This city is hometown to several personalities. One of the more prominent Osnabrück natives, painter Felix Nussbaum was known as a surrealist painter whose images depicted the anguish and horror he experienced in the Holocaust. He was in fact one of the numerous Jews murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. The Felix Nussbaum Haus is a museum dedicated to this visual artist. It houses and exhibits approximately 160 of his paintings.
Another great son of Osnabrück City was the novelist Erich Maria Remarque. Perhaps his most widely read work is "All Quiet on the Western Front," which narrates the harsh life of soldiers in the trenches during the First World War. This novel is a strong statement against war and such a theme recurs in most of his works. The Peace Centre was established in his honor and it archives around a thousand of his documents, including the original manuscript of his most famous novel.
Friedensaal has been the venue of several great moments in European history, one of which was the creation of the peace treaty known as the, Peace of Westphalia. This treaty was significant as it ended the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War. It was the first instance in European history where two major wars were resolved through diplomatic means rather than military surrender. The treaty was actually negotiated in two separate locations, Osnabrück and Munster. In Osnabrück, the Friedensaal, or Hall of Peace, where five years of negotiations were conducted, still stands today.
Osnabrück is an old city whose birth could be traced back to the days of Charlemagne. But even in Roman times around 9 A.D., the surrounding area was already historically significant to the German people. It was the site of the Varus Battle also known as the Battle of Teutoborg Forest. It was in this conflict that allied Germanic tribes were able to resoundingly defeat three Roman legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus, making the Rhine one of the limiting boundaries of the Roman Empire's expansion. Germania beyond this river was unconquered by Rome. The Kalkriese Museum and Park is built around the archeological excavations that revealed this area as the exact site of the battle.
Osnabrück is the only German city which is located in the middle of a nature reserve, the UNESCO Geopark called TERRA.vita. Meanwhile the University of Osnabrück maintains the Osnabrück Botanical Garden, which spans approximately 8.6 hectares. It contains plants from Mediterranean, North American and Asian regions. It has greenhouses, even one that simulates the conditions of a rain forest and a seed bank preserving around 1,750 species.
