WEILBURG  , a

town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, picturesquely situated on the Lahn, just above the confluence of the Weil, 50 M . N.E. from Coblenz by the rail-way to Giessen . Pop . (1905) 3828 . The old town, built on and around a rocky hill almost encircled by the river, contains a castle of the 16th century, formerly the residence of the dukes of Nassau-Weilburg, and later of the grand-dukes of Luxemburg . It has an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church; the former, the Stadtkirche, containing the burial vaults of the princes of Nassau, a gymnasium and an agricultural college . Its industries include wool-spinning, mining, tanning and dyeing . In the neighbourhood are the ruins of the castles of Merenberg and Freienfels . Weilburg was in the 1th century the property of the bishops of Worms, from whom it passed to the house of Nassau . From 1355 to 1816 it was the residence of the princes of Nassau-Weilburg, a branch of this house . See C . C .

Spielmann, Rarer durch Weilburg and Unagebung (Weilburg, 1894) ; and Geschichte der Stadt and Herrschaft Weilburg (Weilburg, 1896) .