Freiberg, Saxony

Freiberg is a city in Saxony, Germany, capital of the district Freiberg. Population 45,428 (2001).

The city was founded in 1186, and has been a center of the mining industry in the Ore Mountains for centuries. A symbol of this history is the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, established in 1765 and the oldest university of mining and metallurgy in the world. Freiberg also has a notable cathedral containing a famous Gottfried Silbermann organ.

In 1944 the Flossenburg concentration camp oversaw a subcamp built outside the city of Freiberg. It housed over 500 female survivors of other camps, including Auschwitz Birkenau. Altogether 50 or so SS women worked in this camp until its evacuation in April 1945. The female survivors later reached the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

In 1985 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built the scenic Freiberg Germany Temple here because of the large number of members in the region.

External links

Freiberg, Obermarkt square