Wolfenbüttel is a town of Lower Saxony, in Germany having 54.664 inhabitants. It is located on the river Oker, to 10 km in the south of Brunswick (Braunschweig).

Several resistant was decapitated there such as for example resistant Marguerite Bervoets of Wallonia.

History

One does not know exactly when Wolfenbüttel was founded, but it is mentioned the first time in 1118. The first dwellings were probably limited to a tiny small island on the river of Oker.

Wolfenbüttel became the residence of the dukes of Brunswick in 1432. During three centuries following, the city became an artistic center, and personalities like Michael Praetorius, Gottfried Leibniz, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing lived there. The ducal court is gone back thereafter to Brunswick, towards 1753, and Wolfenbüttel lost little by little of its importance.

During the War Thirty Year old, the city knew intense combat at the time of the battles of Wolfenbüttel in June 1641, when Swedish, under the orders of Carl Gustaf Wrangel and of the tale Hans Christoff von Königsmarck, overcame the Austrians carried out by the archduke Léopold de Habsbourg.

Principal sites

• the castle Baroque (schloss): today part of the building is used as school, and the old apartments of state are opened with the public like museum.

thumb|Entry of library HAB.

• Herzog August Bibliothek (HAB): it is about the ducal library, which contains one of largest and the most known collections of ancient books in the world. With approximately 10.000 manuscripts, it is particularly rich in bibles, Incunable S, and of books dating from the period of the reform. The library was creates in 1572 and rebuilt opposite the castle in 1723 in the style of the the Pantheon. The current building of the library was built in 1886. Leibniz and Lessing worked in this library as librarian.

During the Second world war, Wolfenbüttel lodged a Concentration camp. Y were gathered resistant Belgians, such as Raoul Rothé, like (mainly) of the Tziganes. Some of them were decapitated with the axe, such as Marguerite Bervoets. Others were famished there (diluted a water milk bowl with a few pieces of bread per day).

thumb|Residence of [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing]] when he was librarian with the HAB. thumb|Old arsenal of Wolfenbüttel which lodges today part of library HAB. Today Wolfenbüttel is smaller than the cities close to Brunswick, Salzgitter, and Wolfsburg, but having mainly been saved by the war, the city preserved half-timbered houses of which much goes back to several centuries, and it always maintains its character historical.

Culture

Wolfenbüttel shelters several departments of the university of sciences applied of Brunswick/Wolfenbüttel and of the Academy of Lessing, an organization for the work study of Lessing. The Liqueur of Jägermeister is also a speciality of Wolfenbüttel.

Twinnings

• 20px - Sevres, France
• 20px - Cachan, France
• 20px - Kenosha, the United States
• 20px - Satu Pond, Romania
• 20px - Kamienna Góra, Poland

A bridge in Wolfenbüttel is baptized name of each one of these cities.

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