Görlitz

Görlitz, a town of Prussian Silesia, is situated on a declivity on the left bank of the Neisse, 49 miles W. of Liegnitz. One of its old mural towers, the Kaisertrutz, is now the guard-house and armoury. Among the beautiful Gothic churches the most interesting is that of St Peter and St Paul, built 1423-97, with five naves. Outside the town is the Kreuzkapelle, an imitation of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, built 1481-89. A railway viaduct, upwards of 2720 feet in length and 118 feet high, here crosses the valley of the Neisse. Görlitz has manufactures of cloth, which is its staple, cotton, linen, and fictile wares, with iron-foundries and machine-shops. Here Jacob Boehme spent most of his life and died. Pop. (1843) 15,200; (1890) 62,135, mostly Protestants. Görlitz was taken and held alternately by the Swedes and the Imperialists during the Thirty Years' War.