A city of southeast Germany north-northwest of Munich. First mentioned in 1050, it became a free imperial city in the 1200s and a center of the German cultural renaissance in the 1400s and 1500s. From 1933 to 1938 it was the site of annual Nazi party congresses. Largely destroyed in World War II, the city served as the venue for the Allied trials of war criminals (1945-1946).