Darmstadt

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Template:Infobox Town DE Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland (federal state) of Hessen in Germany. As of 2003, its population was 137,900. The city is located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Metropolitan Area.

1 History
2 Sights
3 Miscellaneous
4 Twinning
5 External links
- 5.1 Notable institutions

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History

The name Darmstadt first appears towards the end of the 11th century, then Darmundestat; Darmstadt was chartered as a city by the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian in 1330. The seat of the ruling landgraves (1567-1806) and thereafter (to 1918) to the Grand Dukes of Hesse, the city grew in population during the 19th century from little over 10,000 to 72,000 inhabitants. A polytechnical school, which later became a Technical University now known as TU Darmstadt, was established in 1877.

In the beginning of the 20th Century Darmstadt was an important centre for the art movement of Jugendstil, the German variant of Art Nouveau. Annual architectural competitions led to the building of many architectural treasures of this period.

Darmstadt's municipal area was extended in 1937 to include the neighbouring localities of Arheilgen [not Arheiligen] and Eberstadt, and in 1938 the city was separated administratively from the surrounding district (Kreis). Its old city centre was largely destroyed in a British bombing raid of September 11 1944, which killed an estimated 12,300 inhabitants and rendered 66,000 homeless. Most of Darmstadt's 3000 Jews were killed by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.

Darmstadt is home to many technology companies and research institutes, and promotes itself as a "city of science". It is well known as the high-tech centre in the vicinity of Frankfurt Airport, with important activities in spacecraft operations, chemistry, information technology, biotechnology, telecommunications and mechatronics. TU Darmstadt is one of the important technical institutes in Germany and is well known for its research and teaching in the Electrical, Mechanical and Civil Engineering disciplines.

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Sights

Image:Darmstadt 1900.jpg The palace of Darmstadt is located in the city centre. It was the residence of the counts of Hesse-Darmstadt, later as Grand Dukes of Hesse by the grace of Napoleon. Its current look was established in the 18th century. The counts also owned a castle on the Langenberg above the city. This castle dates back to the 13th century, but it was acquired by the counts of Hessen-Darmstadt in 1662. The name of the castle is Frankenstein. Mary Shelley probably adopted the name for her novel Frankenstein; before writing the story she had travelled through the region and visited Eberstadt (today a borough of Darmstadt), so the castle could have given her the inspiration.

The Luisenplatz, the largest square of the city, forms the centre of the town. Today it is surrounded by modern buildings. In 1844 the Ludwigsäule (called Langer Lui, meaning Long Ludwig), a 33-meter column commemorating Ludwig I, first Grand Duke of Hesse, was placed in the middle. The other large town square is the Marktplatz (see image) near the town hall.

Surviving examples of the Jugendstil period include the Rosenhöhe, the Mathildenhöhe with the Hochzeitsturm [Marriage tower], commonly known as the Five-Finger-Tower, the Russian Chapel and large exhibition halls as well as many private villas built by Jugendstil architects who had settled in Darmstadt. The Russian Chapel was built as a private chapel for the last Tzar of Russia, Nicholass II, whose wife Alexandra was born in Darmstadt.

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Miscellaneous

Darmstadt is the site of one of the leading German universities, the Darmstadt University of Technology, renowned for its engineering departments. Related institutes are the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung and the three Institutes of the Fraunhofer Society. The European Space Operations Center (ESOC) of the European Space Agency is located in Darmstadt, as is EUMETSAT, which operates meteorological satellites. Darmstadt is a centre for the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, with Merck and Röhm having their main plants and centres here.

In 1997 Darmstadt was officially awarded the designation Wissenschaftsstadt ("city of sciences").

The chemical element Darmstadtium (atomic number: 110), first discovered at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung was named after the city in 2003, making Darmstadt only the fourth city with an element named after it (the other three are Ytterby, Sweden, Berkeley, California, and Dubna, Russia). Meitnerium (atomic number: 109) (1982), Hassium (atomic number: 108) (1984) and Roentgenium (atomic number: 111) (1994) and Ununbium (atomic number: 112) (1996) were also synthesized in this facility.

The Jazz-Institut Darmstadt is Germany's largest publicly accessible Jazz archive.

The Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, harboring one of the world's largest collections of post-war sheet music, also hosts the biannual Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, a summer school in contemporary classical music founded by Wolfgang Steinecke. A large number of avant-garde composers have attended and given lectures there, including Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, György Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel.

The Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Poetry) provides writers and scholars with a place to research the German language. The Academy's annual Georg-Büchner-Preis, named in memory of Georg Büchner, is considered the most renowned literary award for writers of German language.

Literally translated, the German name "Darmstadt" means "City of the intestine". But that is just an unfortunate coincidence, as the name derives from the medieval name "darmundestat", meaning "Place at the mouth of the Darmbach." The Darmbach is a small creek running through the city and flowing into the Modau, a small confluence of the river Rhine.

Darmstadt also happens to be one of the small number of cities worldwide which do not lie close to a river or coast.

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