Haldensleben

Haldensleben grew on the Ohre and was recorded in a charter of Otto I in 966. A fortified settlement developed under Henry the Lion, but Archbishop Wichmann of Magdeburg besieged and destroyed it in 1181, damming the river to flood the town. Rebuilding began in 1223, and Magdeburg town law followed in 1224. A Cistercian nunnery was founded nearby at Althaldensleben in 1228. The town's Roland, a mounted figure associated with civic rights, was first recorded in 1419. The Reformation was introduced in 1541. Plague took a heavy toll in 1636 during the Thirty Years' War, and a great fire destroyed sixty houses in 1661.