Osnabrück, city in northwestern Germany on the Hase River, in Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen). It is an industrial and transportation center; products include railroad equipment, steel cables, motor vehicles, textiles, paper, and processed food. Osnabrück has a rebuilt 8th-century cathedral and a Gothic town hall, where a treaty of the Peace of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), was signed in 1648. A university is in Osnabrück. Charlemagne established an episcopal see in Osnabrück about 783. The city later joined the Hanseatic League; it passed to the control of Hannover in 1815. Population (1997) 168,050.
