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Ulm is a university town in Baden-Württemberg on the Danube on
the southeastern edge of the Swabian Alb on the border with Bavaria.
The city has over 125,000 inhabitants (as of the end of 2019), forms
its own urban district and is the seat of the district office of the
neighboring Alb-Danube district. According to the Baden-Württemberg
State Development Plan, Ulm is one of a total of 14 regional centers
in the state and, together with Neu-Ulm, forms one of the
transnational dual centers in Germany with 183,323 inhabitants. Ulm
is the largest city in the administrative district of Tübingen and
in the Donau-Iller region, which also includes areas of the Bavarian
administrative district of Swabia.
The city is known for its
Gothic cathedral, whose church tower is the highest in the world at
161.53 meters. Also noteworthy is the long bourgeois tradition of
Ulm with the oldest constitution of a German city and a city
theater, the beginnings of which go back to 1641. In the past, Ulm
was the starting point for the emigration of the Danube Swabians,
who traveled to their new home countries in southeastern Europe in
so-called Ulmer boxes.
Ulm, first mentioned in a document on
July 22, 854, was a royal palace and free imperial city, Bavarian
from 1802, and since 1810 part of Württemberg. Since then, Ulm has
been separated from its former area to the right of the Danube,
which remained with Bavaria and on which the city of Neu-Ulm
developed.
Famous personalities include Albert Einstein
(1879–1955), who was born in Ulm, the resistance fighters Hans
(1918–1943) and Sophie Scholl (1921–1943), who grew up in Ulm from
1932, and the actress Hildegard Knef (1925–2002) , who was born in
Ulm, and the German designer and graphic designer Otl Aicher
(1922–1991), who was born and grew up in Ulm.
Geographical location
The city of Ulm is located at an average
altitude of 479 m above sea level. NN (measuring point: town hall).
The urban area is geographically rich and ranges from 459 m above
sea level. NN (Danube bank) up to 646 m above sea level NN
(Klingensteiner Forest). The historic city center is about two
kilometers below (east) the confluence of the Iller at the
confluence of the Blau and the Danube. The city lies on the southern
edge of the Ulmer Alb (part of the middle surface Alb) and the
plateau of the so-called "Hochsträß", separated from it to the south
by the former valley of the Urdonau (Blau, Ach and Schmiechtal). The
elevations of Hochsträß and Alb (from west to north to east:
Galgenberg, Kuhberg, Roter Berg (Hochsträß), Eselsberg, Kienlesberg,
Michelsberg, Safranberg (Ulmer Alb)) surrounded in the west, north
and east, separated by smaller or larger valleys the city center. In
the south this is limited by the course of the Danube.
The
urban area of Ulm extends largely north of the Danube, which forms
the border between the federal states of Baden-Württemberg and
Bavaria for a few kilometers with the Bavarian sister city of
Neu-Ulm on the southern bank of the Danube. In the west and north,
the urban area with the suburbs Harthausen, Grimmelfingen,
Einsingen, Ermingen, Allewind and Eggingen extends over the plateaus
of the Hochsträß, with Lehr, Mähringen and Jungingen over the
plateaus of the Ulmer Alb. West of the city center is the suburb of
Söflingen south of the Blau on the edge of the Hochstrasse. The
suburb of Böfingen connects to the northeast of the city center and
is located on the slopes of the Alb north of the Danube. Only above
the confluence of the Iller and the Danube does the urban area of
Ulm with the districts of Wiblingen, Gögglingen, Donaustetten and
Unterweiler extend to the floodplains and alluvial terraces of the
Danube and Iller southwest of the Danube and Iller.
Historical geography
There are significant finds from the
Paleolithic in the area around Ulm, on the one hand near neighboring
Blaubeuren and on the other a few kilometers north of Ulm in the
Lone Valley (for example in the Vogelherd cave). They point out that
the area on the edge of the Alb was an interesting habitat in the
times of hunters and gatherers. In the Neolithic the Hochsträß was
settled early (e.g. Ulm-Eggingen); from Ulm itself there are finds
from a more recent phase of the Neolithic. A role that should not be
underestimated for the development of the city of Ulm as a traffic
junction is played by the course of the Danube and Iller rivers and
the easily manageable transition between Ulm and Geislingen across
the Swabian Alb through the blue river valleys that cut far into the
Alb plateau from the south and north, Kleiner Lauter, Lone, Brenz,
Kocher and Fils.
The Römerstraße, which historians call
Donausüdstraße today, runs not far from the southern bank of the
Danube near Ulm between the Roman fort Unterkirchberg, the small
fort Burlafingen and the small fort Nersingen, the Roman path that
branches off northwards into Filstal to the Urspring fort (Fort Ad
Lunam) and the dense evidence of Roman sites and manors in the Ulm
area make the strategically important location of the Ulm area in
the hinterland of the militarized border line of the Limes up to the
Limes falls around the year 260 AD. From 15 BC BC to around 100 AD
and then again after the Limesfall from 260 AD to around 500 AD
(Danube-Iller-Rhein-Limes), the Danube bank opposite Ulm formed the
northern border of the Roman Empire. The state border between
Bavaria and Württemberg runs in the Ulm area exactly where the
border between the Roman Empire and the unoccupied Germania
(Germania Magna) ran more than 2000 years ago.
The burials of
the large grave field from the Merovingian period on the Kienlesberg
(immediately northwest of the city center) and the early medieval
royal palace of the Carolingians on the vineyard and in the area of
St. Geist Spitals (first mentioned in a document in 854) underline
the special importance of Ulm as a strategically important traffic
junction during the early Middle Ages.
Due to its location at the junction of several trade and
pilgrimage routes on land and water, Ulm developed as a free
imperial city into a leading trade and art center in southern
Germany during the High and Late Middle Ages. In the late Middle
Ages, merchants from Ulm maintained a dense network of trade
contacts that stretched from Scandinavia to North Africa, from Syria
to Ireland and beyond. One of the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de
Compostela to the grave of St. James, venerated by the Catholic
Church, the Way of St. James, which has been significant for
centuries, led via Ulm to north-west Spain and has been in the
interests of the city of Ulm since 1997 as a link between nations in
the sense of European unification of the state of Baden-Württemberg.
As the Franconian-Swabian Way of St. James, it stretches from the
north to the Minster and from there, well-marked as the Upper
Swabian Way of St. James, continues south to Switzerland.
From the late 17th century onwards, Ulm became the central
collection point for mostly (but not always) Swabian emigrants who
were settled in the newly conquered territories of the Habsburg and
Russian empires in southeast Europe and southern Russia. A first
wave of emigration reached the newly conquered lands of the Habsburg
Empire in southeastern Europe between the late 17th and mid-18th
centuries on Ulmer Schachteln. The ethnic groups of the Hungarian
Germans and / or Danube Swabians emerged in their new settlement
areas in today's Romania, Hungary and Serbia.
A second wave
of emigration followed at the beginning of the 19th century. From
1804 to 1818 thousands of emigrants came by water to the mouth of
the Danube (Dobruja) in what is now Bulgaria and Romania and to
Bessarabia (now the Republic of Moldova) on the northern Black Sea
(now South Ukraine) and from there to southern Russia, especially in
the area of the Caucasus. The mostly Swabian emigrants embarked in
Ulm on rafts and Ulmer boxes and drove down the Danube to its mouth
in the Black Sea near Ismajil. Travel stories tell of the greatest
exertion of the emigrants during the 2,500 kilometer journey.
Numerous accidents and illnesses that broke out in the crowded
confines of the mostly overcrowded boats after drinking polluted
river water and due to the poorest hygienic conditions resulted in
countless deaths. The result of this second major emigration
movement down the Danube were the ethnic groups of the Dobrudscha
Germans, Bessarabian Germans, Black Sea Germans, and Caucasian
Germans.
Through these waves of emigration, the close
contacts that Ulm merchant and boatmen families had in this area
before that time were sustainably strengthened. After the expulsion
of the Hungarian Germans and Danube Swabians from Serbia and Hungary
as a result of the Second World War and a wave of Danube Swabians
who emigrated from Romania after 1990, they often settled in the
former regions of origin of their ancestors. This has resulted in a
strong Danube Swabian community around Ulm since the late 1940s.
Today, several monuments erected in the urban area, which remind of
the history and expulsion of the Danube Swabians, testify to the
Danube Swabian Central Museum (DZM) opened in 2000 in the rooms of
the Upper Danube Bastion (Federal Fortress Ulm) and numerous town
partnerships and cooperation projects with communities and towns
along the Danube close connection between Ulm and the Danube
Swabians and Southeastern Europe.
The wide-ranging
intellectual and commercial connections in Ulm, which have grown
continuously since the Middle Ages, still play a central role in the
consciousness of many Ulm residents as the basis for current and
future-oriented thinking and action. They are very consciously
cultivated as part of their own history and identity. The
International Danube Festival, which has been taking place every two
years since 1998, with representatives from all the Danube bordering
countries, the recently founded European Danube Academy, the "living
Way of the Cross" of the large Italian community, and an annual
"French Wine Festival" underline the narrow and centuries-old Mutual
connections lived in everyday life.
Neighboring communities
The Bavarian district town of Neu-Ulm
borders on the right (south-eastern) side of the Danube and Iller.
On the left (north-western) side, Ulm is almost completely
surrounded by the Alb-Danube district. The neighboring communities
in Baden-Württemberg are here (from south to west to north):
Illerkirchberg, Staig, Hüttisheim, Erbach (Danube), Blaubeuren,
Blaustein, Dornstadt, Beimerstetten and Langenau as well as the
Bavarian community of Elchingen in the east.
City structure
The urban area of Ulm is divided into 18 districts: Stadtmitte,
Böfingen, Donautal, Eggingen, Einsingen, Ermingen, Eselsberg,
Gögglingen-Donaustetten, Grimmelfingen, Jungingen, Lehr, Mähringen,
Oststadt, Söflingen, Unterweiler, Weststadt and Wiblingen. Nine
parts of the city that were incorporated in the course of the latest
municipal reform in the 1970s (Eggingen, Einsingen, Ermingen,
Gögglingen-Donaustetten, Jungingen, Lehr, Mähringen and Unterweiler)
have their own local councils, which have an important advisory role
for the city council as a whole carry out relevant matters. However,
final decisions on measures can only be made by the city council of
the entire city of Ulm.
climate
With an average
temperature of 8.4 degrees Celsius (° C) and an average
precipitation of 749 millimeters (mm) per year, Ulm is - like almost
all of Germany - in the temperate climate zone. Compared to other
cities in Baden-Württemberg, the climate in Ulm is relatively cold.
The average temperature is well below the values in other places
in the southwest (for example Heidelberg 11.4 ° C, Stuttgart 11.3 °
C). The precipitation mean, however, hardly deviates from what is
usual in Baden-Württemberg (Heidelberg 745 mm, Stuttgart 664 mm).
From a humorous point of view, Ulm is sometimes referred to as
the “capital of the foggy realm”. The statistics of the German
Weather Service, however, show an average of 1,659 hours of sunshine
per year for Ulm, which is in the middle of all recorded weather
stations. However, until 2014 the relevant measuring station was on
the Kuhberg, one of the highest elevations in the city. It has now
been relocated to the Mähringen district, which is also higher up.
Due to the increased measuring locations, fog fields in the Danube
Valley, in which the city center of Ulm is located, were partially
not taken into account in the measurements.
Flooding is only
an occasional problem in Ulm. It usually only occurs when the Danube
and Iller both carry a lot of meltwater or rainwater with them.
However, sudden meltdowns in particular led to severe flooding
within half a day.
According to a study published in 2007,
Ulm is “Germany's healthiest city”. In addition to climate data,
other criteria such as air pollution, medical care or the number of
daycare places were decisive for the assessment.