Bremen, city on both sides of the Weser, with (2019) 567 600 residents, forms together with Bremerhaven the federal state of Bremen.
With the university, other colleges and many institutes, Bremen is a city of research and development. The economic decline of the shipbuilding and steel industries could not be fully absorbed by the auto, food, aerospace industries. The Bremen ports with high turnover stimulate foreign trade.
Many medieval buildings were destroyed in World War II; Worth seeing include the cathedral (11th century) and the brick town hall (1405-10) with a renaissance facade (1608-12). The Roland column (1404) on the market is the symbol of urban freedom. The Böttcherstraße with many museums and the well-preserved Schnoorviertel are also tourist attractions.
First mentioned in 782, Bremen was a member of the Hanseatic League from 1358.
Cityscape
The origins of the cathedral go back to the 8th century, the current construction was started in 1042 (flat-roofed double-choir pillar basilica with 2 crypts), in the 13th century renovations (west facade) and vaulting took place; the late Gothic north aisle was started in 1502.
Gothic church buildings are Liebfrauen (begun after 1230, early Gothic Westphalian hall with a row of gables on the south side) and Sankt Martini (13th / 14th century, hall with cross-pitched roofs and richly carved Baroque organ prospect). Next to the cathedral is the town hall (1405–12) with a splendid Renaissance facade (1608–12), in the Ratskeller there are frescoes by M. Slevogt (1927); the new town hall was added in 1909–13 by G. von Seidl. The Roland column (1404) on the market is a symbol of the imperial freedom of the city and, together with the town hall, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2004 (Town Hall and Roland in Bremen, World Heritage).
Bremen was badly damaged in the Second World War, including Over half of the apartments (and thus the once significant number of town houses) fell victim to the war. Numerous historical buildings have been rebuilt, such as the Schütting, a guild house in the Flemish Renaissance style (1537/38), the former city scales (originally 1587/88) and the commercial building (originally 1618–21). Among the modern buildings are the Haus des Reichs (1928–30), the town hall (today ÖVB-Arena; 1962–64) and the Congress Center (1991–97) on Bürgerweide, the Sankt-Lukas-Kirche (1963/64) in the Grolland district and the House of Citizenship (1966).
The Neue Vahr housing estate, which was built in 1956, was the largest social housing project in the Federal Republic of Germany at the time (including A. Aalto’s high- rise apartment building, 1957–61). Böttcherstraße, designed as a museum and shop street by various architects from 1924–31 (including the “Paula-Becker-Modersohn-Haus” and the Atlantis house by B. Hoetger), was reconstructed in 1945–54 (new facade of the Atlantis house by E Mataré); The Roselius House is also located here (with furnishings from the old patricians of Bremen, among others). The Schnoorviertel with its petty bourgeois houses from the 16th to 18th centuries Century, hardly destroyed in the war, was placed under monument protection (1958), renovated and expanded to a pedestrian zone. In Bremen-Schönebeck is the Schönebeck Palace (17th – 18th century; local history museum).
