Żagań

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Coat of arms of Żagań
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Coat of arms of Żagań

Żagań is a place in the west part of Poland, which had 26,665 people living there in the year 2004. It is the main city 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 (which is called Sagan) that belonged to Wallenstein, a soldier and politician of the Thirty Years' War then belonged to the Bohemian family of Lobkowitz. In 1786 the Sagan area was bought by Peter Biron, duke of Courland, and then in 1843 went to his daughter Dorothea, the wife of Edmond de Talleyrand, who Żagań when she stopped working. An act of the king of Prussia on January 6, 1845 made her Duchess of Sagan and 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.

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