SIEGBURG  , a

town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province, on the river Sieg, 16 m. by rail S.E. of Cologne by the railway to Giessen . Pop . (1905) 14,878 . It has a royal shell factory, calico-printing mills, lignite mines, stone quarries and pottery and tobacco factories . The parish church, dating from the 13th century, possesses several richly decorated reliquaries of the 12th to 15th centuries . The buildings of the Benedictine abbey, founded in Io66, are now used as a prison . The town, which was founded in the 11th century, attained the height of its prosperity in the 15th and 16th centuries owing to its pottery wares . Siegburg pitchers (Siegburger Kruge) were widely famed . Their shape was often fantastic and they are now eagerly sought by collectors . See R . Heinekamp, Siegburgs Vergangenheit and Gegenwart (Siegburg, 1897) ; and Renard, Die Kunstdenkmdler des Siegkreises (Dusseldorf, 1907) .