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TORGAU

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V27, Page 52 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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TORGAU  , a

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town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Saxony, situated on the
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left
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bank of the Elbe, 30 M . N.E. of
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Leipzig and 26 m . S.E. of
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Wittenberg by
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rail . Pop . (1905), 12,299 . Its most conspicuous
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building is the Schloss Hartenfels, on an island in the Elbe, which was built, or at least was finished, by the elector of Saxony, John Frederick the Magnanimous . This castle, which is now used as a barracks, is one of the largest Renaissance buildings in Germany . It was for some time the residence of the electors of Saxony and contains a
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chapel consecrated by Martin Luther . The town hall, a 16th-century building, houses a collection of Saxon antiquities . Torgau has two Evangelical churches and a
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Roman Catholic church . One of the former, the Stadt Kirche, contains paintings by Lucas Cranach and the tomb of Catherine von
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Bora, the wife of Luther . The chief
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industries of the town are the manufacture of gloves, carriages, agricultural machinery,
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beer and bricks; there is a trade in grain both on the Elbe and by rail .

The fortifications, begun in 1807 by

order of
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Napoleon, were dismantled in 1889-1891 . In the vicinity is the royal
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stud
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farm of Graditz . Torgau is said to have existed as the capital of a distinct principality in the time of the German king Henry I., but early in the 14th century it was in the possession of the margraves of
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Meissen and later of the electors of Saxony, who frequently resided here . The town came into prominence at the time of the Reformation . In 1526 John, elector of Saxony, Philip, landgrave of Hesse, and other
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Protestant princes formed a
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league against the Roman Catholics, and the Torgau articles,
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drawn up here by Luther and his friends in 1530, were the basis of the confession of Augsburg . Torgau is particularly celebrated as the scene of a
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battle fought on the 3rd of November 1760, when Frederick the
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Great defeated the Austrians (see SEVEN YEARS' WAR) . In
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January 1814 Torgau was taken by the Germans after a siege of three months and it was formally ceded to Prussia in 1815 . See Grulich and Burger, Denkwiirdigkeiten der altsachsischan Residenz Torgau aus der Zeit der Reformation (Torgau, 1855) ; Knabe, Geschichte der Stadt Torgau bis zur Reformation (Torgau, 1880) ; and the publications of the Altertumverein zu Torgau (Torgau, 1884 sqq.) .

End of Article: TORGAU
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