Dillingen

On the Danube in eastern Swabia, Dillingen grew around the castle of the counts who bore its name. Their line gave the town to the bishops of Augsburg in 1258. The bishops made it their residence, and its castle became the seat of government for their ecclesiastical principality. Beneath the castle walls, a modest Danube town thus acquired the buildings and institutions of a princely court.

Cardinal Otto Truchsess von Waldburg founded a university at Dillingen in 1549 and brought a printer to the town. Entrusted to the Jesuits in 1563, the university became an important centre of Catholic learning and the Counter-Reformation. The town also witnessed the cruelties of the age: between 1574 and 1745, dozens of people were accused of witchcraft, and most did not survive their trials. The bishops' temporal rule ended with secularisation in 1803, and the university closed the following year.