Arneburg is a town in the district of Stendal

Stendal (district)

Stendal is a district in the north-east of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Neighboring districts are Jerichower Land, Börde, Altmarkkreis Salzwedel, the district Lüchow-Dannenberg in Lower Saxony, and the districts Prignitz, Ostprignitz-Ruppin and Havelland in Brandenburg.- History :In the...

, in Saxony-Anhalt

Saxony-Anhalt

Saxony-Anhalt is a landlocked state of Germany. Its capital is Magdeburg and it is surrounded by the German states of Lower Saxony, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia.Saxony-Anhalt covers an area of...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It is situated on the left bank of the Elbe

Elbe

The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northwestern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia , then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 km northwest of Hamburg...

, approx. 12 km northeast of Stendal

Stendal

Stendal is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is the capital of Stendal District and unofficial capital of the Altmark. Its population in 2001 was 38,900. It is located some west of Berlin and around east of Hanover...

. It is part of the Verbandsgemeinde

Verbandsgemeinde

A Verbandsgemeinde is an administrative unit in the German Bundesländer of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt.-Rhineland-Palatinate:...

("collective municipality") Arneburg-Goldbeck

Arneburg-Goldbeck

Arneburg-Goldbeck is a Verbandsgemeinde in the district of Stendal, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Before 1 January 2010, it was a Verwaltungsgemeinschaft. It is situated on the left bank of the Elbe, north of Stendal...

.

History

The stronghold was founded by Henry the Fowler on the Elbe as a bulwark against the Wends. In the Middle Ages Arneburg was a strategic possession of Brandenburg, whose Elector Frederick II (the "Iron Elector") mortgaged it for "100 good Rhenish gilders" to Hans von Blumenthal

Von Blumenthal

The von Blumenthal family are German nobility from Brandenburg-Prussia. Other, unrelated, families of this name exist in Switzerland and formerly in Russia, and many unrelated families called "Blumenthal" without "von" are to be found worldwide.The family was already noble from earliest times ,...

, who was appointed Vogt of Arneburg, a post which he still held long after 1450, when the Hohenzollerns had repaid the mortgage. Arneburg was an important Hohenzollern possession and indeed the Elector John Cicero died there in 1499. The ruins are now part of a park surrounded by a pretty town.