Halle

HALLE, city in prussian Saxony, on the Saale, 28 km (17.4 miles) N.W. of Leipzig; population 60,120. It comprises Halle itself, with five suburbs and the former cities of Glaucha and Neumarkt. The university, founded in 1694 and merged in 1815 with that of Wittenberg, had 90 teachers and 888 students in 1876. A seminar, many medical institutions, an academy of natural sciences, a botanical garden, an observatory and a library with 100 000 volumes. The Francke institutions, in the Glaucha suburb, include an orphan asylum, several schools and a printing house. Important factories of woollen articles and canvas; huge salt marsh. Otto the Great gave Halle to the archbishops of Magdeburg and Otto II established it as a city in 981. It became so powerful that in the thirteenth century, it successfully fought against its feudal lords on several occasions, and in 1435, it resisted the attack of a large army under the command of the Elector of Saxony. The city suffered a lot during the Seven Years’ War; after the Treaty of Westphalia, it fell to the house of Brandenburg.
 
Extract from the Trousset encyclopedia, 1886 – 1891.