STOLBERG, or Stollberg, an industrial and mining town in Rhenish Prussia, is situated on the Vicht, 7 miles east of Aix-la-Chapelle. It is the centre of a very active and varied industry, exporting its produce to all parts of the world. The leading branch is metal-working, which is here carried on in important zinc, brass, and iron foundries, smelting-works of various kinds, puddling and rolling works, and manufactories of needles, pins, and other metal goods. The ore is mostly found in the mines around the town, but some is imported from a considerable distance. In or near the town there are also large chemical works, glassworks, a mirror-factory, and various minor establishments. Extensive coal-mines in the neighbourhood provide the enormous supply of fuel demanded by the various industries. The population in 1885 was 11,841.
The industrial prosperity of the town was founded in the middle of the 17th century by French religious refugees, who introduced the art of brass-founding. An ancient castle in the town is popularly believed to have been a hunting-lodge of Charlemagne.
STOLBERG, Count Christian (1748-1821), German poet, was born at Hamburg on the 15th October 1748. His father, Count Christian Günther, was a privy councillor in Denmark. Stolberg studied at Göttingen, where he formed one of a “Dichterbund,” which afterwards became famous. It included, besides Stolberg and his brother, Boie, Bürger, Miller, Voss, Hölty, and Leisewitz. In 1777 he became an official in the civil service at Tremsbüttel in Holstein, and married Louise, the countess of Reventlow, whoso beauty he had often celebrated in his verses. He resigned his office in 1800, and afterwards lived upon his estate in Schleswig. He died January 18, 1821....
Stolberg was not a poet of high originality, but in some of his poems he gave vigorous expression to sincere and ardent feeling. He excelled, too, in the utterance of gentle and delicate sentiment. Much of his work appeared in association with that of his brother, whose genius was bolder and more impressive than his own. They published together a volume of poems in 1779, and Schauspiele mit Choren in 1787, their object in the latter work being to revive a love for the Greek drama. The dramas contributed to this volume by Christian Stolberg are Balsazar and Otanes. In 1815 the brothers issued a volume of Vaterländische Gedichte. Christian Stolberg was the sole author of Gedichte aus dem Griechischen (1782) and of a translation of the works of Sophocles (1787). All his poetical works are included in the Werke der Bruder Stolberg (20 vols., 1820-25).
STOLBERG, Count Frederick Leopold (1750-1819), the brother of the preceding, was born on the 7th November 1750, at Bramstedt in Holstein. Like his brother he studied at Göttingen, and was a member of the “Dichterbund.” In 1776 he went to Copenhagen as ambassador of the prince-bishop of Lübeck, and in 1789 he was sent to Berlin as the ambassador of the king of Denmark. His first wife, whom he had married in 1782, having died, he married the Countess Sophia von Redern in 1790, and in the following year he was appointed president of the government of the prince-bishop at Eutin. In 1800 he resigned his office, and at Münster joined the Church of Rome, taking with him all the members of his family except his eldest daughter Agnes, who had married Count Ferdinand von Stolberg-Wernigerode. Stolberg’s friends and admirers were astonished by his conversion to the Roman Church, and he was hotly attacked by Voss, whose intervention gave rise to a bitter controversy. After his change of faith Stolberg issued an elaborate Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi, in which he hardly even attempted to write with impartial judgment. He died near Osnabrück on the 5th December 1819.
In association with his brother he published Gedichte; Schauspiele mit Choren ; and Vaterländische Gedichte. He also wrote Iamben (1784), a series of satires on the vices and prejudices of his time; and he translated the Iliad, some of Plato’s dialogues, four tragedies of Aeschylus, and Ossian’s poems. Among his prose writings may be mentioned Die Insel, a romance (1788); Eine Reise in Deutschland, der Schweiz, Italien, und Sicilien (1794); and his Leben Alfred's des Grossen (1815). He was a master of many forms of poetical expression, and in his best period he produced a strong impression on his contemporaries by his passion for nature and freedom.
Biographies of Stolberg have been written by Nicolovius, Menge, Wiedel, Hennes, and Janssen.
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