It was the hot springs that prompted Charlemagne to choose Aachen as his preferred winter palace from the end of the 8th century and to increasingly develop it into a de facto residence. Large parts of this Carolingian palace can still be seen today, such as the eight- and sixteen-sided central building of St. Mary's Church, which Charlemagne had built near his palace, or today's town hall, which is probably identical in its foundations and dimensions to the former royal hall.
As a de facto residence with its imperial assemblies and synods, with its diverse political and cultural life, Aachen became a kind of capital of Europe under Charles and his first successor: not in the sense of a modern capital, but in the medieval understanding as a "curia regalis" or "prima sedes Franctiae". It was from here that early medieval Europe was decisively shaped: as a Latin-Western reality, as an agrarian and Christian age, as a revival of Latin writing and as a verifiable beginning of many a European mother tongue, the "lingua rustica Romana" as well as the Germanic-Franconian language, the "lingua theodisca". The Latin West created here largely remained the basis and framework for the later development of the European world, for its political formation into nations and nation states as well as for its intellectual and cultural orientation of a specifically occidental understanding of the world and life.
In this respect, Charlemagne rightly stands at the beginning of Aachen's European significance. Charlemagne's contemporaries already sensed this special role when they soon attributed historical greatness to him and called him the father of Europe. Scholarly research into his life and personality has confirmed this unique and special aspect of Charlemagne's historical achievement, even if some limitations, some incompleteness and fragility have become apparent in this enormous life's work. Despite this limitation, it will remain the merit of this great Carolingian to have shown the European Middle Ages and the Latin West, especially in France and Germany, the political and cultural path and thus helped to shape the foundation of Europe. The Charlemagne Prize therefore rightly refers to this founding father.
However, it should not be forgotten that the borders of Charlemagne's empire at the time excluded the Britons and Spaniards, and even some of the later Germans, i.e. the inhabitants on the other side of the Elbe, as well as all Slavs and northern Europeans. However, such an inclusion and exclusion falls short even historically, because it must be noted that the encounter between antiquity, Christianity and Germanic culture, which was decisive for Europe, had already been prepared during the Migration Period and this early medieval connection had created an Anglo-Saxon culture and church in England, for example, which its missionaries then transferred from the island to the continent shortly afterwards. Without the Northumbrian and Frisian apostle Willibrord, without Winfried Boniface as the Christian master builder of Europe, without the York universal scholar Alcuin, who here in Aachen became a traveling representative of Charles' court school and a kind of "minister of culture" of the Frankish Empire, the historically fundamental work of the Carolingians can neither be explained nor understood.
The name and the sources
The city of Aachen is already European in its toponym. While in Italian and Spanish it bears a form of name ("Aquisgrana" or "Aquisgran") that goes back to the Latin name in the Middle Ages ("Aquisgrani") and seems to point to a Celtic god of healing, Grannus, in French-speaking countries it is called "Aix-la-Chapelle" in reference to Aachen's Marienkirche (today's cathedral). Like these Romanesque versions, the German name "Aachen" or the Dutch equivalent "Aken" also refer to the special significance of the water and hot springs.
Medieval coronation site
hen the importance of the Aachen Palatinate declined in the further Carolingian period during the 9th century, it was the Church of St. Mary there (today's cathedral) where the continuity of the place was most strongly preserved. Since 936, more than 30 German kings of the Middle Ages have been crowned here in reverence for Charlemagne's throne and tomb, and Emperor Otto III was buried here in 1002.
And it was here that Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa had his distant predecessor canonized in 1165. At this canonization, Charlemagne's remains were solemnly raised and half a century later placed in the precious shrine of Charlemagne, which is now located in the late Gothic choir hall of the cathedral. The latter was also repeatedly presented with valuable gifts from the German kings and emperors, such as the Lothar Cross of Otto III, the gold altar and Gospel pulpit of Henry II, the Barbarossa chandelier and the bust of Charles IV. Various imperial insignia such as St. Stephen's burse and the Imperial Gospels were also kept in this important church of the empire.
Head of the medieval empire
n addition to St. Mary's Church and the Palatinate as well as a number of farmsteads that were responsible for their material supply (cf. in addition to Aachen's main farmstead, the secondary farmsteads in Seffent, Richterich, Orsbach, Vaals, Würselen, Haaren and Eilendorf), early medieval Aachen also included a small settlement that had developed from the 1st century onwards as a Roman military spa with thermal baths. In the Carolingian period, after a long interruption, it developed into a place of craftsmen and merchants with a market and aristocratic accommodation.
However, little is known about this "vicus Aquensis" between the early and high Middle Ages, until it was elevated to the status of head of the empire ("caput regni Theutonici") in 1166 on the occasion of Charlemagne's canonization by Frederick I Barbarossa, its inhabitants were declared free and the civic community was granted extensive market and minting rights. In the 70s of the 12th century, this Barbarossa town with an obviously growing population was surrounded by a wall, the remains of which can still be seen today. Soon afterwards, individual suburbs and churches (St. Adalbert, St. Peter, St. Jakob) were built around this Barbarossa wall, which in turn led to a second and larger enclosure with today's Marschiertor and Ponttor from the middle of the 13th century.
European pilgrimage site
It was not only the abundance of water in the Aachen basin or the cloth trade and brass and copper processing that contributed to this urban development, but above all the European pilgrimages to the great Aachen shrines: to the dress of Mary, the swaddling clothes and the loincloth of Christ and the beheading cloth of St. John. This display of shrines, which originated from Charlemagne's treasure trove of relics, mainly brought pilgrims from the Balkan countries of Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia to Aachen, but also from Poland and Bohemia, as well as from the North and Baltic Sea regions.
Aachen became the most important pilgrimage destination north of the Alps and often also a collection point or stopover on the way to Santiago di Compostela. Since the great plague in the middle of the 14th century, the ceremonial display (instruction) of the precious relics was set to a specific time sequence and repeated every 7 years (cf. the Aachen Sabbatical Year). In the meantime, the venerated shrines were kept in the Marian shrine completed in 1238, an outstanding achievement of Aachen's goldsmiths.
City of citizens
The economic prosperity of Aachen in the High Middle Ages also determined the self-confidence of its citizens. When they built their town hall, the older town hall on the Fischmarkt, around the middle of the 13th century, they decorated its façade with a ribbon that is still preserved today and chose the opening words of the Charlemagne Sequence, which was written around 1200 and is still sung to this day at every Charlemagne Festival and when the Charlemagne Prize is awarded: "Urbs aquensis, urbs regalis, regni sedes principalis" ("Aachen, you royal city and first seat of the empire").
With similar self-confidence, they built their new town hall in the 14th century on the foundations of the old Carolingian royal hall, decorating its northern façade and turning the square in front with its elegant patrician houses into the main market square. Since the coronation of Charles IV in Aachen in 1349, the imperial hall of this new, now multi-storey town hall was probably also the venue for the customary banquet after the coronation, so that Aeneas Piccolomini, the later Pope Pius II (145864), had good reason to describe this monumental building in Aachen as the "palatium tota Germania nobilissimum", the most noble palace in the whole of Germany. Its late medieval figural decoration with its saints and rulers gave way to the Baroque taste of the time in the 18th century, only to be redesigned in the neo-Gothic style in the later 19th century. In its statues of kings and emperors and its aristocratic coats of arms, today's iconographic program combines the political idea of the old empire with the arts and sciences of the Middle Ages and the most important craft and trade guilds of the pre-modern world.
However, at the end of the Middle Ages, the city of Aachen had become seriously isolated in this old world due to general European developments. The political center of gravity of the empire had shifted to the south and southeast and the Burgundian state was developing to the west. Due to the lack of major transport routes in the form of rivers or suitable trade routes, there was also no connection to the Hanseatic League and ultimately a central source of raw materials for the previously important brass production was lost - the Galmeiberg near the city, which fell to the Burgundian dukes. This was compounded in the early 16th century by the turmoil of the Reformation, which lasted 90 years in Aachen with changing constellations and brought numerous religiously persecuted people from the neighboring Netherlands to the city. It was not until 1614 that the Spanish troops restored the old faith and political situation, as can still be seen today in the baroque statue of Charlemagne on the town hall fountain.
Medieval Aachen was largely spared during the religious battles and the Thirty Years' War, until 90% of the city's buildings fell victim to a devastating fire in 1656. "O great Charles, how from the throne / of beauty your city has sunk, / covered by ash dust and sparks" with these and other verses, the Dutch poet Jost van den Vondel mourned the destruction of the late Gothic city, of which only a few buildings survived the catastrophic fire and outlasted the times. These few include today's Haus Löwenstein on the market square and the brick building of today's newspaper museum in Pontstraße, which are among the oldest town houses in Aachen.
Baroque bathing center
"What (however) the fire had destroyed, the water had to rebuild" according to this motto of Aachen's fountain doctor Franz Blondel, Aachen developed into a popular spa town in the early modern period after the great city fire of 1656. The basis for this new prosperity was the balneological development of Aachen's water, which began to be used therapeutically.
Aachen became a Baroque and Rococo city, which was also transformed architecturally under the leadership of important master builders such as the elder Johann Josef Couven and his son Jakob Couven. Not only the cathedral and town hall were given a baroque touch, but also many other places and squares in the city bear witness to this: in Burtscheid, for example, the former abbey church of St. Johann, which was converted into a mighty baroque domed building by the elder Couven, or the Monheim House on Hühnermarkt (today's Couven Museum), which was created by the younger Couven. The latter also designed the "Alte Kurhaus" on Komphausbadstraße, which was the former Redoute at the center of bathing life at the time.
The Peace Congress of 1748 at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession, at which the great powers of the time attempted to settle their differences, is regarded as a European highlight from this phase of Aachen's history: England, France and Spain their colonial problems or Austria the question of the Pragmatic Sanction on the succession of Empress Maria Theresa and the safeguarding of the Habsburg great power position. Even today, the Peace Hall in Aachen Town Hall, designed by the elder Couven, and the White Hall there, with its paintings of the envoys of the time, bear witness to the attempt at this European peace settlement, which was, however, sacrificed again shortly afterwards under the force of arms in the Seven Years' War to Austro-Prussian dualism and in the overseas colonial war to the Anglo-French conflict.
French period
Between the Aachen Peace Congress of 1748 and the second important meeting of princes in 1818, which brought together the rulers of Austria, Russia and Prussia in Aachen and laid down the basic lines of European politics in the early 19th century, the city of Aachen experienced its French phase. In 1794, the armies of the French Revolution occupied Aachen and united it and the left bank of the Rhine with France. Aachen became the capital of the Roer department, which encompassed the Lower Rhine, and in 1802 became the episcopal seat and diocese for the first time.
Included in the economy of the French Empire and supported by its Emperor Napoleon I, who particularly appreciated Charlemagne's city, the Aachen region experienced an unexpected economic boom: the currency, weights and measures were standardized, freedom of trade was introduced, guilds were abolished, transport was improved and the market was finally protected from English competition by the Continental Blockade. The most important branches of production in mining, iron smelting and metal processing, paper and needle manufacture, cloth and glass production were combined in a uniform economic area that stretched from Jülich, Düren and Stolberg via Monschau, Verviers and Eupen to Liège. All these trades, especially the Aachen cloth manufactories, generated a prosperity that can be read about in contemporary French statistics or in the general encyclopaedias of the time. The old Franconian axis between Paris and Aachen seemed to be reviving - a link that is still commemorated today by a portrait of Charlemagne (a copy of a Dürer painting) and the pictures of Emperor Napoleon and his wife Josephine in the Council Chamber of Aachen Town Hall.
Prussian border town
With the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Rhineland was incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia and Aachen became the seat of a Prussian district government. Various examples of Prussian classicism in today's Aachen date from this period: for example, the lobby of the Elisenbrunnen with its rotunda and Doric columns, which were designed according to plans by the Berlin master builder Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and the entrance area of the city theater, which with its columned portico and gable relief is based on an ancient temple and also goes back to Schinkel.
To the west of Aachen, the current borders between the Netherlands and the newly founded Kingdom of Belgium were created in 1831, so that the Prussian Rhine Province, the Belgian province of Liège and the Dutch province of Limburg met in the Aachen area, with the latter remaining linked to the German Confederation as a duchy until 1866. This political reorganization of the Aachen area meant that the city and region lost its western hinterland and its favourable transport connections. In addition, the technically far superior English cloth industry forced its way onto the continental market and, with its low-priced products, caused great embarrassment for Aachen's manufacturers. This depressing economic and social situation could only be remedied in the long term with appropriate industrial structural measures, which mechanized the Aachen economic area technically and promoted it commercially.
Under the sign of early industrialization
The beginnings of this mechanization in Aachen, a close intermeshing of textile production and steam engines in particular, date back to the city's French period, but are now being continuously developed. Fulling mills, spinning and shearing machines are now operated with steam power. In 1834 there were 78, in 1849 more than 200 and finally in 1859 there were over 200 steam engines in the Aachen district. William Cockerill and his sons were not least responsible for this technological development, bringing the relevant technical innovations from England to Prussia via the Walloon region of Liège and making Aachen an important location for technology transfer at the time.
In this way, the Englerth, Reuleaux and Dobbs engineering works had already been founded in Eschweiler in 1818/19. Under the management of the latter, the Lendersdorfer Hütte near Düren was built a few years later, where Eberhard Hoesch was one of the first in Germany to use the English method of steel production. In Aachen, the aforementioned Samuel Dobbs, together with the cloth manufacturer Carl Franz Nellessen, created a machine factory in 1832, which supplied the first locomotive built in Prussia for the Rhenish Railway Company. Other important examples of Aachen's early industrialization include the first steam boiler factory in Germany, which was built in Aachen in 1833 by Jacques Piedboeuf from Jupille in Belgium, and the rolling and hammer mill in Aachen Rothe Erde, which Piedboeuf set up together with Hubert Jakob Talbot in 1845.
A few years earlier, in 1838, Talbot, in collaboration with the stagecoach manufacturer Pierre Pauwels from Brussels, had already set up a railroad carriage construction company, the first German carriage factory, which, like the other industrial companies mentioned, benefited from the construction of the Rhenish Railway, whose Cologne-Aachen line was opened as a section of the route to Brussels and Paris and to Antwerp and London as early as 1841. The fact that the line was routed via Aachen at all is thanks to the then President of the Aachen Chamber of Commerce and later briefly Minister of Finance in Prussia, David Hansemann. His other activities in Aachen, such as the founding of the fire insurance company, which still exists today, or the creation of corresponding social welfare institutions, also made the dark sides of that early industrial development in Europe tangible in Aachen - social deficits that Hansemann and many other Aacheners sought to remedy out of Christian and social responsibility, such as child and female labor, financial hardship and human suffering, in short, the impoverishment of the workforce.
Economic situation at the end of the 20th century
A comparison of Aachen's current economic situation with this early period of technology and industry reveals interesting lines of development. The Aachen cloth, for which the first German steam-powered loom was once set up in this city and which was important at the turn of the century and later on the world market, is now only produced in a few factories, but these still produce a large proportion of German cloth and clothing fabrics. The traditional needle industry, another old Aachen hallmark, has now specialized in machine needles and is said to produce almost half of the world's needles. The once largest steelworks in Thomass, the Rothe Erde steelworks, which at times employed 7,000 people, was shut down after the First World War and has now been replaced by large branches of a tire company and an electronics group. Nevertheless, within Aachen's manufacturing industry, most people still work in the metal production, steel, mechanical engineering and vehicle construction sectors. Only then do the other production sectors such as electrical engineering and chemicals follow. The textile and glass industry, which was so characteristic of Aachen for a long time, now only accounts for 10% of the total number of employees in the manufacturing industry.
In addition, the still strong industrial base of the Aachen economic area is being displaced by the increasing importance of the service sector. Holding one's own here therefore means constantly modernizing and further diversifying the regional industrial structure. The necessary impetus for this can be provided not least by Aachen University of Technology, which was founded almost 125 years ago in 1870 as the first polytechnic in Prussia and in its early industrialized Rhine province by the people of Aachen in the city and the economy and has today become a figurehead of its business-friendly city and in the European university landscape. The scientific expertise of RWTH Aachen University in research and teaching contributes to this, as do the many European and other foreign students and the modern hospital, which is regarded as a high-performance medical center in the Euregional region. Finally, the European Single Market offers further important approaches and opportunities for economic development.
After the end of the Second World War, the region and the city of Aachen were not only considered to be heavily destroyed settlement areas of the old Federal Republic, but were also largely cut off from their Belgian and Dutch neighbors by the tightly closed borders. Aachen had thus once again become or remained a border town, as it had done several times in its recent history. The reconstruction of Germany or the special promotion of the mining industry did little to change this peripheral location. It was only with the creation of the EEC, and later the EC, that these disadvantages of a national border situation were increasingly mitigated. The borders became more permeable for workers from both sides, for cooperation between companies and the establishment of branch plants, for choosing a place to live or for shopping and leisure activities.
This economic networking and human connection has found its political and administrative expression in the creation of a Euregio Meuse-Rhine, which is now likely to be extended and deepened, as the individual sub-regions of the border region are now in a truly central and therefore highly advantageous position thanks to the single market. Two hours from the Ruhr area and the Rhine, or from the world port of Antwerp and the European center of Brussels, or three hours from Frankfurt in the Rhine-Main region, or from the Dutch seaports in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, or from the northern French center of Lille, Aachen, Liège and Maastricht have significant locational advantages that could transform the local region with its educational and technological potential, its residential and recreational value, its high level of accessibility and its multilingualism into a central European landscape and give it the importance it once had in the time of the Carolingians and Charlemagne.
Author and references
Recommended reading
The historical and euregional passages of this report are based on various individual studies on Aachen's past and present. Some of them are therefore recommended for an introduction or further study:
The history of Aachen and Charlemagne
Erich Stephany: Aachen, in: Deutsche Lande Deutsche Kunst,
3rd modified ed. Berlin 1983
Ludwig Falkenstein: Charlemagne et AixLaChapelle,
in: Byzantion. Revue Internationale des Etudes Byzantines 61
(1991), p.231289
Max Kerner: Karl der Große Persönlichkeit und Lebenswerk,
in: H. Müllejans (ed.), Karl der Große und sein Schrein in
Aachen. Eine Festschrift, Aachen/Mönchengladbach 1988, p. 1336
Max Kerner: Charlemagne - Unveiling a Myth,
Cologne 2000Concise overview articles
"Aachen" (by L. Falkenstein and E. Meuthen) and
"Aachenfahrt" (by W. Brückner),
in: Lexikon des Mittelalters I, München/ Zürich 1980, Sp. 14City guide
Ingeborg Monheim: Aachen, A city guide, Aachen 1989
Euregional facts
The Aachen economic region. Ein Grenzraum im Wandel,
published by the IHK Aachen in cooperation with the
MaasRheinInstitut für angewandte Geographie und Lehrerbildung,
esp. H. Breuer, Aachen 1989
Gerhard Fehl, Dieter Kaspari Küffen, Lutz Henning Meyer (eds.):
Mit Wasser und Dampf.... Contemporary witnesses of early industrialization
in the Belgian-German border region, Aachen 1991