ASCHERSLEBEN, a manufacturing city of Prussia, in the government of Magdeburg, formerly the chief town of a circle. It contains one Roman Catholic and five Protestant churches, a synagogue, a poor-house, an asylum for destitute children, and several schools. The discovery of coal in the neighbourhood has at once stimulated and altered its industries. In addition to the manufacture of woollen wares, for which it has long been known, there is now extensive production of vinegar, paraffin, potash, and especially beetroot-sugar; while the surrounding district, which was formerly devoted in great part to marketgardening, is now turned almost entirely into beetroot fields. Population, 16,741. Aschersleben was probably founded in the 11th century by Count Esika of Ballenstedt. the ancestor of the house of Anhalt, whose grandson, Otto, called himself count of Ascania and Aschersleben, deriving the former part of the title from his castle in the neighbourhood of the town. On the death of Otto III. (1315) Aschersleben passed into the hands of the bishop of Halberstadt, and at the peace of 1648, was, along with the bishopric, united to Brandenburg.