Reise-Städtebeschreibung-Europa-Deutschland-Memmingen

The name Memmingen can probably be traced back to a royal court at the Mammo settlement. Over time, the settlement disappeared and only the name remained. Due to the salt road from Bohemia, Austria and Munich to Lindau and the road from northern Germany to Switzerland and Italy, the trading post became increasingly important. Mammingin was first mentioned in 1128 in a document written in the Ochsenhausen monastery. In 1158, Memmingen was elevated to a town by Duke Welf VI. In 1286, it was declared a Free Imperial City by the Roman-German King Rudolf I of Habsburg and thus placed directly under the control of the German king. It received royal confirmation of its traditional town charter. The imperial city flourished from the 14th to the 16th century. This was particularly evident in the lively building activity, trade and flourishing culture. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Emperor Maximilian I visited the city a total of thirteen times. He called it his resting and sleeping cell. He appointed Bernhard Strigel, probably the city's greatest artist, as his house and court painter. It is thanks to the great trading activity of the town's patrician families that it became so wealthy. As early as 1505-1506, the Great German Company undertook the first trading voyage from Portugal to India. In 1630, the town once again became the focus of European politics when the Generalissimo Wallenstein entered the town during the Thirty Years' War and enforced peace for a few weeks in the turmoil of the time. Memmingen became Bavarian again for a short time in 1702, after Bavarian troops conquered the town following a siege. As part of the mediatization after the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, the town fell to the Electorate of Bavaria in 1803. The 19th century saw a slow economic decline, which only slowed down in 1862 with the construction of the Neu-Ulm-Kempten railroad line. This led to a new economic boom. Since the Second World War, Memmingen has been a prosperous town whose economic growth is above the Bavarian average.