NEISSE  , a

town and fortress of Germany, in the province of Prussian Silesia, at the junction of the Neisse and the Biela, 32 M. by rail S.W. of Oppeln . Pop . (1905) 25,394 (mostly Roman Catholics) including a garrison of about 5000 . It consists of the town proper, on the right bank of the Neisse, and the Friedrichstadt on the left . The Roman Catholic parish church of St James (Jakobikirche) dates mainly from the 13th century, but was finished in 1430 . The chief secular buildings are the old episcopal residence, the new town hall, the old Rathaus, with a tower 205 ft. in height (1499), the beautiful Renaissance Kiimmerei (exchequer) with a high gabled roof ornamented with frescoes, and the theatre . A considerable trade is carried on in agricultural products . Neisse, one of the oldest towns in Silesia, is said to have been founded in the loth century, and afterwards became the capital of a principality of its own name, which was incorporated with the bishopric of Breslau about 1200 . Its first walls were erected in 1350, and enabled it to repel an attack of the Hussites in 1424 . It was thrice besieged during the Thirty Years' War . The end of the first Silesian War left Neisse in the hands of Frederick the Great, who laid the foundations of its modern fortifications . The town was taken by the French in 1807 .

Neisse can, at the will of the garrison, be protected by a

system of inundation . See Kastner, Urkundliche Geschichte der Stadt Neisse (Neisse and Breslau, 1854-1867, 3 vols.); Schutte, Beitrage zur Geschichte von Neisse (Neisse, 1881) ; and Ruffert, Aus Neisse's Vergangenheit (1903) .