Ansbach

For the automobile brand, see Ansbach (automobile).

Ansbach
Ansbach
Coordinates	49°18′0″N 10°35′0″E
Administration
Country	Germany
State	Bavaria
Admin. region	Middle Franconia
District	Urban district
Lord Mayor	Carda Seidel (BAP/FWG/ödp)
Basic statistics
Area	99.92 km2 (38.58 sq mi)
Elevation	405 m  (1329 ft)
Population	40,253 (31 December 2010)
- Density	403 /km2 (1,043 /sq mi)
Other information
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Licence plate	AN
Postal code	91522
Area code	0981
Website	www.ansbach.de

Ansbach, originally Onolzbach, is a city in Bavaria, Germany. It is the capital of the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Ansbach is situated 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Nuremberg and 90 miles (140 km) north of Munich, on the Fränkische Rezat, a tributary of the Main river. As of 2004, its population was 40,723.

Ansbach is location of the Ansbach University of Applied Sciences. The city is connected by the autobahn A6 and the highways B13 and B14. Ansbach station is on the Nürnberg–Crailsheim and Treuchtlingen–Würzburg railways and is the terminus of line S4 of the Nuremberg S-Bahn.

History

A Benedictine monastery at the place was founded around 748 by a Frankish noble, Gumbertus, who was later canonized. In the following centuries the monastery and the adjoining village (Onoldsbach) grew to become the town of Ansbach (called a town in 1221 for the first time).

The counts of Oettingen ruled over Ansbach until the Hohenzollern burgraves of Nuremberg took over in 1331. The Hohenzollerns made Ansbach the seat of their dynasty until their acquisition of the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1415. However, after the 1440 death of Frederick I, Elector of Brandenburg, the Franconian cadet branch of the family was not politically united with the main Brandenburg line, remaining independent as "Brandenburg-Ansbach".

Margrave George the Pious introduced the Protestant Reformation to Ansbach in 1528, leading to the secularization of St. Gumbertus Abbey in 1563.

In 1792 Ansbach was annexed by the Hohenzollerns of Prussia. In 1796 the Duke of Zweibrücken, Maximilian Joseph, the future Bavarian king Max I. Joseph, was exiled to Ansbach after Zweibrücken had been taken by the French. In Ansbach Maximilian von Montgelas wrote an elaborate concept for the future political organisation of Bavaria, which is known as the "Ansbacher Mémoire". In 1806 Prussia ceded Ansbach and the Principality of Ansbach to Bavaria in exchange for the Bavarian duchy of Berg.

At the end of the 17th century, the margraves' palace at Ansbach was rebuilt in Baroque style.

Jewish families were resident in Ansbach from at least the end of the 18th century. They set up a Jewish Cemetery in the Ruglaender Strasse, which was vandalised and razed under the Nazi tyranny. It was repaired in 1946, but it was damaged several times more. A plaque on the wall of the cemetery commemorates these events. The Jewish Congregation built its synagogue at No 3 Rosenbadstrasse, but it too was damaged by the SA, though it was not burnt down for fear of damaging the neighbouring buildings. It serves today as a "Symbolic House of God". A plaque in the entrance serves as a memorial to the synagogue and to Jewish residents who were murdered during the Holocaust.

In 1940, at least 500 patients were deported from the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Ansbach [Ansbach Medical and Nursing Clinic] to the extermination facilities Sonnenstein and Hartheim which were disguised as psychiatric institutions, as part of the T4 euthanasia action. They were gassed there. At the clinic in Ansbach itself, around 50 intellectually disabled children were injected with the drug Luminal and killed that way. A plaque was erected in their memory in 1988 in the local hospital at No. 38 Feuchtwangerstrasse.

During World War II, a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp was located here. Also during the Second World War the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht had bases here. The nearby airbase was the home station for the Stab & I/KG53 (Staff & 1st Group of Kampfgeschwader 53) operating 38 Heinkel He 111 bombers. On 1 September 1939 this unit was one of the many that participated in the attack on Poland that started the war. During the Western Allied invasion of Germany in April 1945, the airfield was seized by the United States Third Army, and used by the USAAF 354th Fighter Group which flew P-47 Thunderbolts from the aerodrome (designated ALG R-82) from late April until the German capitulation on 7 May 1945.

At the end of the war, 19-year old student Robert Limpert tried to get the town to surrender to the US Forces without a fight. He was betrayed by Hitler Youth and was hung from the portal of the City Hall by the city's Military Commander Oberst Meyer. Several memorials to his heroic deed have been erected over the years, against great opposition from the citizenry: in the Ludwigskirche, in the Gymnasium Carolinum and at No 6 Kronenstrasse.

After the Second World War, Ansbach belonged to the American Zone. The American Military authorities established a displaced persons (DP) camp in what used to be a sanatorium in what is today the Strüth quarter.

Since 1970, Ansbach has enlarged its municipal area by incorporating adjacent communities.

Ansbach was a small town largely by-passed by the Industrial Revolution, an administrative and cultural center. Although all bridges were destroyed, the historical center of Ansbach was spared during World War II and it has kept its baroque character.

Ansbach hosts several units of the U.S. armed forces, associated with German units under NATO. There are five separate U.S. installations: Shipton Kaserne, home to 412th Aviation Support Battalion, Katterbach Kaserne, formally the home of the 1st Infantry Division's 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, which has been replaced by the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade as of 2006, as part of the 1st Infantry Division's return to Fort Riley, Kansas; Bismarck Kaserne, which functions as a satellite post to Katterbach, hosting their Post Exchange, Theater, Barracks, Franconia Inn, Military Police, and other support agencies, Barton Barracks, home to the USAG Ansbach and Bleidorn Barracks, which has a library and housing. Ansbach was also home to the headquarters of the 1st Armored Division (United States) from 1972 to the early1990s.

Boroughs

• Eyb, part of Ansbach since October 1, 1970
• Bernhardswinden, part of Ansbach since July 1, 1972
• Brodswinden, part of Ansbach since July 1, 1972
• Claffheim, part of Ansbach since July 1, 1972
• Elpersdorf bei Ansbach, part of Ansbach since July 1, 1972
• Hennenbach, part of Ansbach since July 1, 1972
• Neuses bei Ansbach, part of Ansbach since July 1, 1972
  • Strüth
  • Wasserzell
• Schalkhausen, part of Ansbach since July 1, 1972
  • Geisengrund
  • Dornberg
  • Neudorf
  • Steinersdorf

International relations

See also: List of twin towns and sister cities in Germany

Ansbach is twinned with:

• Anglet, France
• Bay City, Michigan
• Fermo, Italy
• Jing Jiang, China

Notable people

• Albert of Prussia, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order and the first duke of Prussia.
• In the late 16th century, the physician to margrave Georg Friedrich was the famous botanist, Leonhart Fuchs.
• Ansbach was home of the astronomer Simon Marius, who observed Jupiter's moons from the castle's tower. Later he claimed to be the discoverer of the moons, which led to a dispute with the true discoverer, Galileo Galilei.
• Ansbach was the birthplace of the early chemist, Georg Ernst Stahl.
• Queen Caroline, consort of King George II of Great Britain was born in Ansbach in 1683.
• Two poets, Johann Peter Uz (1720–1796) and August von Platen-Hallermünde (1790–1835), were also born there.
• Ansbach was the birthplace of the pre-Linnean botanist, Georg Christian Oeder.
• John James Maximilian Oertel (1811–1882), born in Ansbach, was a Lutheran clergyman who later converted to Roman Catholicism, became a professor of German at Fordham University in the United States, and later edited and founded several newspapers in the United States, including one that would become the leading German-language newspaper in the county, Baltimore's Kirchenzeitung.
• Also the Bavarian Major General and War Minister Moritz Ritter von Spies (1805–1862) was born in Ansbach.
• Kaspar Hauser lived in Ansbach from 1830 to 1833. He was murdered in the palace gardens.
• Theodor Escherich, bacteriologist and paediatrician, born in Ansbach in 1857. Bacterial genus Escherichia (for example, Escherichia coli) was named after him in 1919, eight years after his death.
• Hermann Fegelein SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler's Adjutant and Adolf Hitler's brother in law was a great admirer of his birthplace, Ansbach.
• George H. Brickner, U.S. Representative from Wisconsin.

Sights

• Castle of the Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach
• Margrave museum
• Kaspar Hauser Monument
• St. Gumbertus and St. Johannis churches, both 15th century

See also

• Wolf of Ansbach

External links

• Official Website (German, English, French)
• Ansbach information
• US Army Garrison Ansbach - Ansbach Military Community
• Ansbach University of Applied Sciences

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.