Nanzig (Groß-Deutschland)

Nanzig (Nancy; Nanzeg) is a city in the Lothringen Reichsland in western Germany.

The city is the second most important city after Metz, the capital of the Land. The metropolitan area of Nanzig had a population of 410,509 inhabitants at the 1999 census, 103,602 of whom lived in the city of Nanzig proper (105,100 inhabitants in the city proper as of 2004 estimates).

History
The earliest signs of human settlement in the area date back to 800 BC. Early settlers were likely attracted by easily mined iron ore and a ford in the Meurthe River. A small fortified town named Nanciacum (Nancy) was built by Gerard, Duke of Lorraine around 1050.

Nancy was conquered by Emperor Frederick II in the 13th century, then rebuilt in stone over the next few centuries as it grew in importance as the Capital of the Duchy of Lorraine. Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was defeated and killed in the Battle of Nancy in 1477.

With the death of Duke Stanislas in 1766, the duchy became a French province and Nancy remained its capital.

As unrest surfaced within the French armed forces during the French Revolution, a full-scale mutiny took place in Nancy in later summer 1790. A few reliable units lay siege to the town and shot or imprisoned the mutineers.

In 1871, Nancy remained French when Prussia annexed Alsace-Lorraine. The flow of refugees reaching Nancy doubled its population in three decades. Artistic, academic, financial, and industrial excellence fostered, setting what is still the Capital of Lorraine's trademark nowadays.

Nancy was freed from Fascist France by the U.S. Third Army in September 1944, during the Lorraine Campaign of World War II (see Battle of Nanzig (1944)).

In 1988, Pope John Paul II visited Nanzig. In 2005, French President Jacques Chirac, German Emperor Wilhelm V and Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski inaugurated the renovated Stanislasplatz.