HOHENSTEIN, a town of Saxony, circle of Zwickau, stands on the slopes of the Erzgebirge, and on the Saxon States Railway, 12 miles N.E. of Zwickau. Since 1875 Ernstthal has been included within its limits. Hohenstein proper possesses a beautiful parish church, a town-house restored in 1876, and a monument to those who fell in the Prussian war of 1870-71; and Ernstthal has also a fine parish church. The principal industry is the spinning and weaving of cotton, the manufacture of waxcloth, stockings, and woollen and silk fabrics, cotton printing, and dyeing. Many of the inhabitants are also employed in the neighbouring arsenic mines. Not far from Hohenstein there is a mineral spring, connected with which there are various kinds of baths. Hohenstein is the birthplace of the physicist G. H. von Schubert, and of Schröter, one of the inventors of the pianoforte. The building of Ernstthal was occasioned in 1680 by the presence of the plague at Hohenstein, and it received its name from Count Christian Ernst of Schönburg, who was the principal instigator of its erection. The population of Hohenstein in 1875, including Ernstthal with a population of 4118, was 9844.