WEISSENFELS  , a

town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Saxony, situated on the Saale 20 m . S.W. of Leipzig and 19 M . S. of Halle by the main line to Bebra and Frankfort-on-Main . Pop . (1905) 30,894 . It contains three churches, a spacious market-place and various educational and benevolent institutions . The former palace, called the Augustusburg, built in 1664-1690, lies on an eminence near the town; this spacious edifice is now used as a military school . Weissenfels manufactures machinery, ironware, paper and other goods, and has an electrical power-house . In the neighbourhood are large deposits of sandstone and lignite . Weissenfels is a place of considerable antiquity, and from 1656 till 1746 it was the capital of the small duchy of Saxe-Weissenfels, a branch of the electoral house of Saxony, founded by Augustus, second son of the elector John George I . The body of Gustavus Adolphus was embalmed at Weissenfels after the battle of Liitzen . See Sturm, Chronik der Stadt Weissenfels (Weissenfels, 1846); and Gerhardt, Geschichte der Stadt Weissenfels (Weissenfels, 1907) .