Regensburg

• 1. Introduction

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  Regensburg is a city in eastern Bavaria, where the Danube reaches its northernmost bend and takes in the rivers Naab and Regen. English speakers once called it Ratisbon. More than 150,000 people live there today, making it the fourth-largest city in the State of Bavaria, behind only Munich, Nuremberg and Augsburg. In 2006, UNESCO named its medieval centre a World Heritage Site, citing the best-preserved old town of its kind north of the Alps. That recognition rests on centuries when Regensburg served as the region's political, economic and cultural centre, from its days as a Roman river fort onward. What did a frontier garrison need to become a seat of the Holy Roman Empire? Why did one town end up governed as five separate states at once? And what happened, more than once, to a community that had called Regensburg home for centuries, when protection suddenly disappeared?

• 2. A Fortress on the Danube

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  The oldest Celtic name recorded for a settlement near Regensburg was Radasbona, tied to a site where a Roman fort was raised around AD 90. In 179, during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a far larger fort called Castra Regina, meaning fortress by the river Regen, replaced it. It housed the Legio III Italica at the most northerly point the Danube reaches. That fort's footprint still defines Regensburg's Old City, sitting east of the Obere and Untere Bachgasse and west of the Schwanenplatz.

  Historians believe Regensburg was already the seat of a bishop as early as the late Roman period, before any formal diocese existed. That religious foothold would outlast the legion stationed there. Sections of the old Roman wall still stand in the Old City today, including a gate called the Porta Praetoria.

• 3. Capital of an Empire

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  From the early 6th century, the Agilolfing dynasty ruled from Regensburg. The city served as Bavaria's capital from about 530 until the first half of the 13th century. Saint Boniface re-established the Bishopric of Regensburg in 739. Late in the eighth century, under Charlemagne, the city hosted the ecclesiastical wing of his General Assembly in 792. There, bishops in council condemned the Spanish doctrine of adoptionism, taught by Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgell.

  After the Carolingian Empire split in 843, Regensburg became the seat of the Eastern Frankish ruler Louis the German. Two years later, fourteen Bohemian princes travelled to the city to be baptised, launching the Christianization of the Czechs. The diocese of Regensburg subsequently became the mother diocese of Prague, tying Czech lands to Rome rather than the Slavic Orthodox world. On the 8th of December 899, Arnulf of Carinthia, a descendant of Charlemagne, died in Regensburg.

  By the year 1000, Regensburg's population had grown to 40,000, up from 23,000 around 800. Between 1135 and 1146, workers built the Stone Bridge across the Danube, opening new trade routes to northern Europe and Venice. Wealthy trading families flocked to the city, prized for its gold work and fine fabrics. In 1245, Regensburg became a Free Imperial City and a trading hub, a status it held before trade routes later shifted eastward. In 1471, the city hosted talks that decided a war against the Turks. Its independence briefly lapsed in 1486, when it became part of the Duchy of Bavaria, before the Holy Roman Emperor restored self-rule a decade later. That habit of hosting decisive meetings, already visible in 1471 during talks over war with the Turks, would soon take a far more permanent form.

• 4. A City of Five States

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  In 1541, city leaders convened the first Diet of Regensburg. The city adopted the Protestant Reformation the following year, and its Town Council stayed entirely Lutheran from then on. A Catholic minority remained, though these residents were denied civic rights known as Bürgerrecht.

  From 1663 to 1806, Regensburg permanently hosted the Imperial Diet, an arrangement that became known as the Perpetual Diet of Regensburg. Three abbeys, St. Emmeram, Niedermünster and Obermünster, held free imperial estate status, each with its own seat and vote in the Reichstag. Together with the Protestant city and the Catholic bishopric, they made the town a patchwork of five independent states inside one set of walls. Regensburg also served as the traditional capital of the Bavarian region. It functioned as a second capital of the Empire, behind only the Emperor's court in Vienna. The Emperor's Commissary-Principal to the Diet lived there too, a role held for many years by the Prince of Thurn and Taxis.

  In 1803, Regensburg lost its status as an imperial city, absorbed into the newly formed Principality of Regensburg. Archchancellor Carl von Dalberg, the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz, received the city as compensation. He had lost Mainz territory on the Rhine's left bank, annexed by France under the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. Dalberg merged the bishopric, the monasteries and the town into a single principality. He moved quickly to modernise public life, granting equal rights to Protestants and Catholics alike.

  Between the 19th and the 23rd of April 1809, Napoleon's forces fought retreating Austrian troops for control of Regensburg. Henri Gatien Bertrand commanded on the French side in what became known as the Battle of Ratisbon. About 150 houses burned before the city fell, once its defenders ran out of supplies and ammunition. Robert Browning later dramatised the clash from the French side in his poem Incident at the French Camp, though it contains numerous historical errors.

  In 1810, Dalberg ceded Regensburg to the Kingdom of Bavaria. He was compensated with the territories of Fulda and Hanau and the title Grand Duke of Frankfurt. The Adler-Apotheke, a pharmacy near Regensburg Cathedral founded in 1610, had already stood for two centuries by the time Dalberg's principality rose and fell.

• 5. The Jewish Community's Long Ordeal

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  In 1096, crusaders passed through Regensburg on their way to the First Crusade. A mob led by Peter the Hermit tried to force local Jews to convert, and those who refused were killed.

  Emperor Maximilian I had long protected the city's Jews. After his death in 1519, the local council and guilds moved to expel Regensburg's medieval Jewish community. It was one of the largest and most significant such communities in southern Germany. Officials cited economic grievances and long-standing religious hostility. About 500 Jews were forced out, their property confiscated. Their centuries-old synagogue and much of the Jewish quarter were demolished. The medieval Jewish cemetery, among the oldest in the region, was destroyed too, its gravestones broken, removed, or built into other structures around the city. Jewish life in Regensburg would not resume for centuries, until early modern resettlement allowed a return.

  The Nazi Party took power in Germany in 1933, and persecution soon followed. Many of Regensburg's Jews fled in the years after, and some were expelled to Poland. A Polish-German agreement later allowed those exiles to return to the city. On the 9th of November 1938, during Kristallnacht, the Regensburg Synagogue and several Jewish homes and stores were destroyed. Around 220 Jews were arrested that night, and some were sent to the Dachau concentration camp. In 1942, over 200 more Jews were deported, either to Piaski in German-occupied Poland or to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in occupied Czechoslovakia.

  In the final months of the war, between March and April 1945, a subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp operated in Regensburg. It held 460 forced labourers of various nationalities, 40 of whom died there. Stolpersteine, small stumbling stones set into the pavement, now honor the Jews deported during the Nazi era, scattered throughout the city's streets.

• 6. War Damage and Preservation

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  Regensburg was home to a Messerschmitt Bf 109 aircraft factory and an oil refinery, both prime targets for Allied bombers. On the 17th of August 1943, the city was struck during the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission. Bombers returned on the 5th of February 1945, during the Oil Campaign of World War II. Both facilities suffered severe damage, yet the wider city came through the Allied bombing campaign with only minor harm, leaving its medieval centre nearly intact.

  The city's most significant cultural loss was the Romanesque church of Obermünster. It was destroyed in an air raid in March 1945 and never rebuilt, though its belfry survived. Slow economic recovery after the war meant Regensburg's historic buildings were not demolished to make way for new construction. By the time a wider wave of restoration reached the city in the late 1960s, public opinion had shifted firmly toward preserving its heritage. That belfry is what remains of a church first built in the Romanesque style in 1010, nearly a millennium before the bombs fell.

• 7. Refugees and New Industry

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  Between 1945 and 1949, Regensburg held the largest displaced persons camp in Germany. At its peak, in 1946 and 1947, the Ganghofersiedlung district housed almost 5,000 Ukrainian refugees and 1,000 refugees of other nationalities. With approval from the U.S. Military Government, Regensburg and other camps ran their own postal service. Regensburg's version began operating on the 11th of December 1946.

  At the start of the 1960s, Regensburg invested heavily in technical and social infrastructure to attract new industry. Siemens became the first multinational company to set up in the city, a significant step in its post-war development. The University of Regensburg opened in 1965, followed by the Regensburg University of Applied Sciences in 1971. BMW arrived in 1986 as the second multinational, building a large production plant. Since the 1990s, high-tech firms including Infineon and OSRAM have added to the city's wealth.

  In 1997, Regensburg received the Europe Prize for its work advancing European integration. In July 2006, the World Heritage Committee added Regensburg's Old Town to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Decades later, Amazon.com would choose Regensburg for its first customer service centre in Germany. It was a small sign of how far the postwar rebuilding had carried the city.

• 8. Traditions and Notable Names

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  The Regensburger Domspatzen, the cathedral choir at St Peter's Cathedral, specializes in liturgical music but has toured internationally across a wide repertoire. Since 2003, the Regensburger Schlossfestspiele has filled the inner courtyard of St. Emmeram's Abbey every July. The former princely house of Thurn und Taxis sponsors it. The festival has drawn performers including Elton John, David Garrett, Tom Jones and Plácido Domingo. Each summer, more than a hundred bands and soloists perform during the Bavarian Jazz weekend in the Old Town. In 2015, the city opened a House of Music for local musicians and their training.

  Regensburg sits within the Bavarian dialect area, speaking a variation called Central Bavarian. The first dictionary of any German dialect, Johann Ludwig Prasch's Glossarium Bavaricum, was published in the city in 1689 and recorded 500 local words. The city's Bauerntheater, a folk theater performing in Bavarian, has staged plays there for more than 90 years. Joseph Berlinger's play Mei Fähr Lady premiered in 2011. It has since been performed more than 300 times at the Turmtheater. The role of the dialect professor is played by Ludwig Zehetner, a real professor emeritus of Bavarian dialectology at the University of Regensburg.

  Among Regensburg's own, the astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler, who lived from 1571 to 1630, is remembered in the city's Kepler Memorial House. Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and humanitarian who lived from 1908 to 1974, later emigrated to Argentina after the Second World War. Pope Benedict XVI, who lived from 1927 to 2022, taught theology at the University of Regensburg from 1969 to 1977. He kept the title of honorary professor afterward and was made an honorary citizen of the city in 2006.

  More recently, Kenan Yıldız was born in Regensburg in 2005. He went on to become the youngest-ever goalscorer for Juventus in the Champions League, carrying the city's name onto one of football's biggest stages.