Schwedt (or Schwedt/Oder; German: [ˈʃveːt] ^ⓘ) is a town in Brandenburg, in northeastern Germany. With the official status of a Große kreisangehörige Stadt (major district town), it is the largest town of the Uckermark district, located near the river Oder, which forms the border with Poland.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (February 2024) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Schwedt/Oder]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|de|Schwedt/Oder}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts Country, State ...

Schwedt
Town
Old town
Coat of arms
Location of Schwedt within Uckermark district
Schwedt Show map of Germany Schwedt Show map of Brandenburg
Coordinates: 53°03′N 14°16′E
Country	Germany
State	Brandenburg
District	Uckermark
Government
• Mayor (2021–29)	Annekathrin Hoppe[1] (SPD)
Area
• Total	360.73 km2 (139.28 sq mi)
Elevation	6 m (20 ft)
Population  (2022-12-31)[2]
• Total	33,495
• Density	93/km2 (240/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
Postal codes	16303
Dialling codes	03332, 033336
Vehicle registration	UM
Website	www.schwedt.eu

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The formerly agrarian town today has one of the largest oil refineries (PCK Raffinerie GmbH) in Germany, established in 1958 and connected to the Russian Druzhba pipeline network.^[3] The refinery uses 20 million cubic meters of water per year for the process.^[4]

A large paper factory (UPM) is located near Schwedt.^[5] Most industries were located in the remote area during communist rule in the 1960s and 1970s.

Large residential areas were built for the workers moving to Schwedt. About 9% of the town's flats are in prefab concrete buildings (Plattenbau) dating from the era. As many jobs were lost after German reunification and the return to market economy, Schwedt has lost a quarter of its population since 1990. In recent decades, Schwedt became a model town for the demolition of Plattenbau housing to combat urban decay.

Schwedt is situated in the east of the historic Uckermark region stretching from the Oder to the Havel River. It is situated on a sandur at the western edge of the Oder floodplain running along the German-Polish border, which in 1995 was declared as the Lower Oder Valley National Park nature reserve. Across the river and the border, about 10 km (6.2 mi) to the southeast, is the Polish town of Chojna. The nearest German towns are Angermünde (about 18 km (11 mi) to the west) and Gartz (18 km (11 mi) down the Oder).

After the Migration Period, the area had been settled by Polabian Slavs. From 937 onwards the lands of the Slavic Ukrani tribes in the west were subdued by the Saxon forces of Margrave Gero and incorporated into his vast Marca Geronis, while the lands east of the Oder were held by Pomeranian tribes under sovereignty of the newly formed Duchy of Poland ruled by Duke Mieszko I. The Saxon Northern March was lost in the Great Slav Rising of 983, and not before 1147 the Saxon count Albert the Bear again invaded the lands on the Oder river, which remained disputed between the newly established Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Pomeranian dukes.

The settlement of Schwedt was first mentioned in a 1265 deed. In the course of the Brandenburg–Pomeranian conflict, the Brandenburg margrave Louis II the Roman ceded it to Duke Barnim III of Pomerania in 1354. It was again besieged by the first Hohenzollern margrave Frederick I in 1434, but to no avail. In 1481 the Thuringian counts of Hohnstein acquired the estates; they granted town privileges to Schwedt as well as to neighbouring Vierraden and introduced the Protestant Reformation.

The rise of Schwedt came to an end with the extinction of the Hohnstein counts in 1609 and the disastrous Thirty Years' War, when the town on the road from Stettin to Berlin was plundered several times. In 1631 King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, after landing in Pomerania, camped here on his way to the Battle of Breitenfeld. Six years later the Swedish field marshal Johan Banér set the town on fire, after its citizens refused to capitulate.

During the Great Northern War, the Treaty of Schwedt was signed in the town.

From 1815 to 1945, Schwedt was part of the Prussian Province of Brandenburg.

Near the end of World War II, over two months of heavy fighting destroyed an estimated 85 percent of the town, including the Schwedt Castle. The Soviet Army occupied Schwedt on April 26, 1945, two weeks before the final defeat of Nazi Germany.^[7] From 1945 to 1952, Schwedt was part of the state of Brandenburg and from 1952 to 1990 of the Bezirk Frankfurt of East Germany. During the 1960s, the government of the DDR expanded housing and encouraged people to move to Schwedt, a trend that ended with German reunification. Since 1990, Schwedt is again part of the State of Brandenburg.

• Development of population since 1875 within the current Boundaries (Blue Line: Population; Dotted Line: Comparison to Population development in Brandenburg state; Grey Background: Time of Nazi Germany; Red Background: Time of communist East Germany)
• Recent Population Development and Projections (Population Development before Census 2011 (blue line); Recent Population Development according to the Census in Germany in 2011 (blue bordered line); Official projections for 2005–2030 (yellow line); for 2017–2030 (scarlet line); for 2020–2030 (green line)

Schwedt is twinned with:^[9]

• Heinrich Schmelka (1777–1837), stage actor
• Leonhardt von Blumenthal (1810–1900), Prussian Field Marshal
• Karl von Schmidt (1817–1875), Prussian cavalry commander
• Paul von Hintze (1864–1941), naval officer, diplomat and politician
• Max Lemke (1895–1985), officer, Major-General last in World War II
• Heinz von Cleve (1897–1984), actor
• Horst Wendlandt (1922–2002), film producer
• Jörg Hoffmann (born 1970), freestyle swimmer
• Britta Steffen (born 1983), freestyle swimmer