Nuremberg

• 1. Introduction

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  Nuremberg sits at the crossroads of rivers and trade routes in the heart of Franconia, Bavaria's largest city that is not Munich. Its story stretches from a first documentary mention in 1050, when it was little more than an imperial castle on the boundary between East Francia and the Margraviate of the Nordgau, all the way to a courtroom where the 20th century put its worst crimes on trial. Between those two moments lies a city that hosted German emperors, sheltered the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, nurtured Albrecht Durer and Johann Pachelbel, became a platform for Nazi spectacle, and then had eighty percent of its medieval centre destroyed in a single hour. How did one city accumulate so much history, so much glory, and so much catastrophe? And how does it carry all of that forward today?

• 2. Empire's Favourite City

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  Emperor Frederick II granted Nuremberg its Grossen Freiheitsbrief, the Great Charter of Freedom, in 1219. That document gave the city the right to mint coins, set its own customs policy, and enjoy direct subordination to the emperor rather than to local lords. It was a turning point. Nuremberg soon became, alongside Augsburg, one of two great trade centres on the route linking Italy to northern Europe.

  The city and its castle became one of the most frequent sites of the Imperial Diet, the assembly of the empire's princes and estates. The Diets of Nuremberg ran from 1211 to 1543, and the city functioned as a kind of unofficial capital during those centuries, with imperial administration cycling through its gates. Charles IV's Golden Bull of 1356 made this standing official by naming Nuremberg as the city where newly elected German kings must hold their first Imperial Diet.

  Charles IV also served as the patron of the Frauenkirche, built between 1352 and 1362, where the Imperial court worshipped during its Nuremberg stays. The architect was likely Peter Parler. In 1423 the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg granted a further honour: the Imperial regalia, the physical symbols of empire, would be kept permanently in Nuremberg. They remained there until 1796, when the advance of French troops forced their removal first to Regensburg and then to Vienna.

  The relationship between the city and the empire was not without tension. Burgraves appointed by the emperor clashed repeatedly with the city's own castellans and merchant classes. That conflict finally erupted into open enmity in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. After fire destroyed the castle in 1420 during a feud between Frederick IV, Margrave of Brandenburg from 1417, and the duke of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, the city bought the ruins and the adjoining forest in 1427, achieving total sovereignty within its borders.

• 3. Renaissance Heart

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  Albrecht Durer was born in Nuremberg, and in 1515 he created woodcuts of the first printed maps of the northern and southern star hemispheres. Those charts had been ordered by Johannes Stabius. Around the same year Durer published the Stabiussche Weltkarte, described as the first perspective drawing of the terrestrial globe.

  The city's printer Anton Koberger opened what the sources describe as Europe's first print shop in Nuremberg in 1470. In 1493 he published the Nuremberg Chronicles, also known as the Schedelsche Weltchronik or World Chronicles, an illustrated history from the creation to his own day. Hartmann Schedel wrote the text in the local Franconian dialect; illustrations came from Michael Wohlgemuth, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and the young Albrecht Durer.

  Astronomy had a home here too. In 1471 Johannes Mueller of Koenigsberg in Bavaria, who would later be called Regiomontanus, built an astronomical observatory in the city and published important celestial charts. Navigator and geographer Martin Behaim made the first world globe. Pocket watches, known as Nuremberg eggs, were produced in the 16th century by Peter Henlein.

  Sculptors Veit Stoss, Adam Kraft, and Peter Vischer all worked here. The guilds of the Meistersingers, composed of prosperous artisans, also flourished. Hans Sachs was their most famous member, and Richard Wagner later made him the hero of his opera Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel was born in the city and served as organist of St. Sebaldus Church. The academy of fine arts now in Nuremberg is identified as the oldest art academy in central Europe, with roughly 350 years of artistic education behind it.

• 4. Violence Against the Jews

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  In 1298 the Jews of Nuremberg were accused of host desecration. The massacre that followed killed 698 of them, one episode in the broader series of Rintfleisch killings. The source notes that behind the killing was also a desire to unite the city's northern and southern halves, which the Pegnitz river divided, by eliminating the Jewish quarter that stood between them.

  In 1349 the Jewish community suffered another pogrom. They were burned at the stake or expelled, and a marketplace was built over the land where their quarter had stood. Jews across German lands faced mass violence during the plague pandemic of the mid-14th century, and Nuremberg was not spared.

  Six centuries later, the same pattern of targeting and erasure returned with murderous efficiency. The Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher served as Gauleiter of Franconia and publisher of Der Sturmer, using Nuremberg as his base. The Nazi Oberbuergermeister Willy Liebel ordered the Grand Synagogue demolished around the time of the Party rally in September 1938, judging its Moorish revival architecture incompatible with the medieval image he was constructing for the city.

  During Kristallnacht on the 10th of November 1938, the two remaining synagogues and numerous Jewish-owned shops were burned. Of the 91 Jews killed across Germany in Kristallnacht, 26 died in Nuremberg, including ten by suicide. Between 2,000 and 3,000 of the city's Jews fled the country. By 1941 only about 1,800 remained; over 1,600 of those were rounded up and transported to extermination camps. At the war's end in 1945, no Jews remained in Nuremberg. Today Stolpersteine, small commemorative stones, are installed in the streets to mark where those who were persecuted had lived.

• 5. Rallies, Ruin, Reckoning

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  The Nazi Party chose Nuremberg for its giant annual conventions because of the city's deep association with the Holy Roman Empire and its position at Germany's centre. The rallies were held in 1927 and 1929, then every year from 1933 through 1938. Albert Speer designed the vast buildings and gathering areas of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds, some of which were never finished.

  The 1934 rally was filmed by Leni Riefenstahl and released as Triumph des Willens. At the 1935 rally, Hitler ordered the Reichstag to convene in Nuremberg specifically to pass the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped German Jews and other non-Aryans of their citizenship.

  On the 2nd of January 1945, the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Forces systematically bombed the medieval city centre, destroying roughly eighty percent of it in about one hour. Around 1,800 residents were killed and approximately 100,000 displaced. Further attacks followed in February 1945, and in total an estimated 6,000 Nuremberg residents died in air raids. Ground fighting lasted from the 17th to the 20th of April 1945, when the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, 42nd Infantry Division, and 45th Infantry Division fought house to house against determined German resistance.

  The choice of Nuremberg for the postwar trials was deliberate. The Palace of Justice was spacious and largely undamaged; its courtroom could be expanded by removing a wall. The city had been where the rallies were staged and where the citizenship laws were enacted, making it symbolically fitting as the place of accountability. The Soviet Union had wanted the trials in Berlin, but Nuremberg was chosen, with Berlin designated as the permanent seat of the International Military Tribunal for any future proceedings. Due to the Cold War, those subsequent trials never happened. Many prominent Nazi politicians and military leaders were executed in Nuremberg in October 1946. In 1995 the city established the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award, given every two years to individuals or groups defending human rights worldwide.

• 6. City Rebuilt and Remembered

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  Despite the near-total destruction of 1945, Nuremberg was rebuilt and to a significant degree restored to its pre-war appearance. The organisation known as Old Town Friends Nuremberg carried out much of this conservation work. Today twenty-five percent of the city's buildings date to before World War II, and the old town is a declared protected area; the northeastern half of the old Imperial Free City had to be largely reconstructed.

  The Heilig-Geist-Spital, the Hospital of the Holy Spirit founded in 1332 and one of the largest hospitals of the medieval era, still stands on the bank of the Pegnitz in the city centre. The Gothic Schoner Brunnen fountain on the Hauptmarkt was erected around 1385; the original is now kept in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, replaced in the square by a replica. The Lorenzkirche, whose main body was built around 1270-1350, still dominates the southern part of the walled city.

  Nuremberg holds the world's oldest globe, built in 1492 and on display among the city's 54 museums. The Nuremberg International Toy Fair, held at the city's Messe Nurnberg exhibition centre, is the largest toy fair in the world. The Christkindlesmarkt, the annual Christmas market, draws well over a million visitors each year. In 2017 the city recorded 3.3 million overnight stays, a record at that time.

  Transport technology has also given the city a series of firsts. The Bavarian Ludwig Railway connecting Nuremberg to nearby Furth opened in 1835 as the first steam-hauled railway in Germany. Since 2008, the U2 and U3 subway lines have operated without drivers, the first such driverless system in Germany. Nuremberg was also the first subway system worldwide in which driver-operated and computer-controlled trains shared the same tracks.