Zweibrücken ("two bridges") is the Latin Bipontinum; it appears in early documents also as Geminus Pons, and was called by the French Deux-Ponts. The independent territory was at first a countship, the counts being descended from Henry I., youngest son of Simon I., count of Saarbrücken (d. 1180). This line became extinct on the death of Count Eberhard (1393), who in 1385 had sold half his territory to the count palatine of the Rhine, and held the other half as his feudatory. Louis (d. 1489), son of Stephen, count palatine of Zimmern-Veldenz, founded the line of the dukes of Zweibrücken, which became extinct in 1731, when the duchy passed to the Birkenfeld branch, whence it came under the sway of Bavaria in 1799. At the peace of Lunéville Zweibrücken was ceded to France; on its reunion with Germany in 1814 the greater part of the territory was given to Bavaria, the remainder to Oldenburg and Prussia. At the ducal printing office at Zweibrücken the fine edition of the classics known as the Bipontine Editions was published (1799 sqq.).
See Lehmann, Geschichte des Herzogtums Zweibrücken (Munich, 1867).
ZWICKAU, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, situated in a pleasant valley at the foot of the Erzgebirge, on the left bank of the Zwickauer Mulde, 41 m. S. of Leipzig and 20 m. S.W. of Chemnitz on the main line of railway Dresden-Hof and at the junction of several other lines. Pop. (1834) 6701; (1880) 35,005; (1890) 44,198; (1905) 68,502. Among the nine churches, the fine Gothic church of St Mary (1451-1536 and restored 1885-91), with a spire 285 ft. high and a bell weighing 5½ tons, is remarkable. The church contains an altar with wood-carving and eight pictures by Michael Wohlgemuth and a remarkable Pietà in carved and painted wood, probably by Veit Stoss. The late Gothic church of St Catharine (restored 1893-94) has an altarpiece ascribed to Lucas Cranach the Elder, and is memorable for the pastorate (1520-22) of Thomas Münzer. Of the secular buildings the most noteworthy are the town-hall of 1581, with the municipal archives, including documents dating back to the 13th century and an autograph MS. of the works of Hans Sachs, and the late Gothic Gewandhaus (cloth merchants' hall), built 1522-24 and now in part converted into a theatre. The manufactures of Zwickau include spinning and weaving, machinery, motor-cars, chemicals, porcelain, paper, glass, dyestuffs, wire goods, tinware, stockings, and curtains. There are also steam saw-mills, diamond and glass polishing works, iron-foundries, and breweries. Though no longer relatively so important as when it lay on the chief trade route from Saxony to Bohemia and the Danube, Zwickau carries on considerable commerce in grain, linen, and coal. The mainstay of the industrial prosperity of the town is the adjacent coalfield, which in 1908 employed 13,000 hands, and yields 2½ million tons of coal annually. The mines are mentioned as early as 1348; but they have only been actively worked since 1823, during which time the population has increased more than tenfold.
Zwickau is of Slavonic origin, and is mentioned in 1118 as a trading place. The name is fancifully derived from the Latin cygnea, from a tradition that placed a "swan lake" here which had the property of renewing the youth of those who bathed in it. Zwickau was an imperial possession, but was pledged to Henry the Illustrious, margrave of Meissen (d. 1288). The German king Charles VI. conferred it as a fief in 1348 on the margraves of Meissen, and it thus passed to their successors the electors of Saxony. The discovery of silver in the Schneeberg in 1470 brought it much wealth. The Anabaptist movement of 1525 began at Zwickau under the inspiration of the "Zwickau prophets" Robert Schumann (1810-1856), the musical composer, was born here in a house which still stands in the market-place.
See Herzog, Chronik der Kreisstadt Zwickau (2 vols., Zwickau, 1839-45), Geschichte des Zwickauer Steinkohlenbaues (Dresden, 1852); Hansch, Das Zwickau-Chemnitzer Kohlengebiet (Meissen, 1908).
ZWIEDINECK VON SÜDENHORST, HANS (1845-1906), German historian, was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main on the 14th of April 1845. He studied at the university of Gratz, where he became a professor in 1885, and died at Gratz on the 22nd of November 1906.
Südenhorst's principal writings are Dorfleben im 18 Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1877); Hans Ulrich, Fürst von Eggenberg (Vienna, 1880); Die Politik der Republic Venedig während des dreissigjährigen Krieges (Stuttgart, 1882-85); Venedig els Weltmacht und Weltstadt (Bielefeld, 1899 and 1906); Kriegsbilder aus der Zeit der Landsknechte (Stuttgart, 1883); Die öffentliche Meinung in Deutschland im Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV. 1650-1700 (Stuttgart, 1888); Erzherzog Johann im Feldzuge von 1809 (Gratz, 1892); and Maria Theresia (Bielefeld, 1905). He edited the Bibliothek deutscher Geschichte, writing for this series, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Gründung des preussischen Königtums (Stuttgart, 1887-94); and Deutsche Geschichte von der Auflösung des alten bis zur Gründung des neuen Reiches (Stuttgart, 1897-1905). He completed A. Wolf's Oesterreich unter Maria Theresia, Josef II. und Leopold II. (Berlin, 1882-84), and edited the Zeitschrift für allgemeine Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1884-88).
ZWINGLI, HULDREICH (1484-1531), Swiss reformer, was born on the 1st of January 1484, at Wildhaus in the Toggenburg valley, in the canton of St Gall, Switzerland. He came of a free peasant stock, his father being amtmann of the village; his mother, Margaret Meili, was the sister of the abbot of Fischingen in Thurgau. His uncle, Bartholomew Zwingli, afterwards dekan or superintendent of Wesen, had been elected parish priest of Wildhaus. As he was keen at his books and fond of music he was destined for the Church, and when eight years old was sent to school at Wesen, where he lived with his uncle, the dean. Two years later he was sent to a school in Basel, where he remained three years, passing thence to the high school at Bern, where his master, Heinrich Wölflin, inspired him with an enthusiasm for the classics. After some two years there the boy took up his abode in the Dominican monastery. But his father had no thoughts of letting him become a monk, and in 1500 he was sent to the university of Vienna, where he remained for another two years and “included in his studies all that philosophy embraces.” He then returned to Basel, where he graduated in the university and became a teacher of the classics in the school of St Martin's church.
The circumstances and surroundings of Zwingli's early life were thus dissimilar from those of his contemporary, Martin Luther. Zwingli, moreover, never knew anything of those spiritual experiences which drove Luther into a cloister and goaded him to a feverish "searching of the Scriptures" in the hope of finding spiritual peace. Zwingli was a humanist, a type abhorred of Luther; and he was far more ready for the polite Erasmian society of Basel than for a monastery. Luther never quite shook off scholasticism, whereas Zwingli had early learnt from Dr Thomas Wyttenbach that the time was at hand when scholastic theology must give place to the purer and more rational theology of the early Fathers and to a fearless study of the New Testament. He heard from this same teacher bold criticisms of Romish teaching concerning the sacraments, monastic vows and papal indulgences, and unconsciously he was thus trained for the great remonstrance of his maturer life.
At the age of twenty-two Zwingli was ordained by the bishop of Constance (1506), preached his first sermon at Rapperswyl, and said his first mass among his own people at Wildhaus. In the same year he was elected parish priest of Glarus, in spite of the pope's nomination of Heinrich Goldli, an influential pluralist of Zürich, whom Zwingli found it necessary to buy off at an expense of more than a hundred gulden. The Holy See, much dependent at that time on its Swiss mercenaries in the pursuit of its secular ends, expressed no resentment on this occasion. Zwingli indeed seemed still to be devoted to the pope, whom he styled "beatissimus Christi vicarius," and he publicly proclaimed the mercenary aid given by the Swiss to the papal cause to be its dutiful support of the Holy See. The Curia, following its accustomed policy, rewarded his zeal with a pension of 50 gulden.
The ten years which Zwingli spent at Glarus laid the foundations of his work as a reformer. He there began the study of
