Colmar

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Colmar
Colmar coat of arms
Colmar (France)
Colmar
region Grand Est
Department Haut-Rhin ( Prefecture )
Arrondissement Colmar-Ribeauvillé
Canton Colmar-1 , Colmar-2
Community association Colmar agglomeration
Coordinates 48 ° 5 '  N , 7 ° 21'  E Coordinates: 48 ° 5 '  N , 7 ° 21'  E
height 175-214 m
surface 66.57 km 2
Residents 69,105 (January 1, 2017)
Population density 1,038 inhabitants / km 2
Post Code 68000
INSEE code 68066
Website http://www.ville-colmar.fr

Old town
La Petite Venise

Colmar ( Alsatian Colmer [kolmər] , German also Kolmar ) is the third largest city in Alsace after Strasbourg and Mulhouse and the capital of the Haut-Rhin department in the Grand Est region . As of January 1, 2017, Colmar had 69,105 inhabitants in the city and 120,367 in the metropolitan area.

Colmar is located on the Alsace Wine Route and likes to call itself the capital of Alsatian wines . The city is famous for its well-preserved architectural heritage spanning six centuries and for its museums, including the Unterlinden Museum with the Isenheim Altarpiece . Colmar is the birthplace of famous artists such as Martin Schongauer , Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi , Ernst Stadler and Jean-Jacques Waltz .

The city was first documented in 823. In 1226 it was made an imperial city by Emperor Friedrich II . In 1575 the Reformation was able to make a partial entrance. In the Peace of Nijmegen in 1679, Colmar became part of France and has shared the history of Alsace ever since.

geography

Colmar is located on the western edge of the Upper Rhine Plain, about halfway between Basel (60 km away) and Strasbourg (65 km away). In the southeast, the place is traversed in a right curve by the Leek , which flows into the Ill not far to the east . The old town has been irrigated since the 18th century by the Canal du Logelbach, which at Turckheim drains water from the fencing to Colmar.

politics

The city is the seat of the prefecture of the Haut-Rhin department and also the seat of the highest Alsatian court ( Cour d'appel de Colmar , Colmar Higher Regional Court from 1871 to 1918 ). The prefecture also administers the Colmar-Ribeauvillé arrondissement . Colmar is the capital (French: chef-lieu) of the cantons of Colmar-1 and Colmar-2 and the seat of the Colmar Agglomération municipal association .

coat of arms

Blazon : "Split of red and green, topped with a left-slanted golden mace with a five-pointed star."

history

Event history

Schwendi Fountain by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi , built in 1898 in honor of Lazarus von Schwendi

Colmar (Middle Latin: Columbaria ) was first mentioned in a document in 823 as a royal estate under the name Columbarium (Fiscum), "pigeon house", also Columbarium . At the beginning of the 13th century - probably after 1214 - the place Colmar was surrounded by a curtain wall at the instigation of the bailiff Albinus Wölfel (or Wölfelin), which was completed in 1220. In 1226 Colmar was elevated to a city by a document from the Roman-German Emperor Friedrich II and became a free imperial city .

The city council passed power to the professional corporations in 1360. In the 14th century Colmar joined the League of Ten Cities . Since 1564 there was a well-known Mastersinger School in Colmar, as in other cities on the Upper Rhine . In 1548 Josel von Rosheim led a lawsuit for the Jews of the city of Colmar before the Reich Chamber of Commerce because, in his opinion, the city's ban on the market for them was inadmissible.

On May 15, 1575, the first Lutheran service was held in the Franciscan church in Colmar (today Église Protestante Saint-Matthieu ) . Despite the geographical proximity to important centers of the Protestant movement such as Strasbourg , Basel and Schlettstadt , the Colmar Protestants were only able to get their liturgical customs approved by the city administration after half a century of tough struggle.

During the Thirty Years' War, Colmar was besieged and captured by Swedish troops in 1632.

Troops of the French King Louis XIV occupied Colmar in 1673. With the Peace of Nijmegen in 1679, Colmar was added to France and the seat of the “All-Powerful Council of the Province of Alsace”. In 1791 Colmar became the administrative seat of the Haut-Rhin department. In the 19th century Colmar had an efficient textile industry .

After the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71) Colmar became part of the newly formed realm of Alsace-Lorraine in the German Empire, the city became the capital of the Upper Alsace district and the seat of its own higher regional court . In 1902, the city began operating the tram , which was shut down in 1960.

After the end of the First World War , Colmar was again part of France 1918-1919, together with the rest of Alsace. In the following period, the city, home and main place of activity of the anti-German draftsman Hansi , was the venue for two confrontations in the context of the difficult reintegration of Alsace into centralized and assimilatory France . On August 22, 1926, French nationalists attacked an assembly of Alsatian autonomists authorized by the prefecture, known as the Bloody Sunday of Colmar , during which gendarmes supported the attackers and arrested the autonomists. In 1928, the city was the scene of the Colmar plot , a politically determined procedure against some "homeland lawyers" and "native speakers" (including Karl Roos , Joseph Rossé , Eugène Ricklin , Robert Ernst ), which partly resulted from the gradual achievement of regional self-determination from the German Tried to keep time (1911), fought partly for reintegration into the empire and were regarded by France as separatists.

In World War II, Colmar was established in 1940 after the defeat of France as part of the Reichsgau Baden-Alsace de facto the Greater German Reich connected. From 1942 the men from Colmar were drafted into the Wehrmacht . On February 2, 1945, the city was liberated by the Western Allies after fierce fighting in the Kesselschlacht von Kolmar (Poche de Colmar), the last great battle of the Second World War on French territory, and has since been part of France again.

With the establishment of the Foire aux vins wine fair and the Festival international de Colmar music festival, Colmar received two of the most internationally famous annual events in Alsace in 1947 and 1980 respectively.

Colmar has been ruled by mayors from the conservative camp without interruption since 1947. 1945–1947 Edouard Richard had taken over from the social democratic SFIO again the post he had already 1935–1940. His successors, Joseph Rey ( MRP , 1947–1977), Edmond Gerrer ( UDF , 1977–1995) and Gilbert Meyer ( UMP , since 1995), all belonged to Christian-democratic parties.

Demographics

Number of residents according to the year
year 1793 1821 1841 1861 1875 1890 1910 1931 1946 1962 1968 1975 1982 1990 1999 2007 2017
Residents 13,000 14,300 19,908 22,629 23,990 30,399 43,808 46,518 46.124 52,355 59,550 64,771 62,483 63,498 65,118 66,560 69.105
Sources: Cassini and INSEE
Population figures while belonging to the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine (1871–1918)
year population Remarks
1872 23,669
1875 23,990
1880 26,106
1885 26,537
1890 30,399
1900 36,844 with the garrison (an infantry regiment No. 171, a hunter battalion No. 84, a machine gun division No. 14, a dragoon regiment No. 14, an squadron hunters on horseback No. 14), of which 10,861 are Protestants, 1204 Jews
1905 41,791
1910 43,808

Kolmar song manuscript

The Kolmar song manuscript contains around 950 song texts on 107 melodies by various artists of the song poetry and master song . It was probably made around 1460 in Mainz or Speyer; In 1546 Jörg Wickram acquired the Codex in Schlettstadt and in the same year founded a Meistersingergesellschaft in Colmar. The manuscript disappeared in the turmoil of a civil war, was briefly found again in 1789, but was considered lost again until it was found in a Basel bookshop in 1857 and acquired by the Royal Court and State Library in Munich in the same year . There it is kept under the seal Cgm-4997.

Culture and sights

Churches and chapels

The Colmar Minster
  • Martinsmünster Colmar
The main church of the city is the Gothic Martinsmünster with its 71 meter high tower.
→ Main article: Martinsmünster Colmar
  • Dominican Church
The Dominican Church, which was built in the 13th century, houses the painting Madonna im Rosenhag by Martin Schongauer from 1473, as well as the largest preserved collection of medieval leaded glass windows in the city (14th century) in the choir.
→ Main article: Dominican Church of Colmar
→ Main article: The Schongauer Madonna
  • Franciscan Church
The also generously dimensioned former Franciscan church, today's Protestant church Saint-Matthieu , has inside a rood screen rare for the Upper Rhine , a painted wooden flat ceiling, an organ by Andreas Silbermann and windows by Peter Hemmel von Andlau .

Buildings

In Colmar there are numerous important town houses from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which the old town has retained its character over the centuries.

The Koïfhus , which was built in 1480 and expanded in the 16th century , was Alsatian for department store (French Ancienne Douane ) and housed the former customs post . The goods were stored on the ground floor and the delegates of the Ten City Association gathered in the room above on the first floor . The north wing is an extension from the 16th century. Jean Rapp , later General Napoleon , was born in the house on the left in 1771 .

Magnificent examples are also the Pfisterhaus ( Maison Pfister ) , built in 1537 for a wealthy hat maker, and the Renaissance-style house ( Maison des Têtes ) from 1609, the facade of which is decorated with more than 100 heads. Today owned by the wine cooperative, it houses u. a. a restaurant.

Other buildings from this period include the former guard ( Ancien Corps de garde ) and the House of the Knights of the Order of St. John ( Maison des Chevaliers de St. Jean ), both of which were designed in a style inspired by the Italian Renaissance. The former guild room of the farmers ( Poêle des Laboreurs ) from 1626 already bears the first features of baroque architecture.

Significant buildings of classicism are the court building ( Tribunal ) in the Grand Rue (not to be confused with the representative Wilhelminian Higher Regional Court Cour d'Appel in the Avenue Poincaré ) and the former hospital ( Ancien Hôpital ).

Another attraction is the Krutenau district on the Lauch river , Alsatian for “herb meadow”, which is called Petite Venise (“Little Venice”) in French , which is home to beautiful houses and bridges. The quarter borders on the former tanners' quarter ( Quartier des Tanneurs ), which has an equally uniform, albeit simpler, image than the city center.

In the vicinity of the Krutenau lies the fisherman's shore ( Quai de la Poissonnerie ), which is one of the most photographed subjects in the city.

  • The leek in Colmar

  • Surroundings of the Église Saint-Matthieu

  • Petite rue des Tanneurs

  • Saint Joseph Church

  • Maison Pfister

  • Koïfhus

  • Maison des têtes

  • Quai de la Poissonnerie

  • Musée d'Unterlinden

  • The station

  • 12 m high copy of the Statue of Liberty in Colmar

  • The market hall on the Leek

  • Market hall, interior view

  • In downtown

  • Street by the Ancien Couvent des Catherinettes

  • Street view: Rue Kleber

Replicas in Malaysia

The Bukit Tinggi Resort Colmar Tropicale Bentong is a copy of the old town of Colmar in Malaysia , an hour or 60 kilometers northeast of Kuala Lumpur , 3 ° 24 '2.8 "  N , 101 ° 50' 21"  O . A piece of north of it is available in Berjaya Hills a replica of the Hohkönigsburg in which a bio-luxury hotel is operated, 3 ° 24 '15 "  N , 101 ° 50' 21"  O .

Museums

“Isenheim Altarpiece” in the Unterlinden Museum
  • The Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald from the beginning of the 16th century is located in the Unterlinden Museum . Works by Martin Schongauer , Lucas Cranach the Elder and Hans Holbein the Elder are also exhibited here. Medieval art, handicrafts, archaeological finds from the area and works from ancient Egypt and Greece are also on display. The fund of modern and contemporary art was only displayed irregularly due to a lack of space, so the museum was expanded to include the adjacent former swimming pool with a new building by Herzog & de Meuron . This museum is the most visited museum in France outside of Paris.
  • In the birth house of the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi there is a museum dedicated to him. This also houses a section on the history of the Colmar Jewish community .
  • Since 1859 the city has also had a natural and ethnographic museum (Musée d'histoire naturelle et d'ethnographie)
  • Since 1993 Colmar has also housed an extensive toy museum (Musée du jouet)
  • The city's former waterworks, built in 1884, now houses the “Museum of Urban Factories” (Musée des usines municipales), a collection of industrial and technical exhibits
  • The Colmar municipal library (Bibliothèque municipale de Colmar) has one of the most extensive collections of incumbents in France , with over 2,300 different volumes. This number is exceptional for a city that is not the headquarters of a major university and is explained by the expropriations of monasteries and abbeys in the area during the French Revolution and the resulting donations to the city administration. As of 2018, construction work is in progress for a new museum, where this collection will be made available to the public from November 2019.

Sports

The city's largest and nationally best-known sports club is Sports Réunis , founded in 1920 , which was represented in football in both the top French league and the top German league at the time. The SRC first team plays its home games at the Colmar Stadium .

music

Every summer since 1980, the Colmar International Festival of Classical Music (Festival international de musique classique de Colmar) takes place. The first artistic director was the German conductor Karl Münchinger from 1980–1989 . Since 1989 the festival has been under the artistic direction of the Russian violinist and conductor Vladimir Spiwakow .

From 1837 to 1854 the German musician Martin Vogt was choirmaster and organist in the Martinsmünster . According to concert organist Gerd Hofstadt, Vogt was the most published composer of church music in Alsace and northern Switzerland .

Economy and Infrastructure

Liebherr crawler excavator plant in Colmar

Colmar is the European or French headquarters of several major companies such as B. the US company Timken and the companies Liebherr and Leitz . Tourism is another important source of income for the city. Colmar is located on the edge of the Ballons des Vosges Regional Nature Park , with which the city is associated. In the north of the urban area, around 200 hectares are planted with vines.

The city is connected to air traffic through Colmar Airport . In addition, the Colmar-Meyenheim military airfield existed 20 kilometers south of the city until 2010 .

Colmar is an important hub on the Strasbourg – Basel railway line , as the line to Metzeral and the line to Neuf-Brisach begin here.

education

Colmar shares the University of Upper Alsace (Université de Haute-Alsace) with the neighboring, larger Mulhouse. Of the total of around 8,000 students at the UHA, around 1,500 are trained at the Institut universitaire de technologie (IUT) in Colmar, at the Colmar branch of the Faculté des Sciences et Techniques and at the Unité de Formation et de Recherche Pluridisciplinaire d'Enseignement Professionnalisé Supérieur ( UFR PEPS).

Town twinning

Colmar is part of a group of four cities that have been linked by a partnership since 1962. The other three are:

Colmar also maintains other partnerships

Personalities

sons and daughters of the town

Martin Schongauer , carved in stone by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi

Have worked in Colmar

literature

Older representations (selection)

  • Annals and Chronicles of Kolmar - Based on the edition of the Monumenta Germaniae (translated from Latin by H. Pabst). Berlin 1867 ( e-copy ).
  • Heinrich Marc: Elsasser life - Colmar. In: The border messengers. Edited by Ignaz Kuranda . 2nd year, 1st semester. Leipzig 1842, pp. 593-607 ( e-copy ).
  • Anton Johann Jakob Rapp: Chronicle. Description of the siege and capture of the holy imperial city of Colmar. Colmar 1857 (Siege and capture of Colmar in the Thirty Years War by Swedish troops, 1632) ( E-copy ).
  • Théodore François Xavier Hunkler, History of the City of Colmar and the Surrounding Area , Colmar 1838 ( E-Copy ).
  • Franz Lerse: History of the introduction of the Reformation in the former free imperial city of Colmar and its consequences up to 1632. From the best printed and unprinted sources . Colmar 1856 ( e-copy ).
  • Sigmund Billing: Small Chronicle of the City of Colmar. Edited by Andreas Waltz. Colmar 1891.
  • Auguste Scherlen: Colmar - village and city. Colmar 1931.

Web links

Commons : Colmar  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikivoyage: Colmar  - travel guide
Wikisource: Colmar  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Commune: Colmar (68066) ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , recensement.insee.fr @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.recensement.insee.fr
  2. ↑ Aire urbaine 1999: Colmar (067)  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , recensement.insee.fr@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.recensement.insee.fr  
  3. ^ Heinrich Gottfried Philipp Gengler : Regesta and documents on the constitutional and legal history of German cities in the Middle Ages. Erlangen 1863, pp. 615-633, online.
  4. ^ Ernst Theodor Gaupp : German city rights of the Middle Ages, with legal historical explanations . First volume: The city rights of Strasbourg, Hagenau, Molsheim, Colmar, Annweiler, Winterthur, Landshut in Bavaria, Regensburg, Nuremberg, Eger, Eisenach, Altenburg . Breslau 1851, pp. 112-122, online.
  5. ↑ “The Introduction of the Reformation” , www.ot-colmar.fr
  6. ↑ cf. however, minor battles as part of Operation Undertone continued from March 15, 1945 in northern Alsace and Lorraine
  7. ^ Complete geographic-topographical-statistical local lexicon of Alsace-Lorraine. Contains: the cities, towns, villages, castles, communities, hamlets, mines and steel works, farms, mills, ruins, mineral springs, etc. with details of the geographical location, factory, industrial and other commercial activity, the post, railway u. Telegraph stations and the like historical notes etc. Adapted from official sources by H. Rudolph. Louis Zander, Leipzig 1872, Sp. 10 ( online )
  8. ↑ a b c d e M. Rademacher: German administrative history from the unification of the empire in 1871 to the reunification in 1990. (Online material for the dissertation, Osnabrück 2006)
  9. ^ Meyer's Large Conversational Lexicon . 6th edition, Volume 11, Leipzig / Vienna 1907, p. 272 ​​( Zeno.org ).
  10. ↑ Castle double: China now has a castle hotel Neuschwanstein - WELT. Retrieved February 22, 2017 .
  11. ↑ architecture. Musée Unterlinden, accessed October 15, 2016 .
  12. ↑ Bibliothèque centrale de Colmar ( Memento of the original of July 20, 2011 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.colmar.fr
  13. ↑ Peter Schenk: A new home for ancient prints. In: www.limmattalerzeitung.ch. December 21, 2018, accessed December 23, 2018 .