CHEMNITZ, a town of the kingdom of Saxony, in the circle of Zwickau, 50 miles W.S.W. of Dresden by rail, in a beautiful plain at the foot of the Erzgebirge, watered by the River Chemnitz, an affluent of the Mulde. It is the first manufacturing town in the country, and in population ranks next to Dresden and Leipsic. Though in general well built and possessing a large number of handsome edifices, it has comparatively few of special interest ; among the most important are St James s church, the ancient town- house, the post-office, the theatre, the new realschule, and the exchange. It contains a Roman Catholic and five Protestant churches, and has three civic schools, a gymnasium, a royal industrial school, of great repute throughout Saxony, a school of practical designing, and an extensive Sunday school under the direction of the work men s union. It is the seat of several large administrative offices, and a chamber of commerce and industry; and among its societies are two scholastic associations, a merchants union, a scientific association, and an architectural and artistic society. The cotton goods, and especially the stockings, for which it is mainly celebrated, rival those of England in quality and cheapness ; and it is also famous for the manufacture of spinning-machinery. There are nineteen distinct establishments for the weaving of woollen and half-woollen cloth ; and 3400 hand-looms are engaged in the same trade. The stocking weaving is prosecuted by sixty-three firms, partly in regular factories and partly by the domestic system. The dye-works number thirty-three, the print-works eight, the bleach-works six, and the chemical works six. There are about eighty establishments for engineering operations, one of which, founded about 18-44 by Richard Hartmann, employs 4000 workmen, and manufactures steam-engines of all descriptions, mining and boring apparatus, boilers, and a great variety of implements. The export trade is, of course, very extensive ; and in 1871 the value of the goods despatched to America alone amounted to $4,500,000. There is abundant railway communication in all directions. The population in 1849 was 30,753; in 1864, 54,875; and in 1871, 70,380. In the last of these years it was found that, with the exception of about 1800 Roman Catholics, 380 German Catholics, 48 Jews, and a few dissenters, the people were all Protestants. Chemnitz was originally a settlement of the Serbian Wends, which received its first Christian Church from Otto I. in 938. In the 12th century it obtained municipal rights from Lothaire II., and from the 13th to the Nth century it ranked as an imperial city. From its very commencement its prosperity was due mainly to its manu facturing industry, the nucleus of which seems to have been the linen-weaving of the Wends. To this were added extensive bleaching and woollen cloth establishments, which raised the town to great importance in the 15th century. In 1539 the Reformation was introduced, and 1546 saw the dissolution of the great Benedictine monastery which had been founded in 1125 by Lothaire at Schloss Chemnitz, about 2 miles north of the city. In the Thirty Years War the city was plundered by both Swedes and Imperialists, and its trade was almost completely ruined. By the close of the century, however, it began to recover, chiefly through the introduction of cotton- weaving, which as early as 1739 employed 2000 looms. In 1775 the English quilt manu facture was commenced, and in 1799 the Arkwright system of cotton-weaving. After the peace of Paris there was another period of decay ; but a revival set in about 1834 when Saxony joined the customs union. The cotton manufacture suffered considerably during the American Civil War, but by no means so severely as in the English towns.
CHEMNITZ, Martin (1522-1586), probably the ablest Lutheran theologian of the period immediately succeeding that of Luther himself, was born at Treuenbritzen in the mark of Brandenburg, on the 9th November 1522. His father, though of noble rank, was in somewhat straitened circumstances, and Martin s education was frequently interrupted owing to pecuniary difficulties. In his fourteenth year he was sent to school at Wittenberg, where he had frequent opportunities of hearing Luther preach. He studied at the universities of Magdeburg (1539-42), Frankfort-on-the-Oder (1543), and Wittenberg (1545), devoting himself specially at the last of these, under the advice of Melanchthon, to mathematics and astrology. In 1547 he removed to Konigsberg, where he was appointed in the following year rector of the cathedral school, and two years later (1550) librarian to Duke Albert of Prussia, whose patronage he had gained through his acquaintance with astrology. It was during his residence in Konigsberg that Chemnitz first turned his attention seriously to theology, and that he first had an opportunity, in the celebrated controversy with Osiander on the doctrine of justification by faith, of displaying the polemical ability in which he was scarcely surpassed by the greatest of the Reformers. Osiander, who assailed the forensic and objective element in the Lutheran doctrine, was favoured by Duke Albert, and, as the controversy increased in intensity, Chemnitz judged it expedient to resign his post of librarian and leave Konigsberg. In 1553 he returned to Wittenberg, and immediately commenced to deliver lectures at the university on the Loci Communes of Melanchthon. These formed the basis of his Loci Theoloyici (Frankfort, 1591), a work which furnishes one of the best existing expositions of the Lutheran theology, as formulated and modified by Melanchthon. His audience was from the Erst exceptionally large, and a career of great influence seemed open to him at the university, when he was induced to make another change by accepting the office of pastor to the church in Brunswick, to which he removed in 1 554. In this position he spent the remainder of his life, though he received numerous offers of important offices from various Protestant princes of Germany. He was unusually active in the duties of his charge, and he also took a leading part in the theological controversies of the time, always representing and defending strictly Lutheran views. In fact, it is in no small degree to his personal influence, exerted as it was at the critical period of its history, that the Lutheran Church ow r ed the purity of its doctrine and the compactness of its organization. Against the Crypto-Calvinists he maintained the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord s Supper in a treatise Repetitio sance doctrince de vera Prcesentia Corporis el Sanguinis Domini in Ccena Sacra (1560, translated into German 1561). Against the Jesuits, on the other hand, he wrote some works of great power, which probably did a good deal to. check the reaction from Lutheranism that seemed to be setting in. Chief of these were the Theologice Jesuitariim prcecipua Capita (1562), a very incisive attack on the principles of the order, and his Examen Concilii Tridentini, in four parts, published at intervals (1565, 1566, 1572, and 1573). The latter is undoubtedly Chemnitz s greatest work. Roman Catholics themselves have not been slow to acknowledge its ability, and it may be questioned whether to this day anti-Tridentine literature can show anything more thorough or more acute. In conjunction with Morlin, Chemnitz compiled the Corpus Doctrince Pnitenicum (1567), a doctrinal work, which at once acquired great authority. Perhaps his chief service to the organization of the church was rendered when, in conjunction with Andrea and Selnecker, he induced the Lutherans of Saxony and Swabia to adopt the Formula Concordice, and so become one body. In the protracted negotiations which led to this result his learning and tact were of the greatest value.
