boasts among its rarer treasures a Gutenberg Bible printed at Mainz between 1450 and 1455, another on parchment dated 1462, the Institutiones Justiniani (Mainz, 1468), the Theuerdank, with woodcuts by Hans Schäufelein, and numerous valuable autographs. It also contains a fine collection of coins. The Bethmann Museum owes its celebrity principally to Dannecker’s “Ariadne,” but it also possesses the original plaster model of Thorwaldsen’s “Entrance of Alexander the Great into Babylon.” There may also be mentioned the Industrial Art Exhibition of the Polytechnic Association and two conservatories of music. Among the scientific institutions the first place belongs to the Senckenberg’sches naturhistorische Museum, containing valuable collections of birds and shells. Next must be mentioned the Kunstgewerbe (museum of arts and crafts) and the Musical Museum, with valuable MSS. and portraits. Besides the municipal library (Stadtbibliothek) mentioned above there are three others of importance, the Rothschild, the Senckenberg and the Jewish library (with a well-appointed reading-room). There are numerous high-grade schools, musical and other learned societies and excellent hospitals. The last include the large municipal infirmary and the Senckenberg’sches Stift, a hospital and almshouses founded by a doctor, Johann C. Senckenberg (d. 1772). The Royal Institute for experimental therapeutics (Königl. Institut für experimentelle Therapie), moved to Frankfort in 1899, attracts numerous foreign students, and is especially concerned with the study of bacteriology and serums.
Bridges.—Seven bridges (of which two are railway) cross the Main. The most interesting of these is the Alte Mainbrücke, a red sandstone structure of fourteen arches, 815 ft. long, dating from the 14th century. On it are a mill, a statue of Charlemagne and an iron crucifix surmounted by a gilded cock. The latter commemorates, according to tradition, the fowl which was the first living being to cross the bridge and thus fell a prey to the devil, who in hope of a nobler victim had sold his assistance to the architect. Antiquaries, however, assert that it probably marks the spot where criminals were in olden times flung into the river. Other bridges are the Obermainbrücke of five iron arches, opened in 1878; an iron foot (suspension) bridge, the Untermainbrücke; the Wilhelmsbrücke, a fine structure, which from 1849 to 1890 served as a railway bridge and was then opened as a road bridge; and two new iron bridges at Gutleuthof and Niederrad (below the city), which carry the railway traffic from the south to the north bank of the Main, where all lines converge in a central station of the Prussian state railways. This station, which was built in 1883–1888 and has replaced the three stations belonging to private companies, which formerly stood in juxtaposition on the Anlagen (or promenades) near the Mainzer Tor, lies some half-mile to the west. The intervening ground upon which the railway lines and buildings stood was sold for building sites, the sum obtained being more than sufficient to cover the cost of the majestic central terminus (the third largest in the world), which, in addition to spacious and handsome halls for passenger accommodation, has three glass-covered spans of 180 ft. width each. Yet the exigencies of traffic demand further extensions, and another large station was in 1909 in process of construction at the east end of the city, devised to receive the local traffic of lines running eastward, while a through station for the north to south traffic was projected on a site farther west of the central terminus.
Frankfort lies at the junction of lines of railway connecting it directly with all the important cities of south and central Germany. Here cross and unite the lines from Berlin to Basel, from Cologne to Würzburg and Vienna, from Hamburg and Cassel, and from Dresden and Leipzig to France and Switzerland. The river Main has been dredged so as to afford heavy barge traffic with the towns of the upper Main and with the Rhine, and cargo boats load and unload alongside its busy quays. A well-devised system of electric tramways provides for local communication within the city and with the outlying suburbs.
Trade, Commerce and Industries.—Frankfort has always been more of a commercial than an industrial town, and though of late years it has somewhat lost its pre-eminent position as a banking centre it has counterbalanced the loss in increased industrial development. The suburbs of Sachsenhausen and Bockenheim have particularly developed considerable industrial activity, especially in publishing and printing, brewing and the manufacture of quinine. Other sources of employment are the cutting of hair for making hats, the production of fancy goods, type, machinery, soap and perfumery, ready-made clothing, chemicals, electro-technical apparatus, jewelry and metal wares. Market gardening is extensively carried on in the neighbourhood and cider largely manufactured. There are two great fairs held in the town,—the Ostermesse, or spring fair, and the Herbstmesse, or autumn fair. The former, which was the original nucleus of all the commercial prosperity of the city, begins on the second Wednesday before Easter; and the latter on the second Wednesday before the 8th of September. They last three weeks, and the last day save one, called the Nickelchestag, is distinguished by the influx of people from the neighbouring country. The trade in leather is of great and growing importance. A horse fair has been held twice a year since 1862 under the patronage of the agricultural society; and the wool market was reinstituted in 1872 by the German Trade Society (Deutscher Handelsverein). Frankfort has long been famous as one of the principal banking centres of Europe, and is now only second to Berlin, in this respect, among German cities, and it is remarkable for the large business that is done in government stock. In the 17th century the town was the seat of a great book-trade; but it has long been distanced in this department by Leipzig. The Frankfurter Journal was founded in 1615, the Postzeitung in 1616, the Neue Frankfurter Zeitung in 1859, and the Frankfurter Presse in 1866.
Of memorial monuments the largest and most elaborate in Frankfort is that erected in 1858 in honour of the early German printers. It was modelled by Ed. von der Launitz and executed by Herr von Kreis. The statues of Gutenberg, Fust and Schöffer form a group on the top; an ornamented frieze presents medallions of a number of famous printers; below these are figures representing the towns of Mainz, Strassburg, Venice and Frankfort; and on the corners of the pedestal are allegorical statues of theology, poetry, science and industry. The statue of Goethe (1844) in the Goetheplatz is by Ludwig von Schwanthaler. The Schiller statue, erected in 1863, is the work of a Frankfort artist, Johann Dielmann. A monument in the Bockenheim Anlage, dated 1837, preserves the memory of Guiollett, the burgomaster, to whom the town is mainly indebted for the beautiful promenades which occupy the site of the old fortifications; and similar monuments have been reared to Senckenberg (1863), Schopenhauer, Klemens Brentano the poet and Samuel Thomas Sömmerring (1755–1830), the anatomist and inventor of an electric telegraph. In the Opernplatz is an equestrian statue of the emperor Wilhelm I. by Buscher.
Cemeteries.—The new cemetery (opened in 1828) contains the graves of Arthur Schopenhauer and Feuerbach, of Passavant the biographer of Raphael, Ballenberger the artist, Hessemer the architect, Sömmerring, and Johann Friedrich Böhmer the historian. The Bethmann vault attracts attention by three bas-reliefs from the chisel of Thorwaldsen; and the Reichenbach mausoleum is a vast pile designed by Hessemer at the command of William II. of Hesse, and adorned with sculptures by Zwerger and von der Lausitz. In the Jewish section, which is walled off from the rest of the burying-ground, the most remarkable tombs are those of the Rothschild family.
Parks.—In addition to the park in the south-western district, Frankfort possesses two delightful pleasure grounds, which attract large numbers of visitors, the Palmengarten in the west and the zoological garden in the east of the city. The former is remarkable for the collection of palms purchased in 1868 from the deposed duke Adolph of Nassau.
Government.—The present municipal constitution of the city dates from 1867 and presents some points of difference from the ordinary Prussian system. Bismarck was desirous of giving the city, in view of its former freedom, a more liberal constitution than is usual in ordinary cases. Formerly fifty-four representatives were elected, but provision was made (in the
