[edit]
View from the Kalkberg towards the east, with all three main churches
Prehistory[edit]
The first signs of human presence in the area of Lüneburg date back to the time of Neanderthal Man: 56 axes, estimated at 150,000 years old, were uncovered during the construction in the 1990s of the autobahn between Ochtmissen and Bardowick. The site of the discovery at Ochtmissen was probably a Neanderthal hunting location where huntsmen skinned and cut up the animals they had caught.
The area was almost certainly not continuously inhabited at that time, however, due to the various glaciations that lasted for millennia. The first indication of a permanent, settled farming culture in the area was found not far from the site of the Neanderthal discovery in the river Ilmenau between Lüne and Bardowick. This was an axe that is described as a Schuhleistenkeil or "shoe last wedge" due to its shape. It dates to the 6th century BC and is now in the collection of the Lüneburg Museum.
Since the Bronze Age, the Lüneburg hill known as the Zeltberg has concealed a whole range of prehistoric and early historic graves, which were laid out by people living in the area of the present-day town of Lüneburg. One of the oldest finds from this site is a so-called Unetice flanged axe (Aunjetitzer Randleistenbeil) which dates to 1900 BC.
The land within the town itself has also yielded a number of ice age urns that were already being reported in the 18th century. These discoveries are, however, like those from the Lüneburger Kalkberg — they went into the private collections of several 18th-century scholars and, with a few exceptions, were lost when the scholars died.
Also worth mentioning in this regard are the Lombard Urnfield graves on the Lüneburg Zeltberg and Oedeme from the first few centuries AD. In the Middle Ages, there several discoveries were made on the site of the town, for example on the site of the old village of Modestorpe not far from St. John's Church (Johanniskirche), at the Lambertiplatz near the saltworks and in the old Waterside Quarter.
The ancient town may be that identified as Leufana or Leuphana (Greek: Λευφάνα), a town listed in Ptolemy (2.10) in the north of Germany on the west of the Elbe.
From village to commercial town[edit]
View from the Brausebrücke bridge
Lüneburg was first mentioned in medieval records in a deed signed on 13 August, 956 AD, in which Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor granted "the tax from Lüneburg to the monastery built there in honour of Saint Michael" (German: den Zoll zu Lüneburg an das zu Ehren des heiligen Michaels errichtete Kloster, Latin: teloneum ad Luniburc ad monasterium sancti Michahelis sub honore constructum). An older reference to the place in the Royal Frankish Annals for 795 states:ad fluvium Albim pervenit ad locum, qui dicitur Hliuni, i.e. "on the river Elbe, at the location, which is called Hliuni") and refers to one of the three core settlements of Lüneburg; probably the castle on the Kalkberg which was the seat of the Billunger nobles from 951. The Elbe-Germanic name Hliuni corresponds to the Lombard word for "refuge site".
From archaeological finds, it is clear that the area around Lüneburg had already been settled (in the museum of the Principality of Lüneburg, for example, there is a whole range of artefacts that were found here) and the saltworks had already started production.
According to tradition, the salt was first discovered by a hunter who observed a wild boar bathing in a pool of water, shot and killed it, and hung the coat up to dry. When it was dry, he discovered white crystals in the bristles — salt. Later he returned to the site of the kill and located the salt pool, the first production of salt on the site took place. In the town hall is a bone preserved in a glass case; legend has it that this is the preserved leg-bone of the boar. It was here that the Lüneburg Saltworks was subsequently established for many centuries.
In spite of its lucrative saltworks, Lüneburg was originally subordinated to the town of Bardowick only a few miles to the north. Bardowick was older and was an important trading post for the Slavs. Bardowick's prosperity – it had seven churches – was based purely on the fact that no other trading centres were tolerated. Only when Bardowick refused to pay allegiance to Henry the Lion it was destroyed by him in 1189, whereupon Lüneburg was given town privileges (Stadtrechte) and developed into the central trading post in the region in place of Bardowick.
The Polabian name for Lüneburg is Glain (written as Chlein or Glein in older German sources), probably derived from glaino (Slavonic: glina) which means "clay". In the Latin texts Lüneburg surfaces not only as the Latinised Lunaburgum, but also as Selenopolis.
Hanseatic period[edit]
Miniature of Lüneburg in the Sächsische Weltchronik, 13th century
Hans Bornemann's The punishment of Aegeas (~1450). In the background a view of Lüneburg with St. Nicholas' Church
The slightly leaning spire of the church of St. John
As a consequence of the monopoly that Lüneburg had for many years as a supplier of salt within the North German region, a monopoly not challenged until much later by French imports, it very quickly became a member of the Hanseatic League. The League was formed in 1158 in Lübeck, initially as a union of individual merchants, but in 1356 it met as a federation of trading towns at the first general meeting of the Hansetag. Lüneburg's salt was needed in order to pickle the herring caught in the Baltic Sea and the waters around Norway so that it could be preserved for food inland during periods of fasting when fish (not meat) was permitted.
The Scania Market at Scania in Sweden was a major fish market for herring and became one of the most important trade events in Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. Lüneburg's salt was in great demand and the town quickly became one of the wealthiest and most important towns in the Hanseatic League, together with Bergen and Visby (the fish suppliers) and Lübeck (the central trading post between the Baltic and the interior). In the Middle Ages salt was initially conveyed overland up the Old Salt Road to Lübeck. With the opening of the Stecknitz Canal in 1398 salt could be transported by cog from the Lübeck salt warehouses, the Salzspeicher.
Around the year 1235, the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg emerged, ruled by a family whose aristocratic lines repeatedly divided and re-united. The smaller states that kept re-appearing as a result, and which ranked as principalities, were usually named after the location of the ducal seat. Thus between 1267 and 1269 a Principality of Lüneburg was created for the first time, with Lüneburg as the seat of the royal Residenz. In 1371, in the wake of the Lüneburg War of Succession, rebel citizens threw the princes out of the town and destroyed their royal castle on the Kalkberg along with the nearby monastery. The state peace treaty in 1392 granted their demand to become a free imperial town, a status they were able to defend until 1637. The money now stayed in the town, enabling fine houses and churches to be built. In 1288, a Judenstrasse was recorded, indicating that there was a Medieval Jewish community in Lüneburg.
In 1392, Lüneburg was accorded the staple right. This forced merchants who travelled through the area with their carts to stop in Lüneburg, unload their wares, and offer them for sale for a certain period. So that merchants could not go around Lüneburg, an impassable defensive barrier was built west of the town in 1397; a similar barrier was built east of the town in 1479.
The Lüneburg Prelates' War caused a crisis from 1446 to 1462. This was not a war in the proper sense, but rather a bitter dispute between the town council and those members of the clergy who were also part-owners of the town's saltworks. It was not resolved until the intervention of the Danish King Christian I, the Bishop of Schwerin and the Lübeck Bishop, Arnold Westphal.
In 1454, the citizens demanded even more influence over public life.
Since 2007, Lüneburg has once again held the title of a Hanseatic town.
Modern period to the end of the Second World War[edit]
Cityscape of Lüneburg in the 16th-century atlas Civitates Orbis Terrarum, published in its first volume, in 1572
The Old Salt Route connected the Hanseatic Lübeck and the Hanseatic town of Lüneburg. With the demise of the Hanseatic League and the absence of herring around 1560, Falsterbo in Scania broke away as the biggest customers of Lüneburg's salt. Lüneburg rapidly became impoverished. Hardly any new houses were built in central Lüneburg after this time, which is why the historical appearance of the town centre has remained almost unchanged until the present day. The town became part of the Electorate of Hanover in 1708, the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807, the First French Empire in 1810, the Kingdom of Hanover in 1814, and the Prussian Province of Hanover in 1866. In the centuries after the collapse of the Hanseatic League, it was as if Lüneburg had fallen into a slumber. Heinrich Heine, whose parents lived in Lüneburg from 1822 to 1826, called it his "residence of boredom" (Residenz der Langeweile). The horticulturist Curt Backeberg was born in Lüneburg in 1894. Near the end of the 19th century Lüneburg evolved into a garrison town, and it remained so until the 1990s.
After the Nazi anti-Jewish pogroms known as Kristallnacht in the night of November 9, 1938, the city ordered the Lüneburg Synagogue to be torn down at the costs of the local Jewish community. In the Lüneburg Special Children's Ward, part of the Lüneburg State Mental Hospital, it is suspected that over 300 children were killed during the Second World War as part of the official Nazi child euthanasia programme.
When World War II broke out, Lüneburg became a target. During the bombing of Lüneburg, the town was attacked 19 times between 1940 and 1945 but miraculously survived without major damage to its city center, unlike nearby Hamburg. The biggest and most destructive bombing on Lüneburg took place on 22 February. Between 10:10 and 14:15, 39 airplanes bombed the city and its surroundings. As a result, multiple trenches near the Lüneburg station and the station's air raid shelter were hit by bombs, killing a total 350 people. The railway bridge over the Dahlenburger Landstraße also collapsed. The houses around the railway station were severely damaged or completely destroyed. In Wandrahmstraße, the Lüneburg Museum, whose holdings had not been completely removed, was completely destroyed. Furthermore, the terminus of the Lüneburg-Bleckede railway line, the marshalling yard, a dairy on Lüner Weg and a factory in the Am Schwalbenberg street were severely damaged. A second big raid happened on 7 April 1945 with 13 aircraft. The target was once more the railway station and its surroundings, where a train with 400 prisoners from the Alter Banter Weg satellite camp near Wilhelmshaven, who were to be taken to Neuengamme, was parked. Because the prisoners were locked in the carriages, they were unable to flee when the bombs fell, killing 256 in total. The goods station was completely destroyed, as were the waterworks and the Wachsbleiche factory. The teachers' seminar on Wilschenbrucher Weg, which housed an auxiliary hospital and was then used by the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, was badly damaged by a direct bomb hit, as was the auxiliary hospital Zur Hasenburg on Soltauer Straße. Many bombs also hit the Rote Feld, which was still largely undeveloped at the time. While the attacks resulted in 608 casualties, Lüneburg itself was largely spared and only a total of 270 homes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
1945 is also the year where on Lüneburg Heath the unconditional surrender of the three German armies operating in Northwest Germany was signed. The location is presently inaccessible to the general public as it lies within a military out-of-bounds area. Only a small monument on a nearby track alludes to the event. On 23 May 1945, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler took his own life in Lüneburg whilst in British Army custody by biting into a potassium cyanide capsule embedded in his teeth before he could be properly interrogated. He was subsequently buried in an unmarked location in a nearby forest.
Post-war period[edit]
Even before the Nuremberg Trials took place, the first war crimes trial, the so-called Belsen Trial (Bergen-Belsen-Prozess), began in Lüneburg on 17 September 1945 conducted against 45 former SS men, women and kapos (prisoner functionaries) from the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps.
After World War II, Lüneburg became part of the new state of Lower Saxony. But the dilapidated state of its buildings led to various plans to try to improve living conditions. One proposition that was seriously discussed was to tear down the entire Altstadt and replace it with modern buildings. The ensuing public protest resulted in Lüneburg becoming the focal point for a new concept: cultural heritage conservation. Since the early 1970s the town has been systematically restored. A leading figure in this initiative since the late 1960s has been Curt Pomp: against much opposition from politicians and councillors he founded and championed the Lüneburg Altstadt Working Group (Arbeitskreis Lüneburger Altstadt) for the preservation of historic buildings. His engagement was rewarded with the German Prize for Cultural Heritage Conservation and the German Order of Merit. Today Lüneburg is a tourist attraction as a result of the restoration and important sectors of the town's economy also depend on tourism.
Between Lüneburg and Soltau to the southwest, a large military training area, the Soltau-Lüneburg Training Area (SLTA), was established by the British and Canadian military, which was used from 1963 to 1994. It was governed by the Soltau-Lüneburg Agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. The area was located on the Lüneburg Heath and was heavily used particularly by tanks and other armoured vehicles.
The salt mine was closed in 1980, ending the thousand-year tradition of salt mining, although small amounts are still mined for ceremonial purposes. Small bags of salt may be purchased in the town hall, and bags are given as a gift from the town to all couples married in the town. After the closing of the salt mines, the town gained new relevance from its university, which was founded in 1989.
As part of the restructuring of Defence in 1990 two of the three Bundeswehr barracks in the town were closed and the remaining one reduced in size. The Bundesgrenzschutz barracks was also closed. Lüneburg University moved to the site of the old Scharnhorst barracks. The university grew out of the new economics and cultural studies departments set up in the 1980s and their amalgamation with the College of Education (Pädagogischen Hochschule or PH) that took place in 1989. Since its move to the former barracks site the university has enrolled increasing numbers of students. The expansion of the university is an important contribution to the restructuring of the town into a service centre.
Today an industrial estate, the Lünepark, has been built on the terrain of the old Bundesgrenzschutz barracks with its new industrial premises for entrepreneurs. The promotion of trade and industry has resulted in many firms from the ICT area locating themselves there. In May 2006 the nearby Johannes Westphal Bridge was opened to traffic. This links the newly created Lünepark with the suburb of Goseburg on the far side of the Ilmenau. Since 5 October 2007 Lüneburg has been able to call itself a Hanseatic Town; together with Stade it is one of only two towns in Lower Saxony to bear the title.
Amalgamated villages/communities[edit]
1943: Hagen and Lüne
1974: Häcklingen, Ochtmissen, Oedeme and Rettmer as well as the Ortsteile of Alt-Hagen, Ebensberg and Pflegerdorf/Gut Wienebüttel.
