Qualla: Marburg

Marburg: Introduction

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nikanos, CC SA 1.0. Every traffic light in central Marburg speaks. Press the button and a tone marks the crossing; run a hand under the housing and a tactile arrow points the way over. It is a surprising thing to find in a town that climbs its hillside by staircase, where the shortest route between two streets is usually a flight of worn stone steps and the municipal answer to gravity is a pair of free public elevators. Marburg is built vertically and awkwardly, on a slope above the river Lahn in Hesse, and it has spent more than a century making itself navigable for people who cannot see it.

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Image: Nikanos | CC SA 1.0

Marburg: The Town on the Slope

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. The Oberstadt - the upper city - is a labyrinth of narrow cobbled lanes lined with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Hessian half-timbering, remarkably well preserved and, unusually for this kind of postcard Germany, remarkably uncrowded. The Landgrafenschloss sits above it all...

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Image: A.Savin | FAL

Marburg: Read by Hand

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. On 17 September 1916, in the third year of the First World War, a meeting in Berlin resolved to establish the Deutsche Blindenstudienanstalt in Marburg. Alfred Bielschowsky, who ran the university's eye clinic, chaired it; Carl Strehl, then still a student, took over as general m...

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Image: A.Savin | FAL

Marburg: Other Cities Have a University

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ludwig Sebastian Micheler, CC BY-SA 4.0. Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, founded the Philipps-Universität in 1527, and it is still the oldest surviving Protestant-founded university in the world. It is also, quite literally, the town. Marburg has roughly 73,500 residents; some 21,000 of them are students and thousands mor...

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Image: Ludwig Sebastian Micheler | CC BY-SA 4.0

Marburg: Four Days in October

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. In 1529 Philip I wanted a Protestant political alliance, and an alliance needed its theologians to stop contradicting one another in public. He brought them up to his castle between 1 and 4 October: Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, with Melanchthon, Bucer, Oecolampadius, Jonas, ...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Marburg: Two Students Who Needed a Dispensation

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Jacob Grimm left the Friedrichsgymnasium in 1803 and Wilhelm followed in 1804, and both came to Marburg to read law. Neither was especially welcome. The university's rules disqualified applicants of their social standing, so the brothers had to petition for a dispensation simply ...

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Image: Public domain