Baden-Württemberg

The military government of the American occupation zone established a Displaced persons camp for displaced persons, mostly forced labourers from Central and Eastern European industrial firms in the area.^[108] There was, however, a camp located in Stuttgart-West that, until its closure and transportation of internees to Heidenheim an der Brenz in 1949, housed almost exclusively 1400 Jewish survivors of the Shoah.
An early concept of the Marshall Plan aimed at supporting reconstruction and economic/political recovery across Europe was presented during a speech 6 September 1946 given by US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes at the Stuttgart Opera House.^[109] His speech led to the unification of the British and American occupation zones, resulting in the 'bi-zone' (later the 'tri-zone' when the French reluctantly agreed to cede their occupied territory to the new state). In 1948, the city applied to become the capital of the soon to-be Federal Republic of Germany, and was a serious contender against Frankfurt, Kassel, and Bonn. All these cities were examined by the Parlamentarischer Rat,^[110] but ultimately Bonn won the bid when the Republic was founded on 23 May 1949.^[110] The city's bid for capital failed primarily because of the financial burdens its high rents would place on the government.
The immediate aftermath of the War would be marked by the controversial efforts of Arnulf Klett, the first Oberbürgermesiter of Stuttgart, to restore the city. Klett favored the idea of a modernist Automotive city with functional divisions for residential, commercial and industrial areas according to the Athens Charter. Klett demolished both ruins and entire streets of largely undamaged buildings without rebuilding them to their original visage, a move that earned him much scorn from his contemporaries. In the 150th year since his death (1955), the last remnant of the alma mater of Friederich Schiller, the Karlsschule, was removed in favor of an expansion to the Bundesstraße 14. Klett also dramatically expanded the public transportation of Stuttgart with the Stuttgart Stadtbahn and, in 1961, initiated a city partnership with the French city of Strasbourg as part of an attempt to mend Franco-German relations. It would be finalized in 1962 and is still active today.^[111] Klett's Stuttgart saw two major media events: the same year the partnership with Strasbourg was finalized, then French president Charles de Gaulle visited the city and Ludwigsburg Palace in the ending moments of his state visit to Germany,^[112] and Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom visited the city 24 May 1965.^[113]
On 25 April 1952, the other two parts of the former German states of Baden and Württemberg, South Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern merged and formed the modern German state of Baden-Württemberg, with Stuttgart as its capital.^[114] Since the 1950s, Stuttgart has been the third largest city in southern Germany behind Frankfurt and Munich. The city's population, halved by the Second World War, began sudden growth with the mass influx of German refugees expelled from their homes and communities by the Soviets from the late 1940s until 1950 to the city. Economic migrants, called "Gastarbeiter," from Italy, and later Greece and Turkey but primarily from Yugoslavia, came flocking to Stuttgart because of the economic wonder called the "Wirtschaftswunder" unfolding in West Germany.^[115] These factors saw the city reach its (then) peak population of 640,000 in 1962.
In the late 1970s, the municipal district of Stammheim was center stage to one of the most controversial periods of German post-war history. Stammheim Prison, built from 1959 to 1963, came to be the place of incarceration for Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, members of a communist terrorist organization known as the Red Army Faction, during their trial at the Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart in 1975. Several attempts were made by the organization to free the terrorists during the "German Autumn" of 1977 that culminated in such events as the kidnap and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181. When it became clear, after many attempts to free the inmates including the smuggling of three weapons into the prison by their lawyer,^[116][117] that the terrorists could not escape and that they would receive Life sentencing, the terrorists killed themselves^[g] in April 1977 in an event remembered locally as the "Todesnacht von Stammheim," "Night of Death at Stammheim."
The trauma of the early 1970s was quickly left behind, starting in 1974 in Germany with the 1974 FIFA World Cup and the opening of the Stuttgart S-Bahn on 1 October 1978 with a scheduled three routes. From 17–19 June 1983, ten European heads of state and representatives from the European Union met in Stuttgart for a summit and there made the Solemn Declaration on European Union.^[118] Three years later in 1986, the European Athletics Championships of that year were held in the Mercedes-Benz Arena. Mikhail Gorbachev, while on a trip to West Germany to offer a spot for a West German astronaut in a Soviet space mission,^[119] visited Stuttgart 14 June 1989 and was the honored guest of a sumptuous reception held at the Stuttgart.^[120]
Since the monumental happenings of the 1980s, Stuttgart has continued being an important center of not just Europe, but also the world. In 1993, the World Horticultural Exposition, for which two new bridges were built,^[121] and World Athletics Championships of that year took place in Stuttgart in the Killesburg park and Mercedes-Benz Area respectively, bringing millions of new visitors to the city. At the 1993 WCA, British athlete Sally Gunnell and the United States Relay team both set world records. In 2003, Stuttgart applied for the 2012 Summer Olympics but failed in their bid when the German Committee for the Olympics decided on Leipzig to host the Olympics in Germany. Three years later, in 2006, Stuttgart once again hosted the FIFA World Cup as it had in 1974.
Stuttgart still experienced some growing pains even long after its recovery from the Second World War. In 2010, the inner city become the focal point of the protests against the controversial Stuttgart 21f. During the sexual assaults perpetrated by gangs of migrant men across Germany in 2016, at least 72 complaints were filed to city police of which 17 were sexual assault reports.^[122] One assailant, a 20 year old asylum seeker from Iraq, was detained for the sexual assaults of two girls as part of a group of other participants in the attacks.^[122]