< 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

MÜNDEN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, picturesquely situated at the confluence of the Fulda and the Werra, 21 m. N.E. of Cassel by rail. Pop. (1905), 10,755. It is an ancient place, municipal rights having been granted to it in 1247. A few ruins of its former walls still survive. The large Lutheran church of St Blasius (14th–15th centuries) contains the sarcophagus of Duke Eric of Brunswick-Calenberg (d. 1540). The 13th-century Church of St Aegidius was injured in the siege of 1625–26 but was subsequently restored. There is a new Roman Catholic church (1895). The town hall (1619), and the ducal castle, built by Duke Eric II. about 1570, and rebuilt in 1898, are the principal secular buildings. In the latter is the municipal museum. There are various small industries and a trade in timber. Münden, often called “Hannoversch-Münden” (i.e. Hanoverian Münden), to distinguish it from Prussian Minden, was founded by the landgraves of Thuringia, and passed in 1247 to the house of Brunswick. It was for a time the residence of the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg. In 1626 it was destroyed by Tilly.

See Willigerod, Geschichte von Münden (Göttingen, 1808); and Henze, Führer durch Münden und Umgegend (Münden, 1900).

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