PLOEN  , a

town of Germany, in Schleswig-Holstein, beautifully situated between two lakes, the large and the small Ploener-See, 20 M . S. from Kiel by the railway to Eutin and Lubeck . Pop . (1905), 3735 . It has a palace built about 163o and now converted into a cadet school, a gymnasium and a biological station . Tobacco, soap, soda, beer and furniture are manufactured, and there is a considerable trade in timber and grain . The lakes afford good fishing, and are navigated in summer by steamboats . Ploen is mentioned as early as the 11th century as a Wendish settlement, and a fortified place . It passed in 1559 to Duke John the Younger, founder of the line of Holstein-Sonderburg, on the extinction of which, in 1761, it fell to Denmark, and in 1867, with Schleswig-Holstein, to Prussia . The sons of the emperor William II. received their early education here . See H . Eggers, Schloss and Stadt Ploen (Kiel, 1877), and J .

C . Kinder, Urkundenbuch zur Chronik tier Stadt Ploen (Pl&n, 1890) .