Demmin

Demmin is a town in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in northeastern Germany, at the confluence of the Peene, Tollense and Trebel rivers, an area promoted for tourism as the Three Streams Land. Originally a Slavic settlement, it became capital of the small Duchy of Pomerania-Demmin in 1160 and was fought over repeatedly in the following centuries, captured by Henry the Lion in 1164 and taken by King Valdemar II of Denmark in 1211. When Soviet forces reached the town on April 30, 1945, the violence and destruction that followed triggered a mass suicide of hundreds of residents and left much of the old town burned.