SCHWIEBUS  , a

town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Brandenburg, situated in a fertile plain, 47 M . E. of Frankforton-Oder by the railway to Posen . Pop . (1905) 9321 . It is still in part surrounded by its medieval wall, and has an old market-place, a castle and many old houses . Velvet, cloth, machinery, bricks and candles are manufactured, and there are flour-mills, breweries, distilleries and lignite mines . The territory of Schwiebus originally belonged to the principality of Glogau, and in the 16th and 17th centuries was a bone of contention between the electors of Brandenburg and the emperors . A compromise was arrived at in 1686, by which the elector received the lordship of Schwiebus on renouncing his claims to the principalities of Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau . The electoral prince Frederick, afterwards the elector Frederick III., had, however, in a private compact pledged himself to restore Schwiebus to the emperor Leopold I. when he became elector, and he did so in 1695, receiving £40,000 in exchange . By the peace of 1742, Frederick the Great regained Schwiebus with the rest of Silesia, and it was incorporated with the department of Glogau .