Jena

Jena is a city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia, with about 110,000 inhabitants. With the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia, home to approximately 500,000 people. Jena is a centre of education and research: the University of Jena, also called Friedrich Schiller University, was founded in 1558, and many institutes of the leading German research societies are located there. The city was first mentioned in 1182 and stayed small until industry developed in the nineteenth century; for most of the twentieth century it was a world centre of the optical industry around Carl Zeiss, Schott and Jenoptik. Between 1790 and 1850 it was a focal point of German Romanticism and the student liberal movement.