1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pegau

PEGAU, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, situated in a fertile country, on the Elster, 18 m. S.W. from Leipzig by the railway to Zeitz. Pop. (1905), 5656. It has two Evangelical churches, that of St Lawrence being a fine Gothic structure, a 16th-century town-hall; a very old hospital and an agricultural school. Its industries embrace the manufacture of felt, boots and metal wares.

Pegau grew up round a monastery founded in 1096, but does not appear as a town before the close of the 12th century. Markets were held here and its prosperity was further enhanced by its position on a main road running east and west. In the monastery, which was dissolved in 1539, a valuable chronicle was compiled, the Annales pegavienses, covering the period from 1039 to 1227

See Fussel, Anfang und Ende des Klosters St Jacob zu Pegau (Leipzig, 1857), and Dillner, Grössel and Gunther, Alles und neues aus Pegau (Leipzig, 1905). The Annales pegavienses are published in Bd. XVI. of the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores.