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(ONLY TEXT - DEFAULT) Jena as a university town
Cultural city, business location, city to the world
Anyone who has ever driven past Jena on the motorway has probably remembered the city through its ugly prefabricated buildings. But Jena has much more to offer! Jena is the third largest city in Thuringia and is therefore located in the “green heart” of Germany between shell limestone and sandstone slopes on the Saale. With approximately 100,800 inhabitants, Jena, first mentioned in documents in 1236, is one of the major cities in Germany. Many famous people have lived here in the past. Not only Schiller - the university's namesake - and Goethe, but also Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Karl Marx were residents of this East German city. Jena has also become a cultural city thanks to its prominent residents. Many cultural and historical monuments remind us of the city's cultural history. But cultural history was not only written here in the times of Goethe and Schiller; Jena still has a young cultural scene today. Evidence of this is not only the annual “Cultural Arena”, which attracts international stars, but also the everyday music, museum and theater landscape.
Jena is also known as a business location. Shaped by industrialization, the city has developed strongly. Ernst Abbe and Carl Zeiß in particular laid the foundation for the optical and precision mechanical industry for which Jena is known today.
There is a mix of historic and new buildings in Jena's city center. Numerous street cafés invite you to linger here, especially in the summer months.
The universities
The traditional Friedrich Schiller University (“alma mater genesis”) was founded in 1558 and is now the largest university in Germany with 20,000 students - based on the population of Jena. Former students include Friedrich Hölderlin, Kurt Tucholsky, Gerhart Hauptmann and Manfred Stolpe. Friedrich Schiller and Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel are just two of the prominent teachers at this university. Today the university is divided into ten departments and numerous institutes.
The university of applied sciences, founded in 1991, has around 6,000 students and stands for short study periods and a practical orientation. 22 study programs are offered here, in which 44 different specialization subjects can be chosen. The Jena University of Applied Sciences is also a partner university for top-class sport. It cooperates with the Thuringia Olympic Training Center and would like to enable top athletes to combine studies and competitive sports and support them in doing so.