page_title: Erlangen
section_title: Foundation of the new town
hierarchical_section_title: Erlangen / History / Overall history / Foundation of the new town
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Grundriss der Erlanger Neustadt, rot lavierte Federzeichnung (1686), Johann Moritz Richter zugeschrieben
context_page_description: Erlangen is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. It is the seat of the administrative district Erlangen-Höchstadt and with 113,758 inhabitants it is the smallest of the eight major cities in Bavaria. The number of inhabitants exceeded the threshold of 100,000 in 1974, making Erlangen a major city.
  Together with Nuremberg, Fürth and Schwabach, Erlangen forms one of the three metropolises in Bavaria. With the surrounding area, these cities form the European Metropolitan Region of Nuremberg, one of 11 metropolitan areas in Germany. The cities of Nuremberg, Fürth and Erlangen also form a triangle on a map, which represents the heartland of the Nuremberg conurbation.
  An element of the city that goes back a long way in history, but is still noticeable, is the settlement of Huguenots after the withdrawal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Today, many aspects of daily life in the city are dominated by the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Siemens technology group.
context_section_description: After the Thirty Years' War, the town was rebuilt relatively quickly. On 2 December 1655 the parish church was consecrated to the title of Holy Trinity. The situation changed in 1685 when French king Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted Calvinist subjects - called Huguenots by their opponents - religious freedom since 1598. The revocation triggered a wave of refugees of about 180,000 Huguenots who settled mainly in the Dutch Republic, the British Isles, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and some German principalities. A small number of religious refugees later went to Russia and the Dutch and British colonies.
  Margrave Christian Ernst also took advantage of this situation and offered the refugees the right to settle in his principality, which was still suffering from the consequences of the Thirty Years' War, in order to promote its economy in the sense of mercantilism through the settlement of modern trades. He was thus one of the first Lutheran princes in Germany to accept Calvinists into his country and even to guarantee them the freedom to practise their religion. The first six Huguenots reached Erlangen on 17 May 1686, about 1500 followed in several waves. In addition, several hundred Waldensians came, however, as they were unable to settle down they moved on in 1688. Even before it was foreseeable how many refugees could be expected, the margrave decided to found the new town of Erlangen as a legally independent settlement south of the small town called Altstadt Erlangen. The rational motive of promoting the economy of one's own country was associated with the hope of wealth as a city founder, which was typical of absolutism.
  The new city was conveniently located on one of the most important trade and travel routes to and from Nuremberg. Water was to be drained from the nearby Regnitz for a canal necessary for certain trades, however this failed due to the sandy ground. The plan of the city, which at first sight appeared simple, but was in fact extremely differentiated and highly sophisticated, was designed by the margravial master builder Johann Moritz Richter using the "golden ratio" and ideal criteria. The rectangular layout is characterised by the main street, which is designed as an axis of symmetry and has two unequal squares, and the "Grande Rue", which surrounds the inner core and whose closed corners, designed as right angles, act like hinges, giving the entire layout strength and unity. As the plan made clear, it was not the design of the individual buildings that was important, but the overall uniformity of the entire city. Even today, the historical core is characterised by this uniform, relatively unadorned facades of the two-storey and three-storey houses in straight rows with the eaves side facing the street. The construction of the town began on 14 July 1686 with the laying of the foundation stone of the Huguenot Church. In the first year about 50 of the planned 200 houses were completed. The influx of the Huguenots did not meet expectations, because their refugee mentality did not change into an immigrant mentality until 1715. The change of mentality happened in this year, as the peace treaties after the War of the Spanish Succession ruled out their return to France, but also because the Margrave was engaged as commander in the War of the Palatinate Succession against France from 1688 to 1697. Therefore, further expansion stagnated. It was not until 1700 that he received new impetus from the construction of the margravial palace and the development of Erlangen into a royal seat and one of the six provincial capitals. After a major fire destroyed almost the entire old part of the town of Erlangen on 14 August 1706, it was rebuilt on the model of the new town with straightened street and square fronts and a two-storey, somewhat more individually designed house type. In Erlangen, this resulted in the special case of two neighbouring planned cities, which is probably unique in the history of European ideal cities. The old city of Erlangen, which was actually older and still managed indep
caption: The oldest preserved design of the Erlangen Neustadt, red washed pen drawing (1686), attributed to Johann Moritz Richter
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