COLMAR

town, northeastern France, capital of Haut-Rhin dpartement, in the Alsace region. Colmar is located 42 mi (68 km) south-southwest of Strasbourg, 10 mi west of the Rhine River, bordering the German frontier and a few miles east of the foothills of the Vosges Mountains. It is on the main railway from Strasbourg to Mulhouse and Basel, Switz., and is linked with the three towns by canal. The first mention of Colmar is in a chronicle of the Saxon wars of Charlemagne, emperor of the West (800814). In 1226 Colmar was raised to the status of an imperial town by the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II and was surrounded by defensive walls. Civil rights were granted to it by Rudolf of Habsburg in 1278. In 1632, during the Thirty Years' War, it was occupied by Sweden. Louis XIII of France took the town under his protection in 1635; it was later gradually annexed by France during 164878. Colmar was twice annexed by Germany: from 1871 to 1919 and again during World War II. Colmar's many fountains, ancient churches, and Alsatian Renaissance houses have made Colmar a centre of tourism. The Muse d'Unterlinden, formerly a convent, houses the 16th-century Isenheim Altarpiece, the master work of the German religious painter Matthias Grnewald. The home of the sculptor of New York City's Statue of Liberty, Frdric-Auguste Bartholdi, who was born in Colmar in 1834, is a museum. Colmar is also a wine-trading centre and commands an industrial port zone on the Rhine. Metallurgical industries predominate, and there are textile industries as well. Pop. (1982) 61,560.