Passau

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Passau

Passau (Latin: Batavia) is a town in Niederbayern, Eastern Bavaria, Germany, known also as the Dreiflüssestadt (City of Three Rivers), because the Danube River is joined there by the Inn River from the South, and the Ilz River coming out of the Bavarian Forest to the North.

Its population is 50,415, of whom about 8,000 are students at the local University of Passau. The university, founded in the late 1970s, is the extension of the (centuries old) Institute for Catholic Studies. It is renowned in Germany for its institutes of Economics, Law, Computer Sciences and Cultural Science.

Tourism in Passau focuses mainly on the three rivers, the St. Stephen's Cathedral (Der Passauer Stephansdom) and the "Old City" (Die Altstadt). With 17,774 pipes, the organ at St. Stephen's was long held to be the largest church pipe organ in the world and is today second in size only to the organ at First Congregational Church, Los Angeles, which was expanded in 1994. Many river cruises down the Danube start at Passau and there is a cycling path all the way down to Vienna. It is also notable for its gothic and baroque architecture. The town is dominated by the Veste Oberhaus and the former fortress of the Bishop, on the mountain crest between the Danube and the Ilz rivers.

In the Treaty of Passau (1552), Archduke Ferdinand I, representing Emperor Charles V, secured the agreement of the Protestant princes to submit the religious question to a diet. This led to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.

During World War II the town housed three sub-camps of the infamous Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp: Passau I (Oberilzmühle), Passau II (Waldwerke Passau-Ilzstadt) and Passau III (Jandelsbrunn).

An interesting fact is that the Inn is the largest river of the three meeting at the city, so that the Danube should really be called Inn from Passau on. However, at the place of the confluence of two rivers, the name is given to the one which is the longest. The Inn may be wider in Passau than the Danube; still, the name stays Danube as the latter is the longer of the two. Since all three rivers meet at the same point, it causes the rivers to flood at that point. This flood affects parts of town that are at water level, which tends to amuse tourists and non-local media, while locals have many years of experience in getting used to water.

Passau was an ancient Roman colony of ancient Noricum called Batavis, Latin for "for the Batavi". The Batavi were an ancient Germanic tribe mentioned often by classical authors, and they were regularly associated with the Suebian marauders, the Heruli.

Interesting facts

The 1990 West German film "Das schreckliche Mädchen" describes the real-life quest of a much repudiated former Passau resident, Anna Rosmus, who digs into the town's past and discovers deep collaboration with the Nazi party and an entrenched anti-Semitism among its residents. The movie won the 1991 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category.

When Adolf Hitler was young, he came to Passau and went skating on the river and accidentally fell through. He was saved by another kid who admitted years later that if he had known who young Adolf would become he wouldn't have saved him. (Based on a tour taken in Passau)

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Cities on the Danube | Towns in Bavaria

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Interesting facts

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