a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Prussia, on the Schackebach, a tributary of the Little Elster, 28 m. W.S.W. of Cottbus by rail. Pop. (1905) 10,726. The town has a Gothic church (1581), a château, schools, cloth and cigar factories, iron-foundries, flour and saw mills and factories for machine building. The town, which is first mentioned in 1288, came into the possession of electoral Saxony in 1635 and of Prussia in 1815.