Stättlein Wettien An der Saale

Title

Stättlein Wettien An der Saale

Description

View shows Wettin on the Saale with Wettin Castle. Today Wettin is a district of the town of Wettin-Löbejün in Saxony-Anhalt. Published by Kaspar Merian, son of Matthäus Merian.

ca. 1660

Artist

Merian (1593-1650)

Matthäus Merian (1593 – 1650) , born in Basel, learned the art of copperplate engraving in Zurich and subsequently worked and studied in Strasbourg, Nancy, and Paris, before returning to Basel in 1615. The following year he moved to Frankfurt, Germany where he worked for the publisher Johann Theodor de Bry. He married his daughter, Maria Magdalena 1617. In 1620 they moved back to Basel, only to return three years later to Frankfurt, where Merian took over the publishing house of his father-in-law after de Bry's death in 1623. In 1626 he became a citizen of Frankfurt and could henceforth work as an independent publisher. He is the father of Maria Sibylla Merian, who later published her the famous and wellknown studies of flowers, insects and butterflies.

Historical Description

Wettin is a district of the town of Wettin-Löbejün in the Saalekreis in Saxony-Anhalt. The small town is best known for the Wettin dynasty, which provided margraves, electors and kings in Saxony, Great Britain, Belgium, Bulgaria and Poland. However, the first ancestral seat passed to the Archbishopric of Magdeburg as early as 1288. Not far from the town, coal deposits were discovered in 1382, which were initially mined mainly for the Halloren. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle and town were plundered several times by the Swedes; in addition, two fires destroyed almost the entire town in 1660. From the end of the 17th century, Wettin experienced an economic boom due to its coal deposits, so that a Prussian mining office was established here. In the 19th century, the boom came to a standstill as stone extraction became increasingly expensive. In addition, supplies slowly ran out, and the last mine closed in 1893. Even before that, there had been a large population decline, and industrialization hardly affected Wettin at all.