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The Rosenstein Castle in Stuttgart, Germany

Stuttgarts History

Everything began with a 'stud farm' -- Stuttgart`s rise began with a ducal descent

There is a German saying that proclaims, one finds the greatest of luck in the saddle of a well-bred horse.
For the Stuttgarter, such good fortune should be of the essence, as the city` origin is of an equestrian heritage.

It was in this area, in the swampy and sultry valley of the brook Nesenbach, that Duke Luitolf of Swabia founded a "stuotgarten" (stud farm) in the year 950.
The stud farm soon hereafter developed into a settlement and gave the present city its name, first documented in the year 1160. This historical fact has been preserved on until today, through the symbolism in the city`s traditional coat of arms - a black steed raising itself on its hind legs.

Three hundred years later, the settlement was fortified by the Counts of Württemberg by means of a timber-framed castle.
It is on this very site, where the Old Castle later was built in the 16th century, and here it houses now the Württemberg State Museum.

For centuries, the city was overshadowed by Cannstatt, an intersection for important trade routes. Here the Romans had established a permanent stone fortress and a settlement dating back as early as 100 years after the turn of the era. Findings prove also that primitive people lived in the Neckar valley near Cannstatt, as early as 250,000 years ago. Other "inhabitants" were elephants, rhinoceroses, wild boars, stags, wild cattle, horses, wolfs, bears and lions. Their traces and bone remnants were discovered during work in quarries.

When Stuttgart fell to the Margraves of Baden, in the beginning of the 1200s, it was given the status of a town. In the following century, Count Eberhard moved his seat from Beutelsbach to this growing valley. From 1495 to 1803 it was the lineage`s residential town - apart from two interruptions.

From 1520 to 1534 - the peasants` wars had just abated and the city of Stuttgart fell under Austrian rule. In 1589, Stuttgart had 9,000 inhabitants, but a bit more than fifty years later, in 1648 - after the conclusion of the Thirty Years` War - that number was cut in half to just 4,500. At the end of the 18th century the population boomed to over 20,000 dwellers, and at the present time, 590,000 people live in the capital of Baden-Württemberg.

The capital can be associated with many influencial figures in world history. It is where the famous philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel was born in 1770, whose contemplative theses Karl Marx further developed, hoping to create a new, socialist world order. Poets, like Hauff, Mörike and Schwab, who are well-known far beyond their native Swabia, all called Stuttgart "home" and another literary giant, the idealist, Friedrich Schiller, formed his creative spirit, while studying at the former academy "Hohe Carlsschule".

In the second half of the 19th century, the epoch of industrialization began in Stuttgart, as well. Gottlieb Daimler and Robert Bosch made the worldwide motorization wave continue to roll through their pioneer inventions, like those of the first high-speed gasoline engine and the ignition motor.

As the monarchy came to a close, Stuttgart was named the capital of the region of Württemberg, in 1918. Four decades later, in 1952, the state Baden, joined the state of Württemberg to form Baden-Württemberg, one of the 16 present-day German democratic states, and Stuttgart has remained its governing metropolis. Since then, the capital has continued to possess the good fortune of "riding in the horse`s saddle" - not only being the cultural and spiritual centre which it has always been, but for becoming thus the powerful economic and political centre of the state as well.

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