The history of Freiburg began in 1120 when it was founded by the House of Zähringen as a market town strategically located at the edge of the Black Forest and along important trade routes. After the extinction of the Zähringers, control passed to the Counts of Urach and later to the House of Habsburg in the 14th century, under whom Freiburg became part of Further Austria. The city developed as a regional economic and intellectual centre, marked by the founding of the University of Freiburg in 1457. Freiburg suffered significant damage during conflicts such as the Thirty Years' War and later wars between France and Austria. In the early 19th century, following the Napoleonic Wars, Freiburg was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Baden. Heavily bombed during World War II, Freiburg was rebuilt after 1945 and has since developed a reputation for sustainability and environmental policy.
Founding of the castle and the city
The first reference of habitation in the modern-day Freiburg, the Wiehre and Herdern, was documented in 1008. A trade route crossed through south of Zähringen, a modern-day part of Freiburg, and Herdern near the Dreisam, through the Rhine Valley, modern-day Zähringer-, Habsburger- and Kaiser-Joseph-Straße and an imperial road towards Breisach/Colmar (modern-day Salz- and Bertoldstraße).
In approximately 1091, Berthold II of Zähringen built a castle, Castrum de Friburch, on top of the modern-day Schlossberg in order to control the trade routes. A settlement of servants and craftsmen at the foot of the castle belonged to the new area, with the settlement being situated in the modern-day region of the Altstadt (English Old Town) and Oberlinden, which stood under particular protection from the lord. The settlement grew, which was founded by Konrad, the brother of the current Duke, Berthold III, and he then went on to grant a market for the settlement in 1120. He granted the residents extensive privileges, such as the relief from farmstead taxes and the free voting for the pastor.
Also noticeable was the planned network of water, called Bächle, in 1170, to provide water to the Altstadt in the streets, whose water comes from the Dreisam and was used to supply industrial and cleaning water in the Middle Ages, which also served as available means to extinguish fires. Drinking water was supplied to the town by wooden pipes called (Deicheln, in Freiburg Deichele) from sources above the city and was accessible from fountains. Runzgenossenschaften, or canal cooperatives, were formed to manage and maintain the watercourses in the city, such as the Bächle and Runzen (canals) for trade operation (such as tannery, pellet grinding, etc.).
The city's rise Silver, which was discovered at the end of the 10th century to the west of the Black Forest, made the city richer. The Zähringer received the mining rights from the Bishops of Basel, who in turn had received the mountain shelf from Emperor Konrad II in 1028. With the rise of Freiburg, the city church, where Bernhard von Clairvaux had preached the Second Crusade in 1146, soon turned out to be too small, which meant the last ruler of the Zähringer dynasty Bertold V. began the construction of a new parish church around 1200. The Freiburg Minster was first built in Romanesque style, but later finished in Gothic. After his death in 1218, Bertold V. was buried as the last Zähringer in the Minster founded by him. A council already existed before 1178 under his predecessor, Bertold IV. The council was established during Bertold V's reign. Probably the council in Freiburg, like in the episcopal cities of the Upper Rhine, developed from a township advisory council, which emerged from the municipal community involved in the court.Mathias Kälble: Zwischen Herrschaft und bürgerlicher Freiheit. Stadtgemeinde und städtische Führungsgruppen in Freiburg im Breisgau im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert. Freiburg i. Br. 2001, , S. 100.
The Counts of Urach as Counts of Freiburg After Zähringer's died out in 1218, Egino I, the nephew of Bertold V, the first Count of Urach, who then called themselves Counts of Freiburg and resided in the Schlossberg castle above Freiburg. Since the citizens did not trust their new rule, they wrote their old rights granted by the Zähringen into a council constitution (the Stadtrodel of 1218), after which 24 councilors from the old ruling houses ruled Freiburg. Starting from 1248 councils which changed yearly supervened. At the end of the 13th century, craftsmen came to the town council through the guilds.
In the 13th century, several clerical orders were built within the city walls. The Dominicans founded the Preacher's Monastery, Predigerkloster, in 1236, where Albertus Magnus held office of the post-mortem from 1236 to 1238. From 1240 the first mention of a Johanniterhaus is dated. In 1246, Count Konrad surrendered the Martinskapelle to the begging of the Franciscans with four court houses. The barber monks erected their monastery there, and until 1318 they built the chapel to the still existing Martinskirche. The origins of the German Order of Freiburg date from 1258. In the narrow old town of 1278, the Augustiners between Salzstraße and Stadtmauer found a place for their monastery.In den Gebäuden befindet sich heute das Augustinermuseum. Im Pflaster südwestlich davon ist der Verlauf der Stadtmauer markiert.
The years under the rule of the Counts of Freiburg stood out due to the frequent feuds between the Counts and the city. These feuds often always concerned money. In 1299, the citizens of Freiburg refused to comply with the new demands set out by Count Egino II and shot down his castle on top of the Schlossberg with catapults. Because of this, Egino called on support from his brother-in-law Conrad of Lichtenberg, the Bishop of Strasbourg. In the subsequent battle, the Bishop was killed - a citizen of Freiburg called Hauri is said to have stabbed him with a spear - and resulted in a victory for the city. However, the citizens had to pay the Count a yearly reparation for killing the bishop. When Count Egino III tried to penetrate the city at night with an army detachment, the citizens of Freiburg destroyed the castle on the Schlossberg. In order to finally rid the Counts´ rule, the citizens bought their freedom in 1368 with 20,000 Mark* silver and subsequently submitted themselves voluntarily to the House of Habsburg for protection. The city then belonged to Further Austria and shared ups and downs with the Habsburgers until the German Reich was dissolved in 1805. Despite this, Freiburg merged with numerous other mints on both sides of the Upper Rhine in 1377 and the so-called "Rappenmünzbund" in Switzerland. Among them included Colmar and Thann in Alsace, Basel, Schaffhausen, Zurich and Bern in Switzerland and in Sundgau. This universal mint system expanded trade across the Upper Rhine. The Rappen penny, used in Freiburg, was the main unit of currency. In 1584, this union was dissolved.
One Mark had a weight of 237.5 in Silver and served as the basic parameter with a subdivision of 678 pennies.
Freiburg under the Habsburgers
The Habsburgers took up Freiburg on their promise. For the wars against the Swiss Confederacy, the citizens of Freiburg had to financially support and provide knights. In 1386, the Swiss were victorious in the bloody Battle of Sempach. They did not just slay the Austrian Duke Leopold III, but almost the entire Freiburg nobility. As a result, the guilds took over the power of the city council.
After Frederick IV, Duke of Austria had helped Antipope John XXIII who had been deposed at the Council of Constance to flee to Freiburg in 1415, King Sigismund imposed the imperial ban, or Reichsacht in German, on the Habsburg Duke. Thus, Breisgau fell back as a fief to the empire and Freiburg was an imperial city from 1415 until Frederick was pardoned in 1425.
In 1448, Archduke Albrecht, the lord of the Habsburg foreland, established a general university in Freiburg, from which, with the founding charter of 1457, formed the University of Freiburg.
A highlight of Freiburg's history was the imperial diet to Freiburg in 1498 convened by King of the Romans Maximillian I. During the diet, Maximillian and the estate-based society negotiated the initiation of a Swiss peace treaty. However, nothing came about from this because the Swiss rejected both the imperial taxes and the jurisdiction of the Reichskammergericht, or Imperial Chamber Court, as well as, after having defeated Maximillian's army in 1499 in the Swabian War at Dornach, separated from their obligations to the Holy Roman Empire.
After the raised presbytery was completed, the Bishop of Constance inaugurated the Freiburg Minster in 1513. In the same year, under the Bundschuh movement, peasants concentrated themselves in Freiburg alongside their leader Joß Fritz. The uprising was betrayed and ended before it could actually start. As a result, there was an exemplary punishment for the participants in the uprising.
Reformation and the Peasants' War Despite the previous uprising, the Reformation and above all the spreading of Martin Luther's work On the Freedom of a Christian led to more rebellious activities arising. On 23 May 1525, 18,000 peasants led by Hans Müller captured Freiburg during the German Peasants' War and forced the city council to join an evangelical Christian organisation to establish common public peace and eradicate the unfair grievances of the common poor man.Friedrich Schaub: Der Bauernkrieg um Freiburg 1525. In: Zeitschrift des Freiburger Geschichtsvereins. 46, 1935, S. 83. Digitalisat der UB Freiburg After defeating the uprising, the city of Freiburg assured the House of Habsburg of its good Catholic attitude. Alongside Freiburg, Breisach, Waldkirch and Endingen all confirmed their Catholic stance, whilst Kenzingen, Neuenburg, Rheinfelden, Waldshut and Strasbourg all conformed to Protestantism. In 1529, when the iconoclasts fundamentally supported Protestantism, the prominent scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (until 1535) and the cathedral chapter of Basel fled to Catholic Freiburg. They arrived at The Whale House and the Basler Hof respectively.
From the 15th until the 17th century, plague epidemics continued to occur in Freiburg. One of the worst epidemics was in 1564, when around 2000 people, a quarter of the population, died from the plague, as reported by town doctor Johannes Schenck.Heiko Haumann, Hans Schadek (editors.): Geschichte der Stadt Freiburg. Bd. 2, S. 104.
Witch-hunting in Freiburg Similar to the situation across Europe, witch trials took place in Freiburg. Between 1550 and 1628, 131 out of 302 convicted witches were executed. The proportion of women, who had been transferred to "the vile vice of sorcery and witchcraft",Aus dem Gutachten des Freiburger Rechtsgelehrten Dr. Thomas Metzger im Zusammenhang mit dem Prozess gegen Salome Mennin 1603. Zitiert nach: Sully Roecken, Carolina Brauckmann: Margaretha Jedefrau. Freiburg 1989, S. 215. was substantially higher than the proportion of men. On 24 March 1599, Catharina Stadellmenin, Anna Wolffartin and Margaretha Mößmerin among others were beheaded in Freiburg and burned outside of the city. A memorial plaque on the Martinstor recollects these victims. In 1599, 37 women were executed for being a witch and only two men as warlocks. In 1603, 30 women and four men were taken to court for using sorcery, of which 13 women were sentenced to death including Agatha Gatter.
The Thirty Years' War At the start of the Thirty Years' War, the south-west of the empire was largely spared from fighting. In 1620, the Jesuits took over the University of Freiburg, after the neighbouring universities of Tübingen, Basel and Heidelberg had become Protestant.Joseph Bader: Geschichte der Stadt Freiburg im Breisgau. Herdersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Freiburg 1882/83.