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Middle Germany - stuff 2 c arround Halle (if u dont drive a porsche, then except Dresden and Berlin everything within +/- 1 hr drive)


Leipzig (pop. 500.000) (age: 1000 years)
The foundation of the University of Leipzig in 1409 initiated the city's development into a center of German law and the publishing industry, and towards being a location of the Reichsgericht (Supreme Court), and the German National Library (founded in 1912). Friedrich Nietzsche worked at the University and Johann Sebastian Bach worked in Leipzig from 1723 to 1750, at the St. Thomas Lutheran church, and the composer Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig in 1813. Later in the same year, the Leipzig region was the arena of the Battle of the Nations. In 1913 a monument, the Völkerschlachtdenkmal, celebrating the hundred year anniversary of this event was finished.

Battle of Leipzig/ Battle of the Nations (1813)
The Battle of the Nations at Leipzig (Völkerschlacht bei Leipzig, 16-19 October 1813) is considered the largest conflict in Europe before World War I, with over 500,000 troops involved. It was also the most decisive defeat suffered by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Napoleonic Wars. The Völkerschlacht was fought on German soil and involved German troops on both sides, as a large proportion of Napoleon's troops actually came from the German Confederation of the Rhine. Casualties: 120.000.
  

Battle of Lützen (1632) (near Leipzig)
The Battle of Lützen was one of the most decisive battles of the Thirty Years' War. General Wallenstein vs. the Protestant army, led by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus II. casualties: almost 10.000.
      

Gustav Adolf Memorial near Lützen

Monument of the Battle of the Nations (built 1898-1913)
* Biggest national monument in Germany & tallest monument in Europe
* hight: 91 m
* width (bottom): 126 m
* hight of the dome-hall: 68 m
* weight: 300.000 t
* duration of construction: 15 Jahre
* cost: 6.000.000 Reichsmark
* 500 steps to a viewing platform at the top
It is said to stand on the spot of the bloodiest fighting, where Napoleon saw his army destroyed. The architect of the monument was Bruno Schmitz, and the carved figures, including the 5.5 metres (10 feet) high Totenwächter ("Guards of the Dead", or "Keepers of the Vigil of the Dead") are the work of sculptor Franz Metzner.
In front of the monument there is an artificial rectangular lake intended to symbolise the blood and tears shed during the war against Napoleon. The so-called Régates de Baquet (a bathtub race) has taken place in this lake every year since 1991, an attempt to "unmonopolize" the so-called ideologies inherrent in such "overtly nationalistic structures".
Hitler exploited the monument to the full, and chose it as a frequent venue for his speeches when in Leipzig.
During the period of communist rule in East Germany, the government of the GDR was unsure whether it should allow the monument to stand, since it represented the staunch nationalism of the period of the German Empire. Eventually, it was decided that the monument should be allowed to remain, since it represented a battle in which Russian and German soldiers had fought together against a common enemy, and was therefore representative of "Russo-German Brotherhood-in-arms" (German: Deutsch-russische Waffenbruderschaft). The monument is currently under restoration, with work scheduled to be finished by 2013, the year of the two-hundredth anniversary.
  

  

Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg
It was merged in 1817 from the University of Halle (founded 1694) and the University of Wittenberg (founded 1502, closed in 1813 by Napoleon).
It is named after the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, and is the largest and oldest university in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt with approximately 19,000 students.
The University became a centre of the Reformation under the influence of Philipp Melanchthon and building on the works of Martin Luther.
Halle has the world's oldest Bible college.
Institute for Zoology

Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (the Etter Mountain) near the Etterburg (the Etter Keep) located near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany, in July 1937. The prisoners were used as slave labor in local armament factories. Between 1945 and 1950 the camp was used by the Soviet occupational authorities.
Although not technically an extermination camp, summary executions of Soviet prisoners of war took place at Buchenwald, and many inmates died during medical experiments, or fell victim to arbitrary acts perpetrated by the SS guards. Between July 1937 and April 1945, approximately 250,000 people were incarcerated in Buchenwald by the Nazi regime. The number of deaths is estimated at 56,000. The camp was also the site of large-scale testing of vaccines for epidemic typhus in 1942 and 1943, all in all testing 729 inmates, around 280 of whom died. The camp was evacuated by the Nazis as Allied troops approached the area in April 1945. After the departure of Allied troops, the Soviet occupation forces used the infrastructure of the camp from 1945 to 1950, re-naming it "Special Camp 2". It was used to house German prisoners, and Soviet records indicate that over 7,000 died.
  

Magdeburg
* Magdeburg was one of the most important medieval cities of Europe. Emperor Otto I lived during most of his reign in the town and was buried in the cathedral after his death.
* Member of the Hanseatic League since the 13 th century.
* 1631 during the Thirty Years' War imperial troops storm the city and commit a massacre, killing more than 20,000 inhabitants and burning the town in the sack of Magdeburg. The city had withstood a first siege in 1629 by Albrecht von Wallenstein . Of the 30,000 population, only 5,000 survived.



Goseck circle & Nebra skydisk (SW of Halle)
The circle represents the remains of the world's oldest observatory, dating back 7,000 years. Coupled with an bronze disk from 1600 B.C. (ca. 32cm diameter) recovered 1999/2002, the observatory suggests that Neolithic and Bronze Age people measured the heavens far earlier and more accurately than scientists had imagined. It was called the earliest ritual site of Central Europe when it was first made public in August 2003.
First spotted by airplane in 1991, the circle is 75 meters wide. Originally, it consisted of four concentric circles--a mound, a ditch and two wooden palisades about the height of a person, in which stood three sets of gates facing southeast, southwest and north, respectively. Although aerial surveys have demarcated 200-odd similar circles scattered across Europe, the Goseck structure is the oldest and best preserved of the 20 excavated thus far, and it is the first circle whose function is evident.
The Nebra Skydisk - found on a hilltop 25 kilometers away - is the oldest realistic representation of the cosmos yet found.
It depicts a crescent moon, a circle that was probably the full moon, a cluster of seven stars interpreted to represent the Pleiades, scattered other stars and three arcs, all picked out in gold leaf from a background rendered violet-blue.
  



  



  

pictures: Skydisc of Nebra & Goseck circle. The yellow lines represent the direction of suns rise and set at the winter solstice, while the vertical line shows the astronomical meridian.


Kyffhäuser
The mountain has significance in German traditional myth as the resting place of Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, a charismatic leader who died in 1190 while on a crusade.
According to legend, Barbarossa is not in fact dead, but sleeps in a hidden chamber underneath the Kyffhäuser mountain, sitting at a stone table. His beard has supposedly grown so long over the centuries that it grew through the table. As in the similar legend of King Arthur, Barbarossa supposedly awaits his country's hour of greatest need, when he will emerge once again from under the mountain.
The presence of ravens circling the Kyffhäuser summit is said to be a sign of Barbarossa's continuing presence.
Today, the mountain area is a tourist site featuring a restored medieval castle from the 11th century. During the late German Empire in the 19th century, a monument of the emperor and Friedrich II was built. Nearby on the lowlands the Imperial "Pfalz" (palatinate) Tilleda from the 10th century is another historical site.



Castle Kyffhausen
* One of the largest in germany
* First appearance in written documents: 1118 (“destruction of the castrum etiam Cuphese).
* Probably built in the 11 th century by King Heinrich/Henry IV on older fortifications from the 6 th/5 th century BC.
* Rebuilt after the destruction in 1118 (finished by Friedrich/Frederic I. Barbarossa)



Kyffhäuser Monument
* 3 rd largest in Germany
* Hight: 81m (monument tower: 57m, 247 steps)
* Built: 1890-1896 on parts of the ruins of old medieval castle (architect Bruno Schmitz)
  

      

Bauernkriegspanorama Bad Frankenhausen (near Kyffhäuser)
* Le Bauernkriegspanorama (le panorama del guerra del paisanos) es un imagine monumental super le guerra del paisanos in Germania per le pictor e professor de arte Werner Tuebke. Illo situate su in un edificio facite pro lo, le panorama museo. Le obra esseva disvellopate in le annos de 1976 usque 1987. Con un superfacie de 1,722 metros quadrate illo es un del plus grande picturas al oleo in le mundo.
* Title »Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany« (1983-1987) by the artist Werner Tübke.
* 1.722m² (only 2 paintings in Moscow and Plewen (Bulgaria) are 3m² larger) – 123 m long and 14 m high, 1 piece of cloth (without painting 1,1 tons)
* >3000 single figures (largest more than 3 meters)
* Showing the Revolution of 1524
* Local public name of the cylindric building: Elefantenklo (Elephant WC)
  

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