Tübingen

Tübingen stands on the Neckar beneath the castle of Hohentübingen, recorded during a siege by King Henry IV in 1078. It became the seat of the counts palatine of Tübingen, and by 1231 was recognised as a town with a market and court. The town and castle passed to the counts of Württemberg in 1342. Its university, founded by Count Eberhard in 1477, made the small Swabian town a centre of learning far beyond its walls.

In 1514 Duke Ulrich agreed to the Treaty of Tübingen with the Württemberg estates after a popular rebellion. Following his return from exile, he introduced the Reformation; the former Augustinian monastery became the Protestant seminary known as the Tübinger Stift. The Thirty Years' War brought occupation by successive armies and devastating plague. Scholarship and printing remained part of the town's life: in 1798 Johann Friedrich Cotta founded the Allgemeine Zeitung here, a newspaper that became influential across Germany.