1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nossen

NOSSEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, pleasantly situated on the Freiberger Mulde, 51 m. S.E. from Leipzig by the railway to Dresden via Döbeln, and at the junction of a line to Moldau. Pop. (1905), 4879. It possesses an ancient castle crowning a height above the river, and has extensive manufactures of boots and shoes, leather and paper. In the immediate vicinity are the ruins of the Cistercian monastery of Altenzella, or Altzella, founded in 1145, and a noted school of philosophy during the 13th-15th centuries. In the chapel, which was built in 1347 and restored in 1787, lie the remains of ten margraves of Meissen, members of the family of Wettin. The foundation was secularized in 1544. The valuable annals, Chronicon vetere Cellense majus and Chronicon minus, giving a history of Saxony during the 13th and 14th centuries, were removed to the university library of Leipzig in 1544. They are printed in Band xvi. of the Monumenta Germaniae historica. scriptores (1859).

See E. Beyer, Das Cistercienstift und Kloster Alt-Celle (Dresden, 1855).