Passau Editorial Photo

Passau, a city in Lower Bavaria, Germany, is also known as the City of Three Rivers, because the Danube is joined at Passau by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north. Passau's population is approximately 50,000, of whom about 11,000 are students at the local Passau University. The school was founded in the late 1970s. Its roots go back to the Institute for Catholic Studies founded in 1622. It is renowned in Germany for its institutes of economics, law, theology, computer sciences and Cultural Studies. Passau once was an ancient Roman colony. During the second half of the 5th century, St. Severinus established a monastery here. In 739, an English monk called Boniface founded the diocese of Passau. At the time it was the largest diocese of the Holy Roman Empire for many years. In the Treaty of Passau (1552), Archduke Ferdinand I, representing Emperor Charles V, secured the agreement of the Protestant princes to submit the religious question to a diet. This led to the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. From 1892 until 1894, Adolf Hitler and his family lived in Passau.