Spandau Citadel, built in 1594, the 1848 St. Marien am Behnitz Catholic church designed by August Soller, and Spandau arsenal, Germany's arms development center until 1919, now a museum. That arsenal's Spandau machine gun inspired the slang "Spandau Ballet" to describe dying soldiers on barbed wire during the First World War, and later was applied to the appearance of Nazi war criminals hanged at Spandau Prison. The notorious prison, built in 1876, held Nazi war criminals after World War II until 1987, when it was demolished after the death of the last surviving prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In 1979, the English New
Spandau (locality) the Swedes in 1634. In 1806, after the Battle of Jena and Auerstedt, French troops under Napoleon took possession of the city and stayed there until 1807. In 1812, Napoleon returned and the Spandau Citadel was besieged in 1813 by Prussian and Russian troops. The poet and revolutionary Gottfried Kinkel was an inmate of the Spandau town prison from 1849, until he was freed by his friend Carl Schurz on the night of November 6, 1850. Before World War I, Spandau was a seat of large, government, cannon foundries, factories for making gunpowder, and other munitions of war making, it