Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Wittenberg
Summary
Wittenberg (ˈwɪtənbɜːrɡ,_ˈvɪt- , ˈvɪtn̩bɛʁk; Low Saxon: Wittenbarg; meaning White Mountain; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Luther City Wittenberg)), is the fourth-largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the River Elbe, north of Leipzig and south-west of Berlin, and has a population of 46,008 (2018).
Wittenberg is famous for its close connection with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, for which it received the honorific Lutherstadt. Several of Wittenberg's buildings are associated with the events, including a preserved part of the Augustinian monastery in which Luther lived, first as a monk and later as owner with his wife Katharina von Bora and family, considered to be the world's premier museum dedicated to Luther. Wittenberg was also the seat of the Elector of Saxony, a dignity held by the dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg, making it one of the most powerful cities in the Holy Roman Empire.
Today Wittenberg is an industrial centre and popular tourist destination, best known for its intact historic centre and various memorial sites dedicated to Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon. The buildings associated with those two figures were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1996, along with other sites in Eisleben, because of their religious significance and testimony to one of the most influential movements of medieval Europe.
Historical documents first mention the settlement in 1180 as a small village founded by Flemish colonists under the rule of the House of Ascania. In 1260 this village became the residence of the dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg, and in 1293 the settlement was granted its town charter as a free-standing town.
Wittenberg developed into an important trade centre during the following few centuries because of its central location. When the local branch of the Ascanians died out in 1422, control of Saxe-Wittenberg passed to the House of Wettin. The town became an important regional political and cultural centre at the end of the 15th century when Frederick III "the Wise", the Elector of Saxony from 1486 to 1525, made his residence in Wittenberg.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.