Ulm and Neu-Ulm in city competition: Underestimated little sister

Unlike the larger city of Ulm, Neu-Ulm does not have a long history, but it does have a catchy slogan: “We live anew”. Does the city have anything to offer?

With a view of the concrete block: on the Herdbrücke, you cross the Danube from Ulm to Neu-Ulm Photo: H. Lehmann/ullstein bild

NEW-ULM taz | One tiny step and you are no longer in Ulm, but in Neu-Ulm, and thus no longer in Baden-Württemberg, but in Bavaria. Is it getting more lederhosen? Not really.

The marker is in the middle of the Herd Bridge, which connects the two sister cities across the Danube. While Ulm welcomes its visitors with pointed gables and city towers, Neu-Ulm has a riotous concrete block from the 1970s marking the city entrance.

Neu-Ulm is quite unique. The start could be seen as a defiant statement, coined to the pretty best sister vis-à-vis: you always with your old fuss.

Splendor and history, on the other side of the Danube

As far as history and homeland are concerned, Neu-Ulm has never been able to keep up with the opposite. Ulm has its fishing district, its minster, the splendor of its history as a free imperial city – and the advantage of having been there long before Neu-Ulm. It stages this circumstance every year with the Oath Monday anchored in the Middle Ages, which includes the carnivalesque “Nabada” (“Bathing down”).

The much younger sister also did not produce an Albert Einstein, born in Ulm. The “Schneider von Ulm”, recognized posthumously as a pioneer in aviation, belongs to the other person. If Albrecht Berblinger’s attempt at gliding over the Danube had been successful in May 1811, he would not have landed in Neu-Ulm either, but in nowhere in the middle of a turning point in time.

Because Neu-Ulm didn’t even exist back then. Where he would have wanted to land was a largely open area with at most gardens. However, this had shortly before become the content of a royal decree from distant Munich. The political community “on the right bank of the Danube” was to be stamped out of the ground. All a consequence of Napoleon’s reorganization of the lands. The Danube had become the border river of two new kingdoms: Württemberg and Bavaria. Ulm ended up in Baden-Württemberg, Neu-Ulm in Bavaria.

The naming of “Neu-Ulm” came about more casually. The Bavarian headquarters invested in a police base and a small barracks, otherwise not much was going on at first. Neu-Ulm itself was still a structurally weak backwater in 1869, when it was officially elevated to the status of a town. Those who grew up there constantly ran into the military. What made the sculptor Edwin Scharff (1887-1955), the city’s grandson, sigh, which is quotable, about this “miserable little town built in the 1970s, with huge barracks like a terrible prison in the middle”.

The Question of Origin

If we talk about the fateful, it must be mentioned that people from Neu-Ulm usually have to add “near Ulm” to the declaration of origin. Ulmer (“between Stuttgart and Munich”) is only overcome by such a need for explanation very far away. But isn’t it the fate of all of Dings that they merely live “at”? The identity filling station then has to deliver replacement fuel.

At the beginning there were just 112 of them “over there”. If the people of Ulm wanted to visit the expatriated brothers and sisters in the area on the right bank of the Danube, they were subjected to all sorts of harassment. But they were also “formers” themselves: ex-Reichsstadt citizens, their pride badly damaged and also pissed off because, thanks to Napoleon, they were now separated from their own large estates across the Danube by customs barriers. That had an effect, a bad relationship with each other was almost inevitable. The plan was now to develop the smaller sister into a counter-Ulm, with a geometrically correct road network and contrary designs. Identity qua contemporary building.

When in the middle of the 19th century the mighty ring of the federal fortress around Ulm and Neu-Ulm with its bastions, gates and forts was raised, both suddenly found themselves trapped in the same cage. But then it didn’t become a sibling togetherness.

Neu-Ulm bashing really isn’t funny. As a Neu-Ulmer you still have to be strong. And endure jokes of the kind that TV presenter Caro Matzko recently unleashed. Hoho, she “actually” considers her former home to be an industrial area in Ulm.

Incidentally, she comes from a district where the mayor of Neu-Ulm lived who caused the city’s most palatable scandal to date in the 1980s. It is said that in a semi-public, cheerful gathering, he filled a lady’s boot with a drink – and drank it.

What was really annoying and shameless was the behavior of the local MdB (of course also CSU), who personally enriched himself with a mask deal. That’s when you realize that you’re in Bavaria. When alcohol is involved in the indecency, one is considered more likely to be forgiven for everything in heaven.

Trauma and injuries, largely healed

The two sisters have repeatedly gone through difficult phases together. Today, however, the trauma and injuries from her checkered family history have largely healed. They settled things in two city contracts. Like in a marriage contract. Since then, the “fundamental commitment to community solutions” has applied. Neu-Ulm then got the adventure pool and the large event hall.

The little sister, long gone from Cinderella, has undergone rapid development over the past few decades, and structural policy has had an impact. But Neu-Ulm is still not a city to love. You have to look for something picturesque, the fishing district and half-timbered houses on the other side of the Danube aim more deeply into the soul than the “Südstadtbogen”. That’s what they call a stack of 450 apartments in Neu-Ulm. Behind what is currently the largest inner city project is a monofunctional investor complex that will one day contribute next to nothing to the urban revitalization of the city.

Neu-Ulm always makes it damn difficult. It used to be sparkling, sparkling, back when the US military left in the 1990s. Artists, clubs and creative people moved into the remains. Today the new district of Wiley and the young university are located in the former sea of ​​glitter. It is the counterweight to the University of Ulm, which is a quarter of a century older. Just as the company’s own shopping mall should form a counterbalance to the mass of shopping that is being handled in Ulm.

In the large cinema, Neu-Ulm was once faster. “We’re living anew,” they billboard the rapid urban development, with which most of the hip spots have disappeared. By the way, it’s not much different in Ulm. They are both insatiable when it comes to devouring cultural biotopes. But where is the hottest live club at the moment? Neu-Ulm has the “Gold”.

The reunification of Ulm and Neu-Ulm was never on the agenda. Ulm’s Nazi mayor tried it once, but in vain. Conceived as an original idea, this has since only been launched occasionally by the local FDP when there is an election campaign. Whether a merger would actually bring about synergy effects remains to be clarified. And what would that do to the Neu-Ulmern? Nobody ever found out.

As a little sister (64,000 inhabitants compared to 127,000) you also have advantages. You save yourself an expensive theater because you can use that of your big sister. Similar to the tram, you can also do a lap over there. And when you’re younger, you’re always on board with larger, jointly hatched projects.

Their relationship is currently relaxed. They celebrate this symbolically with their joint New Year’s reception, which is alternately held over here and over there. The two local newspapers have long since dissolved the separation into Ulm and Neu-Ulm pages. The joint tourist office that invented the “Zweilandstadt” went one step further. Go then.

Just spinning around: Neu-Ulm would really become a district of Ulm tomorrow, of all times now that it has grown so significantly in stature. Where would that level off in terms of identity level? Nobody knows.