Bautzen
[key], city, Saxony, E Germany, on the Spree River. It is an industrial
city, a rail junction, and the center of a kaolin-quarrying region.
Manufactures include vehicles, iron products, electrochemical equipment,
machinery, and textiles. Bautzen was founded in the 10th cent. and was
contested in the 11th and 12th cent. by Poland, Meissen, Brandenburg, and
Bohemia. It eventually passed to Bohemia, was burned (1634) in the Thirty
Years War, and passed (1635) with Lusatia to Saxony. Noteworthy landmarks
include a 13th-century church and numerous 18th-century buildings. In 1813,
Napoleon I defeated a Russo-Prussian army nearby. In 1989 discoveries were
made in the Bautzen prison complex of the largest mass grave of
post–World War II Germany. The remains of more than 17,000 political
prisoners from the Soviet occupation era after 1945 were found at the
site.
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