Category: General

To engage in politics belongs to the DNA of Göttingen, Germany. Every week you’ll see rallies and demonstrations on local, national and international topics. The city has today a strong left scene which is because of the importance of the university (of the 120,000 inhabitants 30,000 are students), but also as a reaction to the fact that the city during Nazi times embraced the NSDAP fast. Already in 1930 the Nazi party received 37.8 % of the local votes.

When exploring the south of Göttingen you will find a lot of streets named after former German cities. Cities that you can still find on maps but that have new names. Cities that Germany lost after World War II. And these streets are all lined-up along an axis that begins with the street Stettiner Straße (Szczecin) that becomes the Danziger Straße (Gdańsk) and later turns into the Breslauer Straße (Wrocław).

I was growing up in the northern part of Göttingen. Close to the home of my parents was the factory building of Sartorius, producing pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment. And this area was for sure closed, you couldn’t look behind the walls surrounding it. With the extension of the company and the continuous move to the industrial area in the city quarter Grone the former company area (now called Sartorius-Quartier) was opened up. It now contains a restaurant with a rooftop bar, a life science innovation hub, a hotel, shops, numerous flats and a new event location, the Sheddach-Halle.

Did you ever watch a movie in a church? If not, the Méliès at Göttingen gives you the option to do so. It is a small cinema located in a former Baptist church close to the Bürgerstraße, the ring surrounding the city center. The old church dates back to the year 1903 and was standing empty for about 35 years until a new usage and an investor had been found. Now it houses a special cinema, the former altar is now stage and screen and the gallery of the church has been preserved so that the former character of the building remains.

The Lumière is one of the small cinemas at Göttingen, Germany. Named after the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, pioneers of cinema technology, it was opened in 1986 close to the city center, next to the new town hall building. The cinema understands itself as an alternative to the typical multiplex cinemas of our times. It has one single room which is used to show films, for exhibitions and theatre performances.

When the houses in the Ebertal in the south of Göttingen will be rebuilt also the streets will change: some new ones will appear, others will be renamed. A long part of the current Lönsweg will than be known as the Meta-Kamp-Steinmann-Straße. On the Gothaer-Areal nearby a Hedwig-Gehrke-Weg will appear and maybe we will also see a Marianne-Ellenbogen-Weg in the near future. Hopefully these new street names will cause people to search for the history behind them. What does connect these three women?

Once upon a time the city of Göttingen had different cinemas: the Sterntheater in the Sternstraße, the Capitol in the Prinzenstraße, the Cinema in the Weender Straße and many more before them. When in 1996 the large multiplex cinema CinemaxX opened in the former Lokrichthalle we all went there and enjoyed the modern atmosphere and the new technology. This was the beginning of the end of the smaller cinemas.