GREIFENHAGEN  , a

town of Germany,- in the Prussian province of Pomerania, on the Reglitz, 12 m . S.S.W. of Stettin by rail . Pop . (1905) 6473 . Its prosperity depends chiefly on agriculture and it has a considerable trade in cattle . There are also felt manufactures and saw mills . Greifenhagen was built in 1230, and was raised to the rank of a town and fortified about 1250 . In the Thirty Years' War it was taken both by the imperialists and the Swedes, and in 1675 it was captured by the i3randenburgers, into whose possession it came finally in 1679 . Greifswald was founded about 1240 by traders from the Netherlands . In 1250 it received a town constitution and Lubeck rights from Duke Wratislaw of Pomerania . In 1270 it joined the Hanse towns, Stralsund, Rostock, Wismar and Lubeck, and took part in the wars which they carried on against the kings of Denmark and Norway . During the Thirty Years' War it was formed into a fortress by the imperialists, but they vacated it in 1631 to the Swedes, in whose possession it remained after the peace of Westphalia .

In 1678 it was captured by the elector of

Brandenburg, but was restored to the Swedes in the following year; in 1713 it was desolated by the Russians; in 1715 it came into the possession of Denmark; and in 1721 it was again restored to Sweden, under whose protection it remained till 1815, when, along with the whole of Swedish Pomerania, it came into the possession of Prussia . See J . G . L . Kosegarten, Geschichte der Universitlit Greifswald (1856); C . Gesterding, Beitrag zur Geschichte der Stadt Greifswald (3 vols., 1827–1829) ; and I . Ziegler, Geschichte der Stadt Greifswald (Greifswald, 1897) .