Short answers, pulled from the story.
The University of Jena was founded in 1558 by Ernestine Elector John Frederick the Magnanimous. He established it after losing his previous university at Wittenberg to the Albertine branch of the Wettin family following the Schmalkaldic War. The university today enrols approximately 21,000 students.
Jena is known as a world centre of the precision optical instruments industry, built around companies including Carl Zeiss AG, Schott AG, and Jenoptik. The industrial tradition dates to the mid-nineteenth century, when Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe, and Otto Schott established their companies there. Jena glass is named after the city.
Around 1790, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Schiller, and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling were all professors at the University of Jena. The city also hosted early Romantic writers including Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, and the brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel. Goethe and Schiller met at the university in 1794.
Allied bombing raids in 1945 killed 709 people, injured around 2,000, and destroyed most of the medieval city centre. American troops occupied Jena on the 13th of April 1945 and handed the city to the Red Army on the 1st of July 1945. No other Thuringian city suffered comparable destruction except Nordhausen.
Jena has a population of about 110,000. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants. The population peaked at 108,000 in 1988 before declining after German reunification and recovering to 107,000 by 2012.
Thirty-two species of native orchids can be found in the Jena area. One of the best locations is the Leutratal nature reserve to the south of the town. The bee orchid (Ophrys apifera) grows at a few locations within the town itself.