Meschede

Meschede lies in the Sauerland valleys of Westphalia. A community grew around the religious foundation of St Walburga, which received market and toll rights in 958. Meschede gained the status of a Freiheit, a privileged settlement, in 1457. In 1572 it joined the Hanse through an agreement with Arnsberg, and a town hall was built in 1581. The Thirty Years' War damaged the settlement and St Walburga's church. A clothmakers' guild is documented in the early eighteenth century, while outbreaks of dysentery struck later in the century. The foundation was dissolved during secularisation in 1804. Meschede passed with the Duchy of Westphalia to Hesse-Darmstadt and then to Prussia; in 1819 it became the seat of a district.