What the guide books tell you about Tübingen hardly prepares you for the reality — a romantic Medieval town with a world-class university.
Like Heidelberg, Tübingen wasn’t damaged severely during WWII because it had no war value. Indeed, the town’s unspoiled, colorfully painted half-timbered homes, narrow alleys, cobblestone streets and hillside steps must look pretty much like they did five centuries ago.
I’ve wanted to see Tübingen for decades, ever since I learned my big sister Carol studied there during her college years.
Probably the most photographed part of town is the riverfront. The Eberhardsbrücke (Eberhard Bridge), the Neckar river, the collegiate church and Hölderlin Tower seem to pose for cameras.
The Plantanenallee (Plane Tree Alley), oldest in Germany, on the island in the middle of the river has been a walking/talking paradise for generations of students and residents.
University
Today more than 5,000 teachers offer 200 programs at the university, and €300 million in research funds are made available to the 28,000 students (almost one in three of the people in the city proper).
The university, founded in 1477, is one of 11 German Excellence Universities. It’s a center for study of biology, law, archeology, philosophy, religion and especially chemistry and medicine.
The university is on semesters, and “lecture time” is mid-October to mid- February and mid-April to mid-July. So the town is only half-full, and the students — responsible for much of the small-town college atmosphere — simply aren’t here in large numbers yet. Lecture halls are empty and outdoor cafe patios are dominated by us tourists.
Medical
Tübingen’s 15th Century Eberhard-Karls University is considered one of the country’s half dozen best in, say, law and medicine. A prowl through the web shows university-related medical facilities throughout the region, and indeed the university is a hub for a network of hospitals, infirmaries and specialty clinics. My sister Carol’s project involved a Hilfschule (assistance school) and children with disabilities.
The pink, half-timbered Bursary is a key building. Built in the 15th Century, the building first was used to prepare boys for university. By the 19th Century, the building had become a university clinic with a dozen wards.
Schloss
A castle usually is meant for living space and a fortress for defense. Tübingen’s began as a palace in Medieval times. But the thick walls and tall towers give four-winged Hohentübingen Castle, standing on a hill almost 1,000 feet high, the look of a fortress.
The portal and its arch, completed just after 1600, have been called a late-Renaissance masterpiece.
Tübingen’s Eberhard Karls University obtained rooms in the castle in the middle of the 17th Century, and early in the 18th, the king gave the university the whole fortress. Today, the Institute of Classical Archeology has offices there.
The library, which boasted 60,000 volumes then, was housed in the Knight’s Hall. Today, the small university is thought to have the largest group of scientific collections (70 full, others partial) among the country’s universities.
Museum
The castle houses the university’s Museum of Ancient Cultures, whose work with carvings of 40,000-year-old woolly mammoths and cave lions in the Swabian Alps about 20 miles away made the area a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Part of the museum is the 700-square-foot castle “laboratory,” originally the castle kitchen. The kitchen became one of the world’s first biochemistry labs.
The university says a biology student, Friedrich Miescher, who didn’t know fully what he had, was the first to isolate nucleic acid from which DNA and RNA are derived. That’s about 70 years before Americans Watson and Crick discovered the DNA structure was a double helix.
The museum displays Miescher’s test tube with nucleic acid in nearly the exact spot where Miescher worked. It’s labeled in Miescher’s own handwriting.
Artifacts from the biology lab, which closed in 1875, were collected and in 2015 the space opened as the castle lab museum.
The laboratory museum was closed while I was there, but an email exchange with the university resulted in their opening for me. In fact, they left me to read and photograph ’til I was done, asking me just to close the door firmly behind me when I left.
Observatory
The king charged a university professor with determining how big the kingdom was. Measurements were taken from the top of the castle’s northeast tower, and boundary definitions in the area are still made from there. The professor also built a small observatory with a rotating dome on a bastion for precise angle measurements.
Stiftskirche
St. George’s (built 1470-90), the collegiate church, was one of the first to follow Martin Luther to Protestantism.
The three-nave, late-Gothic church is said to be the center of town because it sits on a “saddle’ between two mountains and can be seen from afar.
New Aula
The university gradually outgrew the small town, and one result was the New Aula (auditorium) in a new university quarter. “New,” of course, by German standards. It was built before our Civil War.
The three-story classical building contains a large ballroom and 14 lecture halls and is home to the law faculty.
My sister recognized the exchange students building.
Walking back down from the castle, I asked a shop manager where I could take a photo of student housing. He smiled and said, “Right behind you.” In Munich, student housing meant tall apartment buildings. Not necessarily, in tiny Tübingen.
Hölderlin
The “Tübingen Three” means Hölderlin, Hegel and Schilling, three great German names in philosophy and literature. They were roommates at Tübinger Stift, studying Lutheran theology. Other university graduates include Kepler and Pope Benedict XVI.
Hölderlin was a philosopher and poet, whose emotional, rhythmical lines about divinity and nature in a mixture of Greek and German won him a passionate Romantic following, especially among local students. Academics claim to see his influence on Nietzsche, Rilke, Heidegger and others, but one caveat is that Hölderlin’s language was so hard to translate that he never developed a large following outside the country.
Hölderlin was pronounced mentally ill in 1806 and spent the rest of his life — 36 years — by the willow tree in the golden, pointed-roof tower on the Neckar that bears his name.
The Zwingelmauer, a narrow path along the riverfront that leads to the tower was one of Holderlin’s favorite places to walk. It’s a pleasant spot for lunch today, offering a clear view of the Neckar and the punts gliding past.
Punts
One of the frivolous lists of German universities said Tübingen is known for its “unique boating culture,” referring to the Stocherkahne (punts) that glide along the river when it’s warm.
The long, thin boats bring a vibe like that of Oxford or Cambridge, but the boats actually look quite different. In Tübingen, about a dozen customers face each other in a punt, sitting on polished wooden seats with high backs.
The boat is driven by a pilot pushing against the riverbed with a pole. Students may drive the boats when they’re in town, but at this time of year, the pilot is likely to be a “pro.”
Rathaus
Outside the university, Tübingen is still a beautiful example of German Medieval architecture.
The gabled Rathaus (town hall), stemming from the 1400s, is the oldest building on its square. It’s also the most ornately painted of the high houses there. The complex astronomical clock, designed by a university professor, still works.
Marktplatz
In 2018, the square with the town hall and high houses was named the most beautiful in the state (Baden-Württemberg). During the day, three times a week, the square, which goes back to about 1300, features a market.
Other times on neighboring streets, a stall pops up where you can buy fresh fruit or flowers.
In the evenings, young people congregate around the Neptune fountain.
Pretty sights seem to crop up on all sides in Tübingen, as in this little canal in the Ammergasse.
Or this old house that seemed to threaten the street on the way down to the old French quarter.
Nazi path
Tubingen’s a university town, so it’s not surprising that it tries to be open about its role during the Hitler time. To make that history visible, the city erected a “history trail” of 16 information pillars throughout the town.
The pillars tackle location-related subjects such as “Science and Crime in National Socialism” at the castle, “Destruction of Local Democracy” at the town hall, “The University of Tübingen in National Socialism” at the new campus and “Perpetrator of the Holocaust” at his birthplace. A barcode calls up the full text on the pillars, which is also available in English.
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