Pößneck is a town in the Saale-Orla-Kreis

Saale-Orla-Kreis

Saale-Orla is a Kreis in the east of Thuringia, Germany. Neighboring districts are the districts Saale-Holzland, Greiz, the Vogtlandkreis in Saxony, the Bavarian districts Hof and Kronach, and the district Saalfeld-Rudolstadt.-History:The district was created in 1994 by merging the previous...

 district, in Thuringia

Thuringia

The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It is situated 19 km east of Rudolstadt

Rudolstadt

Rudolstadt is a town in the German Bundesland of Thuringia, close to the Thuringian Forest to the southwest, and to Jena and Weimar to the north....

, and 26 km south of Jena

Jena

Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...

.

Its chief industries are the making of flannel, porcelain, furniture, machines, musical instruments and chocolate. The town has also tanneries, breweries, dyeworks and brickworks.

Pößneck, which is of Slavonic origin, passed about 1300 to the Landgrave of Thuringia. Later it belonged to 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....

 and later still to the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, passing to Saxe-Meiningen

Saxe-Meiningen

The Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine line of the Wettin dynasty, located in the southwest of the present-day German state of Thuringia....

 in 1826.

It has a Gothic Lutheran church built about 1390, and a Gothic town-hall erected during the succeeding century.

Notable residents

Pößneck was the home of the Strelzyk and Wetzel families prior to 15 September 1979, when both families flew out of East Germany

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

 in a homemade hot air balloon

Hot air balloon

The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology. It is in a class of aircraft known as balloon aircraft. On November 21, 1783, in Paris, France, the first untethered manned flight was made by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes in a hot air...

. Following the end of the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 and German reunification

German reunification

German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...

, they eventually moved back to Pößneck. Their story was the subject of the 1982 film Night Crossing

Night Crossing

Night Crossing is a 1982 Disney film starring John Hurt and Beau Bridges. The film is based on the true story of the Strelzyk and Wetzel families, who on September 16, 1979 escaped from East Germany to West Germany in a homemade hot air balloon during the days of the Berlin Wall when emigration to...

.
Stoessner, Hans Melchior dragoon

Dragoon

The word dragoon originally meant mounted infantry, who were trained in horse riding as well as infantry fighting skills. However, usage altered over time and during the 18th century, dragoons evolved into conventional light cavalry units and personnel...

 during the Great Northern War

Great Northern War

The Great Northern War was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in northern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I the Great of Russia, Frederick IV of...

(1678-?)
Volker Emde -politician (1964-) is from the town