GOTTINGEN, a town in the Prussian province of Hanover, at the west foot of the Hainberg, in the valley of the Leine, 67 m. S. from Hanover, on the railway to Cassel. Pop. 47,026. A village of Goding or Gutingi is named in documents of about A.D. 95o. The place received municipal rights from the German king Otto IV. about 1210, and during the 14th century it held a high place in the Hanseatic League. In 1531 it joined the Reformation movement, and in the following century it suffered considerably in the Thirty Years' War. After a century of decay, it was anew brought into importance by the establishment of its university; and a marked increase in its industrial and commercial prosperity has again taken place in recent years. Towards the end of the 18th century Gottingen was the centre of a society of young poets of the Sturm and Drang period of German literature, known as the Gottingen Dichterbund or Hainbund (see GERMANY : Litera ture).
The town is traversed by the Leine canal, which separates the Altstadt from the Neustadt and from Masch, and is surrounded by ramparts. The old streets are crooked and narrow. Gottingen possesses a mediaeval town hall, built in the 54th century and restored in 1880. Industries include branches of the publishing trade, manufacture of cloth and woollens and of scientific instru ments. The university, founded by George II. in 5734 and opened in 1737, rapidly attained fame. Political disturbances, in which both professors and students were implicated, and the expulsion in 1837 of seven professors—Die Gottinger Sieben—for protesting against the revocation by King Ernest Augustus of Hanover of the liberal constitution of 1833, reduced the prosperity of the uni versity. The events of 1848, on the other hand, told somewhat in its favour; and, after the annexation of Hanover in 1866, it was carefully fostered by the Prussian government. The main univer sity building lies on the Wilhelmsplatz, and, adjoining, is the library with the richest collection of modern literature in Germany. There are zoological, ethnographical and mineralogical collections, the most remarkable being Blumenbach's collection of skulls. The Society of Sciences (Sozietat der Wissenschaften) is well known and publishes the Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen.