Neuruppin, Germany

The then (Neu-)Ruppin was a planned town foundation of the counts of Lindow-Ruppin, a collateral line of the Arnsteins, who resided in Alt Ruppin. The first documentary mention dates back to 1238. An expansion of the original Marktsiedlung Alt Ruppin, towards the present-day city of Neuruppin, probably took place before the foundation of the Dominican monastery in 1246 as the first settlement of the order between the Elbe and Oder rivers by the first prior Wichmann von Arnstein. The granting of the Stendal town charter took place on March 9, 1256, by Günther von Arnstein. The city was fortified in the 13th century by palisades and a rampart-ditch system, later it was fortified by walls and rampart-ditches; 24 "Wiekhäuser" and two high towers reinforced the city wall. In addition, there were three gates, the Altruppiner/Rheinsberger Tor in the north, the Berliner/Bechliner Tor in the south and the Seetor in the east. The complete walled enclosure occurred at the latest towards the end of the 15th century.

Neuruppin's oldest part was an elongated Anger, accompanied by two parallel streets between the southern and northern city gates, in the south on it the oldest church of Neuruppin (St. Nikolai). The main street of Neuruppin was pavement since the middle of the 16th century. Across Neuruppin, from the northwest toward the lake, ran the Klappgraben, coming from the Ruppiner Mesche, to supply the city with service water and for drainage, which was partially filled in 1537 and renewed as an open canal in Schinkelstraße after the city fire of 1787.

In the Middle Ages, Neuruppin was one of the larger northeastern German cities. Preserved from this period are, among other things, parts of the city wall, parts of the monastery church of St. Trinitatis (1246), St. George's Chapel (1362), the leprosorium (1490) with the St. Lazarus Chapel consecrated in 1491, as well as remains of the lake district. The medieval city had a nearly square ground plan of about 700 m × 700 m, which blunts conspicuously at the eastern corner. The east-southeast side borders on the Ruppiner Lake.

In 1512, to celebrate a peace treaty, Elector Joachim I organized a three-day jousting tournament in Neuruppin. After the extinction of the Counts of Lindow-Ruppin in 1524, Neuruppin came to the Elector Joachim I as a settled fief. The Thirty Years' War also devastated Neuruppin. In the course of the Reformation, the monastery property fell to the elector around 1540. In 1564, he donated the monastery to the city. During this time, a legend depicted in the monastery church about a mouse chasing a rat, which is interpreted as a sign that the church would remain Lutheran in the future.

A Latin school was first documented in Neuruppin in 1365, which at times had supra-regional importance. Its history is well documented since 1477. In 1777 Philipp Julius Lieberkühn and Johann Stuve took over the school administration and reformed the school in the Basedowsche Sense, which received general attention.

In 1688 Neuruppin became one of the first garrison towns in Brandenburg. It was here that Crown Prince Frederick was imprisoned from 1732 to 1740 after his unsuccessful escape attempt and subsequent imprisonment in Küstrin. Holder of the Regiment on Foot Crown Prince. During this time, Bernhard Feldmann city physicist. His transcripts of historically interesting council records are considered the most important collection of sources on early town history, as the original records were destroyed in the town fire of 1787. At times the number of soldiers and civilian troop members was 1500 out of 3500 inhabitants. Neuruppin only lost this status with the withdrawal of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany.

After 1685, French Huguenots settled there. From 1740 the organ builder Gottlieb Scholtze had his workshop in Neuruppin, who among other things built the organ in Rheinsberg.

A break in the development of the town was the wildfire of Sunday, August 26, 1787. The fire broke out in a barn filled with grain at the Bechliner Tor in the afternoon and spread rapidly. Only two narrow areas on the eastern and western edges of the city remained. A total of 401 bourgeois houses, 159 outbuildings and outhouses, 228 stables and 38 barns, the parish church of St. Mary, the town hall, the Reformed church, and the Prince's Palace were destroyed. Property damage was estimated at nearly 600,000 talers. The Fire Fund replaced about 220,000 thalers, a special church collection yielded 60,000 thalers, and the Prussian Government provided 130,000 thalers of funding for the reconstruction of the city. In total, the state spent over one million thalers in the following years.