Stendal

Stendal was founded as a market town around 1160 by Albert the Bear, margrave of Brandenburg, who granted it Magdeburg town law. It grew into a commercial centre of the Altmark. Walls were built around 1300, a Latin school is documented in 1338, and its merchants belonged to the Hanseatic League from 1358. The town acquired minting rights from the margraves in 1369.

Churches, the town hall and surviving gates reflect its medieval prosperity. Stendal adopted the Reformation in 1539, with Konrad Cordatus as superintendent. In the late seventeenth century religious refugees from Waldensian communities, the Palatinate and Switzerland settled there; after the Napoleonic Wars the Altmark became part of Prussia's Province of Saxony.