Erfurt Unleashed
On the way to today
This is an intended scenario that has been unthinkable for centuries and is unthinkable today. Erfurt is a fortress. No, not Petersberg or Cyriaksburg: the whole city. What made sense in the Middle Ages and early modern times, however, became a problem in the course of the 19th century. Erfurt is constricted in this ring of fortresses. That's why the walls, towers and ramparts were demolished starting in the 1870s. The whole thing lasts almost 30 years.
The Erfurt City Museum has taken on this “unleashing” of the city in the special exhibition of the same name.
Erfurt as a border town
If you want to enter the exhibition, you have to go through a gate, like before the “unleashing”:
Then we go through Erfurt streets
further into the past. The model of the fortress city of Erfurt, which takes up an entire exhibition room, shows what a different appearance Erfurt has had over the centuries. The fortifications were further strengthened until the middle of the 19th century. After the Congress of Vienna, Erfurt became an important border town of the Kingdom of Prussia.
Opening of the medieval structures
With the founding of the empire in 1871, Erfurt was located in the middle of Germany. The way is now clear to dismantle the systems that have long been perceived as an obstacle. The introduction of a new technology in the 1840s showed how difficult it was to reconcile it with the infrastructure of a fortress city: it was the connection of Erfurt to the railway network in 1847, the consequences of which are described in the exhibition as follows: “In the 19th century, the railway questioned the unity of cities throughout Europe and forced the opening of often still medieval structures.” And the railway is just one aspect of what catapults Erfurt from the Middle Ages into modern times under the term “industrialization”. The result was an enormous growth in the population and the founding of industrial companies of a previously unknown size. Just the production of these weapons
In 1876, the Prussian rifle factory in Erfurt employed around 1,000 workers. Like thousands of other people in Erfurt, they need a completely new infrastructure. Without “unleashing” an impossibility. The process is not over and will continue to change Erfurt.
We would like to thank the Erfurt City Museum for their support and the exciting exhibition!
Image credits: Photos 1 and 2 courtesy of the Erfurt City Museum.