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Kassel

City in Hesse, Germany

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History

Kassel was first mentioned in 913 AD, as the place where two deeds were signed by King Conrad I. The place was called Chasella or Chassalla and was a fortification at a bridge crossing the Fulda river. There are several yet unproven assumptions about the origin of the name. It could be derived from the ancient Castellum Cattorum, a castle of the Chatti, a German tribe that had lived in the area since Roman times. Another assumption is a portmanteau from Frankonian cas, meaning ‘valley’ or ‘recess’, and sali meaning ‘hall’ or ‘service building’, which can be interpreted as ‘(town) hall in a valley’.

A deed from 1189 certifies that Cassel had city rights, but the date when they were granted is not known.

The first castle in Kassel was constructed in 1277, later replaced by a Renaissance castle, the Kassel City Palace, which burned down in 1811.

In 1567 the Landgraviate of Hesse, until then centered in Marburg, was divided among four sons, with Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) becoming one of its successor states. Kassel was its capital and became a centre of Calvinist Protestantism in Germany. Strong fortifications were built to protect the Protestant stronghold against Catholic enemies. Secret societies, such as Rosicrucianism, came to the rise, with Christian Rosenkreutz's work Fama Fraternitatis first published in 1617. In 1685 Kassel became a refuge for 1,700 Huguenots, who found shelter in the newly established borough of Oberneustadt. Landgrave Charles, who was responsible for this humanitarian act, also ordered the construction of the Oktogon (Hercules monument) and of the Orangerie. In the late 18th century, Hesse-Kassel became infamous for selling auxiliaries to the British crown to help suppress the American Revolution and to finance the construction of palaces and the Landgrave's opulent lifestyle.

The Brothers Grimm lived in Kassel in the early 19th century, where they collected and wrote most of their fairy tales. At that time, around 1803, the Landgraviate was elevated to a Principality and its ruler to Prince-elector. Shortly after, it was annexed by Napoleon and became the capital of the short-lived Kingdom of Westphalia under Napoleon's brother Jérôme in 1807. The Electorate was restored in 1813.

Having sided with Austria in the Austro-Prussian War to gain supremacy in Germany, the principality was annexed by Prussia in 1866. The Prussian administration united Nassau, Frankfurt and Hesse-Kassel into the new Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. Kassel ceased to be a princely residence but soon developed into a major industrial centre as well as a major railway junction. Henschel & Son, the largest railway locomotive manufacturer in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, was based in Kassel.

In 1870, after the Battle of Sedan, Napoleon III was sent as a prisoner to the Wilhelmshöhe Palace above the city. During World War I, the German military headquarters were located in the Wilhelmshöhe Palace. In the late 1930s, Nazis destroyed Heinrich Hübsch's Kassel Synagogue.

During World War II, Kassel was the headquarters for Germany's Wehrkreis IX, and a local subcamp of Dachau concentration camp provided forced labour for the Henschel facilities, which included tank production plants. There was also a camp for Sinti and Romani people (see Romani Holocaust). Allied prisoners of war from the Stalag IX-A POW camp were deployed to forced labour in the local arms industry in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The most severe bombing of Kassel in World War II destroyed 90% of the downtown area, and some 10,000 people were killed and 150,000 were made homeless. Most of the casualties were civilians or wounded soldiers recuperating in local hospitals, whereas factories survived the attack generally undamaged. Karl Gerland replaced the regional Gauleiter, Karl Weinrich, soon after the raid.

The Allied ground advance into Germany reached Kassel at the beginning of April 1945. The US 80th Infantry Division captured Kassel in house-to-house fighting during 1–4 April 1945, which included numerous German panzer-grenadier counterattacks, and resulted in further damage to bombed and unbombed structures alike.

Post-war, most of the ancient buildings in the city centre were not restored, and large parts of the inner city area were completely rebuilt in the style of the 1950s. A few historic buildings, however, such as the Museum Fridericianum, were restored.

In 1949, the interim parliament ("Parlamentarischer Rat") eliminated Kassel in the first round as a city to become the provisional capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, which the western city of Bonn won.

In 1964, the town hosted the fourth Hessentag state festival.

In 1970, the Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt and the prime minister of the German Democratic Republic Willy Stoph met in Wilhelmshöhe Palace for negotiations between the two German states. In 1991, the central rail station moved from "Hauptbahnhof" (main station) to "Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe", the former now being used exclusively for regional trains. The city had a dynamic economic and social development in the recent years, reducing the unemployment rate by half and attracting new citizens.

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