Founding and early history Like many settlements, Marburg developed at the crossroads of two important early medieval highways: the trade route linking
Cologne and
Prague and the trade route from the
North Sea to the
Alps and on to
Italy, the former crossing the river
Lahn here. A first mention of the settlement dates from 822 in the
Reinhardsbrunner Chronik. The settlement was protected and customs were raised by a small castle built during the ninth or tenth century by the
Giso. Marburg has been a town since 1140, as proven by coins. From the Gisos, it fell around that time to the
Landgraves of
Thuringia, residing on the
Wartburg above
Eisenach.
St. Elizabeth of Hungary In 1228, the widowed princess-landgravine of Thuringia,
Elizabeth of Hungary, chose Marburg as her dowager seat, as she did not get along well with her brother-in-law, the new landgrave. The countess dedicated her life to the sick and would become after her early death in 1231, aged 24, one of the most prominent female saints of the era. She was canonized in 1235.
Capital of Hessen In 1264, St Elizabeth's daughter
Sophie of Brabant, succeeded in winning the
Landgraviate of Hessen, hitherto connected to
Thuringia, for her son
Henry. Marburg (alongside
Kassel) was one of the capitals of Hessen from that time until about 1540. Following the first division of the landgraviate, it was the capital of
Hessen-Marburg from 1485 to 1500 and again between 1567 and 1605. Hessen was one of the more powerful second-tier principalities in Germany. Its "old enemy" was the
Archbishopric of Mainz, the seat of one of the
prince-electors, who competed with Hessen in many wars and conflicts for coveted territory, stretching over several centuries. and Frans Hogenberg's atlas
Civitates orbis terrarum, 1572 After 1605, Marburg became just another provincial town, known mostly for the
University of Marburg. It became a virtual backwater for two centuries after the
Thirty Years' War (1618–48), when it was fought over by
Hessen-Darmstadt and
Hesse-Kassel. The Hessian territory around Marburg lost more than two-thirds of its population, which was more than in any later wars (including
World War I and
World War II) combined.
Reformation Marburg is the seat of the oldest existing
Protestant-founded
university in the world, the
University of Marburg (Philipps-Universität-Marburg), founded in 1527. It is one of the smaller "university towns" in Germany. These include
Greifswald,
Erlangen,
Jena, and
Tübingen, as well as the city of
Gießen, which is located 30 km south of Marburg. In 1529,
Philipp I of Hesse arranged the
Marburg Colloquy, to propitiate
Martin Luther and
Huldrych Zwingli.
Romanticism Owing to its neglect during the entire 18th century, Marburg – like
Rye or
Chartres – survived as a relatively intact
Gothic town, simply because there was no money spent on any new
architecture or expansion. When
Romanticism became the dominant cultural and artistic paradigm in Germany, Marburg became a centre of activities once again, and many of the leaders of the movement lived, taught, or studied in Marburg. They formed a circle of friends that was of great importance, especially in
literature,
philology,
folklore, and
law. The group included
Friedrich Carl von Savigny, the most important
jurist of his day and father of the
Roman Law adaptation in Germany, as well as the poets, writers, and social activists
Achim von Arnim,
Clemens Brentano, and especially
Bettina von Arnim, Clemens Brentano's sister, who became Achim von Arnim's wife. Most famous internationally, however, were the
Brothers Grimm, who collected many of their
fairy tales here. The best-known illustrations for the fairy tale editions are by the painter
Otto Ubbelohde, who also lived in and near Marburg. The original building inspiring his drawing ''
Rapunzel's Tower'' stands in Amönau near Marburg. Across the Lahn hills, in the area called Schwalm, the costumes of little girls included a red hood.
Prussian town In the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the
Prince-elector of Hessen had backed
Austria. Prussia won and took the opportunity to invade and annex the
Electorate of Hessen (as well as
Hanover, the city of
Frankfurt, and other territories) north of the
Main River. However, the pro-Austrian
Hesse-Darmstadt remained independent. For Marburg, this turn of events was very positive, because Prussia decided to make Marburg its main administrative centre in this part of the new province
Hessen-Nassau and to turn the
University of Marburg into the regional academic centre. Thus, Marburg's rise as an administrative and university city began. As the Prussian university system was one of the best in the world at the time, Marburg attracted many respected scholars. However, there was hardly any industry to speak of, so students, professors, and civil servants – who generally had enough but not much money and paid very little in taxes – dominated the town.
Early 20th century Franz von Papen, vice-chancellor of Germany in 1934, delivered
an anti-Nazi speech at the University of Marburg on 17 June. During World War II, Marburg suffered much less compared to its neighbours
Giessen,
Siegen and
Frankfurt. The city was not seen as a target of opportunity by the Allies and lacked any important industrial sites. Nonetheless, it was still bombed 13 times by the
United States Army Air Forces during the
bombing of Marburg. From 1942 to 1945, the entire city of Marburg was turned into a hospital, with schools and government buildings turned into wards to augment the existing hospitals. By the spring of 1945, there were over 20,000 patients – mostly wounded German soldiers. The most significant damage happened at the north side of the city and along the marshalling yards, but the inner city was largely spared, meaning that it survived the war largely intact. In May 1945, the
Monuments men officer
Walker Hancock set up the first so-called Central Collecting Point in the Marburg State Archives. But since the capacity of the archive building was not sufficient to store the many objects and since other collecting points, for example in
Munich, had been set up in the
American occupation zone in the meantime, the Marburg facility was closed after more than a year in favor of the Wiesbaden Collecting Point. With the relocation of the
sarcophagus of Field Marshal and President
Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) to the
Elisabethkirche in August 1946 the project ended.
Milton Mayer's 1955 book
They Thought They Were Free, which attempted to gauge how ordinary German citizens felt about Nazi Germany, used interviews of ten men from Marburg (which it called "Kronenberg") as its case study.
Marburg from 1945 Post-war developments included population growth at first due to war refugees, then to increasing significance of the pharmaceutical industry based in Marburg, and an increase in staff and students for the university. The historic town was in danger of thorough decay, but was renovated from 1972. The university now has about 21,000 students (2023). ==Geography==