Beeskow

Beeskow lies on the Spree where the long-distance road from Frankfurt on the Oder to Leipzig crossed the river, in the Sorbian borderland of Lower Lusatia. Knights of the Strele family founded the town in the thirteenth century; it was first recorded in 1272 and received Magdeburg town law between 1283 and 1285. The town was laid out under the protection of a castle first mentioned in 1316, and within a few decades it had a leper hospital dedicated to Saint Nicholas outside the Fürstenwalde Gate (recorded from 1375) and, from about 1380, work began on the town church of Saint Mary.

Beeskow belonged to the bishopric of Meissen, with its parish under the patronage of Neuzelle Abbey, and by the fifteenth century it served as a toll station and as the centre of the Beeskow lordship. Duke Swantibor of Pomerania held the lordship near the end of the fourteenth century, and it later passed through several hands, including the Bieberstein family. Fires in 1512 and 1513 destroyed large parts of the town, and in 1518 the bishops of Lebus acquired it. After the Biebersteins died out in 1551, King Ferdinand I of Bohemia enfeoffed the Hohenzollern margraves of Brandenburg with Beeskow and Storkow in 1556, and the lordship was drawn into Brandenburg, though Bohemian overlordship lasted nominally until 1742. Later fires nearly destroyed the town again, and it became a garrison town.