page_title: Zwickau
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Zwickau / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Church tower in Zwickau, at dusk.
context_page_description: Zwickau is a town in Saxony, Germany, and the capital of the Zwickau district. It is situated in a valley at the foot of the Erzgebirge mountains, is part of Central Germany and is geographically linked to the urban areas of Leipzig-Halle, Dresden and Chemnitz. The town has approximately 100,000 inhabitants. From 1834 until 1952 Zwickau was the seat of the government of the south-western region of Saxony.
  Zwickau is the centre of the Saxon automotive industry, with a tradition over one hundred years old, including car makers Horch, Audi, Auto Union, Trabant and Volkswagen. The University of Applied Sciences Zwickau trains automotive engineers.
  The valley of the 166-kilometre long Zwickauer Mulde river stretches from the Vogtland to Colditz Castle at the other end. The Silver Road, Saxony's longest tourist route, connects Dresden with Zwickau.
  Zwickau can be reached by car via the nearby Autobahns A4 and A72, the main railway station, via a public airfield which takes light aircraft, and by bike along river Zwickauer Mulde on the so-called Mulderadweg.
context_section_description: The region around Zwickau was settled by Slavs as early as the 7th century AD. The name Zwickau is probably a Germanization of the Sorbian toponym Šwikawa, which derives from Svarozič, the Slavic Sun and fire god. In the 10th century, German settlers began arriving and the native Slavs were Christianized. A trading place known as terretorio Zcwickaw(in Medieval Latin) was mentioned in 1118. The settlement received a town charter in 1212, and hosted Franciscans and Cistercians during the 13th century. Zwickau was a free imperial city from 1290–1323, but was subsequently granted to the Margraviate of Meissen. Although regional mining began in 1316, extensive mining increased with the discovery of silver in the Schneeberg in 1470. Because of the silver ore deposits in the Erzgebirge, Zwickau developed in the 15th and 16th centuries and grew to be an important economic and cultural centre of Saxony.
  Its nine churches include the Gothic church of St. Mary (1451–1536), with a spire 285 ft (87 m) high and a bell weighing 51 tons. The church contains an altar with wood carvings, eight paintings by Michael Wohlgemuth and a pietà in carved and painted wood by Peter Breuer.
  The late Gothic church of St. Catharine has an altar piece ascribed to Lucas Cranach the elder, and is remembered because Thomas Müntzer was once pastor there (1520–22). The town hall was begun in 1404 and rebuilt many times since. The municipal archives include documents dating back to the 13th century.
  Early printed books from the Middle Ages, historical documents, letters and books are kept in the Town Archives (e.g. Meister Singer volumes by Hans Sachs (1494–1576)), and in the School Library founded by scholars and by the town clerk Stephan Roth during the Reformation.in
  In 1520 Martin Luther dedicated his treatise "On the Freedom of the Christian Man" to his friend Hermann Muehlpfort, the Lord Mayor of Zwickau. The Anabaptist movement of 1525 began at Zwickau under the inspiration of the "Zwickau prophets". After Wittenberg, it became the first city in Europe to join the Lutheran Reformation. The late Gothic Gewandhaus (cloth merchants' hall), was built in 1522–24 and is now converted into a theatre. The city was seriously damaged during the Thirty Years' War.
  The old city of Zwickau, perched on a hill, is surrounded by heights with extensive forests and a municipal park. Near the town are the Hartenstein area, for example, with Stein and Wolfsbrunn castles and the Prinzenhöhle cav, as well as the Auersberg peak (1019 meters) and the winter sports areas around Johanngeorgenstadt and the Vogtland.
  In the Old Town the Cathedral and the Gewandhaus (cloth merchants' hall) originate in the 16th century and when Schneeberg silver was traded. In the 19th century the city's economy was driven by industrial coal mining and later by automobile manufacturing.
  During World War II, in 1942, a Nazi show trial of the members of the Czarny Legion Polish underground resistance organization from Gostyń was held in Zwickau, after which 12 members were executed in Dresden, and several dozen were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, where 37 of them died. In May 1942, five Polish students of the Salesian Oratory in Poznań, known as the Poznań Five or five of the 108 Blessed Polish Martyrs of World War II, were imprisoned in Zwickau, before being executed in Dresden. A subcamp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp was located in Zwickau, whose prisoners were mostly Poles and Russians, but also Italians, French, Hungarians, Jews, Czechs, Germans and others.
  On 17 April 1945, US troops entered the city. They withdrew on 30 June 1945 and handed Zwickau to the Soviet Red Army. Between 1944 and 2003, the city had a population of over 100,000.
  A major employer is Volkswagen which assembles its Golf, Passat and Phaeton models in the Zwickau-Mosel vehicle plant.
caption: St. Mary's church, at dusk.
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