BREMEN, city and seaport of Germany, capital city of the Land of Bremen, and one of the Hanseatic towns, occupying a sandy plain on both banks of the Weser, 46m. from the North sea. Pop. (1933) 323,628. The city consists of four quarters: the old town (Altstadt) and its suburban extensions (Vorstadt) being on the right bank of the river, and the new town (Neustadt) with its southern suburb (Siidervorstadt) on the left bank. The river is crossed by three bridges, the old, the new (1872-1875), and the railway bridge. The former ramparts are promenades. Two new communes and parts of two others were added in 1921. The romantic old town, with its winding streets flanked by massive gabled houses, dates from Hanseatic days. The fine town hall (Rathaus) on the market square dates from the 15th century and has a handsome Renaissance façade. Before it stands a statue of Roland, the emblem of civic power. The Rathaus, as well as the cathedral and bourse, was damaged in the Spartacist disturb ances of 1919. Within, there is a handsome gallery of paintings, and in an upper hall a model of an old Hanseatic frigate, with the device Navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse, hangs from the ceiling. The cathedral of St. Peter (12th century) on the site of Charlemagne's wooden church, has a famous lead roof. The churches of St. Ansgarius, of Our Lady and of St. Stephen date from the 12th and 13th centuries. Other interesting build ings are the Schiitting, or merchants' hall, originally built in 1619 for the cloth-traders' gild, and the Stadthaus, the former arch bishop's palace. There are numerous handsome modern buildings. A beautiful park occupies the Burgerweide (meadows) to the north-east of the city. Bremen, with its predominance of one family houses, contrasts with most German towns where the flat system is widespread.
The industries are those typical of a modern port and include shipbuilding, milling of oils and grains, jute-spinning, rope-making and the production of tobacco, chemicals, sugar and rice; there are extensive shipbuilding yards. Ships of 2 5f t. draught are able to reach the port, and the waterway is kept open in winter by ice-breakers. The length of docks approximates. 30,00o metres. Total water area (1927), 126 acres. Trade is predominantly transit ; excellent railway communications are maintained with the chief industrial districts of Germany. Electric tramways and local steamboats serve the immediate neighbourhood.
The chief imports are coal, grain, cotton, wood, iron ore, rice, oil-seeds, mineral oils, wool, tobacco, cottonseed, meal, asphalt, rice offal, copper, coffee, jute, wine, herrings, etc. The exports include woollen goods, glass, iron and iron wares, machinery, wire, cement and mineral salts. Bremen is specially important as the importer of raw products from America and inter-tropical lands; vast quantities of tobacco and rice are handled. For international trade it ranks as the chief port of Germany, after Hamburg: 3,603 vessels entered in 1925, with aggregate tonnage of In 787 Bremen was chosen by St. Willehad, whom Charlemagne had established as bishop in the pagi of the lower Weser, as his see. In 848 the destruction of Hamburg by the Normans led to the transference of the archiepiscopal see of Hamburg to Bremen. In 965 the Emperor Otto I. granted to Archbishop Adal dag "in the place called Bremuh" the right to establish a mar ket, and the full administrative, fiscal and judicial powers of a count, no one but the bishop or his advocatus being allowed to exercise authority in the city—a privilege frequently confirmed by subsequent emperors. There is no direct evidence of the existence of any communal organization during this period, but it is clear from the vigorous part taken by the burghers in the struggle of the Emperor Frederick with Henry the Lion of Saxony that some such organization very early existed. In the 13th cen tury, however, Bremen was still strictly subordinate to the arch bishop and his Vogt; the council could issue regulations only with the consent of the former, while in the judicial work of the latter, save in small questions of commercial dishonesty, its sole function was advisory. By the middle of the 14th century this situation was reversed ; the elected town council was the supreme legislative power in all criminal and civil causes, and in the court of the advocatus two Ratsmanner sat as assessors. The victory had been won over the archbishop; but a fresh peril had developed in the course of the 13th century in the growth of a patrician class, which, as in so many other cities, threatened to absorb all power into the hands of an oligarchy. In 1304 the commonalty rose against the patricians and drove them from the city, and in the following year gained a victory over the exiles which was long celebrated by an annual service of thanksgiving. After a century of trouble, in 1433 the old aristocratic constitu tion was definitively restored. But though in Bremen the efforts of the craftsmen's "arts" to secure a share of power had been held in check, the city government did not, as at Cologne and elsewhere, develop into a close patrician oligarchy. No artificial restraint was placed upon individual enterprise, and the question of the government having been settled, Bremen rapidly devel oped in wealth and influence.
The Reformation was introduced into Bremen in 1522 by Heinrich von Zutphen. Archbishop Christopher of Brunswick Wolfenbiittel (1487-1558), a brutal libertine, hated for his lusts and avarice, looked on the reforming movement as a revolt against himself. He succeeded in getting the reformer burned; but found himself involved in a life and death struggle with the city. Archbishop Christopher was succeeded in 1558 by his brother Georg, bishop of Minden (d. 1566), who is reckoned as the last Roman Catholic archbishop of Bremen. His successor Henry III. (1550-85), was a Lutheran and married. Protestant ism was not, however, definitively proclaimed as the state religion in Bremen until 1618. The last archbishop, Frederick II. (of Denmark), was deposed by the Swedes in 1644. In 1646 Bremen received the privileges of a free imperial city from the Emperor Ferdinand III. The Swedes, during their occupation of Bremen, refused to consent to this: but in 172o, when the elector of Hanover (George I. of Great Britain) acquired the archbishopric, he recognized Bremen as a free city. In 1806 it was taken by the French, and subsequently annexed by Napoleon to his empire. Restored to independence by the congress of Vienna in 1815, it subsequently became a member of the German Confederation, and in 1867 joined the North German Confederation, with which, in 1871, it was merged in the German empire.
During the political and social upheaval in Germany at the conclusion of the World War, a Workers' and Soldiers' Council was set up in Bremen and, on Nov. 15, 1918, the red flag was hoisted at the Rathaus. Comparative order had been maintained but, on Jan. 1o, 1919, the workers united in a protest against the existing government and in a demand for a Communist Republic. After many days of unrest, severe street fighting took place on Feb. 4 and the following days, and order was not completely restored until Feb. 9, when the town and its outskirts were occu pied by government troops.
See Buchenau, Die freie Hansestadt Bremen (3rd ed., Bremen, iqoo) ; Bremisches Urkundenbuch, edited by R. Ehmck and W. von Bippen (1863, fol.) ; W. von Bippen, Geschichte der Stadt Bremen (Bremen, 1892-98) ; F. Donandt, Versuch einer Geschichte des brem ischen Stadt-rechts (Bremen, 1830) ; Bremisches Jahrbuch (1864 1900) ; and Karl Hegel, Stadte and Gilden, vol. ii. p. 461 (Leipzig, 1891) ; Wilhelm Breves, Bremen in der deutschen Revolution (Bremen, 1919).