Tübingen

Tübingen, an important town of Württemberg, 20 miles SW. of Stuttgart (35 by rail), is situated on a ridge between the Neckar and the Ammer, in a beautiful and fertile district. Tübingen is an old place, irregularly built, with steep and narrow streets in the main; but the suburbs, especially round about the new university and the railway station, have wide and spacious streets. Book-printing, bookselling, making of chemicals and surgical and physical instruments, milling, dyeing, and trading in field-produce, wine, hops, and fruits form the principal sources of employment, besides education. Tübingen has three Protestant churches (one, the Stiftskirche, dating from 1469-83, and containing the graves of twelve princes of Württemberg) and one Catholic church. Its university, founded in 1477 by Eberhard im Bart, afterwards first Duke of Württemberg, soon became a distinguished seat of learning, enjoyed for a time the presence of Reuchlin and Melanchthon, and continued to flourish long after the Reformation had firmly established itself. The Thirty Years' War, however, fatally checked its prosperity; and it was not till the early part of the 19th century that it began to reacquire a reputation. Under Baur (q.v.) it became celebrated as headquarters of the historico-philosophical theology known as the 'Tübingen School,' which has profoundly influenced the study of church history. Its medical faculty is of late distinguished. The university has nearly 100 professors and teachers, a library of 200,000 volumes (located in Duke Ulrich's Schloss, on the hill above the town, dating from 1535), and is attended by about 1300 students. Connected with it are an anatomical and physical institute, a botanical garden, a chemical laboratory, &c. There is a Protestant seminary and a Catholic one, in which university lectures are given and theological students reside. Uhland long lived here. Pop. with garrison (1880) 11,708; (1885) 12,251, of whom 1750 were Catholics.