Bild: Blick zur Bahnhofsbrücke im Winter

Welcome to Ilmenau: a university town with Goethe associations

Methinks the reason lies in the harmony that is struck here ..."





From Goethe to the MP3 player



Interesting facts

Ilmenau`s landmark-the Kickelhahn tower (Kickelhahn)
A look-out on its eponymous hill some 3 km outside the town, at a height of 862 m, the Kickelhahnturm is Ilmenau`s landmark. Many years ago, capercaillies lived on the Kickelhahn and their guttural calls are echoed in the name, for these game birds make a strange, whinnying sound during their display and mating period and so were known in German not only as the Auerhahn but also as the Kickelhahn or "giggle" bird; even their Gaelic name means "horse of woods". There is a stuffed capercaillie to bee seen in the Jagdhaus Gabelbach Museum, which used to be hunting loge.

Ilmenau himmelblau (Ziegenbrunnen)

In Ilmenau da ist der Himmel blau,
da tanzt der Ziegenbock mit seiner Frau
(from a German nursery rhyme-„Come to Ilmenau and chance on skies of blue and goats that dance").

It has always been a mystery where this rhyme came from. The only answer of any kind to the riddle relates to the blue sky. Ilmenau`s skies are, indeed, more often blue than those in other areas which do not share its situation below a range of hills, for as clouds from the south cross the valley of the Ilm where the land falls away by a good 300 m, they tend to respond to the pressure change by reducing in volume.

Ilmenau, place of science

Ilmenau University of Technology looks back on a long tradition of higher education in the fields of electrical and mechanical engineering. Its present degree courses are those which will meet future needs: engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry, economics and business and social studies, which can all be followed on a compact campus with five faculties.

One of the inventors of MP3, the data format, is Professor Karlheinz Brandenburg, who is head of Ilmenau´s Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology.


A miracle of sound

The Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology has developed IOSONO, an innovative sound system. With IOSONO , wherever one sits in the theatre, one perceives the sound effects as if they emanated from exactly the right point at the right angle and distance.