Siegburg

Siegburg, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province, on the river Sieg, 16 m. by rail S.E. of Cologne by the railway to Giessen. Pop. (1905) 14,878. It has a royal shell factory, calico-printing mills, lignite mines, stone quarries and pottery and tobacco factories. The parish church, dating from the 13th century, possesses several richly decorated reliquaries of the 12th to 15th centuries. The buildings of the Benedictine abbey, founded in 1066, are now used as a prison. The town, which was founded in the 11th century, attained the height of its prosperity in the 15th and 16th centuries owing to its pottery wares. Siegburg pitchers (Siegburger Krilge) were widely famed. `Their shape was often fantastic and they are now eagerly sought by collectors.

See R. Heinekamp, Siegburgs Vergangenheit and Gegenwart  (Siegburg, 1897); and Renard, Die Kunstdenkrndler des Siegkreises  '(Dusseldorf, 1907).