1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sagan

SAGAN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia, situated on the Bober, a tributary of the Oder, 60 m. S.S.E. of Frankfort-on-Oder and 102 m. S.E. of Berlin by the direct main line of railway to Breslau. Pop. (1905) 14,208. It is still partly surrounded by its old fortifications and has numerous medieval houses. It contains the handsome palace of the dukes of Sagan. Among other buildings are an Evangelical church with a conspicuous steeple and containing the burial vaults of the ducal family, and Augustine and a Jesuit monasterial church, a medieval town-hall with old cloisters attached, a Roman Catholic gymnasium and a large hospital, named after its founder, the duchess Dorothea (1793–1862), wife of Edmund, duke of Talleyrand-Périgord-Dino. The leading industry of the town is cloth-weaving, with wool and flax spinning; there is also some trade in wool and grain.

The mediate principality of Sagan, now forming a portion of the Prussian governmental district of Liegnitz, and formed in 1397 out of a portion of the duchy of Glogau, has several times changed hands by purchase as well as by inheritance. One of its most famous possessors was Wallenstein, who held it for seven years before his death in 1634. Bought by Prince Lobkowitz in 1646, the principality remained in his family until 1787, when it was sold to Peter, duke of Courland, whose descendant, Prince Bozon (b. 1832), son of Napoleon Louis (1811–1898), duke of Talleyrand-Périgord, owned it in 1910. The principality has an area of nearly 500 sq. m. and a population of 65,000.