Jever

Jever stands on a sandy rise projecting into the marshes of the Frisian coast. Its inhabitants were already described as townspeople in 1347, and around 1400 the town maintained close trading links with the seafarers known as the Victual Brothers. Edo Wiemken the Younger, the last chieftain of Jeverland, completed its castle in 1505. His daughter Maria restored Jever's independence from East Frisian rule and granted the town city rights in 1536. After her death in 1575, Jever passed to Oldenburg and later to Anhalt-Zerbst. Its unusual inheritance brought it under the Russian crown in the late eighteenth century; following the Napoleonic occupation, Russia ceded it to Oldenburg in 1818.