his time, which is why the historical appearance of the town centre has remained almost unchanged until the present day.
The town became part of the Electorate of Hanover in 1708, the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807, the First French Empire in 1810, the Kingdom of Hanover in 1814, and the Prussian Province of Hanover in 1866.
In the centuries after the collapse of the League, it was as if L�neburg had fallen into a Sleeping Beauty slumber. Heinrich Heine, whose parents lived in L�neburg from 1822 to 1826, called it his "residence of boredom" (Residenz der Langeweile). Near the end of the 19th century L�neburg evolved into a garrison town, and it remained so until the 1990s.
In the L�neburg Special Children's Ward, part of the L�neburg State Mental Hospital, it is suspected that over 300 children were killed during the Second World War as part of the official Nazi child euthanasia programme.
In 1945 L�neburg surfaced once again in the history books when, south of the town on the hill known as the Timeloberg (near the village of Wendisch Evern) the German Instrument of Surrender was signed that brought the Second World War in Europe to an end. The location is presently inaccessible to the general public as it lies within a military out-of-bounds area. Only a small monument on a nearby track alludes to the event. On 23 May 1945 Reichsf�hrer SS Heinrich Himmler took his own life in L�neburg whilst in British Army custody by biting into a potassium cyanide capsule embedded in his teeth before he could be properly interrogated. He was subsequently buried in an unmarked location in a nearby forest.
Even before the Nuremberg Trials took place, the first war crimes trial, the so-called Belsen Trial (Bergen-Belsen-Prozess), began in L�neburg on 17 September 1945 conducted against 45 former SS men, women and kapos (prisoner functionaries) from the Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camps.
After World War II, L�neburg became part
