Current Time in Göttingen, Germany

Göttingen is a university city in the state of Lower Saxony in central Germany, situated on the Leine River approximately 100 kilometers south of Hannover. The city's identity is entirely and unapologetically defined by its university: Georg-August University, founded in 1737 by the Elector of Hanover, quickly became one of the most celebrated research universities in the world, and during its golden age in the 19th and early 20th centuries it was arguably the most important center of mathematical and scientific research in the world, attracting and producing an extraordinary concentration of genius that transformed multiple academic disciplines.

With a population of approximately 120,000, Göttingen is a relatively small city in which university students make up nearly a quarter of the population, creating a consistently youthful, intellectual, and international atmosphere that distinguishes the city from other cities of comparable size. The historic university town character, with its bookshops, cafes, academic publishers, and research institutes, gives Göttingen an atmosphere reminiscent of Oxford or Cambridge as a city built around and for the university.

The history of Göttingen as a major intellectual center dates from the founding of the Georgia Augusta University in 1737. Almost immediately, the new institution attracted leading scholars in law, medicine, philosophy, and natural sciences, and the enlightened educational environment of the Hanoverian monarchy, relatively liberal in comparison with other German states, allowed the kind of free academic inquiry that produced extraordinary results. By the 19th century Göttingen's mathematics department had become the most distinguished in the world, centered on the towering figures of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, Felix Klein, David Hilbert, and their successors.

The list of scholars associated with Göttingen who won Nobel Prizes or made fundamental contributions to human knowledge is staggering: Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Robert Koch, Otto Hahn, and the mathematician Emmy Noether all worked here. By 1933, Göttingen had produced 45 Nobel laureates, more than any other institution in the world. The Nazi purge of Jewish and politically suspect academics in 1933-1934 destroyed this exceptional concentration of talent in one of the great intellectual tragedies of the 20th century. A famous exchange captures the moment: when asked by the Nazi minister of education whether mathematics had suffered from the removal of Jews and their friends, the mathematician David Hilbert reportedly replied: "suffered? It doesn't exist anymore."

The historic old town of Göttingen centers on the magnificent Town Hall (Rathaus) and the Gänseliesel fountain, a beautiful late-Gothic fountain topped with a bronze goose girl that is a beloved symbol of the city. By tradition, every doctoral graduate of the university must kiss the goose girl after their doctoral examination, a tradition that makes the fountain one of Germany's most kissed monuments. The old town offers fine examples of half-timbered merchants' houses, several medieval churches, and the relaxed cafe and bar culture of a university town.

The Gauss-Weber monument, commemorating the physicists Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber who worked here together, and the numerous university buildings and institutes scattered through the city center provide a living map of intellectual history. The Stadtisches Museum and the Kunstsammlung der Universität Göttingen offer collections related to the regional history and the university's scientific heritage.

Göttingen is connected by ICE high-speed rail to Frankfurt and Hamburg in approximately ninety minutes each. The combination of its extraordinary intellectual heritage, vibrant university culture, charming medieval town center, and central location within Germany make it one of the most intellectually stimulating small cities in Europe, a place where the weight of academic achievement past and present is felt in every street and lecture hall.