Braunschweig (German: [ˈbʁaʊnʃvaɪk] ⓘ) or Brunswick[5] (English: /ˈbrʌnzwɪk/ BRUN-zwik; from Low German Brunswiek, local dialect: Bronswiek [ˈbrɔˑnsviːk]) is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser.

Due to the city's limited urban core and efforts in preserving green spaces, 73% of the residents live in multi-storey apartments.

Tradition maintains that Brunswick was created through the merger of two settlements, one founded by Brun(o), a Saxon count who died in 880, on one side of the River Oker – the legend gives the year 861 for the foundation – and the other the settlement of a legendary Count Dankward, after whom Dankwarderode Castle (the "Castle of Dankward's clearing"), which was reconstructed in the 19th century, is named.

[12] Up to the 12th century, Brunswick was ruled by the Saxon noble family of the Brunonids; then, through marriage, the town fell to the House of Welf.

In 1142, Henry the Lion of the House of Welf became duke of Saxony and made Braunschweig the capital of his state (which, from 1156 on, also included the Duchy of Bavaria).

He turned Dankwarderode Castle, the residence of the counts of Brunswick, into his own Pfalz and developed the city further to represent his authority.

[citation needed] Henry the Lion became so powerful that he dared to refuse military aid to the Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, which led to his banishment in 1182.

He had previously established ties to the English crown in 1168, through his marriage to King Henry II of England's daughter Matilda, sister of Richard the Lionheart.

[15] However, Henry's son Otto, who regained influence and was eventually crowned Holy Roman Emperor, continued to foster the city's development.

[17] Although formally one of the residences of the rulers of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire, Brunswick was de facto ruled independently by a powerful class of patricians and the guilds throughout much of the Late Middle Ages and the Early modern period.

Because of the growing power of Brunswick's burghers, the Princes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who ruled over one of the subdivisions of Brunswick-Lüneburg, finally moved their Residenz out of the city and to the nearby town of Wolfenbüttel in 1432.

The exiled Duke Frederick William raised a volunteer corps, the Black Brunswickers, who fought the French in several battles.

His absolutist governing style had previously alienated the nobility and bourgeoisie, while the lower classes were disaffected by the bad economic situation.

[28][29] On 10 November, the council proclaimed the Socialist Republic of Brunswick under one-party government by the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD); however, the subsequent Landtag election on 22 December 1918 was won by the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD), and the USPD and MSPD formed a coalition government.

[30] An uprising in Braunschweig in 1919, led by the communist Spartacus League, was defeated when Freikorps troops under Georg Ludwig Rudolf Maercker took over the city on order of the German Minister of Defence, Gustav Noske.

On 17–18 October 1931, 100,000 SA stormtroopers marched through the city; street fights between Nazis, socialists, and communists left several dead or injured.

After about 300 had died due to disease, hunger, and maltreatment over the course of just a few months, a further 200 were transferred to the infirmary of a nearby subcamp in early January 1945 in order to reduce the number of deaths.

However, this was only effective to some degree, as another 80 bodies landed in the city's crematory until the subcamp's closing in March 1945, when Büssing-NAG had to halt production due to severe bombing damages.

[50][51] Piera Sonnino (1922–1999), an Italian author, writes of her imprisonment in Braunschweig in her book, This Has Happened, published in English in 2006 by MacMillan Palgrave.

[citation needed] The Allied air raid on October 15, 1944, destroyed most of the city's churches, and the Altstadt (old town), the largest homogeneous ensemble of half-timbered houses in Germany.

This area includes Wolfenbüttel, Meine, northern parts of Salzgitter, Weddel, Sickte, Timmerlah, Lengede and other towns and regions within a 15 kilometer radius.

Companies like New Yorker, Salzgitter AG, Jägermeister, Siemens, Bosch, Volkswagen, Nordzucker, Continental, Kosatec [de] and others are headquartered or have a branch in this area.

These are the biggest groups of nationalities in the urban aggomeration (these include the citizens with a migration background and a second passport): [65] [66][73][74] Braunschweig's climate is classified as oceanic (Köppen: Cfb; Trewartha: Dobk).

Deutsche Bahn (German Railways)(with their DB Regio Subsidiary) serves the city with a few local services, although Errix towards Uelzen(Northwards) and Bad Harzburg(Southwards) operate the aforementioned directions, aswell as Hildesheim and Wolfsburg(West-East respectively) trains having been handed to Enno, and the RE70 service to Hannover being run by the Westfalenbahn.

However, it is being supplemented in stages by a third rail, to allow future joint working with the 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge main railway network.

It has had several notable pupils, such as Carl Friedrich Gauss, Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Richard Dedekind and Louis Spohr.

Additionally, one of the campuses of the Eastphalia University of Applied Sciences (German: Ostfalia Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften, formerly Fachhochschule Braunschweig/Wolfenbüttel) was located in the city until 2010.

Other traditional local dishes include white asparagus, Braunschweiger Lebkuchen, Braunkohl (a variant of kale served with Bregenwurst), and Uhlen un Apen (Low German for "Owls and Guenons", a pastry).

[105] Since 1979 an annual Rosenmontag parade is held in Braunschweig, the largest in Northern Germany, which is named Schoduvel in honour of the medieval custom.

It houses a collection of masters of Western art, including Dürer, Giorgione, Cranach, Holbein, Van Dyck, Vermeer, Rubens, and Rembrandt.