NUREMBERG (Ger. Nürnberg), a city of
Germany, the second town in
Bavaria in size, and the
first in commercial importance. It lies in the district of Middle
Franconia in a sandy but
wellcultivated plain, 124 m. by rail N.W. from Munich. The city is divided by the small river
Pegnitz, a tributary of the
Main, into two parts, called respectively the Lorenzer Seite and
the Sebalder Seite, after the two principal churches. There are
four islands in the Pegnitz, which is crossed here by fourteen bridges. Formerly among the
richest and most influential of the free imperial towns, Nuremberg is
one of the few cities of Europe that have retained their medieval aspect
largely unimpaired. Considerable sections of the ancient walls and
moat still remain, though the
demolition of portions to meet the exigencies of modern traffic and
expansion has somewhat destroyed its quaint medieval character. Of the 365 bastions
which formerly strengthened the walls, however, nearly too are
still in situ, and a few of the interesting old gateways
have also been preserved. Most of the streets are narrow and
crooked, and the majority of the houses have their gables turned
towards the street. The general type of architecture is Gothic, but the rich details, which are lavished
with especial freedom in the interior courts, are usually borrowed
from the
Renaissance. Most of the private dwellings date from the 16th
century, and there are practically none of earlier date than the
15th century. A praiseworthy desire to maintain the picturesqueness
of the town has led most of the builders of new houses to imitate
the lofty peaked gables, oriel
windows and red-tiled roofs of
the older dwellings. Altogether Nuremberg presents a faithful
picture of a prosperous town of three hundred years ago.
The old burg, or castle (Kaiserschloss), is
picturesquely placed on a rock on the north side of the town. This
dates most probably from the early part of the 11th century, but it
received its present form mainly during the reign of the emperor Frederick I. about 150 years later. It was
restored in careful harmony with its original appearance in
1854-1856, and part of the interior is fitted up as a royal
residence, the families of the German emperor and of the king of
Bavaria having apartments therein. In the Heidenturm are two late
Romanesque chapels, one above the other. Other parts of the castle
are the pentagonal tower, the
oldest building in the town, wherein are preserved the famous "iron virgin of Nuremberg," and other
instruments of torture; the
granary (Kornhaus), also called the Kaiserstallung; and the
Vestnertor or Vestnerturm. The castle of Nuremberg was a favourite
residence of the German sovereigns in the later middle ages,
and the imperial regalia
were kept here from 1424 to 1796. Near it are the remains of the
burg of the Hohenzollerns, the principal existing part of which is
the chapel of St Walpurgis, which
was destroyed with the rest of the building in 1420, but was
restored in 1892. Not far from these ruins stands the Luginsland, a
stronghold with four corner turrets, said to have been built by the
burghers in 1367 as a watch-tower against the burg of the
Hohenzollerns.
Nuremberg contains several interesting churches, the finest of
which are those of St Lorenz, of St Sebald and of Our Lady. All
three are Gothic edifices and are notable for their elaborately
carved doorways, in which free play has been given to the exuberant
fancy of the Gothic style, and
all three enshrine valuable treasures of art. The Church of St Lawrence, the
largest of the three, was built in the 13th and 14th centuries and
has recently been restored. In it is the masterpiece of the
sculptor, Adam Krafft,
consisting of a ciborium,
or receptacle for the host, in the form of a florid Gothic spire 65 ft. high; the carving of this work is
exquisitely minute and delicate. The west front contains a
magnificent rose-window, and some of the stained glass dates from the 15th and
16th centuries. In front of the altar hangs a curious piece of wood-carving by Veit Stoss, representing
the Salutation. The shrine of
St Sebald, in the church of St Sebald, consisting of a bronze sarcophagus and canopy, in the richest Gothic style, adorned
with numerous statues and reliefs, is looked upon as one of the
greatest achievements of German art. It was executed by Peter Vischer, the celebrated artist in bronze, who
was occupied on the work for thirteen years (1506-1519), and has
here shown himself no unworthy rival of Lorenzo Ghiberti. The church of Our
Lady possesses some fine old stained-glass windows and some paintings by Michael
Wohlgemuth. The Tuchersche altar, with its winged picture, is
one of the finest works of the Nuremberg school about the middle of
the 15th century. This church was restored in 1878-1881. Other
noteworthy churches are those of St Jacob, founded about 1200 and restored in 1824;
and of St Aegidius.
The town hall (Rathaus), an edifice in the Italian style, erected in 1616-1619, contains
frescoes by Dürer, and a curious stucco relief of a tournament held at Nuremberg in 1446. The
building incorporated an older one of the 14th century, of which
the great hall, with its timber roof, is part. The most interesting
secular buildings are the houses of the old patrician families.
Among the most characteristic of these are the old residence of the
counts of Nassau, and the
houses of the Tucher, Funk and Peller families. A special interest
attaches to the dwellings of Albrecht Dürer, Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, and Johann
Palm, the patriotic bookseller who was shot by order of Napoleon in 1806. There are
statues of Dürer, Sachs, Melanchthon, the reputed founder of the
grammar-school, the navigator Martin Behaim, and Peter Henlein, the inventor
of the watch; and the streets are further embellished with several
fountains, the most noteworthy of which are the Schöne Brunnen,
1385-1396, in the form of a large Gothic pyramid, adorned with statues of the seven electors, the "nine
worthies," and Moses and the
prophets; and the Gänsemännchen or goose-mannikin, a clever little bronze figure by
Pankratz Labenwolf. - On the way to the cemetery of St John, which contains the graves of Dürer, Sachs,
Behaim and other Nuremberg worthies, are Krafft's stations, seven
pillars bearing stone reliefs of the Passion, and ranked among the
finest works of the sculptor.
The Germanic national museum, established in an old Carthusian
monastery, has developed into one of the largest and most important
institutions of its kind in Germany. It includes a picture-gallery,
principally of German works of the 15th and 16th centuries,
including masterpieces by Holbein, Dürer, Wohlgemuth and others. The
municipal library contains about 2000 manuscripts and 80,000
printed books, some of which are of great rarity.
The population of Nuremberg was, in 1905, including a garrison of about 3000 men,
294,344, of whom 145,354 were males and 148,990 females. Of these
again 196,907 were Protestants (Evangelical), 86,939 Roman
Catholics and 6819 Jews. At the
height of its prosperity in the middle ages the population has been
estimated at as high a figure as 150,000, but there seems good
reason to believe that it did not exceed 40,000 to 50,000 souls. In
1818 it had sunk to 27,000, but since then has steadily increased.
On the 1st of January 1899, thirteen outlying communes were
incorporated, extending the area of the town from 2805 to 13,700
acres.
Nuremberg occupies a high place among the industrial and
commercial centres of Europe. The principal manufactures are toys
and fancy articles in metal,
carved wood and ivory, which are
collectively known as Nuremberg wares. Nuremberg is the chief
market in Europe for hops. It is an important junction for railways to all parts of
Germany, and is on the main line from Cologne and Frankfort-on-Main to Munich, Vienna and Eger. In addition to its railways, trade is
facilitated by the Ludwig canal, connecting the Danube and the Main.
History
The first authentic
mention of Nuremberg, which seems to have been called into
existence by the foundation of the castle, occurs in a document of
1050; and about the same period it received from the emperor Henry III. permission to
establish a mint and a market. It
is said to have been destroyed by the emperor Henry V. in 1105, but if this was the case the
town must have been very speedily rebuilt, as in 1127 we find the
emperor Lothair taking it
from the duke of Swabia and
assigning it to Henry the Proud,
duke of Bavaria. An imperial officer, styled the burggrave of
Nuremberg, who, however, seems to have been merely the military
governor of the castle, and to have exercised no sway over the
citizens, became prominent in the 12th century. This office came
into the hands of the counts of Hohenzollern at the beginning of the 13th
century, and burggrave of Nuremberg is still one of the titles of
their descendant, the German emperor. The government of the town
was vested in the patrician families, who, contrary to the usual
course of events in the free towns, succeeded in permanently
excluding the civic gilds from
all share of municipal power, although in 1347 there was a sharp
rising against this oligarchy. The town was specially favoured by
the German monarchs, who frequently resided and held diets here,
and in 1219 Frederick
II. conferred upon it the rights of a free imperial town. By
the terms of this charter the town appears to have been immediately
subject to the king, who was represented by his magistrate (or
Schultheiss). In a short time, however, the latter appears
to have been assisted by a council, consisting of 13
consules (burgomasters) and 13 scabini
(assessors), who collectively formed the governing and
administrative body under the presidency of the bailiff. The last-named official soon confined
himself to the judicial magisterial office, and a further increase
in the numbers of the council having taken place by the appointment
of 8 nominees of the king, a municipal council of 34, under the
direction of the senior consul
or burgomaster, dealt with matters exclusively civic. Later this
council (the kleine Rat) was increased to 42 members, 8 of whom
belonged to the artisan
class.
In 1356 Nuremberg witnessed the promulgation of the famous Golden Bull of the
emperor Charles IV. At
the beginning of the 15th century the burggraves of Nuremberg, who
had in the meantime raised themselves to the rank of princes of the
Empire, were invested with the margraviate of Brandenburg, and sold
their castle to the town. They, however, reserved certain rights,
and their insistence on these led to fierce and sanguinary feuds
between the burghers and the margraves Albert Achilles and Frederick and Albert Alcibiades of Bayreuth.
The quarrel with the margraves, however, did not interfere with
the growth of the town's prosperity, which reached its acme in the 16th century. Like Augsburg, Nuremberg attained
great wealth as an intermediary between Italy and the East on the one hand, and northern
Europe on the other. Its manufactures were so well known that it
passed into a proverb-
"Nuremberg's hand goes through every land." Its citizens lived in
such luxury that Aeneas
Sylvius (Pope Pius II.) has left
it on record that a simple burgher of Nuremberg was better lodged
than the king of Scotland.
The town had gradually extended its sway over a territory nearly
50o sq. m. in extent, and was able to furnish the emperor Maximilian with a
contingent of 6000 troops. But perhaps the great glory of Nuremberg lies in its claim to be the
principal fount of German art. Its important architectural features
have already been described. The love of its citizens for sculpture is abundantly manifest in the statues and
carvings on their houses. Adam Krafft, Veit Stoss and Peter Vischer
form a trinity of sculptors of which any city might be proud. In painting Nuremberg is not
less prominent, as the names of Wohlgemuth and Dürer sufficiently
indicate. In the decorative arts the Nuremberg handicraftsman
attained great perfection in ministering to the luxurious tastes of
the burghers, and a large proportion of the old German furniture,
silver-plate, stoves and the
like, which are now admired in industrial museums, was made in
Nuremberg workshops. Wenzel Jamnitzer (1508-1585), the worker in
silver, is perhaps eminent enough to be added to the above list of
artists. Its place in literary history - by no fneans an
unimportant one - it owes to Hans Sachs and the other
meistersanger. A final proof of its vigorous vitality at this
period may be found in the numerous inventions of its inhabitants,
which include watches, at first called "Nuremberg eggs," the air-gun, gun-locks, the terrestrial and celestial globes,
the composition now called brass, and the art of wire-drawing.
Nuremberg was the first of the imperial towns to throw in its
lot with the
Reformation, and it embraced Protestantism with its wonted
vigour about 1525. Its name is associated with a peace concluded
between Charles V. and
the Protestants in 1532. The first blow to its prosperity was the
discovery of the sea-route to India in 1497; and the second was inflicted by
the Thirty
Years' War, during which Gustavus Adolphus was besieged
here in an entrenched camp by Wallenstein. During the eight or ten weeks
that the blockade lasted
no fewer than 10,000 of the inhabitants are said to have died of
want or disease. The downfall of the town was accelerated by the
illiberal policy of its patrician rulers; and the French
Revolution reduced it to such a degree that in 1796 it offered
itself and its territories to the king of Prussia on condition that he would pay its
debts. Prussia, however, refused the offer. In 1803 Nuremberg was
allowed to maintain its nominal position as a free city, but in
1806 it was annexed to Bavaria.
See Lochner, Nürnberger Jahrbücher bis 1313 (Nuremberg,
1832-1835); Nürnbergs Vorzeit and Gegenwart (Nuremberg,
1845) and Geschichte der Reichsstadt Nürnberg zur Zeit
Kaiser Karts I V. (Berlin, 1873); Priem, Geschichte der
Stadt Nürnberg bis auf die neueste Zeit (Nuremberg, 1874); B.
Schonlank, Altnürnbergische Studien (Leipzig, 1894); L.
Rosel, Alt-Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1895); E. Mummenhoff,
Altnürnberg bis zum Jahre 1350 (1890); R. Hagen, Bilder aus Nürnbergs Geschichte
(Nuremberg, 1889); F. Roth, Die Einführung der Reformation in
Nürnberg (Würzburg, 1885); J. M. Lotter, Sagen,
Legenden and Geschichten der Stadt Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1898);
the Quellenschriften zur Staatsand Kulturgeschichte der
Reichsstadt Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1893, fol.); and the
Mitteilungen of the Verein für Geschichte der Stadt
Nürnberg (Nuremberg, 1879, fol.). See also C. Headlam, The
Story of Nuremberg (London, 1899).
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