Warburg (; Westphalian: Warberich or Warborg) is a town in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, central Germany on the river Diemel near the three-state point shared by Hessen, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is in Höxter district and Detmold region. Warburg is the midpoint in the Warburger Börde. Since March 2012 the city is allowed to call itself 'Hanseatic City of Warburg'.
Geography
The main town, consisting of the Old Town (Altstadt) and the New Town (Neustadt) and bearing the same name as the whole town, is a hill town. While the Old Town lies in the Diemel Valley, the New Town rises on the heights above the Diemel. The Warburg municipal area borders in the west on the Sauerland and in the northwest on the Eggegebirge foothills, while in the north and northeast the Warburger Börde abuts the town and in the south stretches the Diemel Valley.
Constituent communities Warburg consists of the following 16 centres: Bonenburg (1,107 inhabitants) Calenberg (459 inhabitants) Dalheim (95 inhabitants) Daseburg (1,354 inhabitants) Dössel (651 inhabitants) Germete (997 inhabitants) Herlinghausen (446 inhabitants) Hohenwepel (683 inhabitants) Menne (846 inhabitants) Nörde (780 inhabitants) Ossendorf (1,332 inhabitants) Rimbeck (1,603 inhabitants) Scherfede (3,105 inhabitants) Warburg (10,663 inhabitants) Welda (889 inhabitants) Wormeln (652 inhabitants)
History
Early history In the 4th millennium BC, there was a megalith culture in the Warburg area.
In the 1st century AD, there were Germanic settlers south of the Desenberg.
Middle Ages In the 8th century, there was a Saxon noble seat west of the town. In the 8th and 9th centuries came the Christianization of the Saxons in the Diemel area.
The name Warburg was first mentioned in a document sometime around 1010, although archaeological finds have established that there were already people living in what is now Warburg by protohistoric times. The first definite documentary mention came in 1036.
In the 11th century there was on the Warburger Burgberg ("Castle Mountain") the "Wartburg", under whose protection people settled. The castle was at first owned by Count Dodiko, whose estate, according to documents, passed in 1020 to the Bishop of Paderborn when the Count's only son met his end in an accident. Eventually, sometime between 1021 and 1033, the Emperor further granted to the bishop the Count's rights. About 1180, the Old Town was granted town rights.
The castle hill offered a good view over the Diemel Valley, allowing a close watch on the ford that merchants had to cross going to Warburg and Paderborn. This ford on the Diemel was a crossroads of several ancient commercial roads and was crucial in the town's development into a central place. The Warburg New Town was founded in 1228–29 by Bernhard IV. zur Lippe, Bishop of Paderborn, to bolster his political position in the Diemel area against encroachment by the Bishop of Cologne. About 1239, the New Town had been built into a complete town in its own right, and the townsfolk there had full civil rights after the Dortmund and Marsberg models. In 1260, the New Town was granted the right to build a town wall, not only against armies from afar, but even – expressly – against the Old Town.
In 1364, both the Old Town and the New Town became members of the Hanseatic League.
Unification of the two towns
By 1436, the Old Town and the New Town had forgotten their differences, uniting that year into one town. In Der Grote Breff ("The Great Letter"), the newly united town's constitution was precisely framed and sealed. Both former towns' seals are to be seen on the Great Letter. On the cast seal (in the picture), two defensive towers with a double wall are to be seen. Under the town gate stands the Bishop of Paderborn with a staff. The circumscription reads: "Sigillium burgensium in wartborch". The Great Letter is written in Middle Low German, the Hanseatic League's language, and stands as a substantial legal document.
Hitherto, the Old Town's and the New Town's council meetings had each been taking place in their respective town halls, each on their respective marketplaces. Now, however, there were two mayors. This was solved by allowing each mayor to head the unified town for half the year. Furthermore, both town halls were used for council meetings, again, each for half the year. However, the problem of having two town halls was not fully resolved until 132 years after the two former towns had merged. Only then, in 1568, was the new Rathaus Zwischen den Städten – Town Hall Between the Towns – built.
The common Town Hall, in the form of preserved Renaissance buildings, was built right on the former boundary between the two former towns, with two separate entrances for Altstädter and Neustädter ("Old Towners" and "New Towners"). In 1902–03, it was expanded with a half-timbered floor. It stands right where a gate, the Liebfrauentor (roughly, "Gate of Our Lady"), once stood. In the Middle Ages, this was the only gateway between the two then separate towns.
The Old Town's former Town Hall, renovated in 1973, nowadays serves gastronomical and residential ends. The New Town's former Town Hall served various purposes ranging from Town Hall cellar to assembly hall to market hall before it had to be torn down in 1803 owing to decrepitude.
There arose yet another superfluous government building in 1975 after the communities of the old Amt of Warburg-Land were amalgamated with Warburg, namely the Amt administration building on Kasseler Straße, which was forsaken by the district authorities in favour of the Behördenhaus ("Authority House") on Bahnhofstraße.
Modern times
In the early 17th century, Warburg was a well known and rich trading town. Outside the town walls rose "die Hüffert" as a new part of the town. In the Thirty Years' War, great parts of die Hüffert and other villages in the area were sacked and destroyed, impoverishing the town. In 1622, the town was captured by Christian the Younger of Brunswick, Bishop of Halberstadt, who is sometimes called in German der tolle Christian – "Christian the Mad". By 1628, the town was changing overlords and occupation armies repeatedly as the war dragged on, ending up in Imperial hands by the time the war ended in 1648.
On 5 June 1695, Johann Conrad Schlaun was born in Nörde near Warburg (now one of Warburg's constituent communities).
On 31 July 1760, during the Seven Years' War, Warburg was the scene of a battle that now bears its name. Twenty-four thousand Prussian, Hanoverian, Hessian and British troops fought under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick and the Crown Prince of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) against a French army of 21,500 soldiers led by Lieutenant-General Le Chevalier du Muy and the Duke of Broglie. The Prussians and their allies won, killing 8,000 French soldiers while losing only 1,500 themselves, leaving them free to sack the town. A tower on the Desenberg recalls the Battle of Warburg.
On 3 August 1802, Prussian troops came into Warburg in anticipation of the decisions of German Mediatisation (Reichsdeputationshauptschluss). From 1807 to 1813, in the Napoleonic Era, Warburg belonged to the Kingdom of Westphalia. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Warburg was once again assigned to Prussia. The next year, it became a district seat.
In 1850, the railway from Hamm was opened. In 1892 – 244 years after it had ended – Warburg at last paid off the last of the debts that it had incurred because of the Thirty Years' War.
In 1933, at the March elections, the Centre Party won 67.2% of the vote in Warburg to the NSDAP's 21.8%.
During World War II there was a Prisoner of war camp Oflag VI-B in the suburb Dössel. 20 September 1943, 47 Polish officers escaped through a tunnel. 37 were recaptured and executed by the Gestapo.
On 1 April 1945, Warburg was captured by American troops.
On 1 January 1975 came municipal reorganization, which saw 16 formerly independent municipalities merged into a new greater town of Warburg. Also, the districts of Warburg and Höxter were united, taking the latter's name. In 1983, Warburg became a founding member of the Wesphalian Hanseatic League (Westfälischer Hansebund).
History of the districts
Welda The lands around Warburg's constituent community of Welda, once a border town between Westphalia, Waldeck and Hesse, have yielded forth archaeological evidence of a Celtic presence. It has been confirmed that the village was once visited in 1856 by Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, who went on to become the "Ninety-Nine-Day Emperor", Kaiser Friedrich III. He presented the church with a Communion chalice. After the Second World War, in 1945, there was an American prison camp at Welda holding roughly 80,000 German prisoners of war.
Wormeln Likewise, Wormeln's surrounding area has yielded archaeological finds that point to ancient settlement.
There is believed to have been a parish in Wormeln by about 780, with church patrons Simon the Zealot and Judah. Wormeln had its first documentary mention in 1018 in a donation document from Count Dodiko to Meinwerk, Bishop of Paderborn.
About 1246, the Counts of Everstein founded the Wormeln Cistercian Convent of the "Nuns of the Grey Order" Cistercians. On 16 September 1810, Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia in Napoleonic times, decreed the convent's dissolution.
Demographics
Religion
Christianity
During the Saxon Wars in the 8th century the area round the Diemel was incorporated into the Frankish realm. Beside other places Warburg is presumed to be the location were the Irminsul, an old Saxon sacred pillar. The Austrian abbot Sturmius proselytized the area around the Diemel and Weser in 774. So the area around Warburg was Christianized from 774 on.
Catholic church As most of Warburg's inhabitants are Catholic it is part of the center zone of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paderborn. Many theologians as Otto Beckmann, Anton Corvinus or Julius Dammann, office bearers of the church like Johann Conrad Schlaun or Arnold Güldenpfennig and church artists like Josef Kohlschein come from Warburg.
Syriac Orthodox
The Syriac Orthodox Church's bishopric of Germany was founded in 1997 and has its Episcopal seat in the former Dominican monastery in Warburg. After the monastery was renovated, it is now used as the Syriac Orthodox Monastery of Mor Yacqub of Sarugh, and as a centre for the community in Westphalia. The Body of Patriarch Ignatius Zakka I Iwas is buried here.
Jewish life in Warburg
Warburg had in bygone days an important Jewish community. Around the year 1800, roughly 200 of Warburg's 2,000 townsfolk were Jewish, and about 1900, some 300 of the 5,000 people in the town were. The sharp upswing in the population as a whole was due to migration from the countryside, industries setting up shop in town, and railway operations.
In the 16th century, the Warburg family - originally from Venice de la Banca, Abraham de Palenzuela Levi Kahana- took the town's name as their own and moved in the second half of the 18th century to Altona (Hamburg), where the brothers Moses Marcus and Gerson Warburg built up the Bankinstitut M&M Warburg in 1798. From this family also came the natural scientists Otto and Emil Warburg the art historian and cultural theorist Abraham Moritz Warburg, better known as Aby Warburg, who founded the Warburg Institute.
Another well known Warburg Jewish family were the Oppenheims, among whom was Hermann Oppenheim, a famous German neurologist. Yet another famous townsman was Emil Herz, a publisher at the Ullstein-Verlag (until the Nazis forced him out as the company's director in 1934, after he had worked there for 30 years), who described in his book something of Jewish life in Warburg.
There is still a Jewish cemetery in Warburg today. The synagogue, which stood in the Old Town, was destroyed on Kristallnacht (9 November 1938).
Culture
Buildings
Historic Old and New towns