GERMANY - COLOGNE HISTORY
As
"Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensum", Cologne enjoyed Roman municipal
rights as early as 50 AD. For 400 years it formed the north eastern
cornerstone of the Roman Empire. It is therefore not surprising that
Cologne can still show rich remains of Roman buildings, for example
parts of the former 1 kilometer square town walls with their corner
tower and north tower, parts of the underground canalisation system for
the town drains and of the 80 kilometer long aquaduct which brought
spring water to the town from the Eifel mountain range.
After
Cologne had become an episcopal city as early as the 4th century,
Charlemagne established the Archbishopric around 800. The archbishops,
originally advisers of the German emperors, became electoral princes and
thus also secular rulers in the 10th century. Around 1220 they had the 6
kilometer long town walls built, so that the city, with space for
approximately 40.000 people, became the then largest fortification in
the world. The founding of the university (1388) gave even greater
significance to the city, but after the discovery of America, it lost to
the seaports its major position as a trading centre.
It was
this period of the city's zenith that brought forth not only the
churches, but also the Romanesque Overstolzenhaus (13h century, Gothic
wall paintings), the "Gotisches Rathaus" (Gothic Town Hall) (14th
century) with its magnificent Renaissance hall and the Jewish ritual
immersion bath (12th century) on the forecourt as well as the splendid
Gothic structure of the "Gürzenich" (15th century), in which the town
council used to receive emperors and kings. In the area of the old city
centre the attentive visitor can still find - despite the ravages of the
Second World War - more burghers' houses dating back to the 14th to 18th
centuries and even older remains of the town forticifations with mighty
towers and three preserved tower fortresses.
From
1794 the city was occupied by troops of the French revolution. Napoleon
dissolved the archbishopric and confiscated the church possessions
almost in their entirety - as was done everywhere in Germany. After
Cologne had fallen to the Prussians in 1815 and had been once again been
made an archbishopric, there was a new economic boom. It was especially
ounder the rule of Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer (from 1917) that the city
gained greater and greater importance, before the Second World War
caused horrific damage : 95 % of the old city centre was destroyed, the
number of inhabitants fell from 800.000 to a mere 40.000. However, the
reconstruction of the city was done in a imimitable way in the Fifties
and Sixties, restoring even the Romanesque churches. Present-day Cologne
is one of the most important traffic centres of Europe.
