20th century: 1930 - 1939

January: Building 29 of the Zeiss main factory, which forms the south-eastern end to the old town, is completed in its shell (architect: Emil Fahrenkamp; development of the frame ceilings, which enable large rooms to be spanned while bearing enormous loads without beams: Georg Rüth).

July 31: The Abbeanum is handed over to theUniversity as a teaching and research building for the Institute of Optics and the Institute of Applied Mathematics - built by the State College of Crafts and Architecture in Weimar under the architects Ernst Neufert and Otto Bartning.

November 15: Hans F. K. Günther, one of the main representatives of National Socialist racial ideology , is appointed to a newly created Chair of Social Anthropology by the Thuringian Minister of the Interior Frick (NSDAP) against the will of the university management and holds his inaugural lecture in the presence of Hitler, Göring and other Nazi greats.

December 13: The student house on Philosophenweg - commissioned by the Jena Student Aid Association (architect: Ernst Neufert, State Building College Weimar) - is inaugurated. In addition to a canteen kitchen, it also houses a café, lecture and event rooms, student lounges and the offices of the student support organization.

The Bauhaus artist Wilhelm Wagenfeld takes over the design of the heat-resistant household glass ("Jena glass") produced at the Schottwerk since 1918 as a freelancer. By 1937, he had designed an extensive range of heat-resistant household and lighting glass, with the teapot designed for Schott going down in the history of industrial design.

The bee expert and priest August Ludwig sets up the university apiary ("Bienenhaus") on the Steiger.

February 7: In the "Berliner Tageblatt", the American journalist Knickerbockerdescribes the economic and social conditions in Jena during the world economic crisis as surprisingly stable ("Oase Jena").

November 18: Grete Unrein, the daughter of Ernst Abbe, is the first woman in Jena to be awarded honorary citizenshipfor her social commitment, her dedication to girls' education and the creation of a children's hospital.

December 4: In the last free municipal council elections before the establishment of the National Socialist dictatorship, the SPD becomes the strongest party in Jena, despite losses, with around 25% (= 9 seats). The NSDAP and KPD each achieve around 22% (8 each) and the bourgeois parties together achieve around 30% of the vote (10 together).

February 25/26: The Jewish professor Felix Auerbach and his wife Anna, who had both helped shape the social and intellectual-cultural life of the city for a long time, commit suicide.

March 31: The Montessori school in Jena is forced to close after the state and city stop funding it.

March 5: The NSDAP becomes the strongest party in Jena with around 33% (compared to 47% in Thuringia) in the Reich elections, which are already held under exceptional circumstances. The SPD achieves 26%, the KPD, which is largely illegal, around 18% (in Thuringia 20 and 15% respectively), the right-wing conservative bourgeois and liberal forces each achieve around 10%. In the Jena municipal council, which is reconstituted in accordance with the First Gleichschaltung Act (March 31) in line with the Reichstag election results, the NSDAP receives 13 seats, the SPD 8, the right-wing conservative Kampfbund Schwarz-Weiß-Rot 3 and the Deutsche Staatspartei one (the KPD seats are annulled).

March 21: Several streets are named or renamed after NSDAP celebrities. Further renaming of streets and most schools follows in May.

April 1: The first nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses, doctors' surgeries and law firms is largely carried out in Jena.

April 7: The Jewish university professors Brauner, Josephy, Klein, Meyer-Steineg, Peters and Simmel as well as other employees are suspended or dismissed for "racial reasons" onthe basis of the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service". Further dismissals, leaves of absence and early retirements are carried out for political reasons.

2 May: The trade union building in Bachstrasse is occupied by troops from the National Socialist company cell organization of the Zeiss plant and handed over to the German Labour Front for use.

June 9: After the ban and dissolution of most workers' sports clubs, the Glashütte gymnastics club merges with the works orchestra to form the "Turn-, Sport- und Musikverein Glaswerk Jena" to form the "TSM Glaswerk" and accepts athletes from dissolved clubs.

July 25: The NSDAP's "Landesführerschule II" ("Training Castle" of the NSDAP and the German Labor Front) is opened in Lobeda Castle after the complex had become the property of the DAF.

July 28: The NSDAP district leader and former honorary alderman Armin Schmidt is elected Lord Mayor by acclamation by the NSDAP-controlled city council. Following criminal proceedings initiated against the incumbent mayor Alexander Elsner on flimsy grounds , Schmidt had been appointed by the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior to take temporary charge of the city.

26 August: On the first anniversary of the National Socialist seizure of power in Thuringia, the National Socialist factory cell organization of the Zeiss factory and the Hitler Youth carry out a book burning on the market square. The books from the SPD office and the trade union building, which had recently been confiscated, are probably burned.

6 November: The state government decrees a revision of the university's main statutes, replacing academic self-administration with the "Führerprinzip" (Rector as "Führer of the University"). The "Dozentenschaft" is established as a compulsory organization of the teaching staff.

January 1: The Jena Higher Hereditary Health Court begins its work. It hears appeals against the sterilization orders issued by the Hereditary Health Courts. Several prominent Jena physicians, including Prof. Hans Berger, take part in the court's work as expert witnesses, giving the medical crimes perpetrated by the National Socialists a legal veneer.

May: The physicist Abraham Esau, Rector of the University, is appointed Commissioner of the Carl Zeiss Foundation. He replaces Julius Dietz, whose attempts to de facto nationalize the Carl Zeiss Foundation on behalf of the NSDAP state government have thus failed.

June 1: Karl Astel, head of the State Office for Racial Affairs, is appointed professor of "Human Breeding and Heredity Research" (later: "Human Heredity Research and Racial Policy") at the university. Astel, who is in charge of the entire public medical and health system in Thuringia from 1936 in the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior, continues to drive forward the orientation of the university, which he heads as Rector from 1939 to 1945, towards Nazi racial policy and "hygiene".

August 8: The new abattoir building in Löbstedter Straße, financed by funds from the foundation and state loans, begins operations. It replaces the slaughterhouse of the J. Fleischerinnung on Löbdergraben ("barrel mill"), which does not meet modern requirements.

October 15: A municipal cultural office, which reports directly to the Lord Mayor, begins its work.

November 9: As part of the celebrations for Schiller's 175th birthday, the newly founded "Städtisches Sinfonieorchester" gives its first public performanceunder its conductor Ernst Schwaßmann.

November 10: The State University of Jena is given the name "Friedrich Schilller University" at a ceremony.

January 30: The Second Reich Governor Act and the German Municipal Code abolish city and municipal councils as decision-making bodies. Appointed "councillors" form an advisory body to the Lord Mayor without any authority.

February 25: A blackout exercise is carried out in Jena for the first time.

13 May: With the founding of Carl Zeiss-Siedlungs GmbH under the umbrella of the Carl Zeiss Foundation, the Zeiss company institutionalizes the construction of so-called settlement houses to provide housing for its employees. By 1938, more than 250 two-family housing estates with kitchen gardens had been built in the Ringwiese. Between June 1937 and December 1942, the Schlegelsberg housing estate is built with a total of 722 apartments.

August 27: Otto Schott, co-founder of Jenaer Glaswerke and one of the key players in Jena's economic, cultural and social life, dies at the age of 84.

October 18: The ceremonial handover of the traditional flag of the Jena Urburschenschaft to the Nazi Student Union at Wartburg Castle symbolizes the end of the fraternities and corporations and their absorption into the Nazi Student Union, without all fraternity members supporting the unreserved Nazification course of their federal leadership.

End of the year: Construction begins on the barracks in Dornburger Strasse and Naumburger Strasse in Löbstedt and Zwätzen. With their completion and the arrival of Wehrmacht units (Artillery Regiment 24; Infantry Regiment 103) in 1936/37, Jena once again becomes a garrison town.

Jena's population exceeds 60,000 for the first time (officially: 61,361).

June 20-28: On the basis of a document arbitrarily dated 1236, the city celebrates the 700th anniversary of the city's elevation with a week of festivities.

August 23: A memorial grove created by the Fuchsturm-Gesellschaft Jena e. V. is dedicated on the local hill. It serves as a "Thingort" for the Association of Thuringian Mountain, Castle and Forest Communities.

September: The writer Ricarda Huch moves to Jena, where her son-in-law Franz Böhm takes up a professorship in law. A circle of intellectuals critical of the Nazi regime forms around Ricarda Huch.

October 1: A "movie theater" with a Nazi propaganda film is opened in the newly built multi-purpose building "Deutsches Haus" on Holzmarkt. The cinema continues to operate as the "Palast-Theater" after 1945 and closes in 1993.

The Leutratal, which partly covers the city, is declared a nature reserve (finally designated as the "Leutratal" nature reserve in 1961).

April: The Jewish merchant Arthur Behrendt is forced to sell his two department stores on the market below value. The Wohlwert department store is continued under the name "Heka" ("Hepprichs Kaufhaus" after the buyer Hepprich).

Summer: The Jenaer Kunstverein loses most of its holdings of modernist art as a result of the Nazi confiscation campaign "Degenerate Art".

November: Paul Müller replaces Armin Schmidt as commissioner (district leader) of the NSDAP for the city of Jena. Schmidt remains Lord Mayor of the city.

November 6: After renovation, the reading hall and lending library in the Volkshaus, run by the Reading Hall Association, is reopened as the "Ernst Abbe Library and Reading Hall". The director is the librarian Joseph Caspar Witsch.

December 19: The Meerane-Jena section (with the Hermsdorf interchange) of the Dresden-Frankfurt/M. highway is opened to traffic.

A resistance network of around 30 people is formedaround the former KPD functionaries Magnus and Lydia Poser in Jena and the surrounding area. The group, which includes not only former members of the KPD, engages in direct agitation by posting slogans and printing and distributing leaflets.

The construction of the highway to Weimar cuts through the historic Johannisfriedhof cemetery. The oldest part up to Wagnergasse is dissolved and most of the graves are reburied in the remaining part.

Beginning of the year: The "Lache", an artificial mound created in the Middle Ages in the area of the streets Am Rähmen, Gerbergasse and Am Anger, is completely filled in.

End of October: Four Jewish families and two single women are deported to Poland as part of the so-called Polenaktion and are most likely murdered there after the German occupation of the country.

November: The bacteriological laboratory of the Schott & Genossen glassworks in Jena is founded. Hans Knölltakes over its management .

November 9/10: In the so-called Reichspogromnacht, 59 Jewish men and women still remaining in Jena are arrested, 18 men are transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp, from where they are only released weeks later. Max Grossmann, an engineer working at the Jena glassworks , dies here as a result of mistreatment. On November 10, there are attacks, especially against Jewish businesses. Children from Jewish families are subsequently generally excluded from attending school.

November 12: The "Decree for the Elimination of Jews from German Business Life" definitively bans Jewish owners from operating retail businesses. Under the management of the merchant Carl Schmidt, the last remaining Jewish businesses in Jena are subsequently closed and liquidated.

February 11: Walter Grundmann, leading representative of the German Christian movement, holds his inaugural lecture as Professor of New Testament and Ethnic Theology (appointed in 1938). Grundmann is one of the co-founders of the "Institute for the Research and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life" in Eisenach.

August 18: The Jena-Weimar freeway section is inaugurated with the completion of the Saale Valley Bridge near Göschwitz, which spans the entire valley including two railroad lines and a country road (construction began in March 1936). The Jena stonemasonry company Späte is involved in the construction and design. The Saale Valley Bridge is still the longest natural stone arch bridge in Central Germany.

August 26: As part of the 5th Zeiss company sports festival, the Jena stadium is given the name "Ernst-Abbe-Sportfeld".

End of August/September: As part of the general mobilization, meat, sugar, milk, cooking fat, and later bread and potatoes as well as soap and clothing are rationed. A "Food and Economic Office" is set up at the city administration to coordinate these measures. With the invasion of Poland, listening to foreign radio stations is made a punishable offense.

End of the year: The first Polish forced laborers are deployed in agriculture in the villages around Jena.