Liebenburg

Liebenburg

Coat of arms
Liebenburg

Coordinates: 52°01′27″N 10°26′02″E / 52.02417°N 10.43389°E / 52.02417; 10.43389Coordinates: 52°01′27″N 10°26′02″E / 52.02417°N 10.43389°E / 52.02417; 10.43389
Country Germany
State Lower Saxony
District Goslar
Government
  Mayor Alf Hesse (SPD)
Area
  Total 78.73 km2 (30.40 sq mi)
Population (2015-12-31)[1]
  Total 8,059
  Density 100/km2 (270/sq mi)
Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes 38704
Dialling codes 05346
Vehicle registration GS
Website www.liebenburg.eu

Liebenburg is a municipality in the district of Goslar, in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Geography

The municipal area is situated north of the Harz mountain range, within the eastern Salzgitter Hills of the Innerste Uplands. It borders on the district capital Goslar, approx. 12 km (7.5 mi) in the south; the adjacent municipalities in the north are Salzgitter-Bad and Schladen in Wolfenbüttel District.

Subdivisions

The municipality comprises Liebenburg proper (with 2,308 inhabitants[2]) and the following nine villages, which were incorporated on 1 July 1972:

History

Liebenburg Castle Church

Archaeological excavations of a gallery grave indicate a settlement of the area in the Late Neolithic. The former Saxon estates in 1235 belonged to the territory of the newly established Prince-Bishopric of Hildesheim.

From 1292 to 1302, Prince-bishop Siegfried II of Querfurt had the Levenborch spur castle erected in the Salzgitter Hills, near where his episcopal lands bordered on the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. From 1366 it was pawned by his successors to the citizens of Braunschweig, important to secure the trade route to the Imperial City of Goslar.

The castle was seized by the warlike duke Henry V of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel after the Hildesheim Diocesan Feud in 1523 and temporarily served as hidden residence of his mistress Eva von Trott. The Catholic duke in turn lost it to the Protestant Schmalkaldic League, whose troops campaigned the Brunswick lands from 1542 until their final defeat in the 1547 Battle of Mühlberg. During the Thirty Years' War, the stronghold was used as headquarters by the Imperial Generalissimo Albrecht von Wallenstein in 1625, it was occupied by Swedish troops in 1633, and reconquered by the Imperial Army in 1641.

By a 1643 peace treaty with the Braunschweig dukes, the heavily damaged castle was restored to Hildesheim, while day laborers and craftsmen lived within its walls. The Hildesheim prince-bishops promoted the settlement of Catholic families. The castle itself was partly rebuilt in a Baroque style by the order of the Wittelsbach prince-bishop Clemens August until construction work was abandoned due to the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1756. After the bishopric was finally secularised in 1802, Liebenburg fell to the Kingdom of Hanover in 1814.

Demographics

Population statistics
Year Inhabitants
1821 4464
1848 5710
1871 5737
1885 5727
1905 6535
1925 6375
Year Inhabitants
1933 6167
1939 8206
1946 13.208
1950 13.700
1956 12.279
1961 11.687
Year Inhabitants
1968 11.143
1970 10.982
1975 10.405
1980 9851
1985 9502
1990 9655
Year Inhabitants
1995 9803
2000 9693
2005 9431
2010 8777
2011 8620

(from 1968 on numbers of inhabitants as of 31 December)[3]

Politics

Town hall

Seats in the municipal assembly (Gemeinderat) as of 2011 local elections:

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Liebenburg.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 5/26/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.