History
The name Bebra came from Biberaho (“Village on the Beaver River”; Biber still means “beaver” in German today). Later this became first Bibera, and then today’s name Bebra.
In 786, the town had its first documentary mention in an estate directory of the Hersfeld Abbey, which is confirmed as having been built in 769. The reason for the mention was that Bebra was donated to the Abbey to cover food demands, thus leading to the conclusion that the directory itself, and thereby Bebra’s existence as well, go back a few years further than that.
For the next several centuries the settlement was mainly a big farming village, even though important, heavily used roads already met at this spot even quite early on. For one, there was the road to the east leading by way of Eisenach to Halle. For another, there was the postal road running along the Fulda valley linking the region with southern Germany. Nevertheless, at that time the area was dominated by Rotenburg, lying 6 km away, which enjoyed status as a small residence town.
An upswing came Bebra’s way when the railway network in Germany was expanded, reaching even this region by the mid 19th century. Towards the end of the century, the town was one of Germany’s most important railway junctions. On the one hand, the town’s population thereby grew over about 70 years from some 1,300 to 5,063 by 1946. On the other hand, the town lost its formerly exclusively rural character with trade and businesses settling in town, among which the old Deutsche Reichsbahn was the biggest employer. Town rights were granted Bebra on 20 September 1935 by the Chief President (Oberpräsident) of the Province of Hesse-Nassau, Philipp, Prince of Hesse.
The town’s growth kept up – interrupted only by the Second World War – into the 1970s. Given the good transport connections, a big industrial area arose in town. During the time of German division, there was a border checkpoint in Bebra to handle both people and goods crossing between the postwar occupational zones and, later, between West and East Germany. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bebra was the largest border checkpoint for rail transportation across East German territory between West Germany and Berlin.
As of the mid 1980s, Bebra was gradually losing importance as a railway junction, which led to a noticeable decline in goods traffic and thereby to fewer jobs at Deutsche Bahn.
Read more about this topic: Bebra
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)