WEISSENFELS, an industrial town in the province of Saxony, Prussia, is situated on the Saale, 18½ miles southwest of Leipsic and 19 miles south of Halle. It contains three churches, a spacious market-place, and various educational and benevolent institutions. The former palace, called the Augustusburg, built in 1664-90, occupies a site on a sandstone eminence near the town; this spacious edifice is now used as a military school. Weissenfels manufactures machinery, sugar, pasteboard, paper, leather goods, pottery, and gold and silver wares. It contains also an iron-foundry, and carries on trade in timber and grain. In the neighbourhood are large deposits of sandstone and lignite. Weissenfels is a place of considerable antiquity, and from 1657 till 1746 it was the capital of the dukes of Saxe-Weissenfels, a branch of the electoral house of Saxony. The body of Gustavus Adolphus was embalmed at Weissenfels after the battle of Lützen. The population of the town in 1885 was 21,766.