COBLENZ or KOBLENZ, a city and fortress of Germany, capital of the Prussian Rhine province, 57 m. S.E. from Cologne by rail, situated on the left bank of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, whence its ancient name Confluentes, of which Coblenz is a corruption. Pop. (1933) 58,322.
The town was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 9 B.C. Later it was frequently the residence of the.Frankish kings, and in 86o and 922 was the scene of ecclesiastical synods. In 1018 the city, after receiving a charter, was given by the emperor Henry II. to the archbishop of Trier (Treves), and it remained in the possession of the archbishop-electors till the close of the i8th century. In 1249-54 it was surrounded with new walls and it was partly to overawe the turbulent townsmen that suc cessive archbishops built and strengthened the fortress of Ehren breitstein (q.v.) that dominates the city. As a member of the league of the Rhenish cities which took its rise in the 13th century, Coblenz attained to great prosperity. In 1344 the Moselle was spanned by a Gothic freestone bridge of 14 arches. The town suffered greatly, however, in the wars of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. In 1688 the French bombarded the Altstadt, destroying the old merchants' hall (Kau f haus) , which was restored in 1725. In 1786 the elector of Trier, Clement Wenceslaus of Saxony, took up his residence in the town, and a few years later it became one of the principal rendezvous of the French emigres. In Coblenz was taken by the Revolutionary army and, after the peace of Luneville, it was made the chief town of the Rhine and Moselle department (1798). In 1814 it was occupied by the Russians, by the congress of Vienna it was assigned to Prussia, and in 1822 it was made the seat of government of the Rhine I province.
The city, down to 189o, consisted of the Altstadt (old city) and the Neustadt (new city), or Klemenstadt. The old city was triangular in shape, two sides being bounded by the Rhine and Moselle and the third by a line of fortifications. Here is the church of St. Castor, originally founded in 836 by Louis the Pious : the present Romanesque building was completed in 1208, the Gothic vaulted roof dating from 1498. In the old quarter, too, are the Liebfrauenkirche, a fine church (nave 12 5o, choir 1404-31) with late Romanesque towers; the castle of the electors of Trier, erected in 128o, which now contains the municipal pic ture gallery; and the family house of the Metternichs, where Prince Metternich, the Austrian statesman, was born in 1773. In the modern part of the town, the palace (Residenzschloss), built in 1778-1786 by Clement Wenceslaus, the last elector of Trier, contains some fine Gobelin tapestries. Coblenz is a principal seat of the Moselle and Rhenish wine trade. Its manufactures include pianos, paper, machinery, boats and barges, sugar, dyes and chemicals. It is an important transit centre f of the Rhine rail ways and for the Rhine navigation. Immediately outside the former walls lies the central railway station, in which is effected a junction of the Cologne-Mainz railway with the strategical line Metz-Berlin.
Coblenz was bombed by the Allies in 1917 and 1918. After the Armistice the town and bridgehead were occupied by Allied troops under the Treaty of Versailles, the town forming the second zone to be evacuated after lc) years, should Germany fulfil her obliga tions (see RHINELAND) . Coblenz was the seat of the Rhineland High Commission, and was occupied first by American troops and later (since Jan. To, 1923) by French troops. In October 1923 Separatists proclaimed a Rhineland Republic and declared that they had been recognized as a de facto Government by the French high commissioner, but the movement had collapsed by February 1924.