Augsburg is an independent city in the south-west of Bavaria. The College town is home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and also of the Bezirk Schwaben and the Landkreis Augsburg. In 1906 Augsburg became a Großstadt (city), and is currently the third-largest city in Bavaria with more than 264,000 citizens. Only Munich and Nuremberg are larger.
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Augsburg is an independent city in the south-west of Bavaria. The College town is home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and also of the Bezirk Schwaben and the Landkreis Augsburg. In 1906 Augsburg became a Großstadt (city), and is currently the third-largest city in Bavaria with more than 264,000 citizens. Only Munich and Nuremberg are larger.
The name of the city dated from the Roman settlement Augusta Vindelicorum. The city was founded by the Roman emperor Augustus 15 BC as a castra. Therefore the "Fuggerstadt" is the second oldest city in Germany after Trier.
History
main: History of Augsburg
The city was founded in 15 BC in the reign of Roman emperor Augustus as a garrison called Augusta Vindelicorum. Around 120 AD Augsburg became the capital of the Roman province Raetia. It was laid to waste by the Huns in the fifth century, by Charlemagne in the eighth, and by Welf of Bavaria in the eleventh; it rose each time only to greater prosperity.
It became an Imperial Free City on March 9, 1276. Given its strategic location on the trade routes to Italy, it became a major trading centre. It produced large quantities of woven goods, cloth and textiles, and was the base for the Fugger banking empire. The Fuggerei, part of the city devoted to housing for the needy citizens of Augsburg, was founded in 1516 and is still in use today.
In 1530 the Augsburg Confession was presented to the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Augsburg. Following the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, after which the rights of religious minorities in imperial cities were to be protected, a mixed Catholic–Protestant city council presided over a majority Protestant population; see Paritätische Reichsstadt . Until the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), religious peace in the city was largely maintained despite increasing confessional tensions. In 1629, Ferdinand II issued the Edict of Restitution resulting in the installation of an entirely Catholic city government that radically curtailed the rights of local Protestants. This persisted until April 1632, when the Swedish army of Gustavus Adolphus took the city without resistance. Just over two years later, the Swedish army was routed at nearby Nördlingen, and by October 1634 Catholic troops had surrounded Augsburg. The Swedish garrison refused to surrender and a disastrous siege ensued through the winter of 1634–5, during which thousands died of hunger and disease.
These difficulties, together with the discovery of America, and of the route to India by the Cape, conspired to destroy the town's prosperity. In 1806, when the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, Augsburg lost its independence to become part of the kingdom of Bavaria. It increased considerably in industrial importance in the 19th century. It contained large cotton and woollen mills, machine shops, and manufacturers of acetylene gas, paper, chemicals, jewellery, and leather. Out of one acetylene gas plant the company KUKA was founded (1898) as Keller und Knappich Augsburg, today one of the leading companies for industrial robots. Also it gave birth to the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg (Later to merge with Maschinenfabrik Nürnberg and become Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg or MAN AG)—a machine factory where Rudolf Diesel pioneered commercial production of his Diesel engine.
