Żagań
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Żagań is a town in the west part of Poland. 26,665 people lived there in 2004. It is the main town of part of Poland called Żagań County.
It is now part of the in the Lubusz Voivodship (a Voivoidship is part of the way Poland is organised into areas), before it was in Zielona Gora Voivodship (1975-1998). There is a castle called Sagan in the middle of an area that is also called Sagan. The castle belonged to Wallenstein, a soldier and politician of the Thirty Years' War. Later, the castle belonged to the Bohemian family of Lobkowitz. In 1786, the Sagan area was bought by Peter Biron, duke of Courland. In 1843, it went to his daughter Dorothea, the wife of Edmond de Talleyrand.
An act of the king of Prussia on January 6, 1845 made her Duchess of Sagan. Napoleon III did the same in France, for her son Louis. The double title, both Prussian and French, meant that the duc de Sagan was a neutral party in the Second World War. His house (the Château de Valençay) was a safe place to keep pictures and other things from the Louvre when German soldiers were in France.
In the Second World War, the well-known war prison Stalag Luft III was there.
