MEMEL, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Prussia, the most northerly town of the German empire, 91 m. by rail N.E. of Königsberg, at the mouth of the Dange, and on the bank of a sound, called the Memeler Tief, which connects the Kurische Haff with the Baltic. Pop. (1905), 20,687. On the side next the sea the town is defended by a citadel and other fortifications, and the entrance to the harbour is protected by a lighthouse. Memel has been largely rebuilt since a destructive fire in 1854. It possesses iron-foundries, shipbuilding yards, breweries, distilleries, and manufactories of chemicals, soap and amber wares. By far the most important interest of the town, however, is its transit trade in timber and the grain and other agricultural products of Lithuania, and also herrings and other kinds of fish. The timber is brought by river from the forests of Russia, and is prepared for export in numerous saw-mills. The annual value of timber exported is above £1,000,000. A Prussian national memorial was unveiled here in the presence of the emperor William II. in September 1907.
Memel was founded in 1252 by Poppo von Osterna, grand master of the Teutonic order, and was at first called New Dortmund and afterwards Memelburg. It soon acquired a considerable trade, and joined the Hanseatic League. During the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries it was repeatedly burned by its hostile neighbours, the Lithuanians and Poles, and in the 17th century it remained for some time in the possession of Sweden. In 1757, and again in 1813, it was occupied by Russian troops. After the battle of Jena, King Frederick William III. retired to Memel; and here, in 1807, a treaty was concluded between England and Prussia. The poet Simon Dach was a native of Memel.
See J. Sembritzki, Geschichte der königlich preussischen See- und Handelsstadt Memel (Memel, 1900); and Memel in 19 Jahrhundert (Memel, 1902).
MEMEL, or Niemen, a river of Russia and Prussia, rising in
the middle of the Russian government of Minsk at an altitude of
580 ft. and flowing generally west as far as Grodno. Thence it
runs north to Kovno, separating Poland from Russia, and at
Kovno it turns west again, still dividing Poland from Russia,
until it enters the Prussian province of East Prussia, through
which it flows west and north-west past Tilsit for a distance of
70 m. and finally enters the Kurisches Haff by several arms.
Of these, those principally used for navigation are the Russ, and
its chief branch the Atmat. The Russ is connected with the
outlet of the Kurisches Haff at Memel by a canal, while another
canal links the Gilge arm southward with the Pregel. Considerable
quantities of timber are floated down the Memel, and large
amounts of corn shipped down it and its navigable tributary
the Viliya. The lowlands of Tilsit are protected against inundation
by dikes. Total length of the river, 490 m.; area of its
basin, 34,950 sq. m. It is navigable for large vessels as far as
Grodno.
See H. Keller, Memel, Pregel und Weichselstrom (2 vols., Berlin, 1900); and Schickert, Wasserwege und Deichwesen in der Memelniederung (Königsberg, 1901).
MEMLINC, HANS (c. 1430–1494), Flemish painter, whose art gave lustre to Bruges in the period of its political and commercial decline. Though much has been written respecting the rise and fall of the school which made this city famous, it remains a moot question whether that school ever truly existed. Like Rome or
Naples, Bruges absorbed the talents which were formed and developed in humbler centres. Jan Van Eyck first gained repute at Ghent and the Hague before he acquired a domicile elsewhere, and Memlinc, we have reason to think, was a skilled artist
before he settled at Bruges. The annals of the city are silent
as to the birth and education of a painter whose name was inaccurately
spelt by different authors, and whose identity was lost
under the various appellations of Hans and Hausse, or Hemling,
Memling, and Memlinc. But W. H. J. Weale mentions a contemporary
document discovered in 1889, according to which
Memlinc “drew his origin from the ecclesiastical principality of
Mayence,” and died at Bruges on the 11th of August 1494. He
probably served his apprenticeship at Mayence or Cologne, and
later worked under Rogier van der Weyden. He did not come
to Bruges until about 1467, and certainly not as a wounded
fugitive from the field of Nancy, The story is fiction, as is also
the report that he was sheltered and cured by the Hospitallers
at Bruges, and, to show his gratitude, refused payment for a
picture he had painted. Memlinc did indeed paint for the
Hospitallers, but he painted not one but many pictures, and he
did so in 1479 and 1480, being probably known to his patrons of
St John by many masterpieces even before the battle of Nancy.
Memlinc is only connected with military operations in a mediate and distant sense. His name appears on a list of subscribers to the loan .which was raised by Maximilian of Austria to push hostilities against France in the year 1480. In 1477, when he is falsely said to have fallen, and when Charles the Bold was killed, he was under contract to furnish an altarpiece for the gild-chapel of the booksellers of Bruges; and this altarpiece, now preserved, under the name of the “Seven Griefs of Mary,” in the gallery of Turin, is one of the fine creations of his riper age, and not inferior in any way to those of 1479 in the hospital of St John, which for their part are hardly less interesting as illustrative of the master’s power than the “Last Judgment” in the cathedral of Danzig. Critical opinion has been unanimous in assigning the altarpiece of Danzig to Memlinc; and by this it affirms that Memlinc was a resident and a skilled artist at Bruges in 1473; for there is no doubt that the “Last Judgment,” was painted and sold to a merchant at Bruges, who shipped it there on board of a vessel bound to the Mediterranean, which was captured by a Danzig privateer in that very year. But, in order that Memlinc’s repute should be so fair as to make his pictures purchasable, as this had been, by an agent of the Medici at Bruges, it is incumbent on us to acknowledge that he had furnished sufficient proofs before that time of the skill which excited the Wonder of such highly cultivated patrons.
It is characteristic that the oldest allusions to pictures connected with Memlinc’s name are those which point to relations with the Burgundian court. The inventories of Margaret of Austria, drawn up in 1524, allude to a triptych of the “God of Pity” by Rogier van der Weyden, of which the wings containing angels were by “Master Hans.” But this entry is less important as affording testimony in favour of the preservation of Memlinc’s work than as showing his connexion with an older Flemish craftsman. For ages Rogier van der Weyden was acknowledged as an artist of the school of Bruges, until records of undisputed authenticity demonstrated that he was bred at Tournai and settled at Brussels. Nothing seems more natural than the conjunction of his name with that of Memlinc as the author of an altarpiece, since, though Memlinc’s youth remains obscure, it is clear from the style of his manhood that he was taught in the painting-room of Van der Weyden. Nor is it beyond the limits of probability that it was Van der Weyden who received commissions at a distance from Brussels, and first took his pupil to Bruges, where he afterwards dwelt. The clearest evidence of the Connexion of the two masters is that afforded by pictures, particularly an altarpiece, which has alternately been assigned to each of them, and which may possibly be due to their joint labours. In this altarpiece, which is a triptych ordered for a patron of the house of Sforza, we find the style of, Van der Weyden in the central panel of the Crucifixion, and that of Memlinc in the episodes on the wings. Yet the whole piece was assigned to the former in the Zambeccari collection at Bologna, whilst it was attributed to the latter at the Middleton sale in London in 1872. At first, we may think, a closer resemblance might be traced between the two artists than that disclosed in later works of Memlinc, but the delicate organization of the younger painter, perhaps also a milder appreciation of the duties of a Christian artist, may have led Memlinc to realise a sweet and perfect ideal, without losing, on that account, the feeling of his master. He certainly exchanged the asceticism of Van der Weyden for a sentiment of less energetic concentration. He softened his teacher’s asperities and bitter hardness of expression.
