HELMSTEDT  , or more rarely Helmstedt, a

town of Germany, in the duchy of Brunswick, 3o m . N.W. of Magdeburg on the main line of railway to Brunswick . Pop . (1905) 15,415• The principal buildings are the Juleum, the former university, built in the Renaissance style towards the close of the 16th century, and containing a library of 40,000 volumes; the fine Stephanskirche dating from the 12th century; the Walpurgiskirche restored in 1893–1894; the Marienberger Kirche, a beautiful church in the Roman style, and the Roman Catholic church . The Augustinian nunnery of Marienberg founded in 1176 is now a Lutheran school . The town contains the ruins of the Benedictine abbey of St Ludger, which was secularized in 1803 . The educational institutions include several schools . The principal manufactures are furniture, yarn, soap, tobacco, sugar, vitriol and earthenware . Near the town is Bad Helmstedt, which has an iron mineral spring, and the Lii.bbensteine, two blocks of granite on. which sacrifices to Woden are said to have been offered . Near Bad Helmstedt a monument has been erected to those who fell in the Franco-German War; in the town there is one to those killed at Waterloo . Helmstedt originated, according to legend, in connexion with the monastery founded by Ludger or Liudger (d . 809), the first bishop of Munster .

There appears, however, little doubt that this tradition is mythical and that Helmstedt was not founded until about goo . It obtained civic rights in 1099 and, although destroyed by the

archbishop of Magdeburg in 1199, it was soon rebuilt . In 1457 it joined the Hanseatic League, and in 1490 it came into the possession of Brunswick . In 1576 Julius, duke of Brunswick, founded a university here, and throughout the 17th century this was one of the chief seats of Protestant learning . It was closed by Jerome, king of Westphalia, in 1809 . See Ludewig, Geschichte and Beschreibung der Stadt Helmstedt (Helmstedt, 1821) .