This article is about the city in Germany. For other articles subjects named Stuttgart, see Stuttgart (disambiguation).
Stuttgart is a city in the southwest of Germany, located in the center of the densely populated region Mittlerer Neckarraum. Stuttgart is the capital of the Bundesland Baden-Württemberg and is populated by about 600,000 inhabitants.
The name "Stuttgart" has been derived from the german word "Stutengarten", its english translation roughly meaning "mare garden". Stuttgart has originally been founded by Duke Luidolf, one of the sons of Otto I the Great, and was used for horse breeding.
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2 People of Stuttgart 3 Famous People from Stuttgart 4 External links |
Economy
The city and its surroundings are known for the High Tech industry based there. Among the most prominent ones are Daimler-Chrysler, Porsche, Bosch, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, all of whom have their world or German headquarters here. Beside these global players the Stuttgart economy consist out of many highly versatile and dynamic medium-sized enterprises (the so called "Mittelstand"). Approx. 150,000 companies are located in the Stuttgart Region.
Stuttgart is one of the four automotive capitals of the world, the other three being Toyota (Japan), Detroit (United States) and Turin (Italy).
The region currently has Germany's highest density of scientific, academic and research organisations, and tops the national league for patent applications. More than 11% of all R&D-expenses in the Federal Republic of Germany are generated in the Stuttgart Region. Expenses of industrial R&D can be estimated to approximately 4.3 billion Euro per year. In addition to industrial R&D facilities, the Stuttgart Region has six institutes of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, four institutes for collaborative industrial research at local universities, two Max-Planck institutes, as well as one large-scale research centre—the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).
Stuttgart tops the ranking of all European Union regions according to the share of employment in high-tech and medium-high tech manufacturing with a figure of 21.0% (2001 data from Eurostat).
Stuttgart has an international airport simply called Stuttgart Flughafen or Airport Stuttgart. In 2003 there was talk about changing the name into Theodor Heuss Flughafen, but the board of directors of the Stuttgart Flughafen GmbH ruled on November 12, 2003 that the name 'Stuttgart Flughafen' is easy to understand and is representing the region of Stuttgart. The airport actually is located outside of Stuttgart on the area of the neighboring county of Esslingen in the city Leinfelden-Echterdingen.
Stuttgart also got a reputation for organizing major sports events (for example the athletics world championships in 1993, and it will be one of the twelve hosts of the soccer world championship 2006) and its swabian cuisine, beer and wine (which is produced in the area since the 1600s).
Twice yearly a visitor may attend the "Cannstatter Wasen" which is a famous local beer festival which is only second in size to the world-famous Oktoberfest in Munich.
People of Stuttgart
Stuttgart is also known for its cultural life, in particular the Staatstheater and Staatsgalerie. The Stuttgarter Staatstheater consists of the opera, ballet, theater and concert departments. The Stuttgart opera is considered to be one of the major operas worldwide and has won the highly recognized "Opera of the year" (Opernhaus des Jahres) award in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002. The Stuttgart ballet is world famous and connected to names like John Cranko and Marcia Haydée.Famous People from Stuttgart
External links