Pirna

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Pirna
Coat of arms Location
Coat of arms of Pirna
Pirna (Germany)
Pirna
Administration
Country Flag of Germany Germany
State Saxony
Admin. region Dresden
District Sächsische Schweiz
Municipal assoc. Pirna
Town subdivisions 16
Mayor Markus Ulbig (CDU)
Basic statistics
Area 53.01 km² (20.5 sq mi)
Elevation 109-340 m
Population 39,751  (31/12/2006)
 - Density 750 /km² (1,942 /sq mi)
Other information
Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Licence plate PIR
Postal codes 01781–01796
Area code 03501
Website www.pirna.de

Coordinates: 50°57′44″N 13°56′25″E / 50.96222, 13.94028
Also see: Piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA).

Pirna is a city in the Free State of Saxony, Germany in the administrative district of the Sächsische Schweiz. The city's population is over 40,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as a Große Kreisstadt. It is also known for the gassing of about 15,000 disabled people in Schloss Sonnenstein between June 1940 and August 1941, killings which ceased after pressure was exerted on the authorities by the local population. Today, a small plaque at the base of Sonnenstein Castle remembers the dead.

Contents

[edit] Geography

[edit] Geographical location

Pirna is located near the Elbsandsteingebirge in the Elbe valley, where the nearby rivers Wesenitz, in the north, and Gottleuba to the south, flow into the Elbe. Pirna is also called Tor zur Sächsischen Schweiz (gate to the Sächsische Schweiz). The Sächsische Weinstraße, which goes from Pirna over Pillnitz, Dresden, and Meißen to Diesbar-Seußlitz, was dedicated in 1992. In August of 2002, the city suffered great damage in the widespread flooding in Europe at the time.

[edit] Neighbouring municipalities

Pirna is located southeast of Dresden. Neighbouring municipalities are Bad Gottleuba-Berggießhübel (city), Bahretal, Dohma, Dohna (city), Dürrröhrsdorf-Dittersbach, Heidenau (city), Königstein (city), Lohmen, Stadt Wehlen (city), and Struppen.

[edit] History

[edit] Stone Age

Tools made of flint from the late Paleolithic (about 12,000-8000 BC), at the end of the last ice age, are evidence for the earliest human settlement in the area. Later on, people belonging to the Linear Pottery culture, who farmed grain and cattle, lived here during the Neolithic (5,500-4,000 BC) because of a good climate and Loess. Around 600 A.D. a Slavic group called the Sorbs, who were fishermen and farmers, succeeded the Germanic tribes in the Elbe Valley, who had lived in the area for a couple of centuries from the 4th century BC on. The name Pirna derives from the Sorbian phrase, na pernem, meaning on the hard (stone). The representation of a pear tree in the coat of arms was a later, fanciful, German-language notion about the town's name ("pear" is Birne in German, which sounds rather like "Pirna").

Pirna and Schloss Sonnenstein, by Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto)
Pirna and Schloss Sonnenstein, by Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto)

[edit] Middle Ages

With the conquest of the Slavic communities and the founding of the Mark by the Germans (Heinrich I founded the castle of Meißen in 929), settlement in the Pirna area is again verifiable. The castle in Pirna, which was mentioned for the first time in 1269, probably already existed in the 11th century. In the context of the second Eastern German colonization the city was founded by Markgraf Heinrich der Erlauchte von Meißen).

The streets are aligned from east to west and from north to south forming a chessboardlike system. Only the streets east of the church are not in this shape because of the nearby Burgberg. In 1233, Pirna was mentioned for the first time in a document. In 1293, the king of Bohemia bought the city and the castle from the Bishop of Meißen. Thus Pirna belonged to Bohemia until 1405.

[edit] Modern times

In 1502, the construction of the new church was begun under Meister Peter Ulrich von Pirna. With the introduction of the Reformation into Saxony in 1539, Anton Lauterbach, a friend of Martin Luther's, became pastor and superintendent. In 1544 the strategically important castle was upgraded to a fortress by Moritz von Sachsen. Three years later it withstood the siege by elector Johann Friedrich von Sachsen in the Schmalkaldic War.

On April 23, 1639, the city was invaded by Swedish troops under the commander in chief of the Swedish army Johan Banér. During the futile five-month siege of the fortress the city was greatly devastated. About 600 people were murdered (Pirnarisches Elend, lit. Misery of Pirna). In around 1670, the Festung Sonnenstein (fortress) was built with modern military insights. Only the powerful stonework still exists today. In 1707, Pirna had debts that related to the Great Northern War of more than 100,000 Thalern.

[edit] Prussian Pirna

On August 29, 1756, the small Saxon army fled before the Prussians, who had invaded without declaring war, to the levels between Festung Königstein and Schloss Sonnenstein and capitulated there on October 16, two days after Schloss Sonnenstein surrendered. In 1758, Austrian troops and the Imperial Army besieged the fortress.

[edit] Napoleonic Pirna

Manufacturing plants opened in 1774 in Pirna. In 1811 in Sonnenstein, the physician Ernst Gottlob Pienitz opened a mental hospital. But on September 14, 1813, French troops occupied Sonnenstein, forcing the evacuation of 275 patients, seizing supplies and tearing the roof trusses out to remove the threat of fire. In September of 1813, emperor Napoleon temporarily lived at the Marienhaus at the market. Until Dresden's surrender on November 11 the French defended the fortress. Only in February did the hospital for the mentally ill open again.

See also: Schloss Sonnenstein, Margraviate of Meißen, Kings of Saxony, History of Bohemia, History of Saxony, History of Germany

[edit] Industrial revolution, Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic

In 1837, steamship travel began on the upper Elbe. A few years later, a railway line connecting Dresden and Pirna opened. Pirna became an industrial city in 1862 with the building of factories. Mechanical engineering, glass, cellulose and rayon production also expanded. In 1875, the sandstone Elbbrücke (bridge on the Elbe) was completed. During the First World War Pirna became a garrison and the engineer battalions 12 and 5 of the Royal Saxon field artillery regiment No. 64 were billeted on Rottwerndorfer Straße. In 1922/23, the city absorbed several municipalities including Posta, Niedervogelgesang, Obervogelgesang, Copitz, Hinterjessen, Neundorf, Zuschendorf, Rottwerndorf and Zehista. The population then totalled 30,000 inhabitants.

[edit] Holocaust

World War II - From early 1940, until end of June 1942 a part of Sonnenstein castle in Pirna was converted into a euthanasia killing center. A gas chamber and crematorium were installed in the cellar of the former men's sanitary (building C 16). A high brick-wall on two sides of the complex shielded it from outside while a high hoarding was erected on the other sides. Four buildings were located inside the shielding. They were used for offices, living rooms for the personnel etc. Sleeping quarters for the "burners" (men who burned the bodies) were provided for in the attic of building C 16. It is possible that other sections of the buildings were also used by T4.

From end of June 1940 until September 1942 approximately 15,000 persons were killed in the scope of the euthanasia program and the Sonderbehandlung 14f13. The staff consisted of about 100 persons. One third of them were ordered to the extermination camps in occupied Poland, because of their experiences in deception, killing, gassing and burning innocent people.

There were trained the killing groups who mounted the killing machinery in the later camps like Treblinka from TishBeAv 1942 and the others. This was kept unrecognised until 1989 in Germany, but after that there was created a Stiftung in order to have a remembrance of that catastrophe being built which was erected on June 2000. [1]

During August / September 1942 the Sonnenstein killing center was liquidated and incriminating installations such as gas chamber installations and crematorium ovens dismantled. From October 1942 the buildings were used as a military hospital.

[edit] Amalgamations

The cities that were amalgamated with Pirna are:

[edit] Population

Change of Population (from 1960, all figures for December 31):

1834 until 1946

  • 1834 - 5,556
  • 1875 - 10,581
  • 1880 - 11,670
  • 1933 - 33,656
  • 1939 - 36,325
  • 1946 - 37,426 1

1950 until 1997

  • 1950 - 38,676 2
  • 1960 - 41,111
  • 1981 - 48,387
  • 1984 - 47,601
  • 1995 - 39,194
  • 1997 - 38,673

1998 until 2003

  • 1998 - 42,728
  • 1999 - 42,553
  • 2000 - 42,108
  • 2001 - 41,432
  • 2002 - 40,853
  • 2003 - 40,593

1 October 29
2 August 31

[edit] Dialect

The main dialect spoken in Pirna is the Saxon dialect group called : Südostmeißnische, which is one of the five Meißenisch group of dialects.

[edit] City partnership


Pirna is bound with Baienfurt and Reutlingen, both in Baden-Württemberg, in city friendships.

[edit] Culture and sites of interest

[edit] Museums

  • Pirna museum = Stadtmuseum Pirna, located at 2 Klosterhof
  • Botanical collections and Landschloss Pirna - Zuschendorf
  • DDR Museum - museum devoted to East Germany memorabilia
  • Richard Wagner Museum Graupa


[edit] Music

  • Neue Elbland Philharmonie with 60 musicians and about 160 concerts every year.
  • Pirnaer Jazznacht, which in 2004 took place for the fifth time.

[edit] Persons

  • Johann Tetzel (1465 - 1519)
  • Ioannes Sommerus (1542 - 1574) - Transylvanian theologian and chronicler
  • Theophilus Jacobäer (1591 - 1659) - pharmacist, "rescuer" in the Thirty Years' War
  • Johann Siegmund von Liebenau (1607 - 1671) - captain and Commander-in-Chief of fortresses in Saxony
  • William Adolph Haußner (1819 - 1849) - physician and city delegate, revolutionist from 1848-49
  • Anna Marie Geibelt (1838 - 1923)
  • Friedrich August Greif - founder of the Greif endowment
  • Dr. Ernst Gottlob Pienitz (1777 - 1853) - Psychatric reformer
  • Carl William Häcker - pioneer of photography
  • Oskar Speck – Founder of the city scientific historiography in Pirna
  • Hugo Küttner (1880 - 1945) - entrepreneur
  • Siegfried Rädel (1893 - 1943) - city delegate
  • Eva Schulze-Knabe (1907 - 1976) - painter
  • Gertrud Eysoldt (1870 - 1955) - actress and director

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

(in German)

General map City map of Pirna

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Towns and municipalities in Sächsische Schweiz
Coat of arms