Jena
About Jena
Jena lies about 19 kilometres east of Weimar in the middle Saale valley, between wooded slopes of limestone and sandstone, and it has been a university city since 1558.[1] Around 1800 this small town of some 4,000 people and 800 students was what Goethe called a warehouse of knowledge, drawing scholars and philosophers from every German-speaking land, and from 1796 the young rebels of early Romanticism.[2] Schiller taught here, and here Goethe and Schiller began their friendship in 1794. In 1846 Carl Zeiss opened his optical workshop, which with Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott made the name world-famous.[1] That tradition is why Jena calls itself the Lichtstadt, the City of Light, the cradle of the optical industry in Europe.[3] For a visitor from Weimar it is a short trip to a lively university town: the market with the Rathaus and the Hanfried, the Stadtkirche St. Michael, the rooms where Goethe did his science, and the JenTower above it all.
Sights in Jena
- Botanischer Garten JenaBotanical garden
Fürstengraben 26, 07743 Jena
Germany's second-oldest botanical garden, on the university grounds since 1586.
- Goethe-LaboratoriumMuseum
Fürstengraben 26, 07743 Jena
The inspector's house of the Botanical Garden, Goethe's Jena quarters from 1817 to 1830 and the university's Goethe exhibition since 2024.
- ImaginataScience centre
Löbstedter Straße 67, 07749 Jena
Jena's experimentarium for the senses, with more than 100 hands-on stations in the former Jena-Nord electricity substation on Löbstedter Straße.
- Markt (Market Square)Square
Markt, 07743 Jena
Jena's market square at the heart of the old town, with the Rathaus, the Hanfried and the Stadtmuseum.
- Stadtkirche St. MichaelChurch
Kirchplatz 1, 07743 Jena
Jena's main church, a late Gothic hall church in the old town, with Luther's pulpit and his bronze grave plate.
- University Main BuildingHistoric building
Fürstengraben 1, 07743 Jena
The main building of the Friedrich Schiller University, built by Theodor Fischer in 1905–1908 on the site of Jena's palace, with Hodler's mural in the Aula and the Burschenschaft monument in its front garden.
- JenTowerTower
Leutragraben 1, 07743 Jena
The city's viewpoint, 160 metres up, shaped as a telescope for the optics works it was first built for.
- Schillers GartenhausHistoric house
Schillergäßchen 2, 07745 Jena
The house Schiller kept on the edge of the city for three summers, from 1797.
- Zeiss-Planetarium JenaPlanetarium
Am Planetarium 5, 07743 Jena
The oldest planetarium in the world still projecting, opened above the Zeiss works in 1926.
Jena in depth
A town of wine and cloth, 830–1485
Jena first appears in the tithe register of Hersfeld Abbey, written between 830 and 850. The Lords of Lobdeburg made it a town around 1230, and by about 1356 a wall enclosed it completely; in 1332 the Wettin rulers granted it the town law of Gotha. Vineyards, woad, hops, brewing and cloth-making made Jena one of the wealthiest towns in present-day Thuringia by the end of the Middle Ages, a prosperity that shows in the rebuilding of St. Michael's church from around 1380 and in the Rathaus of the late fourteenth century. Latin writers called it Athenae ad Salam, the Athens on the Saale.[1]
The university, 1548–1720
Defeat in the Schmalkaldic War of 1546/47 cost the Ernestine dukes their university at Wittenberg. In its place Johann Friedrich I, the Magnanimous, founded the Hohe Schule in Jena's Dominican monastery in 1548, and in 1558 it became the University of Jena, the institution on which the town's whole later history turned. Printing flourished beside it, and in the seventeenth century Jena ranked third in Germany for books, after Leipzig and Wittenberg. Between 1706 and 1720, with 1,800 students, the university stood at the head of all German universities.[1]
Goethe, Schiller and Fichte, 1775–1803
Under Duke Carl August and his minister Goethe, the new spirit of Weimar reached Jena and brought the university a second flowering; Goethe gave it both his official and his personal interest. Schiller taught here as a professor from 1789, lived in Jena until 1799, and in 1794 began his friendship with Goethe here.[1] He had married in the town in 1790.[4] It was largely Goethe's doing that Schiller and the young Johann Gottlieb Fichte were called to Jena; Fichte came in 1794, Schelling in 1798, and Hegel taught here from 1801 to 1807, making Jena a capital of German idealist philosophy.[1] Goethe himself spent more than five years in the town all told, living long in the palace and later at the inn Zur Grünen Tanne.[5]
The early Romantics, 1796–1803
Fichte's presence and Schiller's journal Die Horen drew the young generation of the early Romantics to Jena, and from 1796 to 1803 they made the town the centre of their thinking: August Wilhelm and Caroline Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel and Dorothea Veit, the poets Ludwig Tieck and Novalis, and the philosopher Schelling. Their movement reached its height at the meeting of the Romantics in November 1799.[1] Fichte's former home is a museum of the Jena Romantics today, the Romantikerhaus, and a walk of a good three kilometres links the places where they lived and worked.[2]
The battle, the Urburschenschaft and the Wartburg, 1806–1817
On 14 October 1806 Napoleon defeated the Prussian and Saxon armies in the double battle of Jena and Auerstedt on the heights north-west of the town. Resistance to his rule ran strong among Jena's students, who joined the Lützow Free Corps in large numbers in 1813, and in 1815 the Urburschenschaft, the original student fraternity, was founded here under the colours black, red and gold as a sign of the unity it sought for Germany. The Wartburg festival of 1817 went out largely from the University of Jena.[1]
Zeiss, Abbe and Schott: the Lichtstadt, 1846–1919
In 1846 Carl Zeiss founded an optical workshop that still had only 20 employees in 1860. With the physicist Ernst Abbe it grew into a precision-optics firm in its own factory buildings from 1880, and it gained decisive momentum from the glassworks Otto Schott built up from 1884; the ten-thousandth microscope, made in 1886, was given to Robert Koch. The profits of the Carl Zeiss Foundation, set up in 1889, went in large part to the university.[1] The trio founded the firms known today as ZEISS, Jenoptik and SCHOTT, and the close ties between university, research and industry that are still Jena's tradition; in 1919 Walter Bauersfeld created the basic form of the planetarium projector here.[3]
War, the GDR and 1989, 1945–1989
In 1945 Jena was repeatedly hit by Allied bombing; American troops occupied the town on 13 April 1945 and handed it to the Red Army on 1 July.[4] On 15 October 1945 its university was the first in Germany to resume teaching, while in 1946 most of the Zeiss and Schott works were dismantled and taken to the Soviet Union. From 1968 the old centre around the Eichplatz was cleared, and the university's tower, today's JenTower, was built between 1969 and 1972 to plans by Hermann Henselmann. On 4 November 1989 some 40,000 people gathered at a citizens' forum in the town centre, the largest demonstration in Jena's history.[1]
Jena, Weimar and Erfurt, from 1999
Jena, Weimar and Erfurt, strung along the Thuringian chain of towns, have worked together in chosen fields since the preparations for Weimar's year as European City of Culture in 1999, today under the shared name of the ImPuls region. Jena lies about 19 kilometres east of Weimar, on the Weimar–Gera railway, with regional trains to Weimar and Erfurt.[1] The Bundesstraße 7 links it by road with Weimar to the west.[4] In summer the Kulturarena fills six weeks with open-air music from around the world, theatre and long film nights,[6] and the Jena Tourist Information on the historic market square, Markt 16, helps with tours and excursions.[7]
Questions visitors ask
- How far is Jena from Weimar, and how do I get there?
- About 19 kilometres east of Weimar. Jena lies on the Weimar–Gera railway with regional trains to Weimar,[1] and the Bundesstraße 7 connects the two towns by road.[4]
- What is Jena known for?
- For its university, founded in 1558, which made Jena a centre of idealist philosophy and early Romanticism around 1800, and for the optical industry of Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott, which began with Zeiss's workshop in 1846.[1]
- What connects Jena with Goethe and Schiller?
- Schiller taught at the university from 1789 and lived in Jena until 1799; Goethe, as Carl August's minister, took an official and personal interest in the university, and the two began their friendship here in 1794.[1] Goethe spent more than five years in Jena in all, more than 350 days of them between 1817 and 1830 in the inspector's house of the Botanical Garden.[5]
- Why is Jena called the Lichtstadt?
- Because Jena has shaped light-based technologies for more than 150 years: Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott laid the foundations of the firms known today as ZEISS, Jenoptik and SCHOTT, and the town calls itself the cradle of the optical industry in Europe.[3]
Quick Information
Highlights & Attractions
Historical Significance
A town since about 1230, seat of the Hohe Schule of 1548 and the university of 1558, a centre of idealist philosophy and early Romanticism around 1800, and the birthplace of the optical industry of Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott from 1846.
Sources (7)
- Jena — Wikipedia, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Jena um 1800 – Wiege der Romantik — JenaKultur / Visit Jena, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Lichtstadt — JenaKultur / Visit Jena, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Jena — Wikipedia, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Goethe-Laboratorium — JenaKultur / Visit Jena, retrieved 13 September 2026
- Jenas Top 10 — JenaKultur / Visit Jena, retrieved 30 August 2026
- Planen Sie Ihre Reise nach Jena — JenaKultur / Visit Jena, retrieved 13 September 2026
In the history of Jena
Historical figures
1759–1805 • writer • poet • historian
Schiller was a professor at the university from 1789, married in Jena in 1790 and lived in the town until 1799.
1749–1832 • writer • statesman • naturalist
Goethe spent more than five years in Jena, took an official and personal interest in its university, and began his friendship with Schiller here in 1794.
1503–1554 • duke • elector
Johann Friedrich I founded the Hohe Schule in Jena in 1548, which became the university in 1558; the Hanfried on the market is his monument.
Historical periods
Under Carl August and his minister Goethe the spirit of Weimar reached Jena's university; Schiller taught here from 1789, and here Goethe and Schiller began their friendship in 1794.
For roughly sixty years a duchy of a few thousand people held the centre of German literature, because its ruler kept inviting writers to live there and then gave them jobs. That is the whole mechanism, and it ran from Goethe's arrival in 1775 to his death in 1832.
In Weimar's history
From 27 September to 14 October 1808 Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I met in Erfurt with the princes of the Rhine Confederation — and on 6 October the congress came to Weimar.
On 7 October 1808 Napoleon showed Tsar Alexander the battlefield of 1806 from the Landgrafenberg above Jena, in a setting designed by Goethe.
The Congress of Vienna made Carl August a grand duke with a larger land in 1815; on 5 May 1816 he gave it the first constitution in Germany after the wars against Napoleon, with an elected Landtag and full freedom of the press.
The university held the eleventh seat of the first estate, and its students' Burschenschaft of 1815 and Wartburgfest of 1817 were the constitution's first public echo.
Interesting reads
Historical figures
1749–1832 • writer • statesman • naturalist
1759–1805 • writer • poet • historian
1739–1807 • duchess • regent • patron • composer
1883–1969 • architect • founder and director of the Bauhaus • teacher
Historic sites
Frauenplan 1, 99423 Weimar
Platz der Demokratie 1, 99423 Weimar
Stéphane-Hessel-Platz 1, 99423 Weimar
Buchenwald, 99427 Weimar