Among the other industries of Halle are sugar refining, machine building, the manufacture of spirits, malt, chocolate, cocoa, confectionery, cement, paper, chicory, lubricating and illuminating oil, wagon grease, carriages and playing cards, printing, dyeing and coal mining (soft brown coal). The trade, which is supervised by a chamber of commerce, is very considerable, the principal exports being machinery, raw sugar and petroleum. Halle is also noted as the seat of several important publishing firms. The Bibelanstalt (Bible institution) of von Castein is the central authority for the revision of Luther’s Bible, of which it sells annually from 60,000 to 70,000 copies.
Halle is first mentioned as a fortress erected on the Saale in 806 by Charles, son of Charlemagne, during his expedition against the Sorbs. The place was, however, known long before, and owes its origin as well as its name to the salt springs (Halis). In 968 Halle, with the valuable salt works, was given by the emperor Otto I. to the newly founded archdiocese of Magdeburg, and in 981 Otto II. gave it a charter as a town. The interests of the archbishop were watched over by a Vogt (advocatus) and a burgrave, and from the first there were separate jurisdictions for the Halloren and the German settlers in the town, the former being under that of the Salzgraf (comes salis), the latter of a Schultheiss or bailiff, both subordinate to the burgrave. The conflict of interests and jurisdictions led to the usual internecine strife during the middle ages. The panners (Pfänner) of the Tal, feudatories or officials, became a close hereditary aristocracy in perpetual rivalry with the gilds in the town; and both resisted the pretensions of the archbishops. At the beginning of the 12th century Halle had attained considerable importance, and in the 13th and 14th centuries as a member of the Hanseatic League it carried on successful wars with the archbishops of Magdeburg; and in 1435 it resisted an army of 30,000 men under the elector of Saxony. Its liberty perished, however, as a result of the internal feud between the democratic gilds and the patrician panners. On the 20th of September 1478 a demagogue and cobbler named Jakob Weissak, a member of the town council, with his confederates opened the gates to the soldiers of the archbishop. The townsmen were subdued, and to hold them in check the archbishop, Ernest of Saxony, built the castle of Moritzburg. Notwithstanding the efforts of the archbishops of Mainz and Magdeburg, the Reformation found an entrance into the city in 1522; and in 1541 a Lutheran superintendent was appointed. After the peace of Westphalia in 1648 the city came into the possession of the house of Brandenburg. In 1806 it was stormed and taken by the French, after which, at the peace of Tilsit, it was united to the new kingdom of Westphalia. After the battle between the Prussians and French, in May 1813, it was taken by the Prussians. The rise of Leipzig was for a long time hurtful to the prosperity of Halle, and its present rapid increase in population and trade is principally due to its position as the centre of a network of railways.
See Dreyhaupt, Ausführliche Beschreibung des Saalkreises (Halle, 2 vols., 1755; 3rd edition, 1842-1844); Hoffbauer, Geschichte der Universität zu Halle (1806); Halle in Vorzeit und Gegenwart (1851); Knauth, Kurze Geschichte und Beschreibung der Stadt Halle (3rd ed., 1861); vom Hagen, Die Stadt Halle (1866-1867); Hertzberg, Geschichte der Vereinigung der Universitäten von Wittenberg und Halle (1867); Voss, Zur Geschichte der Autonomie der Stadt Halle (1874); Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität zu Halle (Berlin, 1894); Karl Hegel, Städte und Gilden der germanischen Völker (Leipzig, 1891), ii. 444-449.
HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE (1790-1867), American poet, was born at Guilford, Connecticut, on the 8th of July 1790. By his mother he was descended from John Eliot, the “Apostle to the Indians.” At an early age he became clerk in a store at Guilford, and in 1811 he entered a banking-house in New York. Having made the acquaintance of Joseph Rodman Drake, in 1819 he assisted him under the signature of “Croaker junior” in contributing to the New York Evening Post the humorous series of “Croaker Papers.” In 1821 he published his longest poem, Fanny, a satire on local politics and fashions in the measure of Byron’s Don Juan. He visited Europe in 1822-1823, and after his return published anonymously in 1827 Alnwick Castle, with other Poems. From 1832 to 1841 he was confidential agent of John Jacob Astor, who named him one of the trustees of the Astor library. In 1864 he published in the New York Ledger a poem of 300 lines entitled “Young America.” He died at Guilford, on the 19th of November 1867. The poems of Halleck are written with great care and finish, and manifest the possession of a fine sense of harmony and of genial and elevated sentiments.
His Life and Letters, by James Grant Wilson, appeared in 1869. His Poetical Writings, together with extracts from those of Joseph Rodman Drake, were edited by Wilson in the same year.
HALLECK, HENRY WAGER (1815-1872), American general and jurist, was born at Westernville, Oneida county, N.Y., in 1815, entered the West Point military academy at the age of twenty, and on graduating in 1839 was appointed to the engineers, becoming at the same time assistant professor of engineering at the academy. In the following year he was made an assistant to the Board of Engineers at Washington, from 1841 to 1846 he was employed on the defence works at New York, and in 1845 he was sent by the government to visit the principal military establishments of Europe. After his return, Halleck delivered a course of lectures on the science of war, published in 1846 under the title Elements of Military Art and Science. A later edition of this work was widely used as a text-book by volunteer officers during the Civil War. On the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846, he served with the expedition to California and the Pacific coast, in which he distinguished himself not only as an engineer, but by his skill in civil administration and by his good conduct before the enemy. He served for several years in California as a staff officer, and as secretary of state under the military government, and in 1849 he helped to frame the state constitution of California, on its being admitted into the Union. In 1852 he was appointed inspector and engineer of lighthouses, and in 1853 was employed in the fortification of the Pacific coast. In 1854 Captain Halleck resigned his commission and took up the practice of law with great success. He was also director of a quicksilver mine, and in 1855 he became president of the Pacific & Atlantic railway. On the outbreak of the Civil War he returned to the army as a major-general, and in November 1861 he was charged with the supreme command in the western theatre of war. There can be no question that his administrative skill was mainly instrumental in bringing order out of chaos in the hurried formation of large volunteer armies in 1861, but the strategical and tactical successes of the following spring were due rather to the skill and activity of his subordinate generals Grant, Buell and Pope, than to the plans of the supreme commander, and when he assumed command of the united forces of these three generals before Corinth, the methodical slowness of his advance aroused much criticism. In July, however, he was called to Washington as general-in-chief of the armies. At headquarters his administrative powers were conspicuous, but he proved to be utterly wanting in any large grasp of the military problem; the successive reverses of Generals McClellan, Pope, Burnside and Hooker in Virginia were not infrequently traceable to the defects of the general-in-chief. No co-ordination of the military efforts of the Union was seriously undertaken by Halleck, and eventually in March 1864 Grant was appointed to replace him, Major-General Halleck becoming chief of staff at Washington. This post he occupied with credit until the end of the war. In April 1865 he held the command of the military division of the James and in August of the same year of the military division of the Pacific, which he retained till June 1869, when he was transferred to that of the South, a position he held till his death at Louisville, Ky., on the 9th of January 1872. Halleck’s position as a soldier is easily defined by bis uniform success as an administrative official, his equally uniform want of success as an officer at the head of large armies in the field, and the popularity of his theoretical writings on war. His influence, for good or evil, on the course of the greatest war of modern times was greater than that of any soldier on either side save Grant and Lee, and whilst his interference with the dispositions of the commanders in the field was often disastrous, his services in organizing and instructing the Union forces were always of the highest value, and in this respect he was indispensable.
Besides Military Art and Science, Halleck wrote Bitumen, its Varieties, Properties and Uses (1841); The Mining Laws of Spain and Mexico (1859); International Law (1861; new edition, 1908); and Treatise on International Law and the Laws of War, prepared for the use of Schools and Colleges, abridged from the larger work. He translated Jomini’s Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon (1864) and de Fooz On the Law of Mines (1860). The works on international law mentioned above entitle General Halleck to be considered as one of the great jurists of the 19th century.