Barthold Jorge Niebuhr

Geography

The locality is pressed on the buttresses of the Massif of the Vosges to the foot of the Mont Sainte-Odile and 8 km in the south of Obernai. It is crossed by the Kirneck , affluent of the Andlau and tributary of a tributary of the Ill.

History

At the origin imperial property, the city was yielded by Habsbourg to Nicolas Ziegler in 1522 then transformed into franc-freehold three years later. Thereafter its sons sold it at the town of Strasbourg whose it had to marry the cause in the war which opposed Strasbourg protesting to the Lorraine catholics. In 1592 those burned the castle, the common house and seventy dwellings, and tortured several inhabitants.

During the Thirty Year old War it had to suffer from Imperial, Swede and the French, but less than the surrounding villages. In the conflict which opposed Louis XIV to Strasbourg the city was occupied by the French; the murder of an officer by an inhabitant brought in reprisals the fire of the city, but there was no massacre of the inhabitants, contrary to the assertions of certain ignoramuses, not more than the city was not shaven in 1675, as affirms it a whimsical site but which wants to be historical [[1].

The rebuilding was fast and thereafter Barr did not know any more a catastrophe of this kind, even if it had to support the passage of troops that it was necessary for him to maintain.

To the 18th century a lawsuit which was to last nearly one century opposed the localities of the seigniory of Barr to the town of Strasbourg, their suzerain, who asserted the totality of the forests of his vassal. In 1763 a first decision allotted the third of them to Strasbourg; there was call and it was only in 1836, under the Monarchy of July, that the verdict was definitively confirmed. There are still forty years of Barrois old man called the part had by Strasbourg of R g' stohlne Wàld , the stolen forest. But one is always the robber of somebody: at the 18th century also Strasbourg made build, in all legality, a small channel who diverted towards Kirneck part of water who should have arrived at Andlau, and about fifty years ago of Andloviens old man still spoke about the g' stohlnes Wasser , of stolen water. Today this business it also appears forgotten on both sides; it even seems that the current barroise municipality does not know any more the existence of the channel (still maintained in the Eighties) and, nature taking again its rights, water will turn over perhaps soon to Andlau.

Violent ones engagements opposed to it in 1944 Germans Nazis and Americans.

Barr knows the decline today. There remains capital wine of the Low-Rhine but, in consequence of errors of management, most of its vineyard was sold with co-operatives belonging to other communes; the tanneries have periclity and employ nothing any more but one very restricted number of workmen. Tourism did not develop and it is striking to see the tourists who pile up in the streets of Obernai, the small town close and rival of always, while those of Barr remain empty in spite of their picturesque. The trade disappeared from the Center Town, killed by large surfaces which were established with the periphery, even in the common neighbors like Gertwiller. Allotments were created but the residents feel barrois very little there and will make their purchases with Sélestat or Strasbourg, leaving with the abandonment the old workings, repurchased little by little by the immigrants Turkish who form already more of the tenth of the population.

Consulted works: Directory of the Company of History and Archeology of Dambach-the-City, Barr and Obernai , 1993 (pp. 99 and suiv.), 2004 (pp. 81 and suiv.)

Administration

Demography

municipal population in 2004: 6.501

provisional population for 2005: 6.417

municipal population in 2006: 6.757

Personalities related to the commune

Emile Bieckert (gift Emilio), which introduced the manufacture of beer in Argentina. He was a large benefactor of Barr, his birthplace.
Richard Hartmann, which founded in Chemnitz a large factory of engines. He either did not forget its birthplace of which he was a large benefactor.
Edouard Schuré, writer esoteric. Alsatian feels held to have in its library the Large Initiates without believing itself obliged to read the work.
Jean Hermann, doctor and naturalist whose cabinet of natural history gave rise to the zoological Musée of the ULP and the town of Strasbourg
Martin Feuerstein, artist-painter, born on January 6th, 1856 with Barr and deceased on February 13rd, 1931 in Munich.
Edmond Rinckenbach, artist-painter, born on March 1st, 1862 with Barr and deceased on August 13rd, 1902 in Metz.

Culture

Barr is the town of origin of the group of pop-rock'n'roll AMPM.

See too

Common of the Low-Rhine

External bonds

Barr on the site of the national geographical Institute
Barr on the site of INSEE
Barr on the site of Quid
Localization of Barr on a chart of France and communes bordering
Plane on Barr on Mapquest
Visit in photographs of the village of Barr

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