Wolfenbüttel

Wolfenbüttel is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located on the Oker river, about 13 kilometres south of Brunswick.

History

It is not known when Wolfenbüttel was founded, but it was first mentioned in 1118 as the water castle Wulferisbutle. The first settlement was probably restricted to a tiny islet in the Oker river.

Wolfenbüttel's Schloss.

Wolfenbüttel became the residence of the dukes of Brunswick in 1432. Over the following three centuries it grew to be a centre of the arts, and personages such as Michael Praetorius, Gottfried Leibniz, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing lived there. The ducal court eventually returned to Brunswick in 1753 and Wolfenbüttel subsequently lost in importance.

The Battle of Wolfenbüttel, part of the Thirty Years' War, was fought here in June 1641, when the Swedes under Wrangel and the Count of Königsmark defeated the Austrians under Archduke Leopold of Habsburg.

Main sights

*The baroque Schloss (castle). Today part of the building is used as a school, and the former state apartments are open to the public as a museum.
*Herzog August Bibliothek (HAB), the ducal library, has one of the largest and best-known collections of ancient books in the world. It is especially rich in bibles, incunabula, and books of the Reformation period, with some 10,000 manuscripts. It was founded in 1572 and rehoused in an interpretation of the Pantheon in 1723, built facing the castle; the present library building was constructed in 1886. Leibniz and Lessing worked in this library, Lessing as librarian. The Codex Carolinus in the library is one of the few remaining texts in Gothic.

The portal above the entrance to the HAB.

The residence of Gotthold Lessing when he was librarian at the HAB.

Wolfenbüttel's former armory now houses part of the HAB.

Today Wolfenbüttel is smaller than the neighbouring cities of Brunswick, Salzgitter, and Wolfsburg, but, because it was largely undamaged by the war, is rich in half-timber buildings, many dating several centuries back, and still retains its historical character.

Culture

Wolfenbüttel is home of several departments of the University of Applied Sciences Brunswick/Wolfenbüttel and the Lessing-Akademie, an organisation for the study of Lessing's works It is also home to the Niedersächsische Staatsarchiv, the state archives of Lower Saxony.

The herb liqueur Jägermeister is also a specialty of Wolfenbüttel.

Twin cities

* - Sèvres, France
* - Kenosha, USA
* - Satu Mare, Romania
* - Kamienna Góra, Poland

A bridge in Wolfenbüttel is named after each of these cities.