Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Gardelegen

GARDELEGEN (formerly Gardeleben and Gardleben), the chief town of a circle in the government district of Magdeburg, Prussian Saxony, is situated on the right bank of the Milde, 28 miles N.N.W. of Magdeburg The inhabitants are employed in agriculture, linen and woollen manufacture, button-making, calico-printing, and brewing. The chief buildings are the hospital founded in 1285, and the higher borough school. The population in 1875 was 6389.

Gardelegen is a place of great antiquity. In 633 it was destroyed by Dervan, duke of the Wends, but it was rebuilt in 924 by King Henry I. For a long time it was the seat of a line of margrave princes. It remained a free town until 1478. It suffered considerably in the Thirty Years’ War, and in 1775 it was burned by the French. On the neighbouring heath Margrave Louis I. gained in 1343 a victory over Otto the Wild of Brunswick.