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Erlangen's first documented mention is contained in this deed of donation from 1002 CE. 1000 years later, the town celebrated its jubilee with an extensive programme of festivities – and including this 'Bocksbeutel' bottle of Franconian wine.

With this document, King Henry II donated the ecclesiastical estate of Forchheim and associated villages – including one named villa erlangon – to the Würzburg Abbey of Haug. When exactly it 'hatched from its egg', i.e. when it was founded and where exactly it was located, remains obscured by the mists of time. Researchers have located the core of the Erlangen settlement in the area of today's Alterlangen (Old Erlangen) district, which bears its name for this reason. One thing is certain: In 1002, Erlangen stepped onto the stage of history – almost 50 years before its neighbour Nuremberg, which was to become such an important city.


A traditionally-shaped Franconian 'Bocksbeutel' wine bottle containing a Jubiläumswein (jubilee vintage) released on occasion of the town's 1000th anniversary
Domäne Castell
2002

Before the arrival of the Huguenots and the construction of the Neustadt (New Town) beginning in 1686, Erlangen had already existed for more than half a millennium. It had been in possession of a town charter for around 300 years.

At the time, it was a compact town of no more than 500 to 600 inhabitants. Its focal point was today's Martin-Luther-Platz (Martin Luther Square) with its church and the town hall. Agriculture and small business formed its economic base. Not insignificantly, the presence of a mint is documented for the 14th century. Even Nuremberg at times used the services of the local Master of the Mint.

In the 20th century, Bernhard Postner makes the setting of the Erlangen mint one of the subjects of his work. Here, he references the depiction of a medieval mint in a Bernese manuscript from 1485. Deviating from the original, however, he imagines an additional window that seems to offer a view of the medieval town of Erlang.


Bernhard Postner
Erlangen mint
Oil on plywood
1957

Erlangen painter, draughtsman and graphic artist Bernhard Postner (1924–1998) was a fixture of the local art scene for many decades. Erlangen and its surroundings often appear as subjects in his work. In the 1960s, he belonged to the studio community housed in the historic 'Thalerei' building.

Over the course of its more than 1000-year-long history, Erlangen had many rulers. The Würzburg Abbey of Haug transferred it to the Diocese of Bamberg in 1017, which in turn sold it to Emperor Charles IV in 1361. Erlangen was incorporated into the territory of New Bohemia and received its town charter in 1398. In 1402, Charles' son Wenzel, who was short of money, mortgaged the town to the Burgrave of Nuremberg, a Hohenzollern.

Via many turns and roundabouts, Erlangen eventually ended up in the Margraviate of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, which was ruled by the Hohenzollern and from 1792 was part of the Kingdom of Prussia. Hohenzollern rule shaped the city over centuries and also left its mark on the cityscape – exemplified by this eagle, which, as the heraldic animal of Brandenburg, graced the Bayreuth Gate at the northern end of the Old Town from 1777. When this city gate was demolished in 1865, Erlangen's 'Prussian period' had long been relegated to history: The city had been Bavarian since 1810.


Brandenburg Eagle from the Bayreuther Tor (Bayreuth Gate)
Iron sheet metal
1777

This originally red-coloured eagle bears on its chest the crest of the Hohenzollern, the princely house of the Margraviate of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, to which Erlangen belonged for centuries.

From 1686 onwards, more than 1000 French Huguenots had come to Erlangen as religious refugees. Margrave Christian Ernst had courted them with generous privileges, hoping the immigration of innovative craftspeople and wealthy merchants would uplift the economy of his principality, which was still suffering from the devastation of the Thirty Years' War.

Many of Erlangen's established denizens were less impressed by their new neighbours – not least because these were initially billeted in their homes. In retrospect, however, the arrival of the French Calvinist refugees was romanticised and idealised, like in this stained-glass window from 1893, which originates from the former town hall located on the Marktplatz (Market Square).

Erlangen finally became a Hugenottenstadt (Huguenot Town) in the late 19th century, when the once-faded interest in its Huguenot heritage experienced a resurgence. Especially during the Nazi period, the Hugenottenmythos (Huguenot myth) was cultivated and instrumentalised to support ideas of ethnic purity, for example on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the New Town in 1936, when Hugenottenplatz (Huguenot Square) received its current name.


Miniature jug on occasion of the 250th Founding Jubilee of the Neustadt (New Town)
Porcelain
1936

This souvenir article for the jubilee year shows the town's coat of arms inscribed "Huguenot Town of Erlangen founded 1686". From the mid-1920s, the name Hugenottenstadt (Huguenot Town) for Erlangen's New Town had entered common usage.

But the chequerboard was not his inspiration when, in 1686, court architect Johann Moritz Richter elaborated the plan for a new town south of Erlangen, where French religious refugees were to live and work.

His client, Margrave Christian Ernst of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, intended nothing less than to realise the urban construction ideals of a planned Baroque town, and to set himself a monument. An evenly spaced layout in which everything fits into a harmonious whole, was to reflect the order guaranteed by the sovereign in the sense of absolutist rule. Nothing was left to chance: The width of the dead-straight streets, the size of the squares, and the height of the mostly just two-storey buildings were defined precisely and based on strict mathematical formulae. Although the plan was only partially realised, Erlangen was around 1800 considered one of the most beautiful towns in Germany. Its townscape remains unique in the Franconian region to this day.


Bernhard Postner
Plan for Erlangen's Neustadt (New Town)
Ink and watercolour
1958

To give an impression of the development of the Baroque-style planned town of Erlangen, the town museum had this plan drawn up by Erlangen draughtsman and graphic artist Bernhard Postner. In it, buildings are colour-coded according to their time of construction. Furthermore, streets and squares bear their current names, which they only acquired much later. Postner presumably based it on a plan created around 1790 by legal counsel and town historian Friedrich Christian Rudel for his town chronicle.

In terms of its architectural history, Erlangen's Old Town is actually younger than the New Town. Yet this has not always been the case: While the Baroque-style New Town around Hugenottenplatz (Huguenot Square) was planned out and constructed within a few years beginning in 1686, the old Erlangen town around the Old Town Church was a settlement that had grown over a long period of time.

This changed abruptly on 14 August 1706, when sparks from a tavern's chimney set fire to a load of hay, and the panicked oxen pulled the wagon into a barn. The rapidly spreading fire within a few hours destroyed almost the entire Old Town. After this devastating catastrophe, it was rebuilt according to a streamlined layout modelled on the Baroque-style New Town. Those walking from Hugenottenplatz to Martin-Luther-Platz today will scarcely notice they are moving between two once independent towns that only became a single administrative unit in 1812.


Architectural decoration on a reconstructed Old Town building
Limestone
1708

This ornamental stone is testimony to the reconstruction of the Altstadt (Old Town) after the fire of 1706, and presumably belonged to the building preceding the current house at number 90 Hauptstraße (well known as the 'Gummi Wörner' rubber goods store’). The initials 'G B' refer to bricklayer and stonemason Georg Bickel, who was also instrumental in the reconstruction of the neighbouring Altstädter Kirche (Old Town Church).

Johann Christian Fick
My latest journey on water and on land, or a fragment of my life story
Erlangen
1807

Erlangen scholar Johann Christian Fick (1763–1821) was probably on the run from the French occupying forces when he found himself walking through the Aufseßtal valley on his journey to Denmark in 1807. In his travel report, we find for the first time in print a reference to the designation 'Fränkische Schweiz' (Franconian Switzerland):

"The full moon hung above us in a cloudless sky; the terrible abyss to our right, the tall, naked rockface to our left, and, in front of us, Streitberg Castle half in ruins, the large and beautiful ruins of Neideck opposite, with the valley winding its way between them, squeezed tight by towering mountains of rock, and with the silvery Wisent river, presented the eye with a view with which only Helvetia's most beautiful and wildly romantic corners may compete ... The Aufseesthal, which we thus traversed, is a main part of Franconian Switzerland."