MUNSTER, a town of Germany, capital of the province of Westphalia, lies in a sandy plain on the Dortmund-Ems canal, at the junction of several railways, 107 m. S.W. of Bremen on the line to Cologne. Pop. (1933) 122,253. Miinster is first men tioned about the year 800, when Charlemagne made it the resi dence of Ludger, bishop of the Saxons. Owing to its distance from any available river or important highway, the growth of the settlement round the monasterium was slow, and it was not until after 1186 that it received a charter, the name Munster having supplanted the original name of Mimegardevoord about a century earlier. During the 13th and i4th centuries the town was one of the most prominent members of the Hanseatic League. At the time of the Reformation, the armed intervention of the bishop suppressed all divergence from the older faith. The authority of the bishops, who usually resided at Ahans, has been limited, but in 1661 the bishop built a citadel, and deprived the citizens of many privileges. The bishopric of Munster, embracing about 2,500 sq.m., contained about 350,000 inhabitants, and its bishops were princes of the empire. The bishopric was secularized in 1803.
The town preserves its mediaeval character, especially in the "Prinzipal-Markt" and other squares, with their gabled houses and arcades. The fortifications were dismantled during the 18th century. The cathedral was rebuilt in the 13th and 14th cen turies, and combines Romanesque and Gothic forms; its chapter house is specially fine. The Gothic church of St. Lambert (i4th
century) was largely rebuilt after 1868; on its tower hang three iron cages in which the bodies of John of Leiden and two of his followers were exposed in 1536. The church of St. Ludger, erected in the Romanesque style about II70, was extended in the Gothic style about 200 years later. The church of St. Maurice, founded about 107o, was rebuilt during the 19th century, and the Gothic church of Our Lady dates from the 14th century.
Other noteworthy buildings are the town-hall, a Gothic building of the 14th century, and the Stadtkeller, which contains a col lection of early German paintings. The room in the town-hall called the Friedens Saal, in which the peace of Westphalia was signed in Oct. 1648, contains portraits of many ambassadors and princes who were present at the ceremony. The Schloss, built in 1767, was formerly the residence of bishops of MUnster. The private houses are admirable examples of German domestic archi tecture in the i6th, 17th and 18th centuries. The University of Miinster, founded after the Seven Years' War and closed at the beginning of the 19th century, was reopened as an academy in 1818, and again attained the rank of a university in 1902. Muns ter is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop and is a garrison town. Industries include weaving, dyeing, brewing and printing, and the manufacture of furniture, pianos, chocolates, surgical instruments, ropes, soap, cement and machines.