ne Division, employed in a standard infantry role and not in a parachute capacity, attacked M�nster with the British 6th Guards Tank Brigade on 2 April 1945 in a ground assault and fought its way into the contested city center, which was cleared in urban combat on the following day.
From 1946 to 1998, a Latvian gymnasium (school) was operating in M�nster, and in 1947, one of the largest of about 93 Latvian libraries in the West was established in M�nster.
In the 1950s the Old City was rebuilt to match its pre-war state, though many of the surrounding buildings were replaced with cheaper modern structures. It was also for several decades a garrison town for the British forces stationed in West Germany.
In 2003, M�nster hosted the Central European Olympiad in Informatics. In 2004, M�nster won an honorable distinction: the LivCom-Award for the most livable city in the world with a population between 200,000 and 750,000. M�nster is famous and liked for its bicycle friendliness and for the student character of the city that is due to the influence of its university, the Westf�lische Wilhelms Universit�t M�nster
