→ Main article: History of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau
The first centuries after the foundation of the city
The first mention of settlements in the area of today's Freiburg, Wiehre, Zähringen and Herdern, is found in a document from 1008. Around 1091, the Zähringer Duke Bertold II built the Castrum de Friburch (Leopoldsburg ruins) on the Schlossberg. The settlement of servants and craftsmen at the foot of the mountain was granted market and town rights by Bertold's son Konrad in 1120. In place of the church, which had become too small in the meantime, Bertold V ordered the generous construction of today's cathedral around 1200, which was mainly financed by the income from the silver mines in the Black Forest, which contributed significantly to the prosperity of the citizens of Freiburg.
After the extinction of the Zähringers, the Counts of Urach took over the rule in 1218 and henceforth called themselves the Counts of Freiburg. After frequent disputes with the counts over finances, the citizens of Freiburg bought themselves out of the rule of the unloved Egino III in 1368 with 15,000 marks of silver and placed themselves under the protection of the House of Habsburg.
Fribourg had to provide warriors and financial aid to the new rulers. In the Battle of Sempach, the Swiss Confederates won against the Austrian Duke Leopold III in 1386, wiping out most of the Fribourg nobility. The guilds then dominated the city council. Fribourg was an imperial city until 1427. As lord of the Austrian Vorlande, Archduke Albrecht founded the University of Fribourg in 1457.
Counter-Reformation and Thirty Years' War
In 1498 Maximilian I held the Imperial Diet in Freiburg. Under the sign of the Bundschuh, the peasants of the Upper Rhine rose up in the same period, but the uprising near Freiburg under Joß Fritz in 1513 was betrayed. In 1525, in the German Peasants' War, peasants led by Hans Müller took Freiburg and forced the city council to join an evangelical Christian union. When the iconoclasts imposed Protestantism in Basel in 1529, the Prince of Science Erasmus of Rotterdam and the Basel cathedral chapter fled to Catholic Freiburg. With the completion of the high choir, which was consecrated by the auxiliary bishop of Constance in 1513, the cathedral was finally finished in 1536.
Shortly after the beginning of the Thirty Years' War in 1620, the Jesuits took over the University of Freiburg. In 1632 the Swedes under General Horn occupied the city, which changed hands several times in the following years. An Imperial Bavarian army under Generals Franz von Mercy and Jan van Werth took Freiburg in 1644. This was followed by the Battle of Freiburg between the Bavarians and Franco-Weimar troops.
Conflicts with France and Napoleon's rule
In the second half of the 17th century, under Louis XIV, there were repeated incursions into territory on the right bank of the Rhine. After the Dutch War, Emperor Leopold I had to surrender the city of Freiburg together with its fiefs as well as Betzenhausen and Kirchzarten to the French crown in the Peace of Nijmegen in 1679. After Louis XIV had instructed Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban to develop the city into a modern fortress, the king visited Freiburg in 1681 to inspect the progress of the work in person. He stayed overnight at the court of Basel. In the Peace of Rijswijk in 1697, Louis XIV was allowed to keep the territories occupied in Alsace, including the free imperial city of Strasbourg, but had to return Freiburg to the Habsburgs. Towards the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, Marshal Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars occupied Freiburg again in 1713. In the second War of the Austrian Succession, the French under Marshal François de Franquetot defeated the Austrians at Weißenburg on July 5, 1744, besieged Freiburg, and were finally able to capture the city. When the French troops had to evacuate Freiburg, they thoroughly destroyed the fortifications. Only the Breisach Gate remained as part of the Vauban buildings.
French revolutionary troops captured Freiburg in 1796. After three months, Archduke Charles liberated the city. When the Duke of Modena Hercules III lost his Italian possessions in the Peace of Campo Formio in 1797, he received the Breisgau as compensation four years later in the Peace of Lunéville in 1801. Hercules III did not agree to this exchange, as he did not consider his losses sufficiently compensated. Therefore, he did not seek out Breisgau after 1801. The affairs of state were conducted by Baron Hermann von Greiffenegg, who did not formally take possession of Breisgau for the House of Este until March 2, 1803. After Hercules' death in October 1803, Breisgau fell to his daughter Maria Beatrice, who had married into the House of Habsburg. But this fashionable Habsburg interlude lasted only a short time, for by Napoleon's decree the Breisgau and Ortenau fell in 1805 to Baden, which had been an electorate since 1803. The Final Act of the Congress of Vienna confirmed in 1815 that Freiburg remained part of the Grand Duchy of Baden.
End of Napoleonic rule until the First World War
In 1821, Freiburg replaced Constance as the episcopal see. In 1827 Freiburg became the seat of the newly founded Archdiocese of Freiburg. In 1845, the railway line in the direction of Offenburg was opened. The revolution of 1848 was particularly violent in southwestern Germany, although Baden had received a fairly liberal constitution during the Restoration in 1818. Bloody barricade fights broke out in Freiburg, in which Hessian troops participated alongside Baden government troops.
With the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the city participated in the general economic upswing in Germany. Under the mayor Otto Winterer, Freiburg received its face with the development of new districts in the style of historicism. An electric tram was in operation as early as 1901.
During World War I, French planes bombed the open city of Freiburg on December 14, 1914. The event shocked the inhabitants. When an air raid killed one adult and seven children in April 1915, it resulted in a wave of flight from the city.
The return of Alsace to France after the lost war hit Freiburg particularly hard economically.
Freiburg under the National Socialists
Two Chancellors of the Reich in the early years of the Weimar Republic came from Freiburg: Constantin Fehrenbach and Joseph Wirth.
The National Socialists also took power in Freiburg in 1933. Under the rectorate of Martin Heidegger, the university was brought into line. In 1938, the synagogue in Freiburg was also set on fire during the Night of Broken Glass. In 1940, the remaining Jews in Freiburg were deported to the Gurs internment camp in southern France as part of the so-called Wagner-Bürckel action.
The Luftwaffe mistakenly carried out a bombing raid on Freiburg on 10 May 1940, killing 57 people. Under the code name Operation Tigerfish, the British Royal Air Force bombed the city on the evening of November 27, 1944, killing about 2800 citizens. After the attack, only the relatively undamaged Freiburg Cathedral rose from the rubble of the old town, which had been completely destroyed in the northern part, but the strong detonation waves had covered the nave. With new tiles donated from Basel, the cathedral was almost completely covered again by January 1946.
After General Charles de Gaulle had been granted his own occupation zone at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 and the French 1st Army had crossed the Rhine at Speyer at the end of March 1945, the 9th Colonial Infantry Division stood before Freiburg in mid-April. SS General Georg Keppler (XVIII SS Army Corps) considered a defense of the city pointless and pulled out "contrary to the repeated explicit 'Führer order' [...] the defense forces (2 battalions) designated for this purpose".
The "city surrenders almost without a fight" confirmed the French army general Lattre de Tassigny to 21 April 1945.
Development of the city since 1945
In October, General de Gaulle held a victory parade in Freiburg. As a result of the division of Germany into different occupation zones, Freiburg became the capital of the newly founded state of Baden in 1946. Minister President was the Freiburg-born Leo Wohleb, who resided in the Colombischlössle, while the state parliament met in the Historisches Kaufhaus. Following a referendum, South Baden was merged into the federal state of Baden-Württemberg in 1951 - despite fierce opposition from broad sections of the population.
The student unrest of the late 1960s was also reflected in Freiburg. In the 1970s, the growing political awareness led to the participation of many Freiburg residents in the successful resistance of the Kaiserstühl farmers against the planned Wyhl nuclear power plant. In the wake of these events, a strong autonomous scene and a broad ecologically oriented spectrum developed in the city. Freiburg became a stronghold of the newly founded Green Party and is therefore referred to as the eco-capital of Germany. A scientific and economic climate also developed in Freiburg that has given the city a leading role as an environmental city - it appeared at Expo 2010 in Shanghai as a "Green City".
Freiburg has become an increasingly popular city for congresses, trade fairs and conferences due to its convenient location and its universities and research institutions, in particular the Freiburg Concert Hall and the Freiburg Trade Fair Centre. International city tourism plays a strong role.
In 1986, the city hosted the seventh State Garden Show of Baden-Württemberg, which was of great importance for the development of the western parts of the city and also resulted in the establishment of the eco-station. A strong increase in population demanded the expansion of old and the construction of new residential areas. On the site of the former Vauban/Schlageter barracks, abandoned by the French garrison in 1992, the internationally known district of Vauban was created. In 1993, the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Rieselfeld district took place.
In 1996, the city exceeded 200,000 inhabitants. Among them are about 30,000 students studying at the university and four other colleges.
Since 2015, the construction of a new district has been under discussion in order to meet the housing shortage. In the process, the local council decided in favour of the "Dietenbach" site, which had previously been used for agricultural purposes, between Rieselfeld and the Mitte feeder road. In 2018, an action alliance of over 15 initiatives collected over 12,500 signatures, leading to a referendum on the planned Dietenbach district. On 24 February 2019, a majority voted in favour of the development of the Dietenbach site in the referendum.
As the seat of the archdiocese and church institutions such as the German Caritas Association, Freiburg is a centre of the Catholic Church. In 1978, Freiburg hosted the 85th German Catholic Day, which was attended by Mother Teresa, among others. On 24 and 25 September 2011, Pope Benedict XVI visited Freiburg as part of his visit to Germany at the invitation of Robert Zollitsch, then Archbishop of Freiburg and President of the German Bishops' Conference. Among other things, the pontiff celebrated a youth vigil at the Freiburg airfield and a Eucharistic celebration with more than 100,000 faithful on September 25, 2011. He also met victims of abuse, had talks with Helmut Kohl, constitutional judges and the presidium of the Central Committee of German Catholics, and gave an ecclesiologically oriented speech to 1,500 invited guests in the Freiburg Concert Hall.
The city's 900th anniversary celebration in 2020 was interrupted in March by the COVID 19 pandemic and the protective measures that accompanied it, so it was extended until July 2021. Few weeks in summer and autumn 2020, the celebrations continued with small and medium events.
Freiburg under the aspect of European relations
Due to its location in the trinational metropolitan region of the Upper Rhine and as a neighbouring city of Strasbourg, among others, Freiburg is becoming increasingly important for the growing together of Europe. The city is the seat of consulates and honorary consulates of various European states. The Freiburg Regional Council, the city administration, the University of Freiburg and many other institutions work closely with partner organisations in the neighbouring countries of France and Switzerland. As a city that belonged to the Kingdom of France at the end of the 17th century (1677-1697) and was the site of a large garrison of the French occupying forces after the Second World War, Freiburg has always played a pioneering role in relations with its neighbouring country. Freiburg works particularly closely with the French cities of Mulhouse and Colmar. French people play an important role as workers and customers in the economic region of Freiburg. Important contributions to the cultural and political relations of both countries are made by the "Centre culturel français" (CCF) Conrad Schroeder and the France Centre of the University. In 2001 and 2010, Franco-German summits of heads of state and government took place in Freiburg. There have also always been close ties with the neighbouring Swiss city of Basel (see Erasmus of Rotterdam and Basler Hof), which are still maintained today.
