Gießen

Gießen is a city in North Hesse. The city has about 88,000 inhabitants (2018) including 44,000 students, so its infrastructure, shopping and cultural offerings are pretty well adapted to students.



Understand
In the late 1970s when many municipalities throughout Germany were merged into bigger units the Hessian Social Democrats (SPD) had the idea of merging Gießen and Wetzlar into a new city which, similar to Wuppertal, was to be given a new "fusion name" for the river which flows through both: "Lahn". This however proved extremely unpopular with people in both cities (bumper stickers would read "Wenn ich Lahn seh' krieg ich Zahnweh" - "When I see 'Lahn' I get a toothache") and even the SPD chancellor Helmut Schmidt commented negatively on the merger which led to it being undone after only 31 months. This however catalyzed an anti-SPD sentiment in Hesse which had been dominated by the SPD up to that point and all mayors of Lahn (the first died in office) were members of the Christian Democratic Union which would only lead its first government in Hesse in 1987.

Go next

 * Wetzlar
 * Marburg