Fulda
Panorama of Fulda from the town castle
Fulda
Location of the town of Fulda within Fulda district
Coordinates	50°33′3″N 9°40′31″E / 50.55083°N 9.67528°E / 50.55083; 9.67528Coordinates: 50°33′3″N 9°40′31″E / 50.55083°N 9.67528°E / 50.55083; 9.67528
Administration
Country	Germany
State	Hesse
Admin. region	Kassel
District	Fulda
Lord Mayor	Gerhard Möller (CDU)
Basic statistics
Area	104.04 km2 (40.17 sq mi)
Elevation	261 m  (856 ft)
Population	64,349 (31 December 2010)[1]
- Density	619 /km2 (1,602 /sq mi)
Founded	744
Other information
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Licence plate	FD
Postal codes	36001–36043
Area code	0661
Website	www.fulda.de

Fulda (German pronunciation: [ˈfʊlda]) is a city in Hesse, Germany; it is located on the river Fulda and is the administrative seat of the Fulda district (Kreis).

History[link]

Middle Ages[link]

The Benedictine monastery of Fulda was founded in 744 by Saint Sturm, a disciple of Saint Boniface, as one of Boniface's outposts in the reorganization of the church in Germany. It later served as a base from which missionaries could accompany Charlemagne's armies in their political and military campaign to fully conquer and convert pagan Saxony.

The initial grant for the abbey was signed by Carloman, the son of Charles Martel. The support of the Mayors of the Palace and later, the early Pippinid and Carolingian rulers, was important to Boniface's success. Fulda also received support from many of the leading families of the Carolingian world. Sturm, whose tenure as abbot lasted from 747 until 779, was most likely related to the Agilolfing dukes of Bavaria. Fulda also received large and constant donations from the Etichonids, a leading family in Alsatia, and the Conradines, predecessors of the Salian Holy Roman Emperors. Under Sturm, the donations Fulda received from these and other important families helped in the establishment of daughter houses Johannesberg and Petersberg near Fulda.

St Boniface baptizing and being martyred, from the Sacramentary of Fulda

After his martyrdom by the Frisians, the relics of Saint Boniface were brought back to Fulda. Because of the stature this afforded the monastery, the donations increased, and Fulda could establish daughter houses further away, for example in Hamelin. Meanwhile Saint Lullus, successor of Boniface as archbishop of Mainz, tried to absorb the abbey into his archbishopric, but failed. This was one reason that he founded Hersfeld Abbey, to limit the attempts of the enlargement of Fulda.

Between 790 and 819 the community rebuilt the main monastery church to more fittingly house the relics. They based their new basilica on the original 4th-century (since demolished) Old Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, using the transept and crypt plan of that great pilgrimage church to frame their own saint as the "Apostle to the Germans". The crypt of the original abbey church still holds those relics, but the church itself has been subsumed into a Baroque renovation. A small, 9th century chapel remains standing within walking distance of the church, as do the foundations of a later women's abbey.

The great scholar Rabanus Maurus was abbot from 822 to 842.

18th and 19th centuries[link]

From its foundation, the abbey Fulda and its territory was based on an Imperial grant, and therefore was a sovereign principality subject only to the German emperor. Fulda was made a bishopric in 1752 and the prince-abbots were given the additional title of prince-bishop. The prince-abbots (and later prince-bishops) ruled Fulda and the surrounding region until the bishopric was forcibly dissolved by Napoleon in 1802.

The city went through a baroque building campaign in the 18th century, resulting in the current “Baroque City” status. This included a remodeling of the Dom (Cathedral) of Fulda (1704–1712) and of the Stadtschloss (Castle-Palace, 1707–1712) by Johann Dientzenhofer. The city parish church, St. Blasius, was built between 1771–1785.

In 1764 a porcelain factory was started in Fulda under Prince-Bishop, Prince-Abbot Heinrich von Bibra, but shortly after his death it was closed down in 1789 by his successor, Prince-Bishop, Prince-Abbot Adalbert von Harstall. Because of its quality and rarity, this porcelain is much prized by collectors.

The city was given to the prince of Orange-Nassau in 1803, was annexed to the Grand Duchy of Berg in 1806, and in 1809 to the principality of Frankfurt. After the Congress of Vienna, most of the territory was given to the electorate of Hesse, and in 1866 was, with the latter, annexed to Prussia.^[2]

Cold War[link]

Fulda lends its name to the Fulda Gap, a traditional east-west invasion route used by Napoleon and others. During the Cold War, the former East/West German border passed just east of Fulda, and large Soviet and East German forces were stationed in the area as it was considered to be a potential invasion route against the German Democratic Republic and the Eastern bloc countries generally.

The U.S. Army stationed the 14th and later the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiments in the city and surrounding areas as the screening force for the U.S. V Corps.

International relations[link]

Twin towns — sister cities[link]

Fulda is twinned with:

• Como, Italy (1960)
• Arles, France (1964)
• Sergiyev Posad, Moscow Oblast, Russia (1991)
• Wilmington, Delaware, USA (1997)
• Litoměřice, Czech Republic (2001)

People[link]

• Adam of Fulda
• Tobias Sammet
• Martin Hohmann
• Ferdinand Braun
• Sebastian Kehl
• Franz Kaspar (or Caspar) Lieblein
• Max Stern
• Dirk Sauer
• Fr. Gereon Karl Goldmann
• Edguy

Images[link]

• 

  Cathedral of Fulda.

• 

  Statue of Saint Boniface (1830) in Fulda.

• 

  Fulda, 1850

• 

  "Stadtschloss" (main entrance) at Fulda.

• 

  Old City Hall of Fulda.

• 

  Orangerie.

• 

  Kloster Frauenberg (Fulda), a Franciscan monastery.

• 

  St. Michael's Church.

• 

  Baroque Adelspalais.

• 

  Old University of Fulda: Adolphs-Universität Fulda.

• Fulda countryside.jpg

  Looking east toward Fulda over the rich farmlands.

• Weser watershed 3.png

  Weser river watershed, showing Fulda River and the city of Fulda.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Fulda

• Official english website
• 360degree virtual tour through downtown Fulda
• Vonderau Museum Fulda
• Hochschule Fulda (University of Applied Science)

v t e Towns and municipalities in Fulda district Bad Salzschlirf Burghaun Dipperz Ebersburg Ehrenberg Eichenzell Eiterfeld Flieden Fulda Gersfeld Großenlüder Hilders Hofbieber Hosenfeld Hünfeld Kalbach Künzell Neuhof Nüsttal Petersberg Poppenhausen Rasdorf Tann

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the German Wikipedia. (April 2012) Don't speak German? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the German article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|de|Warschauer Pakt}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance
Military alliance
1955–1991 →
Motto Союз мира и социализма  (Russian) "Union of peace and socialism"
Member states: Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany², Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.
Capital	Not specified
Language(s)	Russian, Polish, German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian
Political structure	Military alliance
Supreme Commander
- 1955–60 (first)	Ivan Konev
- 1989–91 (last)	Petr Lushev
Head of Unified Staff
- 1955–62 (first)	Aleksei Antonov
- 1989–90 (last)	Vladimir Lobov
Historical era	Cold War
- Established	14 May 1955
- Hungarian crisis	4 November 1956
- Czechoslovakian crisis	21 August 1968
- German reunification²	3 October 1990
- Disestablished	1 July 1991
¹ HQ in Moscow, USSR. ² A 24 September 1990 treaty withdrew the German Democratic Republic from the Warsaw Treaty; at reunification, it became integral to NATO Pact.

The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (1955–1991), more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty between eight communist states of Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. The founding treaty was established under the initiative of the Soviet Union and signed on 14 May 1955, in Warsaw. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional economic organization for the communist states of Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was a Soviet military response to the integration of West Germany^[1] into NATO in 1955, per the Paris Pacts of 1954.^[2][3][4]

Nomenclature[link]

The Cold War (1945–90): NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact, the status of forces in 1973

In the West, the Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance is often called the Warsaw Pact military alliance; abbreviated WAPA, Warpac, and WP. Elsewhere, in the former member states, the Warsaw Treaty is known as:

• Albanian: Pakti i miqësisë, bashkpunimit dhe i ndihmës së përbashkët
• Bulgarian: Договор за дружба, сътрудничество и взаимопомощ
  • Romanized Bulgarian: Dogovor za druzhba, satrudnichestvo i vzaimopomosht
• Czech: Smlouva o přátelství, spolupráci a vzájemné pomoci
• Slovak: Zmluva o priateľstve, spolupráci a vzájomnej pomoci
• German: Vertrag über Freundschaft, Zusammenarbeit und gegenseitigen Beistand
• Hungarian: Barátsági, együttműködési és kölcsönös segítségnyújtási szerződés
• Polish: Układ o Przyjaźni, Współpracy i Pomocy Wzajemnej
• Romanian: Tratatul de prietenie, cooperare şi asistenţă mutuală
• Russian: Договор о дружбе, сотрудничестве и взаимной помощи
  • Romanized Russian: Dogovor o druzhbe, sotrudnichestve i vzaimnoy pomoshchi

Soviet philatelic commemoration: At its 20th anniversary in 1975, the Warsaw Pact remains On Guard for Peace and Socialism.

Structure[link]

The Warsaw Treaty’s organization was two-fold: the Political Consultative Committee handled political matters, and the Combined Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Furthermore, the Supreme Commander of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was also a First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, and the head of the Warsaw Treaty Combined Staff also was a First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Therefore, although ostensibly an international collective security alliance, the USSR dominated the Warsaw Treaty armed forces.^[5]

Strategy[link]

The strategy of the Warsaw Pact was dominated by the desire to prevent, at all costs, the recurrence of an invasion of Russian territory as had occurred under Napoleon in 1812, German forces in 1918 (ended with the Treaty of Brest Litovsk) as well as Hitler in 1941, leading to extreme devastation and human losses in all cases, but especially in the third; the USSR emerged from the Second World War with the greatest total losses in life of any participant in the war except China.

History[link]

Communist Bloc Conclave: The Warsaw Pact conference, 11 May 1955, Warsaw, Poland.

Map of Warsaw Pact countries

On 14 May 1955, the USSR established the Warsaw Pact in response to the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO in October 1954 – only nine years after the defeat of Nazi Germany (1933–45) that ended with the Soviet and Allied invasion of Germany in 1944/45 during World War II in Europe. The reality was that a "Warsaw"-type pact had been in existence since 1945, when Soviet forces initially occupied Eastern Europe, and maintained there after the war. The Warsaw Pact merely formalized the arrangement.

The eight member countries of the Warsaw Pact pledged the mutual defense of any member who would be attacked; relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non-intervention in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence.

The founding signatories to the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance consisted of the following communist governments:

• People's Republic of Albania (withheld support in 1961 because of the Sino–Soviet split, formally withdrew in 1968)
• People's Republic of Bulgaria
• Czechoslovak Republic (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic since 1960)
• German Democratic Republic (withdrew in September 1990, before German reunification)
• People's Republic of Hungary
• People's Republic of Poland
• People's Republic of Romania (Socialist Republic of Romania from 1965)
• Soviet Union

For 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Treaty never directly waged war against each other in Europe; the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies implemented strategic policies aimed at the containment of each other in Europe, while working and fighting for influence within the wider Cold War on the international stage.

In 1956, following the declaration of the Imre Nagy government of withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, Soviet troops entered the country and removed the government.

The multi-national Communist armed forces’ sole joint action was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. All member countries, with the exception of the Socialist Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania participated in the invasion.

Beginning at the Cold War’s conclusion, in late 1989, popular civil and political public discontent forced the Communist governments of the Warsaw Treaty countries from power – independent national politics made feasible with the perestroika- and glasnost-induced institutional collapse of Communist government in the USSR.^[6] In the event the populaces of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, East Germany, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria deposed their Communist governments in the period from 1989–91.

On 25 February 1991 the Warsaw Pact was declared disbanded at a meeting of defense and foreign ministers from Pact countries meeting in Hungary.^[7] On the 1 July 1991, in Prague, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havel formally ended the 1955 Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance and so disestablished the Warsaw Treaty after 36 years of military alliance with the USSR. Five months later, the USSR disestablished itself in December 1991.

Central and Eastern Europe after the Warsaw Treaty[link]

NATO/CSTO

On 12 March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia joined in March 2004; Croatia and Albania joined on 1 April 2009.

Russia and some other post-USSR states joined in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

In November 2005, the Polish government opened its Warsaw Treaty archives to the Institute of National Remembrance who published some 1,300 declassified documents in January 2006. Yet the Polish government reserved publication of 100 documents, pending their military declassification. Eventually, 30 of the reserved 100 documents were published; 70 remained secret, and unpublished. Among the documents published is the Warsaw Treaty's nuclear war plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine – a short, swift attack capturing Western Europe, using nuclear weapons, in self-defense, after a NATO first strike. The plan originated as a 1979 field training exercise war game, and metamorphosed into official Warsaw Treaty battle doctrine, until the late 1980s – thus why the People’s Republic of Poland was a nuclear weapons base, first, to 178, then, to 250 tactical-range rockets. Doctrinally, as a Soviet-style (offensive) battle plan, Seven Days to the River Rhine gave commanders few defensive-war strategies for fighting NATO in Warsaw Treaty territory.^{[citation needed]}

Notes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Havel, Václav (2007). To the Castle and Back. Trans. Paul Wilson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26641-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=GaWwabF35Y0C&lpg=PP1&dq=editions%3AkJCaIwFlq-QC&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Heuser, Beatrice (1998). "Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies". Contemporary European History 7 (3): 311–327. DOI:10.1017/S0960777300004264. 
• Lewis, William Julian (1982). The Warsaw Pact: Arms, Doctrine, and Strategy. Cambridge, Mass.: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. ISBN 978-0-07-031746-8. 
• Mastny, Vojtech; Byrne, Malcolm (2005). A Cardboard Castle ?: An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN 978-963-7326-07-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=Jm4L_b8CHycC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
• Umbach, Frank (2005) (in German). Das rote Bündnis: Entwicklung und Zerfall des Warschauer Paktes 1955 bis 1991. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. ISBN 978-3-86153-362-7. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Warsaw Pact

• The Woodrow Wilson Center Cold War International History Project's Warsaw Pact Document Collection

v t e Countries of Eastern and Central Europe during their communist period Albania Bulgaria Czechoslovakia East Germany Hungary Poland Romania Yugoslavia Map of Cold War Europe Soviet Russia / Soviet Union: 1917–1927 1927–1953 1953–1964 1964–1982 1982–1991 Eastern Bloc Comecon Warsaw Pact

v t e Eastern Bloc Soviet Union · Communism Formation The secret protocol of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact · Soviet invasion of Poland · Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina · Occupation of Baltic states · Soviet occupation of Hungary · Soviet occupation of Romania · Soviet occupations · Yalta Conference Annexed as, or into, SSRs Eastern Finland · Estonia · Latvia · Lithuania · Memel · East Prussia · West Belarus · Western Ukraine · Moldavia · Uzbekistan · Kazakhstan · Azerbaijan · Georgia · Tajikstan · Kyrgyzstan · Turkmenistan · Armenia Annexing SSRs Russian SFSR · Ukrainian SSR · Byelorussian SSR Related organizations Cominform · COMECON · Warsaw Pact · WFTU · WFDY Revolts and opposition Welles Declaration · The Goryani Movement · Forest Brothers · Ukrainian Insurgent Army · Operation Jungle · State continuity of the Baltic states · Baltic Legations (1940–1991) · Cursed soldiers · Uprising in Plzeň (1953) · Uprising of 1953 in East Germany · 1956 Georgian demonstrations · Poznań 1956 protests · Hungarian Revolution of 1956 · Novocherkassk massacre · Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia · 1968 Red Square demonstration · Polish 1970 protests · June 1976 protests · Solidarity, Soviet reaction and Martial law · Reagan Doctrine · Jeltoqsan · April 9 tragedy · Romanian Revolution of 1989 · Black January Conditions Eastern Bloc emigration and defection · Sovietization of the Baltic states  · Eastern Bloc information dissemination · Eastern Bloc politics · Eastern Bloc economies · Telephone tapping in the Eastern Bloc · List of Eastern Bloc defectors Decline Revolutions of 1989 · Fall of the Berlin Wall  · Fall of communism in Albania · Singing Revolution · Collapse of the Soviet Union · Dissolution of Czechoslovakia · January 1991 events in Lithuania · January 1991 events in Latvia

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