Stettin

Stettin (Polish Szczecin) rises on the western bank of the Oder at the northernmost crossing of the river, below the castle of the dukes of Pomerania of the House of Griffin. The merchants' town grew at the foot of the castle hill, with the church of Saint Nicholas and the old town hall standing close together between the Hay Market and the New Market, and the Gothic church of Saint James rising in the middle of the old town. In 1283 the city belonged to the Wendish league of towns that preceded the Hanseatic League, and its herring, grain and timber trade over the Baltic supported more than forty guilds.

The dukes granted the city broad autonomy, and under Magdeburg law Barnim I admitted Jews in 1261, a privilege renewed in 1308 and 1371. In 1451 and 1464 the plague raged. In the late fifteenth century the dukes took Stettin back as their principal residence, which reduced the town's freedoms, and in 1492 the dukes ordered every Jew in the duchy to convert or leave. Craft guilds and German merchants increasingly shut out Slavic townspeople with bans on guild membership and doubled customs dues.

After the Reformation the first secular school of Pomerania, the Pädagogium, was founded here, and in 1570 the Congress of Stettin ended the Northern Seven Years' War. Duke John Frederick rebuilt the castle as a Renaissance residence and made Stettin one of three places allowed to coin money in the Upper Saxon Circle. Bogislaw XIV, the last Griffin duke, died here in 1637. The Swedes held Stettin from 1630 to 1720 as the seat of their provincial government and a great fortress, which Brandenburg took in 1677 but had to return, until Prussia acquired it. The French took the fortress without a fight in 1806 and held it until 1813.