Unit 6: Germany's urban history and present-day's urban system

(Alfred Pletsch)

Urbanized areas of Germany are in many respects a result of political and/or territorial changes over time. First towns developed under the Roman empire in the first century A.D. around military camps, where craftsmen and traders settled to provide for various needs of the soldiers. Market places (vici) or towns grew spontaneously at focal points of trade routes. A third category were the coloniae, new towns founded by an act of the state as is the case of Trier [1] and Cologne (Köln, Roman name Colonia Agrippinensis). Especially the coloniae had a checkerboard morphology pattern [2]. It consisted of two major avenues meeting at right angles at the centre of the city, where the forum and public buildings were situated. The land survey, however, did not stop at the town limits, but included also the adjacent rural areas. The result was a very geometrical layout of the land, subdivided into little blocs (called insulae = islands) on which mostly little farmsteads (villae rusticae) were established. In many cases these villae happened to be the nuclei of later villages. Cities founded by the Romans had its northerly limits at the rivers Rhine and Danube, along which they had built during the first century A.D. a fortified defence system, the famous limes germanicus, traces of which can still be seen today, such as the Saalburg [3] near Frankfurt.

With the gradual retreat of the Romans from Central Europe in the middle of the 3rd century A.D., towns declined or were even abandoned in many cases. Only a very few survived the Dark Ages, such as Trier, mainly in places where the christian church had established bishops, the Church proving remarkably viable in these times of destruction. After a gap of several hundred years (and in the northern part of Germany starting then for the first time), an urban rebirth took place with surprising speed and variety. Parallel to the political consolidation during the Frankish period, economic activities and trade intensified all over Europe. Trade routes developed or were reestablished. Along these and especially at their crossings, new towns came into being. Of even more importance were the feudal political patterns that characterized the Holy Roman Empire. Its highly fragmented territorial structure was one of the key reasons for the great number of towns that developed during that time. Most sovereigns had an interest in developing handicraft and trade within their territories, at the same time they had to protect these against aggressors from outside. Thus, medieval towns originated in several ways. Some developed along the trade routes, others were simply enlargements of rural settlements were a number of artisans and/or traders had settled, again others developed around castles or feudal fortresses [4]. In many cases the names of the towns tell us about their origin: Schleswig, Braunschweig [5] (the suffixes derive from old German wyk = road), Tübingen, Nordhausen, Hildesheim (typical suffixes of former villages), Marburg, Freiburg, Magdeburg (the suffix -burg means castle), to name only a few.

Unlike the regular patterns of their Roman ancestors, the medieval towns had mostly irregular street patterns. Essential attributes were the town wall and the marketplace. Most cities were also given charters that gave them self-governing autonomy and responsibility for their own defence. Citizens were not subject to feudal or manorial restrictions, as people in the rural settlements were. From where the medieval saying: Stadtluft macht frei (meaning: city air makes you free). Since the medieval urban pattern was so dense, not all of the towns were prosperous or even viable. Very often their population did not exceed several hundred citizens. Even if the towns survived, a great number of the people in them were nothing more than small farmers until very recent times. This situation has even generated the specific denomination of Ackerbürgerstädte (farmer-citizen-towns), unique to the German urban realm. Alsfeld in Hesse was historically a very typical example of this type. On the other end, there were urban trade fair centres, such as Leipzig, Frankfurt-am-Main, Cologne, or harbour cities such as Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck and others which were fairly large and formed the hierarchical top of the medieval urban system.

The geographic urban pattern of Germany was thus established early. Later developments did not add many new towns, though they transformed fundamentally urban morphology and functions. During the Renaissance-Baroque period (1500-1800 A.D.) some new political centres or resorts were founded, in most cases, however, already existing towns were only extended for the needs of a growing populace or for military reasons. The internal similarities of the patterns of antique cities are striking, as the examples of Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Ludwigsburg, Hanau and others show. But in general the population size of the cities should not be overestimated. Only two percent of the Germans lived in large towns by 1600.

It is only during the Industrial Revolution that the urban landscape of Germany changed rapidly, following the path of other European countries during the 19th century. The dominant function became manufacturing, the need of manpower attracted millions of people from rural to urban areas. By the turn of the 20th century, more than half of Germany's population lived in urban dwellings, second only to England at that time. A good example is the Ruhr-region. In 1825 it was still a rural area. Here Germany's heavy iron and steel industry developed on the basis of rich local coal deposits. The rapid growth produced the coalescence of urban areas and villages into a huge megalopolis within only a few decades. Berlin [6], Germany's largest city, developed rapidly once it had become the capital of the German Reich in 1871. By 1900, it already had passed the one million mark, and just prior to WWII its population had grown to 3.3 million. Between 1949 and 1989, when the city of Berlin was divided and when West Berlin was only accessible by means of three corridors crossing the GDR, it stagnated. Since unification and the decision of the German government to make it Germany's capital [7] growth has taken place again. Second largest city of today's Germany is Hamburg [8] (2.9 million), followed by Munich [9] (2.3 million).

Germany today is one of the highly urbanized countries of the Western world. According to the definition of the Federal Regional Planning Act (Bundesraumordnungsgesetz), 54 % of its population lives in urban agglomerations, another 30 % in so-called urbanized areas and only 16% in rural areas. On the other hand, only 35 % of the Germans live in central political cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. The historical heritage is right there. The great number of smaller towns, very often competing with each other economically, is still one of the characteristics of Germany's urban landscape. This traditional urban functional pattern was certainly a major impetus to develop central place theories, as the well known Walter Christaller [10] (only available in German) did in the 1930s. Ever since that time, spatial interaction patterns have changed. Today's urban system in Germany is much more characterized by polarized developments to the advantage of cities such as Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Berlin, Leipzig and some others. Detailed information on population, migration and other data for Germany's hundred biggest cities can be gathered from the National Atlas of Germany [11] (only available in German). Many of the smaller towns have preserved their medieval heritage and are for this reason well known tourist attractions, such as Nördlingen [12] or Rothenburg ob der Tauber [13] in southern Germany, two of the most famous medieval towns of Germany.

[1] http://www.trier.de/tourismus/english/sights/porta.htm
[2] http://www.markaurel.de/augustatrever.htm
[3] http://www.saalburgmuseum.de/
[4] http://www.uni-marburg.de/stadt/bilder/schloss.html
[5] http://www.braunschweig.de/english/city/history.html
[6] http://www.berlin.de/english/index.html
[7] http://www.berlin-geschichte.de/index.html
[8] http://international.hamburg.de/index/1,2709,JGdlbz0zJG9rPTE4MzM4JHVrPSQ_,00.html
[9] http://www.munich-tourist.de/
[10] http://slws1.bau-verm.uni-karlsruhe.de/module/christaller/christaller.html
[11] http://www.bbr.bund.de/veroeffentlichungen/rob2000/praesent/sld024.htm
[12] http://www.noerdlingen.de/englisch/start_sehenswertes.htm
[13] http://www.rothenburg.de/d/ISY/index.php?call=englishhome (28.08.2003)