Ulm

Paintings on the south front of the Ulm Town Hall document the commercial energy of the former imperial city, among them a river boat ("Ulmer Schachtel") symbolic of the busy passenger and goods transportation system down the Danube from the 16th Century onwards. And there are the coats-of-arms of the towns and provinces with which Ulm had close commercial ties. The settlement "Hulma",

first mentioned in 854, had become an imperial city by 1376 and was recognized as the most important member of the League of Swabian Cities.

It was numbered among the foremost mediaeval cities from the 14th Century onwards and became a leading centre for the arts and commerce. As it still does today, the city lay at the intersection of European long distance overland routes and that led to its development into a trading metropolis. This economic strength was matched by its political power but both fell away as a result of the Thirty Years' War and the Wars of the Spanish Succession. Finally, Ulm lost its imperial status in 1802 when Napoleon annexed this territory to Bavaria. If Ulm had been for

hundreds of years a bastion of political and economic significance, between the years 1842 and 1859 the expression took on a purely military meaning.

During these 17 years, Ulm became one of the garrison towns in the German Confederation and is still Europe's largest remaining 19th Century garrison town. The pioneer spirit of the people of Ulm/Neu-Ulm has survived till modern times. An embodiment of this spirit was Albrecht Ludwig Berblinger ("The Tailor of Ulm") who, in 1811, made the first serious attempt to fly with his hangglider. Then there is

Albert Einstein, born in Ulm in 1879 and the Neu-Ulmer, Hermann Koehl, who, in 1928, became the first man to fly the North Atlantic, east to west. And we must include in this context the former College of Design (HfG), which existed from 1955 to 1968, with its world-wide reputation, and, very recently, the University and the Science Park, which are focal points of this Science City.