Gezicht op een stadspoort in Göttingen 1770 - 1815

Friedrich Besemann made this print of a city gate in Göttingen, Germany, sometime in the first half of the 19th century. Besemann’s image offers us a glimpse into the political life of a small German city and how it thought about itself. The gate, topped with heraldic sculptures, stands as a powerful symbol of civic identity and self-governance. In Besemann’s time, Göttingen was an important university town with a tradition of independent thought. By depicting this gate so prominently, Besemann highlights Göttingen’s sense of itself as a place apart, a community with its own laws, customs and intellectual life. In this period, institutions like universities played a crucial role in shaping German identity and culture. Artists of the time – Besemann included – often sought to capture this sense of local pride. To better understand this image, look into the history of urbanism and civic identity in early 19th-century Germany.