Grimma

Grimma, a town in the kingdom of Saxony, on the left bank of the Mulde, 19 m. S.E. of Leipzig on the railway Döbeln-Dresden. Pop. (1905) 11,182. It has a Roman Catholic and three Evangelical churches, and among other principal buildings are the Schloss built in the 12th century, and long a residence of the margraves of Meissen and the electors of Saxony; the town-hall, dating from 1442, and the famous school Fürstenschule (Illustre Moldanum), erected by the elector Maurice on the site of the former Augustinian monastery in 1550, having provision for 104 free scholars and a library numbering 10,000 volumes. There are also a modern school, a teachers’ seminary, a commercial school and a school of brewing. Among the industries of the town are ironfounding, machine building and dyeworks, while paper and gloves are manufactured there. Gardening and agriculture generally are also important branches of industry. In the immediate neighbourhood are the ruins of the Cistercian nunnery from which Catherine von Bora fled in 1523, and the village of Döben, with an old castle. Grimma is of Sorbian origin, and is first mentioned in 1203. It passed then into possession of Saxony and has remained since part of that country.

See Lorenz, Die Stadt Grimma, historisch beschrieben (Leipzig, 1871); Rössler, Geschichte der königlich sächsischen Fürsten- und Landesschule Grimma (Leipzig, 1891); L. Schmidt, Urkundenbuch der Stadt Grimma (Leipzig, 1895); and Fraustadt, Grimmenser Stammbuch (Grimma, 1900).

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