1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schlettstadt

SCHLETTSTADT, a town of Germany, in the imperial province of Alsace-Lorraine, on the Ill; 26 m. S. of Strassburg by the railway to Basel. Pop. (1905) 9700. It possesses two fine Roman Catholic churches, a Protestant church, numerous remains of its old walls and some quaint houses of the 15th and 16th centuries. It has a theatre, a municipal library, a gymnasium, and other educational establishments. The Roman Catholic churches are the cathedral church of St George, a fine Gothic building founded in the 13th century, and the church of St Fides, dating from the 11th century. Its industries comprise wire-drawing, tanning and saw-milling, and there is a considerable trade in wine, fruit and other agricultural produce.

Schlettstadt is a place of very early origin. It was a royal residence in Carolingian times and became a free town of the Empire in the 13th century. In the 15th century it was the seat of a celebrated academy, founded by the humanist Rodolphus Agricola, which contributed not a little to the revival of learning in this part of Germany; Erasmus of Rotterdam was one of its students. In 1634 the town came into the possession of France, and it was afterwards fortified by Vauban. It offered little resistance, however, to the Germans in 1870, and the fortifications have since been razed. The Hoh-Königsburg, a great castle standing at an elevation of 2475 ft., was presented to the emperor William II. by the town of Schlettstadt in 1899, and was completely restored in 1908. The site is first mentioned as bearing a castle in the 8th century.