1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marienburg

MARIENBURG (Polish, Malborg), a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of West Prussia, 30 m. by rail to the S.E. of Danzig in a fertile plain on the right bank of the Nogat, a channel of the Vistula, here spanned by a handsome railway bridge and by a bridge of boats. Pop. (1905), 13,095. Marienburg contains large chemical wool-cleaning works and several other factories, carries on a considerable trade in grain, wood, linen, feathers and brushes, and is the seat of important cattle, horse and wool markets. Its educational institutions include a gymnasium and a Protestant normal school. In the old market-place, many of the houses in which are built with arcades, stands a Gothic town-hall, dating from the end of the 14th century. The town is also embellished with a fine statue of Frederick the Great, who added this district to Prussia, and a monument commemorating the war of 1870–71. Marienburg is chiefly interesting from its having been for a century and a half the residence of the grand masters of the Teutonic order. The large castle of the order here was originally founded in 1274 as the seat of a simple commandery against the pagan Prussians, but in 1309 the headquarters of the grand master were transferred hither from Venice, and the “Marienburger Schloss” soon became one of the largest and most strongly fortified buildings in Germany. On the decline of the order in the middle of the 15th century, the castle passed into the hands of the Poles, by whom it was allowed to fall into neglect and decay. It came into the possession of Prussia in 1772, and was carefully restored at the beginning of the 19th century. This interesting and curious building consists of three parts, the Alt- or Hochschloss, the Mittelschloss, and the Vorburg. It is built of brick, in a style of architecture peculiar to the Baltic provinces, and is undoubtedly one of the most important secular buildings of the middle ages in Germany.

Of the numerous monographs published in Germany on the castle of Marienburg, it will suffice to mention here Büsching’s Schloss der deutschen Ritter zu Marienburg (Berlin, 1828); Voigt’s Geschichte von Marienburg (Königsberg, 1824); Bergau’s Ordenshaupthaus Marienburg (Berlin, 1871); and Steinbrecht, Schloss Marienburg in Preussen (8th ed., Berlin, 1905).