Prettin
Encyclopedia
Prettin is a town and a former municipality in Wittenberg
district in Saxony-Anhalt
. Since 1 January 2011, it is part of the town Annaburg
. It was part of the former administrative community
(Verwaltungsgemeinschaft) of Annaburg-Prettin
.
and about 12 km northnorthwest of Torgau
in the lowland on the Elbe
's east bank, west of the Annaburg Heath. This is, however, to a great extent a Bundeswehr
troop drilling ground, and is therefore off limits. West of the community runs the Federal Highway (Bundesstraße) B 182, and to the north is the B 187. In the south, the community borders on Saxony
. Prettin is linked with the Saxon community of Dommitzsch
by a ferry
on the Elbe.
, and the area itself belonged to the Slavic domain of Nisizi. After the German Burgward ("castle district"), which first crops up in one of Otto I's
documents as "Pretimi", had passed in 1012 from Archbishop Dagino to the Church estate of Magdeburg
, and then by way of the County of Brehna in 1290 to the Dukes of Saxony-Wittenberg, Rudolf I of Saxony-Wittenberg built the so-called "Schlösschen" (little castle) about 1335. In this small hunting lodge, the Electress Elisabeth von Brandenburg, who had secretly given herself over to Evangelical
teachings, found refuge between 1536 and 1545 after the staunchly Catholic
Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg had threatened to have her walled up alive. Only after his death did she return to the capital. Some thirty years later, Elector August of Saxony had the Schlösschen torn down and the stones used to build Lichtenburg Castle, which centuries later would become infamous.
East of the townsite, about 1300, the Antonian Preceptorate of "Lichtenbergk" was founded, whose Preceptor General, Goswin von Orsoy became the first Chancellor of Wittenberg University. The Antonian monastery of Lichtenbergk was witness to an historic occasion when in 1518, Martin Luther
and Georg Spalatin met in Elector Frederick the Wise's
presence for consultations. After the discussion, the Elector decided on Luther's disposition in Wittenberg (the Elector always supported Luther). Two years after this came a dramatic discussion, in Philipp Melanchthon
's presence, between Luther and the Papal envoy Karl von Miltitz
. He tried in vain to get Luther to recant, and the break with Rome was inescapable. Miltitz drowned in the river Main on the way back to Rome
. That Luther could have his discussions here shows how broadminded the Antonians were.
After much of the monastery
was burnt down in a fire in 1533, it was dissolved and its property put in a lordly domain's charge. For Elector August I of Saxony, this was a welcome opportunity to satisfy his wife's request and build a Renaissance
palace on the former monastery lands between 1574 and 1582. She did not get to enjoy it for very long, though, dying of the plague
only three years later in 1585. After a period of decay, the palace blossomed once again under Electress Hedwig, who built the "Hedwigsburg", and who had been granted the palace as her "widow's seat" (Witwensitz) after her husband Christian II, Elector of Saxony died in 1611, whereupon she also found herself running the Ämter
of Annaburg, Schweinitz (with Prettin and Lichtenburg), Seyda and Schlieben, even having a small army at her disposal. During the Thirty Years' War
in 1637, the former Danish
princess
managed to convince the Swedish
commander in the region to spare the small town the usual destruction being wrought throughout the countryside by Swedish troops. Three years after Hedwig's death, however, Prettin was sacked by the Swedes. Later, Elector's widow Wilhelmine Ernestine and her sister Anna Sophie of Denmark (August II the Strong's mother, who raised her offspring here) moved into the Lichtenburg, which ceased once and for all to be a widow's seat upon the former's death in 1717.
Back in the 16th century, there were not 800 inhabitants in Prettin. After a short time being part of the newly minted Kingdom of Saxony
, this town on the Elbe had to be ceded to Prussia
, thanks to Napoleon (1807). Even today, the Lichtenburg with its palace church from 1581 is an imposing Renaissance creation that was at first a widow's seat until 1811 when the empty ruins were turned into a prison, later, from 1933 to 1939 into a Nazi
concentration camp
, and later still, after the women were transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp
, into a Waffen-SS
materiel office. During East German times, the Schladitz detergent
factory was located there.
Wittenberg (district)
Wittenberg is a district in the east of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Neighboring districts are Anhalt-Bitterfeld, the district-free city of Dessau-Roßlau, the districts of Potsdam-Mittelmark, Teltow-Fläming and Elbe-Elster in Brandenburg, and the district of Nordsachsen in the Free State of Saxony.-...
district in Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt is a landlocked state of Germany. Its capital is Magdeburg and it is surrounded by the German states of Lower Saxony, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia.Saxony-Anhalt covers an area of...
. Since 1 January 2011, it is part of the town Annaburg
Annaburg
Annaburg is a small town in Wittenberg district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It was the seat of the former Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Annaburg-Prettin.- Constituent communities :Annaburg has two centres, one also called Annaburg, and the other Purzien....
. It was part of the former administrative community
Amt (subnational entity)
Amt is a type of administrative division governing a group of municipalities, today only found in Germany, but formerly also common in northern European countries. Its size and functions differ by country and the term is roughly equivalent to a U.S...
(Verwaltungsgemeinschaft) of Annaburg-Prettin
Annaburg-Prettin
Annaburg-Prettin was a Verwaltungsgemeinschaft in the district of Wittenberg, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It was situated on the right bank of the Elbe, southeast of Wittenberg. The seat of the Verwaltungsgemeinschaft was in Annaburg...
.
Geography and transportation
The town lies about 30 km southeast of WittenbergWittenberg
Wittenberg, officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg, is a city in Germany in the Bundesland Saxony-Anhalt, on the river Elbe. It has a population of about 50,000....
and about 12 km northnorthwest of Torgau
Torgau
Torgau is a town on the banks of the Elbe in northwestern Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district Nordsachsen.Outside Germany, the town is most well known as the place where during the Second World War, United States Army forces coming from the west met with forces of the Soviet Union...
in the lowland on the Elbe
Elbe
The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northwestern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia , then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 km northwest of Hamburg...
's east bank, west of the Annaburg Heath. This is, however, to a great extent a Bundeswehr
Bundeswehr
The Bundeswehr consists of the unified armed forces of Germany and their civil administration and procurement authorities...
troop drilling ground, and is therefore off limits. West of the community runs the Federal Highway (Bundesstraße) B 182, and to the north is the B 187. In the south, the community borders on Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
. Prettin is linked with the Saxon community of Dommitzsch
Dommitzsch
Dommitzsch is a town in the district Nordsachsen, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany and is Saxony's northmost city. It lies on the left bank of the Elbe, 12 km northwest of Torgau and 31 km southeast of Wittenberg....
by a ferry
Ferry
A ferry is a form of transportation, usually a boat, but sometimes a ship, used to carry primarily passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo as well, across a body of water. Most ferries operate on regular, frequent, return services...
on the Elbe.
History
Lying at an old river crossing in the Elbe valley, the first settlers in the Prettin area were SlavsSlavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
, and the area itself belonged to the Slavic domain of Nisizi. After the German Burgward ("castle district"), which first crops up in one of Otto I's
Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor
Otto I the Great , son of Henry I the Fowler and Matilda of Ringelheim, was Duke of Saxony, King of Germany, King of Italy, and "the first of the Germans to be called the emperor of Italy" according to Arnulf of Milan...
documents as "Pretimi", had passed in 1012 from Archbishop Dagino to the Church estate of Magdeburg
Magdeburg
Magdeburg , is the largest city and the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Magdeburg is situated on the Elbe River and was one of the most important medieval cities of Europe....
, and then by way of the County of Brehna in 1290 to the Dukes of Saxony-Wittenberg, Rudolf I of Saxony-Wittenberg built the so-called "Schlösschen" (little castle) about 1335. In this small hunting lodge, the Electress Elisabeth von Brandenburg, who had secretly given herself over to Evangelical
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
teachings, found refuge between 1536 and 1545 after the staunchly Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg had threatened to have her walled up alive. Only after his death did she return to the capital. Some thirty years later, Elector August of Saxony had the Schlösschen torn down and the stones used to build Lichtenburg Castle, which centuries later would become infamous.
East of the townsite, about 1300, the Antonian Preceptorate of "Lichtenbergk" was founded, whose Preceptor General, Goswin von Orsoy became the first Chancellor of Wittenberg University. The Antonian monastery of Lichtenbergk was witness to an historic occasion when in 1518, Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
and Georg Spalatin met in Elector Frederick the Wise's
Frederick III, Elector of Saxony
Frederick III of Saxony , also known as Frederick the Wise , was Elector of Saxony from 1486 to his death. Frederick was the son of Ernest, Elector of Saxony and his wife Elisabeth, daughter of Albert III, Duke of Bavaria...
presence for consultations. After the discussion, the Elector decided on Luther's disposition in Wittenberg (the Elector always supported Luther). Two years after this came a dramatic discussion, in Philipp Melanchthon
Philipp Melanchthon
Philipp Melanchthon , born Philipp Schwartzerdt, was a German reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems...
's presence, between Luther and the Papal envoy Karl von Miltitz
Karl von Miltitz
Karl von Miltitz was a papal nuncio and a Mainz Cathedral canon.-Biography:He was born in Rabenau near Meißen and Dresden, his family stemming from the lesser Saxon nobility. He studied at Mainz, Trier, Cologne , and Bologna , but his deficient Latin reveals that he was not especially learned...
. He tried in vain to get Luther to recant, and the break with Rome was inescapable. Miltitz drowned in the river Main on the way back to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. That Luther could have his discussions here shows how broadminded the Antonians were.
After much of the monastery
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
was burnt down in a fire in 1533, it was dissolved and its property put in a lordly domain's charge. For Elector August I of Saxony, this was a welcome opportunity to satisfy his wife's request and build a Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
palace on the former monastery lands between 1574 and 1582. She did not get to enjoy it for very long, though, dying of the plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
only three years later in 1585. After a period of decay, the palace blossomed once again under Electress Hedwig, who built the "Hedwigsburg", and who had been granted the palace as her "widow's seat" (Witwensitz) after her husband Christian II, Elector of Saxony died in 1611, whereupon she also found herself running the Ämter
Amt (subnational entity)
Amt is a type of administrative division governing a group of municipalities, today only found in Germany, but formerly also common in northern European countries. Its size and functions differ by country and the term is roughly equivalent to a U.S...
of Annaburg, Schweinitz (with Prettin and Lichtenburg), Seyda and Schlieben, even having a small army at her disposal. During the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
in 1637, the former Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
princess
Princess
Princess is the feminine form of prince . Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or his daughters....
managed to convince the Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
commander in the region to spare the small town the usual destruction being wrought throughout the countryside by Swedish troops. Three years after Hedwig's death, however, Prettin was sacked by the Swedes. Later, Elector's widow Wilhelmine Ernestine and her sister Anna Sophie of Denmark (August II the Strong's mother, who raised her offspring here) moved into the Lichtenburg, which ceased once and for all to be a widow's seat upon the former's death in 1717.
Back in the 16th century, there were not 800 inhabitants in Prettin. After a short time being part of the newly minted Kingdom of Saxony
Kingdom of Saxony
The Kingdom of Saxony , lasting between 1806 and 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. From 1871 it was part of the German Empire. It became a Free state in the era of Weimar Republic in 1918 after the end of World War...
, this town on the Elbe had to be ceded to Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
, thanks to Napoleon (1807). Even today, the Lichtenburg with its palace church from 1581 is an imposing Renaissance creation that was at first a widow's seat until 1811 when the empty ruins were turned into a prison, later, from 1933 to 1939 into a Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
concentration camp
Lichtenburg (concentration camp)
Lichtenburg was a Nazi concentration camp, housed in a Renaissance castle in Prettin, near Wittenberg in eastern Germany. Along with Sachsenburg, it was among the first to be built by the Nazis, and was operated by the SS from 1933 to 1939. It held as many as 2000 male prisoners from 1933 to 1937...
, and later still, after the women were transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....
, into a Waffen-SS
Waffen-SS
The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...
materiel office. During East German times, the Schladitz detergent
Detergent
A detergent is a surfactant or a mixture of surfactants with "cleaning properties in dilute solutions." In common usage, "detergent" refers to alkylbenzenesulfonates, a family of compounds that are similar to soap but are less affected by hard water...
factory was located there.
Personalities
- Otto Karl Bachmann (1877–1954), who in 1927 became the first KPDCommunist Party of GermanyThe Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
mayor of a German town (Oelsnitz in Saxony's VogtlandkreisVogtlandkreisThe Vogtlandkreis is a Landkreis in the southwest of the Free State of Saxony, Germany, at the borders to Thuringia, Bavaria, and the Czech Republic. Neighboring districts are Hof, Saale-Orla, Greiz, Zwickau and Erzgebirgskreis...
district).