JENA, a university town of Germany, in the Land of Thur ingia, on the left bank of the Saale, 56 m. S.W. from Leipzig by the Grossberigen-Saalfeld and 12 m. S.E. of Weimar by the Wei mar-Gera lines of railway. Pop. (1933) 58,357. Jena appears to have possessed municipal rights in the 13th century. It passed in 1423 from the margraves of Meissen to the elector of Saxony. In 1690 Jena was united with Eisenach, and in 1741 reverted to Weimar.
To the north lies the limestone plateau, descending steeply to the valley, famous as the scene of the battle of Jena (1806) in which Napoleon defeated the Prussians. It contains in addition to the mediaeval market square, many old-fashioned houses and narrow streets. Besides the old university buildings, the most interesting edifices are the 15th-century church of St. Michael, the university library and the bridge across the Saale. Hard by is the Fuchs-Turm (Fox tower) celebrated for student orgies, while in the centre of the town is the house of an astronomer, Weigel, with a deep shaft through which the stars can be seen in the day time. There must also be mentioned the university church, the new university buildings, which occupy the site of the ducal palace (Schloss) where Goethe wrote his Hermann and Dorothea, the Schwarzer Bar hotel, where Luther spent the night of ter his flight from the Wartburg, and four towers and a gateway which now alone mark the position of the ancient walls. In 1547 the elector John Frederick the Magnanimous of Saxony, while a captive of the emperor, conceived the plan, carried out by his three sons of a university at Jena. A charter having been obtained from the
emperor Ferdinand I., it was inaugurated in 1558. The most brilliant professoriate was under the duke Charles Augustus, Goethe's patron (1787-1806), when Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Schlegel and Schiller were on its teaching staff. Founded as a home for the new religious opinions of the 16th century, it has even been in the forefront of German universities in liberal ac ceptance of new ideas. At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, the opening of new universities, co-operating with the suspicions of the various German Governments as to the democratic opinions which obtained at Jena, militated for a while against the university. It had 180 teachers and 1,972 students in 1926. Amongst its numerous auxiliaries may be mentioned the library, the observatory, the meteorological institute and the botanical garden. There are also veterinary and agricultural col leges in connection with the university. The book trade has of late years revived, and there are several printing establishments.
The famous Zeiss firm of optical instrument makers has its seat at Jena and the town has profited in many ways therefrom. Scientific instruments, chemicals, machinery, etc., are also made.