Brunswick

Braunschweig, called Brunswick in English, rose on the Oker, navigable from the city downward, under the Guelph dukes; Henry the Lion had set up the bronze lion of 1166 beside his castle of Dankwarderode. After the Guelph duchy split in 1267 to 1269 into Brunswick and Lüneburg, the city remained common ground but also the residence of the Brunswick line. Its three boroughs, the Altstadt, Hagen and Neustadt, merged their councils into one in 1269, and by 1386 that council had 105 members.

Brunswick joined the Hanseatic League in the mid-thirteenth century and led the Saxon quarter of the Hanse between the Weser and the Elbe, together with Magdeburg. It bought the right to mint coins in pledge in 1296 and as its own in 1412, so that its "Eternal Penny" ended the disruptive recalling of old coins. Cloth, metalwork and farm produce were its goods, and its beer, notably the strong Mumme, was famous abroad. By 1350 the Jewish community that had grown up in the early fourteenth century numbered about 150.

Tension with its citizens drove the dukes to move their residence to nearby Wolfenbüttel, and in 1432 Brunswick gained its independence. Along with Paris and Ghent it was reckoned among the most restless cities of late medieval Europe, where revolutionary uprisings known as the Schichten broke out again and again over constitutional disputes. In 1528 the council and citizens accepted a church order by Johannes Bugenhagen, and in 1531 the city joined the Schmalkaldic League. A three-month siege by Duke Frederick Ulrich failed in 1615, but in 1671 a Guelph army conquered the city and ended its independence. The dukes returned their residence to a new palace in 1753, and the French made the city capital of the Oker department in 1807.