COTHEN, a town of Germany, in the Land of Anhalt, on the Ziethe, 42 m. N.W. of Leipzig by rail. Pop. (1933) 26,695.
COthen was a Slav settlement destroyed by the German king Henry I. in 927. By the 12th century it had secured town rights and become a market centre. In 13oo it was burned by the mar grave of Meissen. In 1547 the town was taken from its prince, and given by the emperor Charles V. to the Spanish general and painter, Felipe Ladron y Guevara (1510-1563), but was soon re purchased. Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, lived and worked in Cothen. From i6o3 to 1847 Cothen was the capital of the principality, later duchy, of Anhalt-Cothen. It consists of an old and a new town with four suburbs. The former palace of the dukes of Anhalt-Uthen, in the old town, contains the ornithologi cal collection of Johann Friedrich Naumann (178o-1857). The Lutheran Jakobskirche (called the cathedral), a Gothic building, has some fine old stained glass. The industries include iron-found ing and the manufacture of agricultural and other machinery, malt and beet-root sugar; there is trade in grain and cattle.