Goslar

Goslar is situated in the middle of the upper half of Germany, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Brunswick and about 70 km (43 mi) southeast of the state capital, Hanover. The Schalke mountain is the highest elevation within the municipal boundaries at 762 metres (2,500 feet). The lowest point of 175 m (574 ft) is near the Oker river. Geographically, Goslar forms the boundary between the Hildesheim Börde which is part of the Northern German Plain, and the Harz range, which is the highest, northernmost extension of Germany's Central Uplands. The Hildesheim Börde is characterised by plains with rich clay soils – used agriculturally for sugar beet farming – interlaced with several hill ranges commonly known as the Hildesheim Forest and Salzgitter Hills. In the northeast the Harly Forest stretches down to the River Oker, in the east, Goslar borders on the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Immediately to the south the Harz range rises above the historic borough at a height of 636 m (2,087 ft) at Mt Rammelsberg. Extended forests dominate the landscape. The major rivers crossing the municipal boundaries are the Oker with its Gose/Abzucht and Radau tributaries. The eponymic River Gose originates approximately 9 kilometres (6 miles) south-west of Goslar at the Auerhahn Pass (638 m (2,093 ft)) east of the Bocksberg mountain. At the northern foot of the Herzberg (632 m (2,073 ft)) it meets the smaller Abzucht before it flows into the Oker. The Dörpke and Gelmke also flow from the Harz foothills to the south into the Goslar municipal area, where they discharge into the Abzucht.

Abzucht river in the Old Town

Iron ore mining has been common in the Harz region since Roman times; the earliest known evidence for quarrying and smelting is from the 3rd century AD. Ancient burial objects made of Harz ore have even been discovered during excavations in England. The settlement on the Gose creek was first mentioned in a 979 deed issued by Emperor Otto II; it was located in the Saxon homelands of the Ottonian dynasty and probably a royal palace (Königspfalz) already existed at the site. It became even more important when extensive silver deposits were discovered at the nearby Rammelsberg, today a mining museum.

When Otto's descendant Henry II began to convene Imperial synods at the Goslar palace in 1009, Goslar gradually replaced the Royal palace of Werla as a central place of assembly in the Saxon lands, a development that was again enforced by the Salian (Franconian) emperors. Conrad II, once elected King of the Romans, celebrated Christmas 1024 in Goslar and had the foundations laid for the new Imperial Palace (Kaiserpfalz Goslar) the next year.

Goslar became the favourite residence of Conrad's son Henry III, who stayed at the palace about twenty times. Here he received King Peter of Hungary as well as the emissaries of Prince Yaroslav of Kiev and here he appointed bishops and dukes. His son and successor Henry IV was born here on 11 November 1050. Henry also had Goslar Cathedral erected and consecrated by Archbishop Herman of Cologne in 1051. Shortly before his death in 1056 Emperor Henry III met Pope Victor II in the church, emphasizing the union of secular and ecclesiastical power. His heart was buried in Goslar, his body in the Salian family vault in Speyer Cathedral. Of the cathedral only the northern porch survived; the main building was torn down in the early 19th century.

Under Henry IV Goslar remained a centre of Imperial rule. However conflicts intensified such as in the violent Precedence Dispute at Pentecost 1063. While Henry aimed at securing the enormous wealth deriving from the Rammlesberg silver mines as a royal demesne, the dissatisfaction of local nobles escalated with the Saxon revolt 1073–1075. In the subsequent Saxon revolt of 1077–1088 the Goslar citizens sided with anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden, who held a princely assembly here in 1077, and with Hermann of Salm, who was crowned king in Goslar by Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz on 26 December 1081, giving Goslar the status of an Imperial City.

In Spring 1105 Henry V convened the Saxon estates at Goslar to gain support for the deposition of his father, Henry IV. Elected king in the following year, he held six Imperial Diets at the Goslar Palace during his rule. The tradition was adopted by his successor Lothair II and even by the Hohenstaufen rulers Conrad III and Frederick Barbarossa. After his election in 1152, King Frederick appointed the Welf duke Henry the Lion Imperial Vogt (bailiff) of the Goslar mines; nevertheless, the dissatisfied duke besieged the town and at an 1173 meeting in Chiavenna demanded his enfeoffment with the estates in turn for his support on Barbarossa's Italian campaigns. When Henry the Lion was finally declared deposed in 1180, he had the Rammelsberg mines devastated.

Goslar's importance as an Imperial residence began to decline under the rule of Barbarossa's descendants. During the German throne dispute the Welf king Otto IV laid siege to the town in 1198 but had to yield to the forces of his Hohenstaufen rival Philip of Swabia. Goslar was again stormed and plundered by Otto's troops in 1206. Frederick II held the last Imperial Diet here; with the Great Interregnum upon his death in 1250, Goslar's Imperial era ended.

While the Emperors withdraw from Northern Germany, civil liberties in Goslar were strengthened. Market rights date back to 1025 and a municipal council (Rat) was first mentioned in 1219. The citizens strove for control of the Rammelsberg silver mines and in 1267 joined the Hanseatic League. Besides mining in the Upper Harz, commerce and trade in Gose beer, later also slate and vitriol, became important. By 1290 the council had obtained Vogt rights, confirming Goslar's status as a free imperial city. In 1340 its citizens were vested with Heerschild rights by Emperor Louis the Bavarian. The Goslar town law set an example for numerous other municipalities, like the Goslar mining law codified in 1359.

Early modern times saw both a mining boom and rising conflicts with the Welf Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg, mainly with Prince Henry V of Wolfenbüttel who seized the Rammelsberg mines and extended Harz forests in 1527. Though a complaint was successfully lodged with the Reichskammergericht by the Goslar citizens, a subsequent gruelling feud with the duke lasted for decades. Goslar was temporarily placed under Imperial ban, while the Protestant Reformation was introduced in the city by theologian Nicolaus von Amsdorf who issued a first church constitution in 1531. To assert independence, the citizens in 1536 joined the Schmalkaldic League against the Catholic policies of the Habsburg emperor Charles V. The Schmalkaldic forces indeed occupied the Wolfenbüttel lands of Henry V, however, when they were defeated by Imperial forces at the 1547 Battle of Mühlberg, the Welf duke continued his reprisals.

In 1577 the Goslar citizens signed the Lutheran Formula of Concord. After years of continued skirmishes, they finally had to grant Duke Henry and his son Julius extensive mining rights which ultimately edged out the city council. Nevertheless, several attempts by the Brunswick dukes to incorporate the Imperial city were rejected. Goslar and its economy was hit hard by the Thirty Years' War, mainly by the Kipper und Wipper financial crisis in the 1620s which led to several revolts and pogroms. Facing renewed aggressions by Duke Christian the Younger of Brunswick, the citizens sought support from the Imperial military leaders Tilly and Wallenstein. The city was occupied by the Swedish forces of King Gustavus Adolphus from 1632 to 1635; in 1642 a peace agreement was reached between Emperor Ferdinand III and the Brunswick duke Augustus the Younger. The hopes of the Goslar citizens to regain the Rammelsberg mines were not fulfilled.

Goslar remained loyal to the Imperial authority, solemnly celebrating each accession of a Holy Roman Emperor. While strongly referring to its great medieval traditions, the city continuously decreased in importance and got into rising indebtedness. When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stayed at Goslar in 1777, he called it "an Imperial city rotted in and with its privileges". In the winter of 1798, the coldest of the century, the young English poet William Wordsworth stayed in the city. To dispel homesickness he started to write a few verses about his childhood, which would eventually evolve into the masterpiece that was published in 13 volumes after his death as The Prelude.[6]

First administrative reforms were enacted by councillors of the Siemens family. Nevertheless, the status of Imperial immediacy was finally lost, when Goslar was annexed by Prussian forces during the Napoleonic Wars in 1802, confirmed by the German Mediatisation the next year. Under Prussian rule, further reforms were pushed ahead by councillor Christian Wilhelm von Dohm. Temporarily part of the Kingdom of Westphalia upon the Prussian defeat at the 1806 Battle of Jena–Auerstedt, Goslar finally was assigned to the newly established Kingdom of Hanover by resolution of the Vienna Congress. The cathedral was sold and torn down from 1820 to 1822, bitterly mourned by Heinrich Heine in his Harzreise travelogue. Again under Prussian rule after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Goslar became a popular retirement residence (Pensionopolis) and a garrison town of the Prussian Army. The Hohenzollern kings and emperors had the Imperial Palace restored, including the mural paintings by Hermann Wislicenus.

After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 Reichsminister Richard Walther Darré made Goslar the seat of the agricultural Reichsnährstand corporation. In 1936 the city obtained the title of Reichsbauernstadt. In the course of German rearmament a Luftwaffe airbase was built north of the town and several war supplier companies located in the vicinity, including subcamps of the Buchenwald and Neuengamme concentration camps. Nevertheless the historic town escaped strategic bombing during World War II.

Part of the British occupation zone from 1945, Goslar was the site of a displaced persons’ camp. During the Cold War era the city near the inner German border was a major garrison town for the West German army and the border police. After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 the barracks were vacated and a major economic factor was lost. The Rammelberg mines were finally closed in 1988 after more than a thousand years.

In the summer of 2018 a bottled typewritten message dated 26 March 1930 was discovered in the roof of Goslar Cathedral, signed by four roofers, who bemoaned the economic state of the country.[7] The bottle was discovered by a roofer who turned out to be the grandson of one of the signatories, who had been an 18-year-old apprentice in 1930.[7] Goslar's mayor replaced the bottle with a copy of the 1930 message, adding his own confidential message.[7]

Demographics

As of 31 December 2020 there were 50,184 inhabitants in Goslar (including Vienenburg).[8]

Population statistics

Year Inhabitants 1821 7,547 1848 9,748 1871 11,900 1885 15,997 1905 23,640 1925 27,881

Year Inhabitants 1933 29,538 1939 34,371 1946 47,855 1950 53,804 1956 53,236

Year Inhabitants 1961 54,151 1968 53,819 1970 52,649 1975 53,963 1980 52,556

Year Inhabitants 1985 49,636 1990 46,251 1995 46,142 2000 44,278 2005 43,119 2010 40,989

(count: December 31 of each year)

Goslar is twinned with:[11]

War memorial 1870/1871 at barrack yard

War memorial 1914–1918 at Thomaswall

Medieval Imperial Palace (Kaiserpfalz)

The Zwinger tower and pond

• Memorial to the fallen riflemen of the 10th Hanover Rifle Battalion in the Franco-Prussian War 1870/1871 (now near the Kahnteich)
• Memorial to the fallen riflemen of the 10th Hanover Rifle Battalion in World War I 1914-1918

Religion

The Frankenberg Church

Church: Neuwerkkirche from the Mauerstrasse

• Protestant-Lutheran
  • Congregation Marktkirche, Market Church (build 1151, North Tower mountable)
  • Congregation Neuwerk, Newark Church
  • Congregation St Stephani, Saint Stephen
  • Congregation Zum Frankenberge, Frankenberg Church
  • Congregation Gustav-Adolf-Stabkirche, Gustav Adolf stave church in Hahnenklee
  • Congregation Martin-Luther-Kirche, Martin Luther Church
  • Congregation St Paulus Kirche, St Paul's Church, in Oker
  • Congregation St Georg, St George
  • Congregation St Johannes, St John
  • Parish Church St Kilian in Hahndorf
  • Congregation St Lukas, St Luke
  • Parish Church St Matthäus, St Matthew, in Jerstedt
  • Congregation St Peter
• Baptist
  • Congregation Christuskirche, Church of Christ
• Roman Catholic
  • Congregation St Jakobi, St James the Greater (built in 1073, Goslar's oldest romanesque church still in use)
  • Congregation Maria Schnee, St Mary of the Snows, in Hahnenklee
  • Congregation St Barbara (part of St James)
  • Congregation St Konrad, St Conrad (part of St James) in Oker
  • Congregations Ss Benno & George
  • Abbey St George
• Islamic Faith
  • Mosque of the Turkish-German Society
  • Goslar Mosque

Celebrations and Events

In 2006 Goslar hosted the Salier Year to celebrate the founding of this ancient German Imperial dynasty a millennium ago.

Other events include:

• Annual award (since 1975) of the ‘Imperial Ring’ to a personality who has made an outstanding contribution to society and the arts. Its recipients include Henry Moore, Joseph Beuys, Christo and Dani Karavan.
• Goslar International Concerto Days, mid to end August
• The Goslar Fair, early to mid July
• Annual Artisans market in the old town, usually beginning of August
• Old Town Festival, mid-September
• Hanseatic Days, Spring (usually during the Easter holidays)

Panoramic view from the market church of Goslar

Half-timbered houses on the river Gose

Hotel Kaiserworth

The town centre of Goslar serves as a regional shopping centre for the Northern Harz region. Here department stores, several supermarkets, elegant boutiques and restaurants can be found. Once weekly there is also a market, where farmers sell their local produce. There are also several car dealerships in the borough, some of which specialise in either discount/reimport or custom car sales.

Tourism is a booming sector in Goslar. Several hotels and bed and breakfasts are located in or near the centre of the town. In addition the town has become a popular resort for the elderly and there are many care homes in the town.

Goslar has become a popular conference venue. The Achtermann Hotel and the Kaiserpfalz are popular conference centres, host to the annual German Road & Transport Tribunal Days: the Deutscher Verkehrsgerichtstag

The largest employers in Goslar are H.C. Starck (chemistry company), tourism and the civil service. Many residents of Goslar commute to Salzgitter, where car production, steel works and white-collar jobs are based.

The Dr-Herbert-Nieper-Krankenhaus is a privately owned hospital in the Asklepios Harzkliniken group serving the greater Harz region. A new annex for intensitive medicine is under construction. There are several general practitioners, dentists and specialists distributed across the town. There is an emergency service.

Ernst Jünger, Philipp Jenninger, Liselotte Jünger

Henning von Tresckow

• Rudolf Bindig (born 1940), politician (SPD), Member of Bundestag 1976–2005
• Hans Colbitz (1899–1972), artist, painter, teacher at Albrecht-Duerer-Oberrealschule in Berlin-Neukoelln[16]
• Falko Feldmann (born 1959), German biologist and phytomedicologist
• Sigmar Gabriel (born 1959), politician (SPD), Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs
• Heinz Günther Guderian (1914–2004), officer in the Wehrmacht and later Inspector of armoured mechanized artillery in the German Defence forces Bundeswehr and NATO
• Mathias Hain (born 1972), soccer player
• Silvia Hildegard Haneklaus (* 1959), Researcher
• Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (1050–1106), King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor
• Aaron Hunt (born 1986), footballer
• Ernst Jünger (1895–1998), German soldier (recipient of the Pour le Mérite decoration in World War I) and author, lived in Goslar from December 1933 to 1936. This time represented the beginning of his innere Emigration (inner emigration), distancing himself from direct political commentary, as he left Berlin following the Gestapo search of his house in April 1933
• Hermann Max (born 1941), church musician and conductor
• Albert Niemann (1834–1861), chemist and pharmacist. Credited with the discovery of cocaine
• Otto Wilhelm August Nieper (1848–1939), Chief Surgeon at the hospital in Goslar, which was renamed the Dr.-Herbert-Nieper-Krankenhaus in his honor.
• Ernst Pistulla (1906–1944), German boxer, competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics
• Wilhelm Ripe (1818–1885), painter and graphic designer
• Maurice, comte de Saxe (1696–1750), Marshal General of France. Adversary of the Hanoverians
• Ewald Schnug (born 1954), agricultural researcher, professor, Honorary-President of the International Scientific Center for Fertilizers[17]
• Regine Schumann (born 1961), artist, painter and light artist
• Siemens Family. The ancestral home of the Siemens family, which includes the Prussian-British-Russian industrial pioneers Werner von Siemens, Sir William Siemens and Carl von Siemens, is in Goslar
• Rudolf Sprung (1925–2015), politician (CDU), Member of Bundestag 1969–1994
• Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944), German military officer and leading anti-Hitler conspirator, was a student at the Goslar Realgymnasium (now Ratsgymnasium Goslar) from 1913 until 1917, when he left to join the army. He boarded in a private home near the school since his own home was far away.
• Thomas Wallner (born 1961), consultant (SAP), Ambassador for Martinique
• Phylicia Whitney (born 1950), journalist and public speaker
• Dieter Zechlin (1926–2012), pianist

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Goslar.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Goslar.

Mines of Rammelsberg, Historic Town of Goslar and Upper Harz Water Management System UNESCO Official Website

• Official website (in English)
• Goslar at Curlie
• Sound and video of Marktplatz clock
• Pictures of Goslar (German website)