TILSIT  , a

town of Germany, in the Prussian province of East Prussia, situated on the left bank of the Memel or Niemen, here crossed by an iron railway bridge, 57 M . S.E. of Memel and 72 N.E. of Konigsberg by rail . Pop . (1905), 37,148 . The town has a number of handsome modern buildings, including a town hall, a post office, law courts, and a large hospital . It contains four Protestant churches, among them the German church, with a handsome steeple, and the curious circular Lithuanian church, a Roman Catholic church, a Jewish synagogue and a classical school (Gymnasium) . The manufactures include machinery, chemicals, soap, leather, shoes, glass and other articles, and there are iron-foundries, breweries, and, steam flour and saw-mills . Tilsit carries on trade in timber, grain, hemp, flax, herrings and coal; but its trade with Russia, at one time considerable, has fallen off since the construction of the railway from Konigsberg to Kovno . The river is navigable above the town, and there is a steamboat communication with Konigsberg, Memel and Kovno . Tilsit, which received civic rights in 1552, grew up around a castle of the Teutonic order, known as the " Schalauner Haus," founded in 1288 . It owes most of its interest to the peace signed here in July 1807, the preliminaries of which were settled by the emperors Alexander and Napoleon on a raft moored in the Memel . This treaty, which constituted the kingdom of Westphalia and the duchy of Warsaw, registers the nadir of Prussia's humiliation under Napoleon .

The poet Max von Schenkendorf (1784–1817) was

born at Tilsit . See Aus Tilsits Vergangenheit (5 vols., Tilsit, 1888–1892) ; and R . Thimm, Beitrage zur Geschichte von Tilsit (Tilsit, 1893) .