History
The region on the Pleiße River was part of a huge forest, which was settled by Slavic peoples. The castle of Altenburg already existed in the 10th century. In the following centuries German settlers occupied the region. It was part of the margravate of Meißen in the 14th century. At this time most of the forests were cleared.
The city of Altenburg and the surrounding lands were the tiny duchy of Saxe-Altenburg from 1826 to 1918; afterwards it was a state within the Weimar Republic for a short time, before it was dissolved in 1922 in order to join the state of Thuringia.
The district in its present borders was established in 1922 under the name "Altenburg". In 1952 there was an administrative reform splitting the districts into two smaller units, called Altenburg and Schmölln. They were merged again in 1994, but now under the name "Altenburger Land".
Read more about this topic: Altenburger Land
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)