to the archdiocese of
Mainz and to its archdeaconate in Nörten. After the Reformation,
Göttingen was an almost exclusively Lutheran city for many centuries. In
1530 the city received a new church order with a city superintendent who
was subordinate to the state superintendent in Grubenhagen. All parishes
of the city formed a general association. In what later became the
Kingdom of Hanover, Göttingen became the seat of a parish that included
several church districts, including the church district of Göttingen.
All Lutheran parishes in the city of Göttingen belong to the parish of
Göttingen of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover.
From
1713 Reformed house services were held in Göttingen, in 1736 there were
French Reformed services. All this led to the founding of a Reformed
congregation in 1748, which was accepted into the Confederation of
Reformed Churches in Lower Saxony in 1752. In 1928 the Reformed
congregation in Göttingen was a founding member of the Federation of
Evangelical Reformed Churches in Germany, of which it was the chairman
for over 50 years; In 2013 she left this association of independent
congregations and joined the Evangelical Reformed Church.
From
1746, Catholic services were allowed again for students in Göttingen,
and a year later for all residents of the city. It was not until 1787
that the first Catholic church (St. Michael) could be built after the
Reformation. In 1825 an independent parish was formed, which belonged to
the Diocese of Hildesheim. In 1929 a second Catholic church, the
Pauluskirche, was consecrated. Göttingen later became the seat of a
deanery of the Diocese of Hildesheim, which includes all of the city's
Roman Catholic parishes.
In addition to the two major churches,
there are congregations that belong to free churches, including an
Evangelical Free Church congregation (Baptists, founded 1894), a
Mennonite congregation (founded 1946), the Evangelical Free Church
Ecclesia, an Adventist congregation, a congregation of independent
Evangelical Lutheran Church (SELK) and a Free Evangelical Congregation
(FeG).
There has been a Jewish community in Göttingen that can be
traced back to the 16th century. The old synagogue from 1869 was burned
down in the Reichspogromnacht in 1938. Over 400 tombstones have been
preserved in the Jewish cemetery next to the city cemetery. There is now
a lively Jewish community life again. At the beginning of 2004, a new
community center was inaugurated in Angerstrasse. On February 6, 2004,
the first Erev Sabbath service was celebrated in the new church. The new
synagogue building had been relocated from Bodenfelde to Göttingen.
There are also several Muslim communities, including some in Grone,
in Nordstadt and one in Südstadt. In 2006, the Turkish DITIB community
completed the Salimya Mosque on the Königsstieg.[46] The Al-Taqwa Mosque
is on Güterbahnhofstrasse.
Yazidis have been gaining a foothold
in Göttingen since the mid-1980s, and in 2015 there were an estimated
160 families in southern Lower Saxony.
In addition, congregations
of Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
the New Apostolic Church, the Russian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox
churches are represented in Göttingen.
The city council with 24 councilors has been at the head of the city
since the 12th century. From 1319 the new town came under the authority
of the council. The election of the Council took place on the Monday
after Michaelmas Day. From 1611, the 24 councilors were elected by the
entire citizenry. The council elected the mayor from among its members.
From 1669 there were only 16 councillors, later only 12. From 1690 the
city regiment was completely reorganized. Then there was the council,
which consisted of the magistrate, two mayors, the syndic, the city
secretary and eight councilors to be elected by the government. During
the city's affiliation to the Kingdom of Westphalia, a mayor headed the
city administration. He was assisted by a municipal council. In 1831 new
constitutional and administrative regulations were issued. After that
there was a mayor and from 1844 a mayor. With the new town ordinance of
1852, there was a mayor again, who from 1885 once again bore the title
of Lord Mayor. During the Third Reich, the mayor was employed by the
NSDAP.
In 1946, the military government of the British occupation
zone introduced the local constitution based on the British model. After
that there was a council elected by the people. He elected the mayor
from his midst as chairman and representative of the city, who worked on
an honorary basis. In addition, from 1946 there was a full-time senior
city manager, also elected by the council, as head of the city
administration. In the year 2000 the dual leadership was given up in
Göttingen. Since then there has only been the full-time mayor, who is
the head of the city administration and representative of the city.
Since 1999 he has been directly elected by the citizens for eight
(previously five) years.[49] Jürgen Danielowski (CDU) emerged victorious
from the first election in 1999. He took office on January 1, 2000 and
handed it over to his successor, Wolfgang Meyer (SPD), on November 1,
2006. He was succeeded by Rolf-Georg Köhler (SPD) in June 2014 and by
Petra Broistedt (SPD) in November 2021.
In the constituent
council meeting on November 12, 2021, Julian Schlumberger (Bündnis
90/Die Grünen) was elected the new council chairman. In the previous
election period, Sylvia Binkenstein (SPD) chaired the council from 2016
to 2018, followed by Christian Henze (SPD) until 2020 and Karola Margraf
(SPD) until 2021.
In September 2017, the unemployment rate was 5.0% (in 2017: 5.8%,
2010: 8.3%).
As part of a divestment resolution for climate
protection, the city has committed itself to investing public funds only
in financial investments that meet ethical and ecological criteria and
thus e.g. exclude investments in fossil fuels or child labor.
The federal autobahn 7 Hanover-Kassel runs from north to south
through the western part of the city of Göttingen. South of Goettingen,
the Drammetal interchange connects to the A38 federal autobahn to Halle
(Saale) and Leipzig. In addition, federal highways 3 and 27 run through
Göttingen. The traffic ring runs around the city center along the former
city wall, which separates the city center from the neighboring
quarters, keeps car traffic out of the city center as far as possible
and distributes it in all directions to the remote parts of the city.
Nevertheless, there are overlaps between different user groups,
especially in the area of the transition between the pedestrian zone and
the small-chambered development. Bus and parking traffic interfere with
cyclists and pedestrians here.
Göttingen station is on the old
Hanoverian Southern Railway, which connected Hanover with Kassel. Since
1991, Göttingen has been an ICE stop on the Hanover-Würzburg high-speed
line. The routes of the InterCityExpress run via Kassel to Frankfurt am
Main, Munich and Stuttgart, partly to Switzerland and Austria, and in
the opposite direction to Hanover, Hamburg, Bremen and via Hildesheim,
Braunschweig and Wolfsburg to Berlin. The railway line
Göttingen-Bodenfelde leads to the Weser and the Solling. An average of
around 109 ICE, 6 IC and 114 local trains run from Göttingen on
weekdays. There are also a number of international night trains. For
several years, regional traffic has been guaranteed on the southern
route by private providers following tenders. A regional train runs in
the direction of Kassel via Eichenberg–Witzenhausen–Hann.Münden, with a
part of the train south of Eichenberg serving the route via Bad
Sooden–Eschwege to Bebra.
The Dransfeld Railway, which branched
off in Göttingen and was the first railway connection between Hanover
and Kassel as part of the Hanoverian Southern Railway, has been closed
since 1980. In 1957 the Gartetalbahn, a narrow-gauge railway to
Duderstadt for passenger traffic, was shut down.
The nearest
commercial airports are in Hanover (about 105 km as the crow flies),
Paderborn/Lippstadt (about 90 km as the crow flies) and Kassel-Calden
(about 40 km as the crow flies). Göttingen has an airfield in Günterode
in Thuringia, the Eichsfeld airfield (20 km as the crow flies). Other
airfields in the area are Witzenhausen airfield (20 km as the crow
flies), Höxter-Holzminden airfield (47 km as the crow flies) and
Northeim airfield (about 20 km as the crow flies).
In 1914, an
8.5 km standard-gauge tram was to be built in Göttingen, but the work
was stopped due to the war and was not resumed after 1918. City buses
have existed since 1925. 27 city bus lines (lines 11/12, 21/22, 23,
31/32, 33, 41/42, 50, 61/62, 71/72, 73, 80, 91/92 and night bus lines N1
to N8) of the Göttingen public transport company and numerous taxis
serve Göttingen's local public transport.
The bicycle is often
the preferred means of transport in the student city. Due to its largely
hill-free location, the city center of Göttingen is predestined for
bicycle traffic. There are numerous developed bike paths and parking
spaces, including a fee-based bike station at the train station. In
2006, the city of Göttingen won the state competition for
bicycle-friendly communities in Lower Saxony. In 2016 and 2018, the city
took first place in the ADFC’s bicycle climate test in its resident
category. A bicycle city map published on behalf of the city has been
available since 2008. The Leine-Heide cycle path leads through the city.
Göttingen has a large number of companies that deal with measurement
technology. Therefore, in 1998, the regional trade association
Measurement Valley was founded. The 34 members include institutions such
as vocational schools, the Georg-August University of Göttingen, the
Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen University of Applied Sciences and the
Hanover Chamber of Industry and Commerce. Sartorius AG and the Mahr
Group are also members. Sartorius AG is a globally active group with its
headquarters in Goettingen and is an international leader as a supplier
in some areas of laboratory and process technology. With around 8,125
employees worldwide, the company achieved sales of 1.566 billion euros
in 2018. The Mahr Group, with around 1700 employees worldwide, also has
its headquarters in Goettingen, employed around 750 people in Goettingen
in 2012 and achieved sales of 214 million euros.
The ten largest
companies by total assets are:
Savings Bank Goettingen
Sartorius
AG
Volksbank Kassel Goettingen eG
Novelis (formerly Alcan)
Sartorius Stedim Biotech GmbH
Amedes Medical Services Ltd
Coherent
GmbH (laser technology)
Logistic company coincidence
Sartorius
Weighing Technology GmbH
Housing cooperative eG Goettingen
Also of importance are:
optical industry (Zeiss, Qioptiq, ISK OPTICS)
Scientific teaching and learning systems (Phywe)
Vacuum systems
(Pfeiffer Vacuum Components & Solutions GmbH)
Regional sausage
specialties (Börner-Eisenacher GmbH)
Press Distribution Company
(Tonollo)
Healthcare (AQUA Institute)
Luxury goods (Kaufmanns AG)
Book publishers (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Steidl-Verlag;
Wallstein-Verlag)
In 2012, Goettingen was recognized as an energy municipality for its commitment to renewable energies. Biogas-driven combined heat and power plants (CHPs) and a heating plant fired with waste wood supply numerous households there via district heating networks. In the future, the networks are to be expanded bit by bit.
The supply of drinking water is taken over by the Stadtwerke
Göttingen. 80% of the water comes from the Sösetalsperre in the Harz
Mountains and is drawn from the Harzwasserwerke via a 40 km long
pipeline. The remaining 20% is groundwater from our own extraction
systems Springmühle Welt-Icon, Stegemühle Welt-Icon and Weendespring
Welt-Icon. All water is mixed at three mixing stations and delivered to
households. At the Springmühle site, around 50,000 kWh of electrical
energy are generated annually via a water wheel.
After treatment,
the drinking water enters the 493 km long pipeline network. With a total
hardness of 1.2 mmol/l (6.5 °dH), the water falls into the "soft"
hardness range.
The gross consumption price is 2.03 euros per
cubic metre. In a test by Öko-Test magazine in August 2014, the drinking
water from Göttingen took first place out of 69 cities tested.
The drainage and cleaning of the waste water is the responsibility of the Göttingen waste disposal companies. The 720 km long sewage system (mainly in the separate system) conveys the waste water via three main collectors to the central sewage treatment plant in Rinschenrott Welt-Icon. The catchment area of the plant extends to Lenglern in the north and to the state border of Thuringia and Hesse in the south. Every day, 30,000 m³ of waste water are cleaned (80,000 m³ when it rains) and discharged into the Leine. The resulting sewage sludge is decomposed, dried and then used as fertilizer for agriculture (10,000 t per year). The sewage gas produced during digestion is used to generate electricity.
The health care of the residents is ensured by several hospitals. The University Medical Center Göttingen is at the forefront of patient care with around 1,500 beds, of which 1,362 are regular beds, followed by the psychiatric Asklepios Specialist Clinic in Göttingen with 428, the Evangelical Hospital in Göttingen-Weende with 421, the Neu-Mariahilf Hospital with 104 and the Agaplesion Hospital in Neu Bethlehem with 100 plan beds.
Göttingen is the administrative center of the district of Göttingen and the educational region of southern Lower Saxony. The city is also the seat of a police headquarters and a federal police station. In addition to the Goettingen District Court, the Goettingen Regional Court, Goettingen Administrative Court and Goettingen Labor Court are located in the city, as well as other authorities such as the tax office, customs office, a branch of the Federal Employment Agency and a branch of the Deutsche Bundesbank.
with a high degree of distribution
Göttingen is a single newspaper
district; the only local daily newspaper that appears here is the
Göttinger Tageblatt, which is published by the publishing company
Madsack in Hanover. It is a regionalised variant of the Hannoversche
Allgemeine Zeitung.
The free advertising papers blick (also Madsack)
and ExtraTip (Madsack holds 20% of the shares) appear weekly.
further
The GÖKick magazine has been published quarterly since 2008
and focuses on the regional soccer situation.
The street magazine
TagesSatz and K3-Das Magazin are published monthly, the city magazines
37°, pony and trends&fun are published ten times a year, and Factor, the
decision-maker magazine for the Göttingen region, and the regional
journal for southern Lower Saxony RegJo are published quarterly.
in the surrounding area/discontinued
The Hessische/Niedersächsische
Allgemeine (HNA) has an editorial office in Göttingen. The state
political pages and the Blick nach Göttingen page (appears in the
Witzenhäuser Allgemeine) are produced there for the HNA local editorial
offices in southern Lower Saxony (Hann. Münden, Northeim and Uslar). The
editors are also responsible for the weekly event page Das ist los in
the region.
The attempt to establish an independent and cooperatively
organized Göttingen weekly failed in July 2006.
The Göttingen printed
paper, which was perceived as radical left, appeared every one to two
weeks.
Until the press was brought into line in 1933, the Göttinger
Zeitung and the Göttinger Volksblatt were published in Göttingen and the
surrounding area.
As a local station, StadtRadio Göttingen offers a non-commercial
local radio program. Local windows are also broadcast by the Lower
Saxony private broadcasters Hit-Radio Antenne and radio ffn. NDR 1
Niedersachsen broadcasts regional windows for southern and eastern Lower
Saxony from the Braunschweig studio on weekdays, with southern Lower
Saxony contributions being produced in a regional studio based in
Göttingen, which produces for the other NDR radio stations as well as
for Das Erste and NDR Fernsehen.
Because of the valley location,
which is unfavorable for VHF reception, city-wide reception is limited
to the Bovenden, Hoher Meißner and Nikolausberg transmitters. The latter
was blown up in December 2022 after the NDR had built a new steel
skeleton building. The following frequencies are radiated from these:
NDR 1 Lower Saxony on 88.5 MHz (Nikolausberg)
NDR 2 on 94.1 MHz
(Nikolausberg)
NDR culture on 96.8 MHz (Nikolausberg)
NDR Info on
99.9 MHz (Nikolausberg)
N-Joy from NDR on 95.9 MHz (Nikolausberg)
StadtRadio Göttingen on 107.1 MHz (Bovenden)
Radio 21 on 93.4 MHz
(Bovenden)
radio ffn on 102.8 MHz (Bovenden)
Hit-Radio antenna on
106.0 MHz (Bovenden)
Deutschlandfunk on 101.0 MHz (Bovenden)
hr1
on 99.0 MHz (High Meissner)
hr2 culture on 95.5 MHz (Hoher Meißner)
hr3 on 89.5 MHz (High Meissner)
hr4 on 101.7 MHz (High Meissner)
Hit Radio FFH on 105.1 MHz (Hoher Meißner)
The programs broadcast
by the strong transmitters on the Brocken can also be received well:
MDR Saxony-Anhalt on 94.6 MHz
MDR Figaro on 107.8MHz
MDR Jump to
91.5MHz
Deutschlandradio Kultur on 97.4 MHz
89.0 RTL on 89.0MHz
Radio SAW on 101.4MHz
In some higher-lying parts of the city, a
large number of other FM stations from the federal states of
Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and North Rhine-Westphalia can be heard.
There is no local television in Göttingen. On May 29, 2006, the analogue terrestrial television signal from the Göttingen (Nikolausberg) and Hoher Meißner transmitters, which had previously covered the city area with analogue television, was switched off and DVB-T was introduced. The private channels RTL and Sat.1 can no longer be received terrestrially; however, a larger number of public service programs is available for this compared to analogue reception. The Espol broadcaster broadcasts Das Erste, Arte, Phoenix, tagesschau24, 3sat, ZDF, KiKA/ZDFneo, ZDFinfo and the third programs from NDR, WDR, hr-fernsehen and MDR. The bouquets, which essentially consist of the same programs, can be received from Hohen Meißner and Hetjershausen transmitters throughout the city. In addition to cable and satellite television, IPTV from Telekom is available in some parts of the city.
From 1999 to the beginning of 2020, the Göttinger Stadtinfo
(goest.de) published reports on local events of a political and cultural
nature and a detailed calendar of events as a non-commercial online
magazine on the Internet.
From mid-2005 to the end of 2012, the
internet newspaper www.buergerstimme.de was online.
Gö-Polis -
Göttinger Stadtmagazin (formerly: Polis - Göttinger Stadtmagazin) from
2004 to 2013 as a print medium, from 2010 also, from 2014 only as an
online magazine (www.goe-polis.de) with a focus on up-to-date local
political and ecological reporting . The project was discontinued in
2018.
The daily newspaper Göttinger Tageblatt (subject to a fee) and
the local edition of the Hessisch/Niedersächsische Allgemeine have
online editions.
See also: Media in the district of Göttingen
From 1945 to 1960, Göttingen was the production site for over 90
feature films, among others
1949: Love 47 (director: Wolfgang
Liebeneiner, leading actress: Hilde Krahl, based on Wolfgang Borchert's
play outside in front of the door)
1950: Gynecologist Dr. Praetorius
(Directors: Curt Goetz and Karl Peter Gillmann, Actors: Curt Goetz,
Valérie von Martens, Albert Florath, Rudolf Reif, Erich Ponto)
1950:
There Comes a Day (Director: Rudolf Jugert, Actors: Dieter Borsche,
Maria Schell, Lil Dagover, Herbert Hübner, Gustav Knuth)
1951: The
House in Montevideo (Directors: Curt Goetz and Valérie von Martens,
Cast: Curt Goetz, Valérie von Martens, Albert Florath)
1953: Hocus
Pocus (Director: Kurt Hoffmann, Cast: Curt Goetz, Valérie von Martens,
Hans Nielsen, Erich Ponto)
1958: Dogs, do you want to live forever
(director: Frank Wisbar, actors: Joachim Hansen, Ernst Wilhelm Borchert,
Wolfgang Preiss, Karl Lange, Horst Frank, Peter Carsten, Richard Münch,
Günter Pfitzmann, Sonja Ziemann)
1958: Wir Wunderkinder (director:
Kurt Hoffmann, actors: Johanna von Koczian, Hansjörg Felmy, Wera
Frydtberg, Robert Graf)
1959: Rosen für den Prosecutor (Director:
Wolfgang Staudte, Actors: Martin Held, Walter Giller, Ingrid van Bergen,
Camilla Spira)
1959: Buddenbrooks (director: Alfred Weidenmann,
actors: Liselotte Pulver, Nadja Tiller, Hansjörg Felmy, Lil Dagover,
Werner Hinz, Hanns Lothar, Rudolf Platte, Günther Lüders)
1959: Of
course the drivers (leading actors: Heinz Erhardt, Maria Perschy, Erik
Schumann, Ruth Stephan, Trude Herr) and numerous other Heinz Erhardt
films
The production company was the Goettingen film construction
company, which was founded by Hans Abich and Rolf Thiele in 1946. The
company stands for the problem-oriented cinema film of the 1950s and the
production of numerous comedies with Heinz Erhardt. In 1960 the company
moved to Munich.
The Curt Goetz films were produced by Domnick
Filmproduktion GmbH.
In 2004 in Göttingen and Hann. Münden filmed
the episode Dark Paths from the crime series Tatort.
In 2012 Harder
and the Brat was shot in Göttingen to make Göttingen a film city again
(director: Oliver Clark, main actors: Harry Baer, Paula Hans, Thomas
Lehmann, Thomas Kahler)
Since 1994, the Göttingen International
Ethnographic Film Festival has been held every two years in May during
Ascension Day in the inner-city Pauluskirche.
Several crime
scenes have been filmed in Göttingen since 2019:
2019: The
missing child - First case of the commissioner Charlotte Lindholm (Maria
Furtwängler) in Göttingen. First episode with Anaïs Schmitz (Florence
Kasumba)
2020: War in the head - commissioner: Charlotte Lindholm,
filming locations: Göttingen and Hamburg
2020: National Feminin -
Commissioner: Charlotte Lindholm, locations: Göttingen and Hamburg
2022: Revenge on the world - commissioner: Charlotte Lindholm, filming
locations: Göttingen and Hamburg
The Göttingen section of the German Alpine Club with 3,954 members (as of December 31, 2021) is one of the largest sports clubs in Göttingen. It was founded on November 22, 1889, making it one of the oldest clubs in Göttingen. She runs a climbing hall in Weende and a mobile climbing wall.
A nationally known football club in Göttingen is 1. SC Göttingen 05.
This is the successor club to 1. SC Göttingen 05, which played in the
then first-class Oberliga Nord between 1948 and 1958 and was dissolved
in 2003 due to insolvency. The club currently plays in the Landesliga
Braunschweig. Venue of the 1. SC Göttingen 05 is the Maschpark.
The long-standing sporting rival is the neighboring club, SVG Göttingen
07. This is based on the other side of the Leineufer (seen from the Jahn
Stadium), in the SVG Stadium on Sandweg, and plays in the Braunschweig
state league. The highlight was the Göttingen city derbies in the
Braunschweig state league in the 2010/2011 season on the Benzstraße in
Göttingen with around 1,800 spectators and the second leg in front of
around 2,500 spectators in the SVG stadium. The game ended 1:1 and
months later RSV 05 surprisingly rose to the Oberliga.
Some
officials of the larger clubs in Göttingen have already planned several
times to merge into one large club in order to bring higher-class
football back to the university town (as happened in other cities, for
example FC Ingolstadt 04). They could not implement this due to many
negative voices from clubs and fans. Most recently, FC Göttingen was
founded in November 2008 by board members of SVG Göttingen, RSV
Göttingen 05, SCW Göttingen, TSV Holtensen and Sparta Göttingen. The aim
was higher-class football in Göttingen. The association was partly
welcomed, partly strictly rejected. After the SVG Göttingen quickly
withdrew from the project after discussions with the board, the
association was dissolved again after only 21 days. A spokesman for the
SVG justified this with the words: "the [...] material and human
resources [the existence of the SVG] are significantly endangered."[
A youth indoor tournament, Sparkasse & VGH Cup, is held annually in
Göttingen. The tournament, which used to take place shortly before
Christmas in the Lokhalle, had to be postponed to mid-January due to the
quarter-finals of the DFB Junior League Cup being scheduled for this
period. Internationally known clubs (FC Barcelona, Chelsea London, Inter
Milan, PSV Eindhoven, Bröndby Copenhagen, Manchester United, FC Fulham,
FK Austria Vienna), eight Bundesliga teams (such as VfL Wolfsburg,
Hannover 96 or Borussia Dortmund) and 12 regional clubs to win the
tournament. The tournament regularly attracts large numbers of
spectators and is considered Europe's largest A youth indoor tournament.
The Mexican national team set up their World Cup quarters in
Göttingen for the 2006 World Cup. The team made a guest appearance at
Hotel Freizeit In and played a test match in front of 15,000 spectators
against a regional team from Göttingen. In addition, in 2006 Göttingen
was the venue for the unofficial German Futsal Championship.
Göttingen is also a traditional basketball location. The BG 74
Göttingen is currently represented with the men's team as BG Göttingen
in the first basketball league. This team won the EuroChallenge in 2010.
In the years 1980, 1983 and 1984 the basketball players of the ASC 1846
Göttingen, the second big club in the city, won the German championship,
in 1984 and 1985 they were the German cup winners.
The women of
the 1. SC Göttingen 05 are considered the most successful basketball
team. In the years 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972 and 1974 the women from
Göttingen won the German championship five times. They also won the DBB
Cup, which was played for the first time in 1973. In the mid-1970s, the
club's board wanted to put more money into the football department, so
the women's basketball department was dissolved entirely. Many players
joined the BG 74 Göttingen. The women's team of BG 74 Göttingen also
played in the first women's basketball league from 2003 to 2009, in the
2008/2009 season under the name Trinos Göttingen. After the 2008/2009
season, however, there were renewed financial problems, which meant that
the team was not granted a first division license. Furthermore, the
Göttingen team (consisting of players from ASC 1846, BG 74 and the Bad
Sooden-Allendorf sports high school) plays in the junior basketball
league (NBBL). The fact that three teams played in the highest German
league was unique in German basketball history.
Venue of the
women's team is the sports hall of the Felix-Klein-Gymnasium, which
holds about 1500 spectators. The men's venue since the 2007/2008 season
has been the Lokhalle in Göttingen. Since the 2011/12 season, the men's
team has played most of its home games in the newly built
Sparkassen-Arena on Schützenplatz, but continues to play individual
games in the Lokhalle. The ASC 1846 plays in the hall of the IGS.
The competition community of the University of Göttingen has also
been a multiple German university champion, most recently in 2006.
The Tanzsportteam Göttingen was founded in 1994 and, with its
A-Formation, rose to the 1st Bundesliga of standard formations for the
first time in 1999. Since being promoted again to the 1st Bundesliga in
2008, the team has danced uninterruptedly in the highest class and has
gradually worked its way up to the top of the world. A 5th place at the
World Championships in Pécs in 2016 was followed by winning the 1st
Bundesliga for the first time in 2019. In the same year, the team became
German champions of the standard formations and took 3rd place as the
best German participant at the World Championships in Moscow. In the
2020 and 2022 seasons, the team managed to successfully defend 1st place
in the Bundesliga. On September 24, 2022, the standard formation from
Göttingen succeeded in winning the European Championship in Nuremberg.
At the World Championships in Braunschweig on October 15, 2022, the team
took 2nd place.
The youth work of the dance sport team includes a
B and in many years also a C formation. The team is supported by
numerous volunteers, especially at the annual team presentation and the
Bundesliga home tournament in the Sparkassen-Arena.
The BG 74 Göttingen Generals, which celebrate their 30th anniversary in 2018, are the American football department of the traditional BG 74 club in Göttingen. The Generals provide an U19 youth team and a men's team. The men's team competes in the 2018 season in the Oberliga Nord.
Canoe polo is one of the most successful sports in Göttingen. The men's team of the Göttinger Paddler Club (GPC) was in 2012 after two vice championships (2006 in Essen and 2007 in Berlin) and a third place in 2009 for the first time in the club's history German champions of the canoe polo Bundesliga and reached the European Club Championships (Championsleague) in Duisburg 8th place. The women's team, one of the most successful teams in the country (Champions: 2004, 2005, 2007, 2011 - Vice Champion 2008, 2010 Third: 2009, 2012 - European Club Championship Winner 2007), achieved third place in 2012. The junior teams of the GPC have already celebrated a number of successes: for example, first place in the Lower Saxony Championships, first place in the Karnath Cup, which was attended by top-class players, and the greatest success so far at the German Championships 2007 in Berlin with third place. In addition to the successes at national level, Göttingen has produced numerous successful national players. Lukas Richter (vice world champion 2012) and Tonie Lenz (world champion 2006, 2012 – 1st place World Games 2005) are currently playing in the highest national squads. Every year on the last weekend in April, one of the largest national tournaments takes place in the outdoor pool on Brauweg with international and top-class players.
The Hockey-Club Göttingen has existed since July 1, 1982.., which
split off from ESV Rot-Weiss Göttingen.
The training grounds are
for the field season at the district sports facility (BSA) in Greitweg,
where they play on the natural grass and for the indoor season in the
large hall of the Geschwister-Scholl-Gesamtschule (KGS). The club room
is also located on the school grounds.
After a double promotion
in February 2019, the 1st women and 1st men of HC Göttingen both play in
the 2019/20 indoor season in the Regionalliga Nord. After their
promotion (also in 2019), the 2nd men compete in the 2nd association
league of Lower Saxony. In addition to these three teams, there are also
children's and youth teams and a leisure team that mainly takes part in
tournaments in the region.
The Black Lions represent Tuspo 1861 Göttingen in the North German Inline Hockey League (NIHL).
The table football players of the ASC represent their club in the 2nd table football Bundesliga. In addition to the team competition, players from the ASC Göttingen team also compete in singles and doubles competitions. In addition to the Hessian association championship 2009 and the North Hessian championship 2009 in doubles, the world championship in singles in the amateur class was won by an ASC player.
The parachuting club was founded in 1986 to promote and implement university sports at the Georg-August University. A team of four under police chief inspector Jacqueline Emmermann became German champions in formation jumping in 2013. The skydiving site for the team is Kassel-Calden.
In 2021, the city applied to host a four-day program for an international delegation to the Special Olympics World Summer Games 2023 in Berlin. In 2022 she was selected to host Special Olympics South Africa. This made it part of the largest municipal inclusion project in the history of the Federal Republic with more than 200 host towns.
On the last series of D-Mark banknotes, on the 10-D-Mark banknote, to
the left of the portrait of the mathematician and astronomer Carl
Friedrich Gauss, there was a collage of various historical buildings in
Göttingen. There you can see the observatory, the Johanniskirche, the
university auditorium, the town hall, the Jacobi church tower and the
museum.
A Lufthansa Airbus A340-311 with the registration D-AIGF
bore the name Göttingen until it was decommissioned in 2014. In the
meantime, a somewhat smaller Airbus A321-231 with the registration
D-AIDG has taken its place. Since 2019, the Airbus A350-900 with the
registration D-AIXN has borne the name of the university city.
A
Deutsche Bahn ICE with the Tz 330 multiple unit (ICE class 3) was
christened Göttingen in 2003.