Jena

For other uses, see Jena (disambiguation).

Jena
Jena Skyline
Jena
Coordinates	50°55′38″N 11°35′10″E
Administration
Country	Germany
State	Thuringia
District	Urban district
Lord Mayor	Albrecht Schröter (SPD)
Basic statistics
Area	114.30 km2 (44.13 sq mi)
Elevation	155 m  (509 ft)
Population	105,463 (31 December 2011)
- Density	923 /km2 (2,390 /sq mi)
Other information
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Licence plate	J
Postal codes	07701–07751
Area code	03641
Website	www.jena.de

Jena (German pronunciation: [ˈjeːna] ( listen)) is a university city in central Germany on the River Saale. It has a population of roughly 105,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.

History

Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document. In the 11th century it was a possession of the lords of Lobdeburg but, in the following century, it developed into an independent market town with laws and magistrates of its own. The local economy was based mainly on wine production. In 1286, the Dominicans were established in the city, followed by the Cistercians in 1301.

The margraves of Meißen imposed their authority over Jena in 1331. From 1423, it belonged to the Electorate of Saxony of the House of Wettin, which had inherited Meißen and remained under them after the division of Wettin lands in 1485.

The Protestant Reformation was brought to the city in 1523. In the following years, the Dominican and the Carmelite convents were attacked by the townsmen. In 1558, the university (now called the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena) was founded by elector John Frederick the Magnanimous.

For a short period (1672–1690), Jena was the capital of an independent dukedom (Saxe-Jena). In 1692, it was annexed to Saxe-Eisenach and, in 1741, to the Duchy (later Grand Duchy) of Saxe-Weimar, to which it belonged until 1918.

At the end of the 18th century, the university became the largest and most famous one among the German states and made Jena the centre of idealist philosophy (with professors like Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling) and of the early romanticism (with poets like Novalis, the brothers August and Friedrich Schlegel, and Ludwig Tieck). In 1794, the poets Goethe and Schiller met at the university and established a long lasting friendship.

On 14 October 1806, Napoleon fought and defeated the Prussian army here in the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. Resistance against the French occupation was strong, especially among the town students. Many of the students fought in the Lützow Free Corps in 1813. Two years later, the Urburschenschaft fraternity was founded in the city.

At the end of the 19th century, with the building of the Saal Railway (Saalbahn) along the river Saale from Halle/Leipzig to Nuremberg, Jena became a centre for precision machinery, optics and glass making, with the formation of the world famous companies Carl Zeiss Jena and Schott Jenaer Glaswerk, by Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott.

In 1945, towards the end of World War II, Jena was heavily bombed by the American and British Allies. 153 people were killed and most of the medieval town centre was destroyed (though restored after the end of the war).

Part of the State of Thuringia from its foundation in 1920 on, it was incorporated into the German Democratic Republic in 1949 and its district of Gera in 1952. Since 1990, the city of Jena has been a part of the Free State of Thuringia in the united Federal Republic of Germany.

Economy

Today, Jena is a manufacturing city, specializing in precision machinery, pharmaceuticals, optics and photographic equipment and is home to the famous Zeiss optics plant. In 1926, the world's first modern planetarium was built by the Zeiss company in the Damenviertel district of the town.

Today, the city's economy diversifies into bioinformatics, biotechnology, software and photonics. The metropolitan area of Jena is among Germany's 50 fastest growing regions, with many internationally renowned research institutes and companies, a comparatively low unemployment and a very young population structure. Jena was awarded the title "Stadt der Wissenschaft" (city of science) by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, a German science association, in 2008.

The Jen-Tower.

View over the city center of Jena

Johannisstraße, looking towards Eichplatz. Jena

Christmas Market in Jena

Main sights

• The 13th century Town Hall ("Rathaus"). It has an astronomical clock featuring the "Snatching Hans" ("Schnapphans").
• The Gothic St. Michael's Church ("Michaelskirche", 1506). It has a bronze slab of Martin Luther's tomb
• Monument to John Frederick the Magnanimous (1905–08), in the Market Square
• Numerous towers from the medieval fortifications, including the Powder Tower (13th-14th centuries)
• House of Friedrich Schiller and his Wedding Church.
• The Botanischer Garten Jena, founded in 1580, the second oldest botanical garden in Germany
• Jen-Tower, a research edifice built in GDR times. There is a restaurant and viewing platform at the 27th floor.

In the neighbourhood are the Dornburg Castles and the Kapellendorf Moated Castle.

Public transport

• The city is served by the Jena tramway network, and by an extensive network of buses, both run by the "Jenah" organization (a pun on Jena and Nahverkehr, German for public transport).
• Buses of the JES Verkehrsgesellschaft connect Jena with cities and villages in the region.
• The high-speed Intercity-Express trains from Berlin to Munich call at the Jena Paradies station, just to the east of the city centre (like all other trains on the north-south Saal Railway); trains from Erfurt and further west arrive at Jena West station, just west of the city centre (like all other trains on the east-west Weimar–Gera line).
• The nearest airports to Jena are Leipzig-Altenburg Airport and Erfurt Airport. However, international visitors normally arrive at Frankfurt, Berlin or Munich airports, from all of which there are convenient train connections to Jena.

Colleges, universities and research institutes

• The Friedrich Schiller University of Jena was founded in 1558 as the "Collegium Jenense".
• The University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule Jena) was founded in 1991.
• The Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology is an important research center and offers a Ph.D. program.
• The Max Planck Institute of Economics
• The Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
• The Institute of Photonic Technology
• The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF)
• INNOVENT - one of the biggest private research centers in Germany
• The Leibniz Institute for Age Research is an important research center and offers a Ph.D program.
• The Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology
• Friedrich-Löffler-Institute of Bacterial Infections and Zoonoses
• Friedrich-Löffler-Institute of Molecular Pathogenesis
• The Jena Center for Bioinformatics

Museums

• Optical Museum Jena - history of optical instruments
• Schott GlassMuseum - production and usage of glass
• The Göhre City Museum - urban history of Jena
• Botanical Garden
• Phyletic Museum - phylogeny and evolutionary theory
• House of Romanticism - literature
• Memorial to Goethe - literature
• Oriental Coin Cabinet Jena - Oriental history, numismatics (non public, open for scientific research only)
• Schott Villa - history of the Jena glassworks and of Otto Schott and his family

Culture

The Botanical Garden of Jena

• The Jenaer Philharmonie is the largest independent symphony orchestra in Thuringia.
• Kulturarena: annual music festival held in front of the theatre

Famous citizens and alumni of the university

• Ernst Abbe, physicist, social reformer, partner of Carl Zeiss and Otto Schott
• Anton Wilhelm Amo, African philosopher
• Johannes R. Becher, poet and politician
• Hans Berger, discoverer of human EEG
• Bernhard, Prince of the Netherlands
• Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, influential German naturalist, doctor, comparative anatomist and physiologist
• Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, orientalist and Protestant theologian of the Enlightenment
• Robert Enke, German footballer
• Walter Eucken, founder of neoliberal economic theory
• Rudolf Eucken, philosopher and the winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize for Literature
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte, philosopher and early German nationalist
• Gottlob Frege, mathematician, logician, and philosopher
• Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel, inventor of the kindergarten
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe, poet/writer
• Ernst Haeckel, German evolutionary biologist/zoologist
• G. W. F. Hegel, philosopher
• Friedrich Hölderlin, poet
• Martin Luther, reformer
• Karl Marx, philosopher/economist
• Philipp Melanchthon, theologian
• Johann Karl August Musäus, German author
• Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher
• Novalis, poet
• Max Reger, composer, pianist, professor and conductor
• Friedrich Schelling
• Friedrich Schiller, poet/writer
• Caroline Böhmer Schlegel Schelling
• Wilhelm Schlegel, philosopher
• Bernd Schneider, German footballer
• Otto Schott, inventor of fireproof glass, founder of the Schott glass works
• Reinhard Johannes Sorge, German poet, dramatist, and Roman Catholic convert
• Johann Gustav Stickel, orientalist
• Kurt Tucholsky, writer
• Carl Zeiss, founder of the Zeiss company

International relations

See also: List of twin towns and sister cities in Germany

Jena is twinned with:

• Porto, Portugal
• Lugoj, Romania, since 1983
• Erlangen, Germany, since 1987
• San Marcos, Nicaragua, since 1996
• Aubervilliers, France, since 1999
• Berkeley, USA
• Kamëz, Albania

External links

• Jena travel guide from Wikivoyage
• Official Homepage of Jena (German) (English)