Detailed information:     

Biberach an der Riß

is a district town in northern Upper Swabia. Biberach was an imperial city (parity imperial city after 1648), has been since 1. February 1962 Large district town and is the largest city in the district of the same name. The city has entered into an agreed administrative community with the neighboring communities of Attenweiler, Eberhardzell, Hochdorf, Maselheim, Mittelbiberach, Ummendorf and Warthausen. Biberach is located on the Württemberg Southern Railway (Ulm–Friedrichshafen).

Biberach is located in northern Upper Swabia at 524 to 653 m above sea level. NN, almost 40 kilometers south of Ulm and almost 30 kilometers west of Memmingen. The city is located on both sides of the Riß, which gave its name to an ice age.

Neighboring communities

Warthausen, Maselheim, Ochsenhausen, Ummendorf, Hochdorf, Ingoldingen, Mittelbiberach, Bad Schussenried, Oggelshausen, Tiefenbach, Attenweiler and Schemmerhofen.

City structure

The city consists of the core town and the formerly independent communities of Mettenberg, Ringschnait, Rißegg and Stafflangen, which were incorporated as part of the municipal reform of the 1970s. The incorporated communities are now localities in the sense of the Baden-Württemberg municipal code, which means that they each have a local council with a local mayor as chairman, who is elected by those entitled to vote at every local election. In each of the localities there is a local administration, headed by the mayor.

Some parts of the city still have spatially separate residential areas with their own names, which, however, usually only have a few residents, or residential areas with their own names, the names of which have emerged in the course of development and whose boundaries are usually not precisely defined. The following should be mentioned in detail:

in the core city: Bachlangen, Bergerhausen, Birkendorf, Burren, Fünf Linden, Gaisental, Hagenbuch, Jordanbad, Mumpfental, Reichenbach and Wolfentalmühle

in Mettenberg: Hochstetter Hof and Königshofen

in Ringschnait: Bronnen, Schlottertal, Stockland, Winterreute and Ziegelhütte

in Rißegg: dump and bark moss

in Stafflangen: Aymühle, Eggelsbach, Eichen, Hofen, Maierhof, Mösmühle and Streitberg

Story

early period

Evidence of early Roman settlement can be found in the form of a villa rustica in the urban “Burrenwald” (♁48° 7′ 10.2″ N, 9° 44′ 28.7″ E). Excavation results date the Roman estate to the 2nd century AD. Remains of the farm can be viewed in the municipal Braith Mali Museum. Further Roman sites are located in the “Birkenstock”, “Mauren” near Stafflangen and “Kirchäcker” near Ummendorf corridors. The estates supplied the border troops on the Limes.

Imperial city

Biberach was first mentioned in a document in 1083. At that time, today's urban area was in the Duchy of Swabia. The market settlement was founded around 1170 and was first mentioned as a town in 1226. In 1281/82 Biberach was made an imperial city by Rudolf I of Habsburg. In 1312 Ulm law was introduced. The hospital was founded around 1239, a charitable institution for all citizens that still owns forests and runs the citizens' home (old people's home). In contrast to other imperial cities, Biberach did not manage to form a territory that extended beyond the city limits. The surrounding area always belonged to other rulers. With the introduction of cotton in the 14th century, Biberach grew into an important weaving town. Biberach barchent and canvas were exported all over Europe. Several weavers' houses from the 15th century still survive.

The village of Baltringen belonged to the Biberach Hospital. There was a center of the German Peasants' War in 1524.

From 1500 the imperial city belonged to the Swabian Imperial District. As a result of the Reformation, Biberach developed into a religiously mixed imperial city. During the Thirty Years' War, on the 20th In April 1632, Swedish troops invaded the city and had the Protestant baptismal font re-erected in the city parish church the next day. On the 31st In May 1632, imperial forces under the command of Colonel Wolfgang Rudolf von Ossa approached the city. The city's Catholics were locked up in the parish church for three days and were only released when Ossa returned home after his death on March 2. The failed storm on the city took place in June with heavy losses. After the Swedes under Field Marshal Count Gustaf Horn began the siege of Constance on September 7, 1633, the commander in chief of the Imperial Army, Count Johann von Altreiben, took advantage of the opportunity and advanced to Biberach on September 24. The Imperials shelled the White Tower with cannons on September 26th and took over the city on September 27th. But already on the 25th. The Swedes recaptured the city in March 1634, but were not able to hold it for long. On September 6th they suffered a heavy defeat in the Battle of Nördlingen; Horn was taken prisoner. The Imperials then reconquered almost all of southern Germany. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 introduced a parity government and administration system for Biberach as well as for Ravensburg, Augsburg and Dinkelsbühl (equal rights and exact distribution of offices between Catholics and Protestants, see Parity Imperial City).

Despite the damage suffered in the Thirty Years' War, the population increased in the second half of the 18th century. century to over 4,000 inhabitants. Biberach thus overtook the long-distance trading center of Ravensburg, which had been much more important since the late Middle Ages.

Due to the development of modern artillery, the existing city fortifications - consisting of a double wall ring with walls up to two meters thick and up to six meters high, lower kennel walls, deep and moats as well as the towers and city gates - became militarily superfluous. In times of peace they were only needed to collect admission fees. That's why work began in 1790 to demolish the weaker outer wall, the kennel walls and individual sections of the inner wall.

Württemberg period

As a result of the Peace of Lunéville and the Imperial Deputation Main Agreement, Biberach came to the Electorate. later Grand Duchy of Baden, which was founded on 25. The city took possession of it in September 1802. However, as early as 1806, the Rhine Confederation Act exchanged the cities of Villingen, Bräunlingen and Tuttlingen as well as the county of Bonndorf with the Kingdom of Württemberg, which acquired the city on the 24th. October 1806 took possession.[6] In 1810 Biberach became an Oberamtss

In February 1813, an anti-French attack was carried out on the four city gates. In response, the demolition of all masonry in Biberach was ordered, but not carried out. In October 1836, the gate ban and the gate fee were lifted in consideration of further joining the German Customs Union. This meant that the city fortifications lost their ultimate importance as a financial defense and further demolitions followed, in which the majority of the gates and towers were torn down. Only a small part of the wall between the White Tower and the Gigelberg Tower and in the area of the Ulm Gate remained

On 26. In May 1849, the Ravensburg-Biberach railway line was opened to traffic, connecting the city to the Württemberg Railway network. From the 29th In June 1850 a continuous connection from Stuttgart to Friedrichshafen was available.

During the administrative reforms during the Nazi era in Württemberg, the Oberamt became the Biberach district in 1934, from which the Biberach district emerged in 1938.

Biberach in the Second World War

During the Second World War, a prisoner of war camp called “Camp Lindele” was set up by the Wehrmacht in 1939 on the site of today’s riot police. Soviet prisoners of war were housed there, 146 of whom died. From September 1942, residents of the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey were deported to Germany, and some of them were sent to the Lindele camp. In November 1944, 149 Oriental Jews from Tripoli were imprisoned here. In January 1945, 133 prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were added, mostly Dutch Jews. The Jews who died in Biberach during this time were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Laupheim in 1945.

During the war there were several air raids on Biberach. The first attack on the 24th In July 1944, an express train from Berlin was attacked by low-flying aircraft; one person was killed. At the beginning of April 1945, a hospital train was shot at. There were 13 deaths. On 12. The heaviest attack on Biberach took place in April: seven Allied aircraft bombed the area around the train station, affecting Ulmer-Tor-Straße, Bahnhofstraße, Bürgerturmstraße and the fruit market. 55 people were killed and 14 injured. 37 buildings were destroyed in the attack, 24 were severely damaged, 15 were moderately damaged and about 100 were slightly damaged. In the days following this attack there were individual low-flying attacks in which a total of six people were killed.

Eleven days after the attack, the city was sacked on the 23rd. Occupied by French forces in April 1945. The planned defense of Biberach was not implemented: a battalion that was here for this purpose was withdrawn and the men of the Volkssturm were sent home. In addition, local citizens opened previously created anti-tank barriers. At 4:30 p.m. the first French tanks rolled into the market square and Mayor Joseph Hammer handed over the city. Nevertheless, there were still several battles between German and French troops in the area: At the Mittelbiberacher Steige, twelve German soldiers died trying to stop the French. A French soldier was killed at the Jordanbad. The French then stopped their advance on the city and shelled it. An unknown number of civilians were killed or wounded. Even after the city was occupied, there were repeated battles in the surrounding area between French troops and scattered German units that the French had left behind in their rapid advance through Upper Swabia.

After the Second World War until today

The city of Biberach was in the French occupation zone in 1945 and thus became part of the newly founded state of Württemberg-Hohenzollern in 1947, which became part of the state of Baden-Württemberg in 1952 as the South Württemberg-Hohenzollern administrative district.

In order to be able to accommodate around 12,500 displaced people from East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania in Biberach after the war, apartments urgently had to be built. Through the founding of “Biberacher Wohnungshilfe”, the acquisition of cooperative shares, private loans and support from the city, it was possible on January 2nd. In July 1949, the groundbreaking ceremony for three new houses on Galgenberg took place. 1,500 new residential units were built by 1958 and a total of 3,000 by 1962. In addition, new schools also had to be built. The first was the Dollinger School on the 18th. April 1953, which was followed shortly afterwards by the new municipal high school on the Pflugwiesen in March 1962. In the same year it was decided to build the Birkendorf elementary school.

Due to immigration, the city exceeded the threshold of 20,000 inhabitants in the early 1960s. The city administration then submitted an application to be elevated to a major district town, which the state government of Baden-Württemberg approved on January 1, 1962. Through the incorporation of the four neighboring communities of Stafflangen, Ringschnait, Rißegg and Mettenberg between 1972 and 1975, the urban area reached its current size. During the district reform on January 1, 1973, the Biberach district was enlarged.

In order to relieve the load on the only railway bridge on Eselsberg, a valley crossbar was built about one kilometer further south along Königsbergallee in 1971, which crosses the crack and the railway line. The bridge was partly built on an existing railway embankment, which was part of a railway line to Uttenweiler that was planned before the First World War. But this was never realized. A few years earlier, from 1958 to 1968, the old B 30 was expanded to four lanes in the area of Ulmer and Memminger Strasse in order to relieve north-south traffic in the city center. A further step in this direction took place in 1981, when the B 30 was expanded to resemble a motorway and relocated to the east as part of a new construction project. In order to further relieve pressure on the city center, the so-called “north-west bypass” was built from the B 312 along the airfield into the Riß valley south of Warthausen and opened in 2013. The plan is to connect the northwest bypass from there with the B 30 via a subsequent climb to Mettenberg.

On the 27th. In June 1983, a French Mirage IIIC fighter aircraft (registration number 342/33-CR) collided with a Partenavia P.68 business jet (registration number D-GFPH) over the city. The fighter-bomber crashed in a residential area near the Thomae pharmaceutical factory in the Birkendorf district. Seven people were killed and 13 others were injured in the accident.

Incorporations

The following communities or Places were previously incorporated into the city of Biberach an der Riß:

1864 Birkendorf

1934 Bergerhausen with Hagenbuch, Jordanbad and Reichenbach

With the regional reform in Baden-Württemberg in the 1970s, the following places were incorporated:

1. January 1972 Ringschnait and Stafflangen

1. January 1974 Rißegg

1. January 1975 Mettenberg

Culture and sights

Biberach is also a stop on the Upper Swabian Baroque Road, the Upper Swabian Mill Road and the Swabian Poets Road. The Upper Swabian Way of St. James from Nuremberg via Ulm to Konstanz and on to Santiago de Compostela has also led through Biberach since the Middle Ages. Biberach is also a stop on the German Half-timbered Road. A route with six cities connects to the existing Black Forest route in Herrenberg and to the already established Neckar route in Kirchheim/Teck and leads via Bad Urach, Blaubeuren, Riedlingen, Biberach, Pfullendorf to Meersburg. With a total length of 560 km, the route “From the Neckar to the Black Forest and Lake Constance” is the second longest route in Germany.

The Gigelberg

is a hill in the middle of the town of Biberach an der Riß.

Story

The merchant and city councilor Friedrich Goll (1786–1871) recognized that the mountain was suitable as a city park area. Goll had the Gigelberg near the city converted into a public park from 1828 onwards. The city garden on the Gigelberg was further developed under the responsibility of the beautification association founded in 1864. It was built here towards the end of the 19th century. In the 19th century there was the Gigelberg gymnasium, an old wooden building from 1895, as well as the city beer hall (built in 1894–1895), the Schützenhalle and beer gardens, which have served the Biberach Schützenfest ever since. They belong to the ensemble of the park area in the middle of Biberach an der Riß that was laid out by Friedrich Goll over 170 years ago. The White Tower was built as the cornerstone of the city fortifications around 1480 at the weak point of the masonry ring. The Gigelturm, first mentioned in 1552 under the name "das Gügelin", dates back to the 14th century in its original form as Hochwacht. century back. In 2020, the Gigelberg will be the city of Biberach's exhibition center.

Location and surroundings

In the middle of the town of Biberach an der Riß, to the west of the historic town center, is the Gigelberg. Through the Hochwacht archway on the western city wall you can reach the Gigelberg via a bridge. The bridge spans the deep Hirschgraben, which is also part of the medieval city fortifications. In 1861, a wooden bridge was initially built here on behalf of the Beautification Association, which was replaced by an iron bridge at the turn of the century.

(from Wikipedia)