Encyclopedia
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the
Alsace région, of which 21 are in the continental part of metropolitan France [i] ...
of northeastern
France, with approximately 650,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 1999. Located close to the border with
Germany, it is the
préfecture of the Bas-Rhin
département.
The city's Germanic name means "town of roads".
Stras- is cognate to the
English street from the German equivalence of the word,
Straße, while
-bourg from the German
-burg is cognate to the English
borough.
Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as of road, rail and river communications.
Strasbourg is the seat of the
Council of Europe, of the
European Court of Human Rights and of the
European Parliament, though the latter also holds some sessions in
Brussels.
Strasbourg served as the host city for the start and Stage 1 of the
2006 Tour de France.
Geography
Strasbourg is situated on the
Ill River, where it flows into the
Rhine on the frontier with
Germany. The German town across the Rhine is Kehl.
History
At the site of Strasbourg, the
Romans established a military outpost and named it
Argentoratum. It belonged to the
Germania Superior Roman province. From the
4th century, Strasbourg was the seat of the
Archbishopric Strasbourg.
The
Alamanni fought a battle against Rome in Strasbourg in 357. They were defeated by
Julian, later
Emperor of Rome, and their king Chonodomarius was taken prisoner. On January 2, 366 the Alamanni crossed the frozen
Rhine in large numbers, to invade the Roman Empire. Early in the
5th century the Alamanni appear to have crossed the Rhine, conquered, and then settled what is today Alsace and a large part of
Switzerland.
The town was occupied successively in the 5th century by Alamanni,
Huns and
Franks, who gave it its present name. In 842, Strasbourg was the site of the
Oath of Strasbourg, the trilingual text of which is considered to contain, besides Latin and German, also the oldest written document in the
French language. A major commercial centre, the town came under control of the
Holy Roman Empire in 923, through the homage paid by the Duke of Lorraine to German King
Henry I. The early history of Strasbourg consists of a long conflict between its
bishop and its citizens. The citizens emerged victorious after the Battle of Oberhausbergen in 1262, when King
Philip of Swabia granted the city the status of an Imperial Free City.
A revolution in 1332 resulted in a broad-based city government with participation of the
guilds, and Strasbourg declared itself a free
republic. The Straßburger Münster was completed in 1439, and became the
World's Tallest Building, surpassing the
Great Pyramid of Giza. During the 1520s the city embraced the religious teachings of
Martin Luther, whose adherents established a
university in the following century. Strasbourg was a centre of humanist scholarship and early bookprinting in the Holy Roman Empire and its intellectual and political influence contributed much to the establishment of Protestantism as an accepted denomination in the southwest of Germany. Together with four other free cities, Strasbourg presented the confessio tetrapolitana as her Protestant book of faith at the Imperial Diet of
Augsburg in 1530, where also the slightly different Augsburg confession was handed over to the emperor.
After the reform of the Imperial constitution in the early 16th century and the establishment of "Imperial Circles" , Strasbourg was part of the "Upper Rhenish Circle", a corporation of Imperial estates in the southwest of the empire, mainly responsible for maintaining troops, supervising coining, and ensuring public security.
During the
Thirty Years' War, the Free City of Strasbourg remained neutral. However, it was suddenly seized by King
Louis XIV of France in September 1681, whose unprovoked annexation was recognised by the
Treaty of Ryswick . The official policy of religious intolerance which drove many Protestants from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the Edict of Fontainebleau was not applied in Strasbourg and in Alsace. Strasbourg cathedral, however, had to be handed over from the
Lutherans to the Catholics. The German Lutheran university persisted until the
French revolution. Famous students were
Goethe and
Herder.
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle composed "
La Marseillaise" on April 25, 1792, in Strasbourg during a dinner organised by Frédéric de Dietrich, Strasbourg's mayor. However, Strasbourg's status as a free city was revoked by the French Revolution.
With the growth of industry and commerce, the city's population tripled in the
19th century to 150,000. Annexed to the newly-established
German Empire, as part of the
Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen, in 1871, following the
Franco-Prussian War , the city was restored to France after
World War I, in 1919 by the
Treaty of Versailles without a plebiscite, the outcome of which might not have been too convincing from the French point of view. This was because Strasbourg was almost exclusively German-speaking and Reichstag election results before the war revealed only a small percentage of votes for pro-French political parties. It was again effectively a part of
Germany during
World War II, from 1940 to 1944.
In 1920, Strasbourg became the seat of the
Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, previously located in
Mannheim, one of the very first European institutions. In 1949, the city was chosen to be the site of the
Council of Europe, and since 1979, Strasbourg has been a seat of the
European Parliament, although sessions are held in Strasbourg only four days each month, with all other business being conducted in Brussels. Those sessions take place in the
Immeuble Louise Weiss , built in 1998, which houses the largest parliamentary assembly room in Europe and of any democratic institution in the world. Before that, the EP sessions had to take place in the main CoE building, the
Palais de l'Europe, whose unusual inner architecture had become a familiar sight to European TV audiences.
In 1992, Strasbourg became the seat of the Franco-German TV channel and movie-production society
Arte.
In 2000, an islamist plot to blow up the cathedral was prevented by German police.
In 2006, after a long and careful restauration, the inner decoration of the
Aubette, made in the 1920s by
Hans Arp,
Theo van Doesburg and
Sophie Taeuber-Arp and destroyed in the 1930s, was made accessible to public again. The work of the three artists had been called " the
Sistine Chapel of abstract art ".
Main sights
Architecture
The city is chiefly known for its
sandstone Gothic cathedral with its famous
astronomical clock, and for its medieval cityscape of Rhineland black and white timber-framed buildings, particularly in the
Petite-France district alongside the Ill and in the streets and squares surrounding the cathedral, where the renowned
stands out.
Strasbourg's historic centre, the
Grande Île , has been classified a
World Heritage site by the
UNESCO in 1988, for the first time for a whole city centre. Besides the cathedral, Strasbourg houses several other medieval churches that have survived the many wars and destructions that have plagued the city: the
Romanesque Eglise Saint-Etienne, partly destroyed in 1944 by Anglo-American bombing raids, the part Romanesque, part Gothic, very large
Eglise Saint-Thomas [Eglise St. Thomas:, with its
Silbermann on which W. A. Mozart and Albert Schweitzer played, the Gothic
Eglise Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune protestant with its crypt dating back to the 5th century
[Eglise Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune protestant:,,
, the Gothic
Eglise Saint-Guillaume with its fine early-Renaissance stained glass etc.
[Eglise Saint-Guillaume:,.
The Neo-gothic church
Saint-Pierre-le-Vieux catholique serves as a shrine for several 15th-century
altars that had been saved from destruction and installed a century ago.
The German
Renaissance has bequeathed the city some noteworthy buildings , as did the French
Baroque and
Classicism with several palaces, among which the
Palais Rohan is the most spectacular. Others are the
Hôtel du Préfet, the
Hôtel des Deux-Ponts and the city-hall
Hôtel de Ville . As for French
Neo-classicism, it is the
opera house on Place Broglie that most prestigiously represents this style.
Strasbourg also offers high-class eclecticist buildings in its very extended German district , being the main memory of
Wilhelmian architecture since most of the major cities in Germany proper suffered intensive damages during World War II. Streets, boulevards and avenues like
Avenue de la Forêt Noire,
Avenue des Vosges,
Avenue d'Alsace,
Avenue de la Marseillaise,
Avenue de la Liberté,
Boulevard de la Victoire,
Rue Sellénick,
Rue du Général de Castelnau,
Rue du Maréchal Foch and
Rue du Maréchal Joffre are homogenous, surprisingly high and broad examples of German urban lay-out and of this architectural style that summons and mixes up five centuries of European architecture as well as Neo-Egyptian, Neo-Greek and Neo-Babylonian styles. The former imperial palace
, the most political and thus heavily criticised of all German Strasbourg buildings epitomises the grand scale and stylistical sturdiness of this period.
But the two most handsome and ornate buildings of these times are the
École internationale des Pontonniers with its towers, turrets and multiple round and square angles and the
École des Arts décoratifs with its lavishly ornate facade of painted bricks, woodwork and
majolica.
Impressive examples of prussian military architecture of the 1880s can be found along the newly opened
Rue du Rempart, displaying large scale fortifications among which the aptly named
Kriegstor .
As for modern and contemporary architecture, Strasbourg possesses some fine
Art Nouveau buildings , good examples of post-
WWII functional architecture and, in the very extended
Quartier Européen, some spectacular administrative buildings of sometimes utterly large size, among which the
European Court of Human Rights by
Richard Rogers is arguably the finest. Other noticeable contemporary buildings are the new
Music school , the Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain and the
Hôtel du Département facing it, as well as, in the outskirts, the tramway-station
Hoenheim-Nord designed by
Zaha Hadid.
Strasbourg also features a number of prominent
parks, of which at least three are of historical interest: the
Parc de l'Orangerie, created for
Joséphine de Beauharnais and displaying noteworthy French gardens, a little neo-classical castle and a small
zoo; the
Parc de la Citadelle, built around impressive remains of the fortifications erected by Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban; the
Parc de Pourtalès, laid out in English style around a
Neo-baroque castle that now houses the
Schiller International University. The
Jardin Botanique was created under the German administration next to the
Observatory of Strasbourg, built in 1881, and still owns some
greenhouses of those times. The
Parc des Contades, although the oldest park of the city, was completely remodeled after World War II. The
Jardin des deux Rives, spread over Strasbourg and Kehl on both sides of the Rhine, is the most recent and most extended park of the agglomeration.
Finally, the city is also home to some beautiful bridges, among which the medieval
Ponts Couverts with its four towers is the most spectacular. Next to it is another part of the Vauban fortifications, the
barrage Vauban. Other nice bridges are the ornate 19th-century
and
, as well as the futuristic
Passerelle over the Rhine, opened in 2004.
Museums
For its comparatively small size, Strasbourg displays a large quantity and variety of museums.
- The Musée de l'Oeuvre Notre-Dame houses a large and renowned collection of medieval and Renaissance upper-Rhenish art, among which original sculptures, plans and stained glass from the Cathedral and paintings by Hans Baldung and Sebastian Stoskopff
...
.
- The Musée d'art moderne et contemporain is among the largest museums of its kind in France.
- The Musée des Beaux-Arts owns paintings by Hans Memling, Francisco de Goya
...
,
Tintoretto,
Paolo Veronese,
Giotto di Bondone,
Sandro Botticelli,
Peter Paul Rubens,
Anthony van Dyck,
El Greco,
Correggio,
Cima da Conegliano and
Piero di Cosimo, among others.
- The Musée des Arts décoratifs, located in the sumptuous former residence of the cardinals of Rohan, the palais Rohan, displays a reputable collection of 18th century furniture and china.
- The Musée archéologique presents a vast display of regional findings from the first ages of man to the 6th century.
- The very large Musée Alsacien is dedicated to every aspects of traditional alsacian daily life.
- The is one of the oldest in France and is especially famous for its gigantic collection of birds.
- Le Vaisseau is a science and technology centre, especially designed for children.
- The Musée historique is closed until June 2007. It is dedicated to the tumultuous history of the city and displays among other things the Grüselhorn, the medieval horn that was blown every evening at 10 to order the Jews out of the city.
There are also the
Collection Tomi Ungerer, the
Musée de Sismologie et Magnétisme terrestre, the
Musée Pasteur, the
Musée d'égyptologie , the
Cabinet des estampes et des dessins and the
Musée de la Navigation sur le Rhin, also going by the name of
Naviscope.
Demography
| 1684 | 1789 | 1851 | 1871 | 1910 | 1921 | 1936 | 1946 | 1954 | 1962 | 1968 | 1975 | 1982 | 1990 | 1999 | 2004 |
|---|
| 22 000 | 49 943 | 75 565 | 85 654 | 178 891 | 166 767 | 193 119 | 175 515 | 200 921 | 228 971 | 249 396 | 253 384 | 248 712 | 252 338 | 264 115 | 273 100 |
Today, the metropolitan area of Strasbourg reaches 650,000 inhabitants and the eurodistrict 868, 000 inhabitants .
Education
Strasbourg, which was a
humanism centre, has a long history of higher-education excellence, melting French and German intellectual traditions. Although Strasbourg had been annexed by Royal France in 1683, it still remained connected to the German-speaking intellectual world throughout the 18th century and the university attracted numerous students from the
Holy Roman Empire with
Goethe,
Metternich and
Montgelas, who studied law in Strasbourg, among the most prominent. Nowadays, Strasbourg is known to offer among the best university courses in France, after Paris.
There are three
universities in Strasbourg:
- Strasbourg I - Université Louis Pasteur
- Strasbourg II - Université Marc Bloch
- Strasbourg III - Université Robert Schuman
The campus of the École nationale d'administration is located in Strasbourg . The location of the "new" ENA - which trains most of the nation's high-ranking civil servants - was meant to give a European vocation to the school.
The École supérieure des Arts décoratifs is an art school of Europe-wide reputation.
The permanent campus of the
International Space University is located in the south of Strasbourg .
Transport Systems
A modern-looking
tram system has operated in Strasbourg since 1994 by the regional transit company Compagnie des Transports Strasbourgeois. A former tram system, partly following a different route, had been operation since 1878 but was ultimately dismantled in 1960.
Two
TGV lines are planned to link Strasbourg to the European high-speed train network:
- TGV Est
- TGV Rhin-Rhône
European role
Strasbourg is:
Recently, Strasbourg has been the subject of some debate.
Cecilia Malmström, a Swedish member of the European Parliament, started an in which the monthly travel between Brussels to Strasbourg by members of the Parliament at an alleged annual cost of 200 million euros is criticised and a call to make Brussels the sole seat of the European Parliament is made.
Strasbourg also houses the
Eurocorps headquarters as well as the
Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and the Franco-German television channel,
Arte.
France and Germany are creating a Eurodistrict straddling the Rhine, combining the Greater Strasbourg and the
Ortenau district of
Baden-Württemberg, with some common administration. The combined population of this district is 868,000 .
Miscellaneous
Births
Strasbourg was the birthplace of:
...
, satirical poet and humanist
...
, painter of still lives
, painter
...
, artist
[i]
...
, conductor
, philosopher
, painter
, singer
- Arsène Wenger OBE, , football manager
- Yann Wehrling, artist and leader of the french Green Party
- Fréro , Emcee, writer & beatmaker
- Valérien Ismaël , football player
- Armando Teixeira , football player
- Salomé Haller, soprano
- Mehdi Baala, , athlete
- Paul-Henri Mathieu , tennis-player
See also
Famous residents
- Johann Gutenberg , inventor of printing with movable type
- Erasmus , humanist
- Hans Baldung , painter
- Martin Bucer , Reformation leader
- Johannes Sturm , teacher and pedagogue
- John Calvin , Reformation leader
- François-Marie de Broglie , marshall and governor of Strasbourg
- Franz Xaver Richter , composer, eminent member of the "Mannheim school".
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , writer, researcher
- King Maximilian I of Bavaria spent several years in Strasbourg
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , composer - spent 23 days there in 1778.
- Ignaz Pleyel served as Kapellmeister at the Cathedral in 1789
- Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle , composer of the Marseillaise
- Klemens Wenzel von Metternich , studied in Strasbourg from 1788 to 1790
- Georg Büchner , writer
- Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges , historian
- Louis Pasteur
...
, scientist
- Lujo Brentano , economist
- Ferdinand Braun , physicist, Nobel Prize
- Georg Simmel , sociologist
- Hans Pfitzner, composer
- Jean Jacques Waltz aka. Hansi , artist
- Albert Schweitzer , theologian, philosopher, physician and musician
- Maurice Halbwachs, sociologist
- Otto Klemperer, conductor
- Marc Bloch , historian and resistant
- Hans Rosbaud , conductor
- George Szell
...
, conductor
- Emmanuel Lévinas philosopher
- Lucie Aubrac and Raymond Aubrac , founding members of the Résistance.
- Ernest Bour , conductor
- Paul Ricoeur , philosopher
- Guy Debord , philosopher
- Sarkis , painter
- Jean-Marie Lehn , Nobel Prize for chemistry 1987
- Georges Aperghis , composer
- Bernard-Marie Koltès , playwright
- Barbara Honigmann , German writer and painter
- Ségolène Royal , leading member of the Parti Socialiste, went to school in Strasbourg.
, musician
- John Howe , artist
- Mireille Delunsch , soprano
See also
Twin towns
Strasbourg is twinned with:
Boston 
