Gotha, Germany

The parish church of this first urban settlement was St. Mary's Church (demolished in 1530) at Schlossberg. The castle (at the site occupied today by Friedenstein Castle) was first mentioned in 1217. As the Ludowingians died out in 1247, Gotha became part of the Wettins' territories, where it remained until 1918. The new town east of Querstraße was established in the early 15th century (with the Neumarkt, first mentioned in 1428).

The monastery (first Cistercians, since 1258 Augustinians) was founded before 1251 and abandoned in 1525. Until 1665, the bourse of Gotha was located in the centre of Hauptmarkt square inside the Renaissance building, which hosts the town hall today. The medieval town hall was located on the north-eastern edge of Hauptmarkt, at the site of today's Innungshalle.

Water supply was a big problem, because Gotha is not located on a river. In 1369, Landgrave Balthasar had the Leinakanal built. This channel, over 25 kilometres long, brought fresh water from the Thuringian Forest (Hörsel and Apfelstädt rivers) to the city. The main businesses of medieval Gotha were cloth-making and the woad trade.

The Reformation was introduced in Gotha in 1524 and the castle was rebuilt as a larger fortress between 1530 and 1541. Gotha was already part of the Ernestine Wettins territory after the 1485 Treaty of Leipzig. However, the Ernestines' loss of power after the Schmalkaldic War in 1547, the Treaty of Erfurt in 1572, when the city became part of Saxe-Coburg, and the Thirty Years' War resulted in Gotha's decline. The local castle, Grimmenstein, was razed by Imperial troops in 1572.

The turnaround was brought about by the selection of Gotha as a ducal residence in the 1640 territorial partition, when Ernest the Pious founded the duchy of Saxe-Gotha. The strongly Protestant and absolutist sovereign quickly began to reorganize his small state (even before the war had ended) and in particular fostered the school system by introducing compulsory education up to the age of 12 in 1642. This was the origin of the often noted liberal education of the Gotha citizenry and the following cultural heyday.

Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff was one of numerous experienced and loyal civil servants employed by the duke. Seckendorff was considered one of the most able and influential thinkers on administration and public law of his time. His book Der teutsche Fürstenstaat (1656), written by order of Ernest, served for decades as a standard work in teaching political science at Protestant universities in Germany.

Friedenstein Castle was built between 1643 and 1654 and is one of the first large Baroque residence castles in Germany. Between 1657 and 1676, the city received a stronger fortification, which was demolished between 1772 and 1811. In their place, a park around Friedenstein and a boulevard around the city were established. Some important scientific institutions were the ducal library (today's Forschungsbibliothek Gotha as part of the University of Erfurt), founded in 1650, the "coin cabinet" (1712), the "art and natural collection", basis of today's museums, and the Gotha Observatory at Seeberg mountain, established 1788. The Gotha porcelain manufactory (established in 1767) was famous around 1800 for their faiences.

In 1774, the actor group led by Conrad (or Konrad) Ekhof, called "the father of German acting", came from Weimar to Gotha. He began working at the Schlosstheater and became Direktor of the first ever German court theatre (founded in 1683), while acting in many plays himself. Having turned it into one of the leading theatres in Germany, after his death in 1778 the fame of the theatre declined rapidly.

The Almanach de Gotha, a directory of European royalty and nobility, was first published in 1763 and Justus Perthes founded his science publishing company in 1785. Joseph Meyer followed in 1826 by founding the Bibliographisches Institut, one of the two leading encyclopedia publishers in the German language besides the Brockhaus and Adolf Stieler first published his Handatlas in Gotha in 1816. Johann Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the order of the Illuminati, died in Gotha in 1830. It was also during this time, that the city developed a sizeable Jewish population.

From 1826 to 1918, Gotha, along with Coburg, was one of the two capitals of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Under the rule of Duke Ernest II, Gotha was a centre of Germany's liberal movement, where the Gothaer Nachparlament took place in the aftermath of 1848 German Revolution. After 1851, Gustav Freytag, novelist, advocate of German unity, and, often harsh critic of Otto von Bismarck, made Siebleben (today part of Gotha) his summer home. Ernest II made Freytag Hofrat (privy councillor) in 1854, when the Prussian government had issued a warrant for his arrest.