Lissa, Poland
LISSA, POLAND (Polish Lezno), a town in the Prussian province of Posen, 25m. N.E. from Glogau by rail and at the junction of lines to Breslau, Posen and Landsberg. Pop. (1905) 16,021. The chief buildings are the handsome palace, the medieval town-hall, the four churches and the synagogue. Its manufactures consist chiefly of shoes, machinery, liqueurs and tobacco; it also possesses a large steam flour-mill, and carries on a brisk trade in grain and cattle.
Lissa owes its rise to a number of Moravian Brothers who were banished from Bohemia by the emperor Ferdinand I. in the 16th century and found a refuge in a village on the estate of the Polish family of Leszczynski. Their settlement received municipal rights in 1561. During the Thirty Years' War the population was reinforced by other refugees, and Lissa became an important commercial town and the chief seat of the Moravian Brothers in Poland. Johann Amos Comenius was long rector of the celebrated Moravian school here. In 1656 and 1707 Lissa was burned down.
See Voigt, Aus Lissas erster Bliilezeit (Lissa, 1905), and Sanden, Geschichte der Lissaer Schule (Lissa, 1905).
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
