Munich - City of Germany

Munich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Munich is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg.

Munich is not the only location within Bavaria known as "München". Three such locations exist: the one which is known as "Munich"; another which is northeast of the city of Nuremberg, and also Hutthurm, a town north of the city of Passau.

Munich has a continental climate, strongly modified by the proximity of the Alps. The city's altitude and proximity to the northern edge of the Alps mean that precipitation is rather high. Rain storms often come violently and unexpectedly. The range of temperature between day and night or summer and winter can be extreme. A warm downwind from the Alps can change the temperatures completely within a few hours, even in the winter.

The year 1158 is assumed to be the foundation date, which is only the earliest date the city is mentioned in a document. The document was signed in Augsburg .By that time the Guelph Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, had built a bridge over the river Isar next to a settlement of Benedictine monks - this was on the Salt Route and a toll bridge.

When Bavaria was reunited in 1506 Munich became capital of the whole of Bavaria. The arts and politics became increasingly influenced by the court . During the 16th century Munich was a center of the German counter reformation, and also of renaissance arts. Duke Wilhelm V commissioned the Jesuit Michaelskirche, which became a center for the counter-reformation, and also built the Hofbräuhaus for brewing brown beer in 1589.

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, life in Munich became very difficult, as the Allied blockade of Germany led to food and fuel shortages. During French air raids in 1916 three bombs fell on Munich. After World War I, the city was at the centre of much political unrest. In November 1918 on the eve of revolution, Ludwig III and his family fled the city. After the murder of the first republican premier of Bavaria Kurt Eisner in February 1919 by Anton Graf von Arco-Valley, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed. When Communists had taken power, Lenin, who had lived in Munich some years before, sent a congratulatory telegram, but the Soviet Republic was put down on 3 May 1919 by the Freikorps.

The city is known as the site of the culmination of the policy of appeasement employed by Britain and France leading up to World War II. It was in Munich that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain assented to the annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland region into Greater Germany in the hopes of sating the desires of Hitler's Third Reich.

Today, the crime rate is very low compared to other large German cities, such as Hamburg or Berlin. This high quality of life and safety has caused the city to be nicknamed "Toytown" amongst the English-speaking residents. German inhabitants call it "Millionendorf", a expression which means "village of a million people".

The Deutsches Museum or German Museum, located on an island in the River Isar, is one of the oldest and largest science museums in the world. Three redundant exhibition buildings which are under a protection order were converted to house the Verkehrsmuseum, which houses the land transport collections of the Deutsches Museum. Deutsches Museum's Flugwerft Schleißheim flight exhibition centre is located nearby, on the Schleißheim Special Landing Field. Several non-centralised museums show the expanded state collections of palaeontology, geology, mineralogy, zoology, botany and anthropology.

Munich is a major European cultural centre and the domain of many prominent composers including Orlando di Lasso, W.A. Mozart, Carl Maria von Weber, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Max Reger and Carl Orff. With the Biennale, founded by Hans Werner Henze the city still contributes to modern music theatre.

Munich is a leading location for science and research with a long list of Nobel Prize laureates from Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in 1901 to Theodor Hänsch in 2005. Munich has become a spiritual centre already since the times of Emperor Louis IV when philosophers like Michael of Cesena, Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham were protected at the emperor's court. Both the universities of the Bavarian metropolis, the Ludwig Maximilian University and the Technical University , were found to be worthy of the title of elite university by the selection committee, which consisted of academics and members of the Ministries of Education and Research of the Federation and the German states . Only Munich's two universities and the Technical University of Karlsruhe have been awarded already in 2006 the title of elite university of Germany and millions of euro in funding.

University of Munich
Technical University of Munich
Munich Business School
Munich University of Applied Sciences
Munich Intellectual Property Law Center
University of the German Federal Armed Forces, Munich,
Pionierschule und Fachschule des Heeres für Bautechnik
Hochschule für Musik und Theater München,
Akademie der Bildenden Künste München,