Neustadt-Glewe was mentioned for the first time in a document in 1248. Neustadt-Glewe was the site of a Nazi concentration camp (1944–1945) "KZ Neustadt-Glewe". Among its prisoners was Stanisława Rachwał, a Polish resistance fighter transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hans Axel Holm, a Swedish writer and journalist, documented life in Neustadt-Glewe in the late 1960s when it was part of the
German Democratic Republic. In his book
The Other Germans: Report From an East German Town, Holm documented various aspects of everyday life in the GDR, such as being an adult who worked at a
VEB (industrial state-owned enterprise) or at an
LPG (collective farm); being a child or teen going to school and participating in the
FDJ (youth organization); being a soldier in the
NVA (army); the GDR's relationship with the Soviets, including tensions within the
Eastern Bloc and
the threat of Soviet interventions; recreation; housing; socialist ideology and administration; the Nazi era and its consequences; interaction with West Germans, including the themes of who left the East, who stayed, and who came to the East; and other topics. LPG farming was big business in the
Ludwigslust-Parchim region at the time, and the factories in the area included a large tannery (VEB Lederwerk "August Apfelbaum", which had formerly been a large plant of Adler and Oppenheimer), a hydraulic parts factory (for VEB Hydraulik Nord), and a factory for radio parts and telephone switchboard parts (for VEB Funkmechanik). ==Sights and monuments==