Zinna Abbey

The abbey was founded in about 1170 by Wichmann von Seeburg, the Archbishop of Magdeburg, after his troops had conquered the former Slavic territory.

It possibly was meant for preventing the territorial expansion southwards of the Ascanian lords of nearby Luckenwalde, descendants of Albert the Bear.

The monks left a famous psalter, the psalterium novum beatae Mariae, printed in the 1490s, today on display at the Brandenburg State Library in Potsdam.

The area however remained a remote eastern exclave of the Magdeburg archdiocese, pressed by the neighbouring Margraves of Brandenburg and the Dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg.

In 1764, in an effort to bring economic revival to the area, King Frederick II of Prussia established a new village for weavers descending from Upper Lusatia at the site on which some of the monastic buildings had remained.

The success of the economic efforts was quite modest, but there is still a statue to Frederick II erected in celebration of the centenary jubilee in 1864 and re-erected in 1994.