Plan of Göttingen. | |||||||||||||||
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The earliest mention of a village of Goding or Gutingi occurs in documents of about 950 a.d. The place received municipal rights from the emperor Otho IV. about 1210, and from 1286 to 1463 it was the seat of the princely house of Braunschweig-Göttingen. During this period it held a high place among the towns of the Hanseatic League. In 1531 it joined the Reformation movement, and in the following century it suffered considerably by the Thirty Years War, having been taken by Tilly in 1626, after a siege of 25 days, and recaptured by the Swedes in 1632. After a century of decay, it was anew brought into importance by the establishment of its university; and a marked increase in its industrial and commercial prosperity has again taken place in recent years.
See Schmidt, Urkundenbuch der Stadt Göttingen 1400–1500 (1867); Pütter, Versuch einer akademischen Gelehrtengeschichte der Universität Göttingen (1765–88), continued by Saalfeld (1820) and by Oesterley (1838); Unger, Göttingen und die Georgia Augusta.