Middle Ages Braunschweig was an important center of trade, one of the economic and political centers in Northern Europe and a member of the Hanseatic League from the 13th century to the middle of the 17th century. By the year 1600, Braunschweig was the seventh largest city in Germany. Although formally one of the residences of the rulers of the Duchy of Brunswick-L�neburg, a constituent state of the Holy Roman Empire, Braunschweig was de facto ruled independently by a powerful class of patricians and the guilds throughout much of the Late Middle Ages and the Early modern period. Because of the growing power of Braunschweig's burghers, the Princes of Brunswick-Wolfenb�ttel, who ruled over one of the subdivisions of Brunswick-L�neburg, finally moved their Residenz out of the city and to the nearby town of Wolfenb�ttel in 1432. The Princes of Brunswick-Wolfenb�ttel didn't regain control over the city until the late 17th century, when Rudolph Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-L�neburg, took the city by siege.
In the 18th century Braunschweig was not only a political, but also a cultural centre. Influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment Dukes like Anthony Ulrich and Charles I became patrons of the arts and sciences. In 1745 Charles I founded the Collegium Carolinum, predecessor of the Braunschweig University of Technology, and in 1753 he moved the ducal residence back to Braunschweig. With this he attracted poets and thinkers such as Lessing, Leisewitz, and Jakob Mauvillon to his court and the city. Emilia Galotti by Lessing and Goethe's Faust were performed for the first time in Braunschweig.
In 1806 the city was captured by the French during the Napoleonic Wars and became part of the short-lived Napoleonic Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815 Braunschweig was made capital of the reestablished independent Duchy of Brunswick, later a constituent state of the German Empire from 1871.
