Warburg | |
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 Flag  Coat of arms | |
Location of Warburg within Höxter district  | |
 Location of Warburg | |
  Warburg  Warburg | |
| Coordinates:51°30′00″N09°10′11″E / 51.50000°N 9.16972°E /51.50000; 9.16972 | |
| Country | Germany |
| State | North Rhine-Westphalia |
| Admin. region | Detmold |
| District | Höxter |
| Subdivisions | 16 |
| Government | |
| • Mayor(2020–25) | Tobias Scherf[1] (CDU) |
| Area | |
• Total | 168.84 km2 (65.19 sq mi) |
| Elevation | 230 m (750 ft) |
| Population (2023-12-31)[2] | |
• Total | 23,336 |
| • Density | 138.21/km2 (357.97/sq mi) |
| Time zone | UTC+01:00 (CET) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC+02:00 (CEST) |
| Postal codes | 34414 |
| Dialling codes | 0 56 41 |
| Vehicle registration | HX |
| Website | www.warburg.de |
Warburg (German pronunciation:[ˈvaːɐ̯bʊʁk]ⓘ;Westphalian:Warberich orWarborg) is a town in easternNorth Rhine-Westphalia, centralGermany on the riverDiemel near the three-state point shared byHessen,Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is inHöxter district andDetmold region. Warburg is the midpoint in theWarburger Börde. Since March 2012 the city is allowed to call itself 'Hanseatic City of Warburg'.
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The main town, consisting of the Old Town (Altstadt) and the New Town (Neustadt) and bearing the same name as the whole town, is a hill town. While the Old Town lies in the Diemel Valley, the New Town rises on the heights above the Diemel. The Warburg municipal area borders in the west on theSauerland and in the northwest on theEggegebirge foothills, while in the north and northeast theWarburger Börde abuts the town and in the south stretches the Diemel Valley.
Warburg consists of the following 16 centres:
In the4th millennium BC, there was amegalith culture in the Warburg area.
In the 1st century AD, there wereGermanic settlers south of the Desenberg.
In the 8th century, there was a Saxon noble seat west of the town. In the 8th and 9th centuries came theChristianization of theSaxons in the Diemel area.
The name Warburg was first mentioned in a document sometime around 1010, althougharchaeological finds have established that there were already people living in what is now Warburg byprotohistoric times. The first definite documentary mention came in 1036.
In the 11th century there was on theWarburger Burgberg ("Castle Mountain") the "Wartburg", under whose protection people came and settled. The castle was at first owned by Count Dodiko, whose estate, according to documents, passed in 1020 to theBishop of Paderborn when the Count's only son met his end in an accident. Eventually, sometime between 1021 and 1033, the Emperor further granted to the bishop the Count's rights. About 1180, the Old Town was granted town rights.
From the castle hill, there was a good view over the Diemel Valley, such that a close watch could be kept on theford that merchants had to cross going to Warburg andPaderborn. This ford on the Diemel was a crossroads of several ancient commercial roads and was crucial in the town's development into a central place. The Warburg New Town was founded in 1228–29 byBernhard IV. zur Lippe, Bishop of Paderborn, to bolster his political position in the Diemel area against encroachment by theBishop of Cologne. About 1239, the New Town had been built into a complete town in its own right, and the townsfolk there had full civil rights after theDortmund andMarsberg models. In 1260, the New Town was granted the right to build a town wall, not only against armies from afar, but even – expressly – against the Old Town.
In 1364, both the Old Town and the New Town became members of theHanseatic League. By 1436, they had forgotten their differences, uniting that year into one town.
The two towns, the Old Town and the New Town, joined in 1436 into one town. InDer Grote Breff ("The Great Letter"), the newly united town's constitution was precisely framed and sealed. Both former towns' seals are to be seen on the Great Letter. On the cast seal (in the picture), two defensive towers with a double wall are to be seen. Under the town gate stands the Bishop of Paderborn with a staff. The circumscription reads:"Sigillium burgensium in wartborch". The Great Letter is written inMiddle Low German, the Hanseatic League's language, and stands as a substantial legal document.
Hitherto, the Old Town's and the New Town's council meetings had each been taking place in their respective town halls, each on their respective marketplaces. Now, however, there were twomayors. This was solved by allowing each mayor to head the unified town for half the year. Furthermore, both town halls were used for council meetings, again, each for half the year. However, the problem of having two town halls was not fully resolved until 132 years after the two former towns had merged. Only then, in 1568, was the newRathaus Zwischen den Städten – Town Hall Between the Towns – built.
The common Town Hall, in the form of preservedRenaissance buildings, was built right on the former boundary between the two former towns, with two separate entrances forAltstädter andNeustädter ("Old Towners" and "New Towners"). In 1902–03, it was expanded with ahalf-timbered floor. It stands right where a gate, theLiebfrauentor (roughly, "Gate of Our Lady"), once stood. In the Middle Ages, this was the only gateway between the two then separate towns.
The Old Town's former Town Hall, renovated in 1973, nowadays servesgastronomical and residential ends. The New Town's former Town Hall served various purposes ranging from Town Hall cellar to assembly hall to market hall before it had to be torn down in 1803 owing to decrepitude.
There arose yet another superfluous government building in 1975 after the communities of the oldAmt of Warburg-Land were amalgamated with Warburg, namely theAmt administration building on Kasseler Straße, which was forsaken by the district authorities in favour of theBehördenhaus ("Authority House") on Bahnhofstraße.
In the early 17th century, Warburg was a well known and rich trading town. Outside the town walls rose "die Hüffert" as a new part of the town. In theThirty Years' War, great parts of die Hüffert and other villages in the area were sacked and destroyed, impoverishing the town. In 1622, the town was captured byChristian the Younger of Brunswick, Bishop of Halberstadt, who is sometimes called inGermander tolle Christian – "Christian the Mad". By 1628, the town was changing overlords and occupation armies repeatedly as the war dragged on, ending up in Imperial hands by the time the war ended in 1648.
On 5 June 1695,Johann Conrad Schlaun was born in Nörde near Warburg (now one of Warburg's constituent communities).
On 31 July 1760, during theSeven Years' War, Warburg was the scene of a battle that now bears its name. Twenty-four thousandPrussian,Hanoverian, Hessian andBritish troops fought under PrinceFerdinand of Brunswick and theCrown Prince ofHesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) against aFrench army of 21,500 soldiers led by Lieutenant-General Le Chevalier du Muy and theDuke of Broglie. The Prussians and their allies won, killing 8,000 French soldiers while losing only 1,500 themselves, leaving them free to sack the town. A tower on the Desenberg recalls theBattle of Warburg.
On 3 August 1802, Prussian troops came into Warburg in anticipation of the decisions ofGerman Mediatisation (Reichsdeputationshauptschluss). From 1807 to 1813, in theNapoleonic Era, Warburg belonged to theKingdom of Westphalia. After theCongress of Vienna in 1815, Warburg was once again assigned to Prussia. The next year, it became a district seat.
In 1850, therailway from Hamm was opened. In 1892 – 244 years after it had ended – Warburg at last paid off the last of the debts that it had incurred because of the Thirty Years' War.
In 1933, at the March elections, theCentre Party won 67.2% of the vote in Warburg to theNSDAP's 21.8%.
DuringWorld War II there was aPrisoner of war campOflag VI-B in the suburb Dössel. 20 September 1943, 47 Polish officers escaped through a tunnel. 37 were recaptured and executed by the Gestapo.
On 1 April 1945, Warburg was captured byAmerican troops.
On 1 January 1975 came municipal reorganization, which saw 16 formerly independent municipalities merged into a new greater town of Warburg. Also, the districts of Warburg and Höxter were united, taking the latter's name. In 1983, Warburg became a founding member of the Wesphalian Hanseatic League (Westfälischer Hansebund).
The lands around Warburg's constituent community of Welda, once a border town betweenWestphalia,Waldeck andHesse, have yielded forth archaeological evidence of aCeltic presence. It has been confirmed that the village was once visited in 1856 by Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, who went on to become the "Ninety-Nine-Day Emperor", KaiserFriedrich III. He presented the church with aCommunionchalice. After theSecond World War, in 1945, there was an Americanprison camp at Welda holding roughly 80,000 Germanprisoners of war.
Likewise, Wormeln's surrounding area has yielded archaeological finds that point to ancient settlement.
There is believed to have been a parish in Wormeln by about 780, with church patronsSimon the Zealot andJudah. Wormeln had its first documentary mention in 1018 in a donation document from CountDodiko toMeinwerk, Bishop of Paderborn.
About 1246, the Counts of Everstein founded the WormelnCistercian Convent of the "Nuns of the Grey Order"Cistercians. On 16 September 1810,Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia in Napoleonic times, decreed the convent's dissolution.
(each time at 31 December)
During theSaxon Wars in the 8th century the area round the Diemel was incorporated into theFrankish realm. Beside other places Warburg is presumed to be the location were theIrminsul, an old Saxon sacred pillar. The Austrian abbotSturmius proselytized the area around the Diemel andWeser in 774. So the area around Warburg was Christianized from 774 on.
As most of Warburg's inhabitants are Catholic it is part of the center zone of theCatholic Archdiocese of Paderborn. Many theologians as Otto Beckmann, Anton Corvinus or Julius Dammann, office bearers of the church like Johann Conrad Schlaun or Arnold Güldenpfennig and church artists like Josef Kohlschein come from Warburg.
TheSyriac Orthodox Church's bishopric of Germany was founded in 1997 and has its Episcopal seat in the formerDominican monastery in Warburg. After the monastery was renovated, it is now used as the Syriac Orthodox Monastery of Mor Yacqub of Sarugh, and as a centre for the community in Westphalia. The Body of PatriarchIgnatius Zakka I Iwas is buried here.[3]
Warburg had in bygone days an importantJewish community. Around the year 1800, roughly 200 of Warburg's 2,000 townsfolk were Jewish, and about 1900, some 300 of the 5,000 people in the town were. The sharp upswing in the population as a whole was due to migration from the countryside, industries setting up shop in town, and railway operations.
In the 16th century, the Warburg family - originally fromVenice de la Banca, Abraham de Palenzuela Levi Kahana- took the town's name as their own and moved in the second half of the 18th century toAltona (Hamburg), where the brothers Moses Marcus and Gerson Warburg built up the Bankinstitut M&M Warburg in 1798. From this family also came the natural scientists Otto andEmil Warburg the art historian and cultural theorist Abraham Moritz Warburg, better known asAby Warburg, who founded the Warburg Institute.
Another well known Warburg Jewish family were the Oppenheims, among whom wasHermann Oppenheim, a famous Germanneurologist. Yet another famous townsman was Emil Herz, a publisher at theUllstein-Verlag (until theNazis forced him out as the company's director in 1934, after he had worked there for 30 years), who described in his book something of Jewish life in Warburg.
There is still a Jewishcemetery in Warburg today. Thesynagogue, which stood in the Old Town, was destroyed onKristallnacht (9 November 1938).
In the Middle Ages, the castle was mostly surrounded by a double wall ring, through which the old and new city gates lead to the breachstone. The old town's citizens first erected the connection wall of the castle to theJohannistor-Tower. Because of height of the castle mountain theChattenturm was constructed. The roundSackturm (Saxon tower) next to theSacktor (Saxon Gate) was erected in 1443 while theSacktor was built around 1300. Until 1830, the town castle had about ten city towers and nine city gates. In the walls of the old town, there were five gates and four in the new town, of which only theSacktor and theJohannistor have been preserved. Between 1801 and 1840, the other gates were taken down.
| Climate data for Warburg (1991–2020 normals) | |||||||||||||
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| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Mean daily maximum °C (°F) | 3.7 (38.7) | 5.1 (41.2) | 9.4 (48.9) | 14.7 (58.5) | 18.2 (64.8) | 21.6 (70.9) | 23.6 (74.5) | 23.3 (73.9) | 19.2 (66.6) | 13.3 (55.9) | 8.0 (46.4) | 4.7 (40.5) | 13.9 (57.0) |
| Daily mean °C (°F) | 1.3 (34.3) | 1.4 (34.5) | 4.9 (40.8) | 9.0 (48.2) | 12.6 (54.7) | 15.9 (60.6) | 17.8 (64.0) | 17.3 (63.1) | 13.6 (56.5) | 9.3 (48.7) | 5.4 (41.7) | 2.4 (36.3) | 9.4 (48.9) |
| Mean daily minimum °C (°F) | −1.3 (29.7) | −1.2 (29.8) | 0.6 (33.1) | 3.0 (37.4) | 6.8 (44.2) | 10.1 (50.2) | 12.1 (53.8) | 11.8 (53.2) | 8.6 (47.5) | 5.5 (41.9) | 2.6 (36.7) | 0.1 (32.2) | 5.0 (41.0) |
| Averagerelative humidity (%) | 87.2 | 83.5 | 77.6 | 71.7 | 74.4 | 75.0 | 73.9 | 74.6 | 80.1 | 85.4 | 88.5 | 88.2 | 80.0 |
| Source:World Meteorological Organization[4] | |||||||||||||
The last municipal election took place on 13 September 2020. Winners with anabsolute majority were the CDU. The next election is in 2025. Warburg's mayor is Tobias Scherf (CDU), elected in September 2020.[1]
Council seat distribution:[5]
Warburg's civiccoat of arms might heraldically be described thus: In azure a fleur-de-lis argent.
Warburg's oldest town seals are from 1254 and 1257, and show a bishop – likely the Bishop of Paderborn – standing in a gateway. Thefleur-de-lis charge seen in today's arms originally appeared oncoins minted in the town, beginning in 1227. Smaller town seals in the 14th century also showed the lis, with the gateway only appearing on the greater seal.
For a time in the 20th century, Warburg used a coat of arms based on the old greater seal, showing the walls, towers and gateway, but not the bishop. His place was taken by a fleur-de-lis. The town, however, readopted the fleur-de-lis-only composition on 30 June 1977.[6]
Falkenberg/Elster, Germany, since 1991Luckau, Germany, since 1992
Walchsee,Austria (through the constituent community of Scherfede)
Prochowice,Poland, since 1997
Ledegem-Sint-Eloois-Winkel,Belgium, since 1998Warburg stands as a middle centre in an area shaped byagriculture. Of the two former great food producers, the Warburg canning plant and sugar factory, only the latter remains. The biggest fields of industry nowadays are automotive technology, steel and machine building, chemicals, woodworking and packaging.
Since 1721, brewing rights have been held by the Kohlschein family, known as Warburg-Beer (german:Warburger Bier) with variety of different beer-specialities.
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At Warburg, Federal Highways (Bundesstraßen) B 7 and B 252 cross. On the latter, one may reach the Warburg interchange onAutobahnA 44 (Kassel-Dortmund), which not much farther on meets theA 7 near Kassel and theA 33 near Wuennenberg.
Warburg station lies on theRuhr area-Kassel (InterCityExpress,InterCity andRegionalBahn trains) andHagen-Warburg regional lines: RE17Hagen –Schwerte –Brilon-Wald –Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe and RB89Rheine –Münster –Hamm –Paderborn – Warburg (Westfalen-Bahn). Furthermore, theRegio Citadistram-train runs toKassel Main Railway Station (Kassel Hauptbahnhof). The surrounding towns are served by regional buses. The town belongs to the Paderborn-Höxter Local Transport Association (Nahverkehrsverbund Paderborn-Höxter). When travelling towards Hesse, the North Hesse Transport Association (Nordhessischer Verkehrsverbund or NVV) tariffs apply.
Also easily reached are the two regionalairports,Kassel-Calden andPaderborn-Lippstadt.
The town of Warburg already had at its disposal in the Middle Ages organized fire-quenching forces from among the citizenry. With the "Prussian Fire Order" in the early 19th century, even the outlying communities were obliged to lay the groundwork forfirefighting.
Beginning about 1850 in what is today Warburg's municipal area, the first structures of modernfire brigades were taking shape as "dousing and spraying teams". These were the beginnings of the Ossendorf and Scherfede fire brigades.
After theFranco-Prussian War (1870–1871), it wasveterans who had the idea of setting up volunteer fire brigades after the French example of thepompiers. Thus arose the Wormeln fire brigade.
In the main town of Warburg, the volunteer fire brigade was founded in 1889, and quickly thereafter, the same happened in communities throughout theWarburger Land. After the fire in Hohenwepel in 1912, they were established in Dössel, Hohenwepel and Menne.
Today's Warburg volunteer fire brigade was founded in 1975 by merging the town's and all newly amalgamated centres' former volunteer fire brigades.
The following personalities were born in Warburg:
The following personalities were not born in Warburg, but lived and worked in the town:
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