MAGDEBURG, chief t. of Prussian Saxony. Is situated in 52° 8' n. lat., and 11° 40 e. long., has a pop. '75, of 122,789 (including its suburbs and its citadel), and is one of the most strongly fortified and most important commercial towns of Prussia, and the focus of four of the principal lines of railway in Germany. It lies on the left bank of the Elbe, and is surrounded by extensive suburbs, known as Neustadt and Sudenburg, hu.t with the exception of one long and wide thoroughfare, the Breite Weg (Broadway), it consists mostly of narrow and crooked streets. Magdeburg is the seat of the govern mental courts of appeal and administration, and of a superintendent-general of the evan gelical church. It has two gymnasia, a normal school, institutions for the deaf and dumb, and blind; schools of arts, trades, practical mining, medicine, surgery, and mid. wifery; and is well provided with institutions for the promotion of charitable purposes. Its most remarkable buildings are the cathedral, built between 1208 and 136.3, and con. taining the graves of the emperor Otho, the founder of the city, and of his first wife, the English princess Editha, and the sarcophagus of archbishop Ernest, sculptured in.1497 by P. Vischer of Nuremberg; the town hall, in front of which stands the memorial o. t Otho the great. erected after his death, in 973, by the magistracy of. Magdeburg, in grateful remembrance of the favors which lie had conferred upon the city; the govern ment house, the barracks, and the theater. The industrial products of Magdeburg embrace silk, cotton, and woolen goods, gloves. ribbons, and leather, and it has. manu
factories of tobacco, chicory, lead, sugar, and vinegar, and extensive breweries and distilleries. The transit and commission trade is very considerable; there are ann.ual wool and other markets; and trade is facilitated by rail, and by ste,am and canal naTiga tion. In 967 Magdeburg was raised to the dignity of being selected by pope John XIII. .as the see of the primate of Germany, wIllie it had already acquired the rights of. a free •city under Charlemagne. During the middle ages. the archbishops and the magistracy were frequently at war; and Magdeburg early -adopted the 'reform doctnnes, and thus brought upon itself the combined wrath of the emperor and the archbishops. Its. greatest troubles are, however, connected with the thirty years' war, when, after sustaining a siege for 28 weeks against the imperialists, under Tilly, the city was taken, sacked, and nearly burned to the ground; the cathedral and about 150 houses being all that remained after the three days' sack to which it had been exposed. Thirty thousand' of the inhabitants were slain, and numbers threw themselves into the Elbe, to escape the fury of the invaders. In 164-8 the archbishopric was converted into a secular duchy, and conferred upon the house of Brandenburg in compensation for the loss of Pome rania. In 1806 it was taken by the French and annexed by- them to the kingdom of Westphalia; but finally restored to Prussia in consequence of the downfall of Napoleon in 1814.