Cologne Cologne Cologne (; , , ) is the largest city of Germany's most populous federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and its 1,075,935 (2016) inhabitants make it the fourth most populous city in Germany after Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. The largest city on the Rhine, it is also the most populous city both of the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region, which is Germany's largest and one of Europe's major metropolitan areas, and of the Rhineland. Centred on the left bank of the Rhine, Cologne is about southeast of North Rhine-Westphalia's capital of Düsseldorf and northwest of Bonn. It is the largest city in
History of the Jews in Cologne rented land. The first burials took place in 1699. When in 1798 the Jews were again permitted to settle within the old city walls of Cologne, the cemetery was also used by this community until 1918. Until the French annexion of Cologne in 1794, following the French Revolution, no Jew was permitted to settle in Cologne. The Napoleonic Code included equality before the law, rights of individual freedom and the separation of church and state. The Government Commissioner Rudler, in his proclamation of June 21, 1798 to the inhabitants of the conquered territory announced: A few months earlier, Joseph Isaac