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Copperplate engraving of Hersfeld in 1655 (Matthäus Merian the Younger)
Bad Hersfeld's written history begins with the monk Sturm, who established a monastic settlement in Haerulfisfeld but later evacuated it to Fulda, and with Lullus, who reëstablished the Benedictine Hersfeld Abbey in 769. Both had been missionary bishop Boniface's disciples. The monastery was enlarged between 831 and 850 and Lullus's remains were moved in 852 to another grave in the new basilica. During this ceremony his canonisation was announced by Rabanus Maurus. Since 852, the Lullusfest, the oldest folk festival in Germany, has been celebrated in the week of Saint Lullus's day, 16 October (his day of death). Martin Luther visited the monastery, on his way back from the Diet of Worms in 1521 and held a sermon in the abbey church on 1 May. About two years later, the town and the territory of the abbey was mostly Protestant.
It has been shown, however, through archaeological digs that today's townsite has a considerably longer settlement history, with traces of habitation going back to the New Stone Age about 2000 BC; a Bronze Age grave from about 1200 BC has also been unearthed, as have finds from La Tène times about 400 BC.
The town's landmark, the tower of the Hersfelder Stadtkirche (Town church)
Hersfeld was first mentioned as a market centre in 1142 and as a town in 1170. At this time also came the Hersfeld Abbey's greatest importance in Imperial politics. In the centuries that followed, the Abbey's might ebbed as after the Great Interregnum (1254–1273) it could no longer enjoy the Holy Roman Emperor’s support. Beginning in 1373, the Landgraviate of Hesse acquired influence over the town through defensive alliances. On Vitalisnacht (Saint Vitalis’s night, 27–28 April) 1378, the power struggle between the Abbey and the town reached its high point. Because of the German Peasants' War in 1525, great parts of the town and the Abbey passed to Hesse. In 1606, the last abbot died and in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Imperial Abbey, raised to Electorate, was awarded to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. Hersfeld, now a worldly electorate, henceforth belonged to Hesse-Kassel.
In 1439, great parts of the town were destroyed by fire. The oldest timber-frame house in town is the Küsterhaus (Sexton’s House") from 1452. Abbot Ludwig V (1571–1588) brought the town its last building boom for centuries in which he had the Abbey's buildings expanded and converted in the "Weser Renaissance" style. These can still be seen throughout the Old Town, for instance the former mint and the Schloss Eichhof (palatial castle).
During the Seven Years' War the French army used the former abbey church as a supply and food depot. In 1761, the French burnt the church and the monastery buildings down to destroy their supplies during their retreat, thus destroying one of the largest churches in Germany, and in 1807, the town was almost utterly destroyed by Napoleonic occupation troops, but was spared when it turned out that Baden Lieutenant Colonel Johann Baptist Lingg von Linggenfeld would only carry out Napoleon's orders "literally": he was supposed to set fire to the town on all four sides, and this he did by having four buildings, each standing away from others, set on fire.
Main building of the former barracks in Bad Hersfeld (Hohe Luft). Between 1948 and 1993 it was the McPheeters Barracks of the United States Army.
During the American Revolution King George III of Great Britain hired the Musketeer Regiment Prinz Carl along with other regiments from Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse. The Musketeer Regiment Prinz Carl was stationed both before and after their return from America at Hersfeld.
In 1821, Hersfeld became the seat of Hersfeld district in the Electorate of Hesse. In the same century, Hersfeld was linked to the railway network in 1866, and the town has also had an Autobahn link since 1938 (today Bundesautobahn 7) northwards via Kassel and Hamburg to Scandinavia and southwards via Kirchheim, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria to Austria. The Bundesautobahn 4 coming from Kirchheim links eastwards via Dresden and Görlitz to Poland. The development into a spa town began when the Lullusbrunnen (spring) was tapped in 1904.
In 1935 the barracks was built in the outskirts of Hersfeld (today Hohe Luft), by the Wehrmacht. In 1945, Hersfeld was once again spared utter destruction, when two officers who had been taken prisoner guaranteed the town's peaceful handover.
The United States Army took over the Wehrmacht's barracks. Between 1948 and 1993 it was the McPheeters Barracks. Here served the 3rd Squadron, 14th Armored Cavalry Regiment (1948 until 1972) and 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (1972 until 1993) at the Inner German border. About 800 American soldiers manned the barracks and its three observation posts, designated OP Romeo, OP India and OP Oscar. They also conducted two patrols daily along the border trace. The Americans had no interest in civilians crossing the border. Theirs was a tactical mission to halt possible Warsaw Pact aggression. Bad Hersfeld lies in the Fulda Gap, a historical avenue used for armies of the past. Bad Hersfeld was the northernmost American border garrison and the first line of defense during the days of the Cold War. While small in numbers, the US forces were heavily equipped with a nuclear capability. They were primarily equipped with armored personnel carriers, artillery, and main battle tanks. They were augmented with combat engineers and an anti-aircraft missile site. However, they patrolled the Russian-American Demarcation Line in pairs of jeeps to avoid damage to the roads.
Memorial stone in the former McPheeters Barracks. It was erected in honor of the soldiers who did their military service in Bad Hersfeld.
Beginning in 1949, the town was called Bad Hersfeld, and as of 1963 it became a Hessian State Spa, which was municipalized in 2006. (Bad is German for "bath", and is a title given towns by state governments in recognition of their spa status).
In May 1983, 5,000 people in the town demonstrated against a reunion of soldiers from the Waffen-SS. Among the protest organizers were also the organizers of the Bad Hersfelder Festspiele.
Religion[edit]
The area of the town of Bad Hersfeld today belongs to the Evangelische Kirche von Kurhessen-Waldeck ("Protestant Church of the Electorate of Hesse-Waldeck", member of the Protestant Church in Germany), and the largely coextensive Catholic Bishopric of Fulda.
Besides the two big churches, various communities and free churches can be found in Bad Hersfeld, among them the State Church Community, the Protestant Free Church Community (Baptists), the Seventh Day Adventists and the Free Christian Community (Pentecostal).
Further religious communities in Bad Hersfeld are the New Apostolic Church and the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Amalgamations[edit]
In 1918, Kalkobes was amalgamated and in 1928 so was the area that later became the outlying centre od Johannesberg (Domäne Johannesberg und Bingartes). In 1972, the centres named above under "Constituent communities" were amalgamated. Moreover, the districts of Hersfeld and Rotenburg were merged into one new district, Hersfeld-Rotenburg, and Bad Hersfeld became its seat.
Population development[edit]
In 1525, 400 men lived in the town, and presumably this meant only householders – men with townsman's rights. Before the Thirty Years' War, in 1614, there were 725 households, putting the town's population at this time somewhere between 3,300 and 3,600. The town only reached this figure once again in the mid-18th century. The leftmost chart below shows the sharp drop in the town's population due to the Thirty Years' War.
After the Thirty Years' War, the population figure rose only slowly, falling back in the wake of many wars, disease outbreaks and famines. Only beginning in the mid-19th century, as the town was spreading outside to old town walls and as the textile and machine building industries were growing did the population figure rise sharply. Between 1910 and 1913, it surpassed 10,000 and after the Second World War, sometime between 1946 and 1950, it reached the 20,000 mark. After eleven villages were amalgamated in 1972, the population reached some 27,000, and sometime between 1987 and 1994, the town's population reached 30,000.
Given the population structure and the forecast migration to urban agglomerations, the HA Hessen Agentur GmbH foresees that the district's population will shrink by 6% by 2020. This fall is therefore also foreseen within the same timeframe for the town.
Number of free householders in Bad Hersfeld in the Middle Ages
Population development since the Thirty Years' War
Population development over the last hundred years
