BIBERACH  , a

town of Germany, in the kingdom of Wurttemberg, on the Riss, a small affluent of the Danube, 22 M . S.S.W. from Ulm . Pop . (19o0) 8390 . It is still surrounded by medieval walls and towers, and is strikingly picturesque . Its principal church dates from the 12th century, and it possesses a hospital with rich endowments . Its main industries are cloth, bell-casting, toys and zinc wares, and its fruit markets are famous . Biberach appears as a village in the 8th century, and in 1312 it became a free imperial city . During the Thirty Years' War it underwent various vicissitudes, and was for a while held by the Swedes . In 1707 it was captured and put to ransom by the French, who afterwards, in 1796 and 1800, defeated the Austrians in the neighbourhood . In 1803 the city was deprived of its imperial freedom and assigned to Baden, and in 18o6 was transferred to Wurttemberg . Biberach is the birthplace of the sculptor Johann Lorenz Natter (1705–1763) and the painter .Bernhard Neher (18o6–1886); Christoph Martin Wieland, born in 1733 at the neighbouring village of Oberholzheim, spent several years in the town .