BREISACH

in full Breisach Am Rhein, city, Baden-Wrttemberg Land (state), southwestern Germany, on the right bank of the Rhine opposite Neuf-Brisach, Fr. As ancient Brisiacum, it was a stronghold of the Celtic Sequani. Captured in the time of Julius Caesar, it became known as Mons Brisiacus. Fortified by the emperor Valentinian in 369, it remained one of the chief Rhine bulwarks of medieval Germany and gave its name to the Breisgau district. Taken by the German king Otto I in 939, it fell to the bishops of Basel in 1254 and 1262. Made an imperial city in 1275, it was held by the Habsburgs after 1331. It fell to the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War (1638), to the French in 1648, and was restored to Austria in 1697. It was incorporated into Baden by the Treaty of Pressburg (1805), and its fortifications were razed. Although devastated in World War II, it has been rebuilt in the original style. Two medieval gates and the Romanesque-Gothic Cathedral of St. Stephan (11th and 15th centuries) escaped destruction. Breisach trades in wines, agricultural produce, textiles, electrical goods, and paper. Pop. (1989 est.) 10,121.