Around Jena

St. Michael's Church

Under construction this Spring is the new 63 ft. high dome for the tower of Jena's 15th century St. Michael's Church. The original dome as well as much of the church and the rest of central Jena was severely damaged by Allied bombing during WWII.

After the war the tower was merely capped with a flat roof. But with fund-raising among Jena citizens, the 174 ft. high tower is being stabilized (behind construction scaffolding to the left in the picture), and on May 26 the new dome, patterned after the original, will be raised by a giant crane to the top of the tower. GC SSTers will join the celebration of this historic event.

City wall

In Medieval times Jena was surrounded by a wall and a moat. Portions of the wall and some corner towers from the 14th century (picture at left) are still standing, as well as the Rathaus (Town Hall) and St. Michael's Church in the center of the old city.

Historical Jena

Jena has been an important intellectual center of Germany for centuries. Both Goethe (known as the "Shakespeare of Germany") and Friedrich Schiller (after whom the university in Jena was named in 1934) were at the University, as were the philosophers Fichte, Hegel and Feuerbach. Karl Marx received his doctorate from Jena in 1841. Carl Zeiss founded his precision engineering optical workshop in Jena in 1846, a company that still dominates international optical manufacturing.

Within thirty miles of Jena: Martin Luther was educated at Erfurt and translated the New Testament at nearby Wartburg Castle; Bach was born in Eisenach. Franz Liszt composed and conducted in Weimar.

A sharp contrast to the ideals of the German Romantics and of the Weimar Republic: the Buchenwald concentration camp lies in the hills above Weimar. Here, both Holocaust author Elie Wiesel and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer were incarcerated.

Since World War II Jena and its neighbors have experienced four decades under Communism, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and German reunification.