Göttingen

Göttingen grew on the Leine along an old north-south trade road, as the seat of a Guelph principality that was the poorest of those in the duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Its wool weavers in the Neustadt and its linen weavers, organized in guilds, made the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a boom time. The Franciscans settled in the Altstadt in the thirteenth century and the Dominicans in the Papendiek, whose Pauline church was consecrated in 1331. After the old castle of the lords of Grone was destroyed by the burghers between 1323 and 1329, the city stood without a rival fortress.

In the first half of the fourteenth century the Gothic hall church of Saint John replaced an earlier building, and from 1330 Saint Nicholas was rebuilt in Gothic style. After 1366 the old town hall took shape, and Saint James' church was begun later in the century. In 1362 Duke Ernest of Brunswick-Göttingen allowed a new wall that took in the Neustadt, which grew the city to about seventy-five hectares and took two hundred years to complete; from 1380 a long hedged Landwehr ringed the countryside. Göttingen was first invited to a Hansetag in 1351 but stayed aloof, and paid dues only from 1426.

Duke Otto the Evil, a knight who hated cities, razed the remains of the castle of Grone in 1387 in his feud with Göttingen, but the city kept its autonomy. In 1369 and 1370 the dukes handed the city jurisdiction over the Jews, who then suffered repeated pogroms and expulsions. Duke Eric forced Göttingen to pay homage in 1512 after an imperial ban in 1504 had harmed its economy. The Reformation came in the 1520s, and the University of Göttingen was founded in the 1730s under the Hanoverian elector-kings.