QUEDLINBURG, an ancient town of Prussian Saxony, in the district of Magdeburg, is pleasantly situated on the Bode, near the north-west base of the Harz Mountains. It is still partly surrounded by a turreted wall. On the west it is commanded by the old chateau of the imperial abbesses of Quedlinburg, with the interesting abbey church, the body of which was erected in the 11th century. In the crypt, dating from the 10th century, are interred Henry the Fowler and his wife Matilda. The Late Gothic town-house, with additions of the 18th century, contains a good collection of local antiquities. The town also possesses several other churches and numerous schools and charitable foundations. Quedlinburg is famous for its nurseries and market-gardens, and exports vegetable and flower seeds to all parts of Europe and America. It supplies most of the seed used for the cultivation of beetroot for sugar in Silesia, Austria, and Poland. It also carries on manufactures of cloth, iron, and chemicals, and a trade in grain and cattle. The poet Klopstock was a native of Quedlinburg. The population in 1880 was 18,437, almost all Protestants....
The town of Quedlinburg, which was founded by Henry the Fowler about the year 930, on the site of the old village of Quit-lingen, became a favourite residence of the Saxon emperors, and was the scene of several diets and assemblies of princes. It afterwards joined the Hanseatic League, and attained its greatest prosperity in the 13th or 14th century. The convent was established a few years after the town, and was also richly endowed with lands and privileges. The abbesses, who were frequently members of the imperial house, ranked among the independent princes of the German empire and had no ecclesiastical superior except the pope. The town at first strove zealously to maintain its independence against the abbess, and to this end called in the aid of the bishops of Halberstadt. In 1477, however, the abbess Hedwig, aided by her brothers Ernest and Albert of Saxony, forced the bishops to renounce their claims; and for the next two centuries both town and abbey remained under the protection of the electors of Saxony. In 1539 the Reformation was embraced, and the nunnery was converted into a Protestant sisterhood. In 1697 the elector of Saxony sold his rights over Quedlinburg to the elector of Brandenburg, whose troops forthwith entered the town. The abbesses retained their right of private jurisdiction, and the disputes between them and the Prussian Government were not finally settled till the secularization of the abbey in 1803. The last two abbesses were the Princess Anna Amelia (1755-1787), sister of Frederick the Great, and the Princess Sophia Albertina, daughter of King Adolphus Frederick of Sweden.
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