The independent city of Münster in Westphalia is the seat of the
administrative district of the same name in the state of North
Rhine-Westphalia. From 1815 to 1946 Münster was the capital of the
Prussian province of Westphalia. The city on the Münsterschen Aa
lies between the Ruhr area and Osnabrück in the center of the
Münsterland and, as the twentieth largest city in Germany, is one of
the regional centers of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Münster has been a major city since 1915, and in 2014 its population
exceeded the 300,000 mark for the first time. With 65,000 students
(2018), Münster is one of the ten largest university cities in
Germany. Münster is also known as a bicycle city due to its
bike-friendly cityscape.
The Westphalian metropolis is an
important service and administrative location and the seat of
several universities. Important courts and administrative
institutions for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia are located in
Münster, including the Constitutional Court and the Higher
Administrative Court. The former Westphalian provincial capital is
now the seat of the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe, which
makes it the administrative, political and cultural center of the
Münsterland.
Münster is the seat of a Catholic bishop. In 799
Pope Leo III founded at his meeting with Charlemagne the diocese of
Münster and the dioceses of Osnabrück, Minden and Paderborn. In 805,
St. Ludgerus was consecrated the first bishop of Münster in Cologne
Cathedral. Felix Genn has been the bishop since 2009.
Münster
is known for its historic old town, which was partially
reconstructed after the Second World War.
It is estimated that the small Saxon settlement of Mimigernaford
has been in the area of Domplatz since the 6th century. In 793 the
Frisian missionary Liudger founded a monastery (Latin: monasterium)
at the ford over the Münstersche Aa, which gave the developing city
its name. In 805 he was appointed the first bishop of Munster, and
construction work on the first cathedral began.
Due to the
growing number of inhabitants, Münster received city rights in 1170.
During this period, the city fortifications were built. The city
wall was about four kilometers long and was reinforced by additional
fortifications in the middle of the 14th century. At that time,
Münster was the largest city in Westphalia. In the late Middle Ages,
the corporations played an important role in the municipal
constitution of the city, naming the electorates who were involved
in the election of the councilors. Until 1458, the passive council
suffrage was available exclusively to the city nobility, popularly
known as heirmen. Only hereditary families like the Bischopinck,
Droste zu Hülshoff, Kerckerinck (all others have since expired) etc.
provided the councilors, mayors and prince-bishop city judges. The
hereditary men, after whom many streets in Münster are named,
represented Münster in the prince-bishop's government, in the state
parliament of the prince-bishopric and at the Hanseatic days.
Between 1358 and 1454, Münster gained great importance as a
member and from 1494 as a suburb of the Hanseatic League in
Westphalia. The Prinzipalmarkt, for example, bears witness to this,
the splendid merchants' houses of which date from this era, most of
which were destroyed in the Second World War and rebuilt in many
simplified ways.
In 1534 the dramatic episode of the
Anabaptist Empire in Münster began. It culminated in the
proclamation of the Kingdom of Zion in September 1534 by Jan van
Leiden with himself as king. However, this kingdom only lasted until
June 24, 1535, when troops of Bishop Franz von Waldeck took the
besieged city. The tortured and executed leaders of the Anabaptists
were then hung up in three iron baskets in the Lamberti Church as a
deterrent. The originals of the baskets from 1535 are still hanging
there. They are often mistakenly called cages. The main reasons for
this are reports from foreign authors and visitors who reported from
the end of the 18th century on the rule of the "Anabaptists" with
negative terms, as well as translation errors in Latin manuscripts
about the Anabaptist empire.
In 1648 an event of European
importance took place in Münster and Osnabrück. The Peace of
Westphalia was concluded, ending the Thirty Years 'War and the
Eighty Years' War. As the “Place of Peace of Westphalia”, the town
hall in Münster, along with the one in Osnabrück, was awarded the
European Heritage Seal by the European Commission in mid-2015.
At the same time, around 1648, the struggle for the city's
independence reached its climax. It culminated in the attempt to
elevate Münster to the status of a Free Imperial City. With this,
however, the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the ecclesiastical
sovereign was predetermined. It resulted in an open confrontation
with Prince-Bishop Christoph Bernhard von Galen, who took the city
in 1661 after an eight-month siege and temporarily withdrew all
rights.
After the death of the last prince-bishop in 1801,
the city was occupied a year later by the Prussian general Gebhard
Leberecht von Blücher. This measure was only legitimized in 1803 by
the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, before Napoleon's troops took and
occupied the city in 1806. Due to the agreements made in the Treaty
of Tilsit in 1807, the city and the surrounding area became part of
the Grand Duchy of Berg in 1808. Münster became the capital of the
Ems department. In 1811 the region was finally ceded to France.
Munster now belonged to the Hanseatic departments and became part of
the French Empire. In 1813 the French were driven out of the city by
Prussian and Russian troops. Since the reorganization of Europe by
the Congress of Vienna, Münster officially belonged to the Kingdom
of Prussia from 1815 and was the provincial capital of the newly
founded Province of Westphalia.
Due to the economic boom in
the second half of the 19th century and the incorporation of smaller
surrounding communities, the number of inhabitants exceeded the mark
of 100,000 in 1915 and Münster became a major city. At the end of
the First World War - as in the capital Berlin - the Republic was
proclaimed on November 9, 1918 on Neuplatz. The soldiers' council
set up a short time later was only ousted a few months later in
February 1919 by General Oskar von Watter.
During the time of National Socialism, Münster was the seat of
the Gau leadership of the Gau "Westfalen-Nord" and the
Ordnungspolizei, under whose direction around 200,000 "law
enforcement officers" were involved in the mass murder of Jews,
Sinti, Roma, homosexuals and other groups. An outstanding figure in
the resistance against the National Socialists was Clemens August
Graf von Galen, who became known far beyond the boundaries of the
city and the diocese of Münster through his fight against the
arbitrariness of the Gestapo against Catholic institutions and the
inhuman euthanasia program of the National Socialists and was
nicknamed The Lion received from Munster. During the Second World
War, Münster was one of the most heavily destroyed cities in
Germany. About 91% of the old town and 63% of the entire city were
destroyed by British bombing as part of the moral-bombing strategy.
At the beginning of April 1945, Münster was occupied by US troops.
Elsewhere in Germany, the war continued until the beginning of May.
It finally ended on May 8th with the unconditional surrender of the
Wehrmacht.
In the 1950s, unlike in many other major German
cities, at the insistence of the population, part of the historic
old town was rebuilt similar to the pre-war state.
The 24th
German Fire Brigade Day took place in Münster from June 17 to 21,
1970.
On June 18, 1990, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Eduard
Schewardnadse met in Münster in the historic town hall to prepare
the two-plus-four talks that paved the way for reunification. The
people of Münster gave the politicians an enthusiastic reception on
the Prinzipalmarkt, which Shevardnadze visibly moved.
At the
end of July 2014 there was a storm in Münster and the surrounding
area with the most violent thunderstorms in recent years. Especially
on July 28th and 29th, several strong thunderstorms hit the same
area one after the other. The amount of rain that fell in Münster
was an event of the century. A station of the State Environment
Agency reported an amount of 292 l / m² within seven hours;
otherwise there is an average of around 69 l / m² throughout July.
Countless streets and cellars were flooded, one person died in his
flooded cellar. The city of Münster expects damage of 15 to 20
million euros to urban buildings and infrastructure alone. On April
7, 2018, there was a rampage in the city center; four people were
killed; the gunman took his own life.
Münster is located on the Münsterschen Aa, 15 km south of its
confluence with the Ems, in the Westphalian lowland bay covered by
sandy-loamy deposits in the middle of a landscape characterized by
scattered settlements and individual farms, the Münsterland. The
ice-age sediments of the Münsterländer gravel-sand train run through
the city in the center in a north-south direction. The highest point
is the Vorbergshügel in the nature reserve Vorbergs Hügel at 99.8 m
above sea level, the lowest point is in the north of the urban area
on the Ems at an altitude of 38.6 m above sea level. Münster's city
center is 60 m above sea level. , measured on the Prinzipalmarkt in
front of the town hall.
The Dutch city of Enschede is about
65 km away. Other large cities in the vicinity are the large cities
in the Ruhr area (Herne and Bochum about 55 km and 59 km southwest,
Dortmund about 61 km south, and Gelsenkirchen 61 km southwest),
Osnabrück about 44 km north, Hamm about 34 km south and Bielefeld
about 62 km east.
Münster is one of the 42 German
agglomerations and is one of the largest cities in Germany. However,
this includes larger, sparsely populated, rural areas of the places
incorporated in 1975. Almost half of the urban area is used for
agriculture, which explains the relatively low population density of
a good 1000 inhabitants per km².
In addition, the contiguous
urban area is comparatively large in terms of area, as the
development is lower than in other cities with a comparable number
of inhabitants. This is mainly due to the high proportion of
single-family houses and villas as well as the mostly only two to
three-story apartment buildings. In contrast, there are only a few
high-rise buildings, tenements and skyscrapers are not found in
Münster. What is striking compared to other German cities is that
the houses were often built in brick and are often gable instead of
eaves. Nevertheless, there are high population densities of up to
15,000 inhabitants per km² in some areas of the city center around
the historical core. This results in a settlement density, i.e. the
population density in the populated urban area, of around 2,890
inhabitants per km².
The total area of the urban area of
300.327 km² is divided into 74.181 km² settlement areas, 26.429
km² traffic areas, 194.012 km² vegetation areas and 6.001 km² water
areas. The circumference is 107 km, the extension from north to
south 24.4 km and from west to east 20.6 km.
Climate
The
amount of precipitation in the city is around 773 mm per year (mean
1981-2010), about the average in Germany. Nevertheless, Münster is a
rainy city - not because of the absolute amount of precipitation,
but rather because of the relatively high number of rainy days (an
average of 189 per year) with often little rainfall. The Münsterland
dialect even knows a special term for the unproductive but prolonged
rainfall: the word "Meimeln". The average temperature is 9.8 ° C
with around 1580 hours of sunshine a year. In terms of the annual
hours of sunshine, however, Münster does worse than many southern
and eastern German cities. The Münster winters are relatively mild
in a national comparison, so that it snows comparatively seldom,
while the summer temperatures correspond to the national average.
The highest daily rainfall was recorded on July 28, 2014: The
MeteoGroup weather station at Aasee / Zoo reported a rainfall of
122.2 l / m², the State Environment Agency registered 292.5 l / m²
within seven hours at its station at the main sewage treatment
plant. The record rainfall led to heavy flooding throughout the city
and in neighboring Greven.