PÖSSNECK, a town of Germany, in the duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, 21 m. by rail S. of Jena, on the Kotschau. Pop. (1905), 12,702. It has a Gothic Evangelical church built about 1390, and a Gothic town-hall erected during the succeeding century. Its chief industries are the making of flannel, porcelain, furniture, machines, musical instruments and chocolate. The town has also tanneries, breweries, dyeworks and brick works. Pössneck, which is of Slavonic origin, passed about 1300 to the landgrave of Thuringia. Later it belonged to Saxony and later still to the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, passing to Saxe-Meiningen in 1826.
See E. Koch, Aus Pössnecks Vergangenheit (Pössneck, 1894–1895); the same writer, Beiträge zur urkundlichen Geschichte der Stadt Pössneck (Pössneck, 1896–1900); and the Geschichte der Stadt Pössneck, published by the Pössnecker Zeitung (Pössneck, 1902).