Place:Bonn, Rheinland, Preußen, Germany

Alt namesBonnasource: Times Atlas of World History (1993) p 338
Bonnburgsource: Encyclopædia Britannica (1988) II, 364
Castra Bonnensiasource: Canby, Historic Places (1984) I, 112
TypeIndependent City
Coordinates50.733°N 7.1°E
Located inRheinland, Preußen, Germany
Also located inCologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany    
Contained Places
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Bonn, officially the Federal City of Bonn, is a city on the banks of the Rhine River in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The city is the second official residence of the President of Germany, the Chancellor of Germany, the Bundesrat (upper house), and the first official seat of six German federal ministries and approximately 20 federal authorities. Bonn is located in the very south of the Rhine-Ruhr region, the largest metropolitan area of Germany. It is the seat of two major DAX-listed German corporations.

Founded in the first century BC as a Roman settlement, Bonn is one of Germany's oldest cities. From 1597 to 1794, Bonn was the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and residence of the Archbishops and Prince-electors of Cologne. It was the de facto capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 (Berlin was symbolically named the de jure capital in the West German Basic Law) and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999. In recognition of this, the former capital holds the one-of-a-kind title of Federal City (Bundesstadt).

Being a hub for international cooperation, the city currently hosts 18 United Nations institutions. Simultaneously, Bonn is establishing itself as a national and international centre of meetings, conventions and conferences, many of which are directly related to the work of the United Nations.

The city is home to the University of Bonn, one of Germany's most reputable institutions of higher learning. Bonn is the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven (born 1770).


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To date, Bonn's Roman fort remains the largest fort of its type known from the ancient world, i.e. a fort built for one full-size Imperial Legion and its auxiliaries. The fort covered an area of approximately . Between its walls it contained a dense grid of streets and a multitude of buildings, ranging from spacious headquarters and large officers' houses to barracks, stables and a military jail. Among the legions stationed in Bonn, the "1st", i.e. the Prima Legio Minervia, seems to have served here the longest. Units of the Bonn legion were deployed to theatres of war ranging from modern-day Algeria to what is now the Russian republic of Chechnya.


In late antiquity, much of the town seems to have been destroyed by marauding invaders. The remaining civilian population then holed up inside the fort along with the remnants of the troops stationed here. During the final decades of imperial rule, the troops were supplied by Germanic chieftains employed by the Roman administration. When the end came, these troops simply shifted their allegiances to the new barbarian rulers. From the fort, the Bonnburg, as well as from a new medieval settlement to the South centred around what later became the minster, grew the medieval city of Bonn.


In 1794, the town was seized by French troops, becoming a part of the First French Empire. In 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars, Bonn became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. Administered within the Prussian Rhine Province, the town became part of the German Empire in 1871 during the Prussian-led unification of Germany. Bonn was of little relevance in these years.

Modern history


Following World War II, Bonn was in the British zone of occupation, and in 1949 became the provisional capital of the newly formed Federal Republic of Germany. The choice of Bonn was made mainly due to the advocacy of West Germany's first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, a former Cologne Mayor and a native of that area. This was despite the fact that Frankfurt already had most of the required facilities and using Bonn was estimated to be 95 million DM more expensive than using Frankfurt. However, Adenauer and other prominent politicians intended to make Berlin the capital of the reunified Germany, and felt that locating the capital in a major city like Frankfurt or Hamburg would imply a permanent capital.

Because of its relatively small size for a capital city, Bonn was sometimes referred to, jokingly, as the 'B'undeshauptstadt ohne nennenswertes Nachtleben (Federal capital without noteworthy nightlife) or the 'Bundesdorf' (Federal Village). At one point in the post-WWII/Cold War era, the U.S. Embassy in Bonn was America's largest, "comparable, with its thousands of staff, to the [U.S.] Baghdad embassy today".


The heated debate that resulted was settled by the Bundestag (Germany's parliament) only on 20 June 1991. By a vote of 338–320, the Bundestag voted to move the seat of government to Berlin. The vote broke largely along regional lines, with legislators from south and west favouring Bonn and legislators from north and east voting for Berlin.

While the government and parliament moved to Berlin, as a compromise, some of the ministries (such as Defence and Agriculture) largely remained in Bonn, with only the top officials in Berlin. There was no plan to move these departments, and so Bonn remained a second, unofficial capital with the new title "Federal City" (Bundesstadt). Because of the necessary construction work, the move took until 1999 to complete. Over 8,000 of the 18,000 federal bureaucratic employees remain in Bonn.

At present, the private sector plays a major role in Bonn's economy. With five stock listed companies, Bonn has the 4th highest market capitalisation among German towns. With headquarters of DHL, T-Mobile and other renowned companies, managers have replaced the public sector.

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