Heidelberg

Germany

Heidelberg lies on the Neckar where it leaves its valley for the Rhine plain, in Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany. Its university, founded in 1386, is the oldest in Germany. The city was a seat of government of the Electors Palatine, whose castle still overlooks the old town; French troops took town and castle in 1689, and the area was almost completely destroyed in 1693. In April 1518 Martin Luther defended his theology there at the Heidelberg Disputation, where Martin Bucer heard him and became his follower, and Elector Frederick III later commissioned the Reformed Heidelberg Catechism. The chemist Robert Bunsen taught at the university from 1852 to 1889, and the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal studied there in 1907.