You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (December 2008) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the French article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Wissembourg]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template {{Translated|fr|Wissembourg}} to the talk page.
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1km2 (0.386sqmi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
Close
Wissembourg was a sub-prefecture of the department until 2015.[4] The name Wissembourg is a Gallicized version of Weißenburg (Weissenburg) in German meaning "white castle". The Latin place-name, sometimes used in ecclesiastical sources, is Sebusium.[5]
The town was annexed by France after 1648 but then incorporated into Germany in 1871. It was returned to France in 1919, but reincorporated back into Germany in 1940. After 1944 it again became French.
Geography
Wissembourg is situated on the little river Lauter close to the border between France and Germany approximately 60km (37mi) north of Strasbourg and 35km (22mi) west of Karlsruhe. The Wissembourg station offers rail connections to Strasbourg, Haguenau and Landau (Germany).
Weissenburg (later Wissembourg) Abbey, the Benedictineabbey around which the town has grown, was founded in the 7th century, perhaps under the patronage of Dagobert I. The abbey was supported by vast territories. Of the 11th-century buildings constructed under the direction of Abbot Samuel, only the Schartenturm and some moats remain. The town was fortified in the 13th century. The abbey church of Saint-Pierre et Paul erected in the same century under the direction of Abbot Edelin was secularized in the French Revolution and despoiled of its treasures; in 1803 it became the parish church, resulting in the largest parish church of Alsace, only exceeded in size by the cathedral of Strasbourg. At the abbey in the late 9th century the monk Otfried composed a gospel harmony, the first substantial work of verse in German.
In 1354 Emperor Charles IV made it one of the grouping of ten towns called the Décapole that survived annexation by France under Louis XIV in 1678 and was extinguished with the French Revolution. On 25 January 1677 a great fire destroyed many houses and the Hôtel de Ville; its replacement dates from 1741 to 1752. Many early structures were spared: the Maison du Sel (1448), under its Alsatian pitched roof, was the first hospital of the town. There are many 15th- and 16th-century timber-frame houses, and parts of the walls and gateways of the town. The Maison de Stanislas was the retreat of Stanisław Leszczyński, ex-king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from 1719 to 1725, when the formal request arrived on 3 April 1725 asking for the hand of his daughter in marriage to Louis XV. The First Battle of Wissembourg took place near the town in 1793.
The "Lines of Wissembourg" (French: Lignes de Wissembourg; German: Weißenburger Linien), originally made by Villars in 1706, were famous. They were a line of works extending to Lauterbourg nine miles to the southeast. Like the fortifications of the town, only vestiges remain, although the city wall is still intact for stretches.[6]Austrian General von Wurmser succeeded in briefly capturing the lines in October 1793, but was defeated two months later by General Pichegru of the French Army and forced to retreat, along with the Prussians, across the River Rhine.[7]
Wissembourg formed the setting for the Romantic novel L'ami Fritz (1869) co-written by the team of Erckmann and Chatrian, which provided the material for Mascagni's opera L'amico Fritz.
Another Battle of Wissembourg took place on 4 August 1870. It was the first battle of the Franco-Prussian War. The Prussians were nominally commanded by the Crown Prince Frederick, but ably directed by his chief of staff, General Leonhard Graf von Blumenthal. The French defeat allowed the Prussian army to move into France. The Geisberg monument commemorates the battle; the town's cemetery holds large numbers of soldiers, including the stately tomb of French general Abel Douay who was killed in combat.[8]
In 1975 the commune of Wissembourg absorbed the former commune of Altenstadt.[3]
Martin Bucer (1491–1551) was a Protestant reformer based in Wissembourg/Strasbourg who influenced Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican doctrines and practices.
Karl Harst (1492–1563), German diplomat and assistant of Erasmus
Stanisław Leszczyński, king of Poland from 1704 to 1709, exiled in Wissembourg and lived there from 1719 to 1725. The school in the city now bears his name.
Jean-Gotthard Grimmer[fr], (1749–1820), pastor at Wissembourg then deputy to the National Convention on 10 ventôse year III (28 February 1795) to replace Philibert Simond.
Louis Moll (1809–1880), agronomist, born in Wissembourg.
Auguste Dreyfus (1827–1897), businessman who made his fortune by financing the Peruvian trade in guano.
Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916), cavalry officer in the French Army, explorer, geographer, and Catholic priest and hermit who lived among the Tuareg in the Sahara in Algeria.
Jean Frédéric Wentzel[fr] (1807–1869), printer and lithographer.
The town, set in a landscape of wheat fields, retains a former Benedictine monastery with its large-scale Gothic church, now the parish church of Saints Peter and Paul's church (Église Saints-Pierre-et-Paul). Other medieval churches are the Lutheran St John's church (Église Saint-Jean), and the Romanesque St Ulrich's church (Église Saint-Ulrich) in Altenstadt. The 13th-century Dominican church now serves as the cultural center "La Nef". The Grenier aux Dîmes (tithe barn) belonging to the abbey is from the 18th century but an ancient foundation. Noteworthy houses are the medieval "Salt house" (Maison du sel), the Renaissance "House of l'Ami Fritz" and the Baroquetown hall, a work by Joseph Massol.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Wissembourg, and is written by contributors.
Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
.jpg)
