Bremen

Bremen grew on a dune ridge above the Weser, where the missionary Willehad's church was followed by a bishopric that Charlemagne confirmed in 787. As the seat of the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen it was a church city, but its merchants made it a port: the Schlachte quay on the river took sea-going ships from the 13th century, and the town joined the Hanseatic League in 1260 with trade to Flanders, England and Scandinavia. Archbishops short of money pledged their rights in the surrounding country to the town, which thereby acquired a wide territory of its own.

Bremen shook off the archbishop's secular rule and displayed that freedom on its market square. The stone Roland, a symbol of imperial justice, was raised in 1404, and the Gothic town hall followed in 1405 to 1409. The archbishops withdrew to Bremervörde, and the Reformation, preached in the city from 1522, left the council still more independent. The Weser silted up, and in 1619 to 1623 Dutch builders made the first artificial harbour in Germany at Vegesack, downstream.

In 1646, during the Thirty Years' War, Emperor Ferdinand III recognised Bremen as a free imperial city in the Linz Diploma, but Sweden, which gained the old archbishopric in 1648, disputed this and besieged the city in 1666 until the Treaty of Habenhausen ended it. In 1783 Bremen merchants opened direct trade with the United States. Napoleon had the city occupied in 1806 and annexed in 1811; Bremen regained its freedom in 1814 and entered the German Confederation as a free city.