HAMELN, the chief town of a circle in the province of Hanover, Prussia, is situated at the confluence of the Weser and Hamel, and at the junction of four railways, 25 milee S.W. of Hanover. It is surrounded by old walls, and possesses a number of old-fashioned houses with quaint richly-adorned gables. The only public buildings of interest are the minster church, restored in 1872, and the townhouse. Hameln is the seat of several courts and public offices, and possesses a gymnasium, a higher city school, a higher female school, a trade school, a poorhouse, two hospitals, and a district prison. The principal industries are the manufacture of woollen and cotton goods and machines, distilling, agriculture, and salmon fishing. By the steamboats on the Weser there is communication with Karlshafen and Minden. In order to avoid the dangerous part of the river near the town a channel was cut in 1734, the repairing and deepening of which, begun in 1868, was completed in 1873. The Weser at Hameln is crossed by an iron suspension bridge 830 feet in length, supported by a pier erected on an island in the middle of the river. The population of Hameln in 1875 was 9519....
The older name of Hameln was Hameloa or Hamelowe, and the town owes its origin to an abbey of St Boniface. It existed as a town as early as the 11th century, and in 1259 it was sold by the abbot of Fulda to the bishop of Minden, but this transaction gave offence to the townspeople, and after a battle in which many of them lost their lives, they placed themselves under the protection of the house of Brunswick. During the Thirty Years’ War Hameln was conquered by the Swedes (1633). In 1757 it capitulated to the French, who, however, vacated it in the following year. Its fortifications were strengthened in 1766 by the erection of Fort George, but they were wholly dismantled in 1807. Hameln is famed as the scene of the myth of the piper of Hameln. According to the legend, the town in the year 1284 was so infested by rats as almost to compel the inhabitants to leave it, when one day there appeared upon the scene a piper clad in a fantastic suit, who offered for a certain sum of money to charmall the vermin into the Weser by his piping. His conditions were agreed to, but after he had fulfilled his promise the inhabitants, on the ground that he was a sorcerer, declined to fulfil their part of the bargain, whereupon on the 26th of June he reappeared in the streets of the town, and putting his pipe to his lips began a soft and curious strain, which drew all the children to come trooping after him while he led them out of the town to the Koppelberg hill, in whose side a door suddenly opened, by which he entered and the children after him, all but one who was lame and could not follow fast enough to reach the door before it shut again and remained fast. Some trace the origin of the legend to the “Child Crusade,” or to an abduction of children. For a considerable time the town dated its public documents from the event. The story is the subject of a poem by Robert Browning, and also of one by Julius Wolff (3d edition, Berlin, 1876).
See S. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 2d ser., 1868; Grimm, Deutsche. Sagen, Berlin, 1866; and Reitzenstein's edition of Sprenger’s Geschichte der Stadt Hameln, Hameln, 1861.
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