Jena – a city in between history and high-tech
The city of Jena is coined as having a past which is both intellectual and rich with history. Goethe and Schiller worked here, the early Romantic period was founded here, and Napoleon’s campaigns even crossed the city. Great thinkers and scholars alike were attracted to Jena, resulting in a unique cultural, scientific, and economic infrastructure evolving in the city along the Saale.
Jena was officially recognized as a city in 1236. Since the founding of the university in 1558, Jena has been one of the most famous student locations in Germany. During the second half of the 17 th Century, the university reached its first period of prosperity. Through the narrow relationship to the near residence city, Weimar, and the development through the poet and minister, Goethe, the Saale city experienced its classical time after 1785 and became one of the most important intellectual centers in Germany.
In the second half of the 19th Century, Jena developed into an industrial city, thanks to the work of the scientific-economic triumvirate Carl Zeiss, Otto Schott, and Ernst Abbe. Through their work together, the world famous Zeisswerke and the Jena Glaswerk Schott und Genossen originated. The effective cooperation between research institutes and commercial enterprises has proved to be valuable up until today and founded Jena’s exceptional reputation as a high-tech location.
The groundbreaking inventions and the historical working environments of the past are on display for all the clever minds to see. Take a look at the Optical Museum with the historical Zeiss workshop, or the Zeiss-Planetarium, the oldest working planetarium in the world.
