Groningen

Netherlands

Groningen is the capital of the province of the same name in the northern Netherlands. A member of the Hanseatic League in the Middle Ages, it was captured by forces under Maurice of Nassau in 1594 and joined the Dutch Republic. Its university, founded in 1614, is the second oldest in the country; Johann Bernoulli was its professor of mathematics from about 1695 to 1705, and his son Daniel Bernoulli was born in the city in 1700. The region was an early centre of Anabaptism, and Menno Simons, after breaking with the Catholic priesthood in 1536, was ordained an Anabaptist elder by Obbe Philips around 1537, reportedly at Groningen.