History of the city of Bad Hersfeld

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The history of the city of Bad Hersfeld is closely linked to the history of the Hersfeld Abbey , which has existed since the eighth century.

Numerous historical forms of name are documented, e.g. B. Haerulfisfelt (775), Hariulfisfelt (779), Erulvisfeld (780), Harulfisfelt (782), Herocampia and Herolfesfeld in pago Hassiae (968), Herosfeld (1099), Herveld (1107), Herschfeld and Hersfeld (1134) or Hirschfeld (1617).

Old town of Bad Hersfeld

prehistory

During excavations there were finds from the Latène period around 400 BC. Under the westwork of the collegiate church and at the church gate.

Early middle ages

Between 736 and 743 the monk Sturmius , who came from Bavaria , came to Haerulfisfelt (Hersfeld). According to the tradition of Abbot Eigil in the Vita Sturmi , he built a bark-covered church on Frauenberg. According to the Vita Sturmi , there was already an abandoned settlement here that is said to have belonged to a man named Haerulf. This resulted in the place name Haerulfisfelt ("Field of Haerulf"). Sturmius came to Haerulfisfeld in the wilderness of Buchonia (the name of an old district that covered the landscape of the central and eastern Vogelsberg until the 10th century ) to serve God here, after serving as a priest and convert to the heathen for three years under Abbot Wigbert Surrounding Fritzlar had worked. In 744, due to the proximity of the Saxon border, on the instructions of Bonifatius , Sturmius moved further into the interior of Buchonia and founded the Fulda monastery . It is not known whether the hermitage ( cella ) continued until the monastery was founded.

In 754 Lullus (Lul) became the successor of Bonifatius on the bishop's see in Mainz . A dispute arose between him and Sturmius over the privileges of the Fulda Monastery, which was directly subordinate to the Pope and not to the Bishop of Mainz. In 772, Emperor Charlemagne subjugated the Saxons. Therefore Lullus founded a Benedictine monastery in Hersfeld between 769 and 773 because of the proximity to the Saxony border and for reasons of competition with Fulda ( Trutzfulda ) . At the Diet of Quierzy (near Soissons ) in 775, Charlemagne took the monastery under his protection. It was thus an imperial abbey ( abbatia regalis ) and was given exceptional privileges, including the free election of abbots by the monks and the exemption from any episcopal and countess power. From a secular point of view, the monastery was subordinate to the king, and the position of the Hersfeld abbot as imperial prince was emerging. Spiritually, the monastery was directly subordinate to the Pope. The monastery quickly became a rich and powerful factor in eastern Hesse and western Thuringia thanks to gifts from Charlemagne (land holdings, localities, tithe levies, churches and other things). According to the Breviarium Lulli , a tithe list of the monastery made around 810 , it owned around 60,000 acres of land in Carolingian times, spread over 193 localities, of which 132 localities with about 3/4 of the entire property were in Thuringia.

In 780 Lullus had the remains of Saint Wigbert , the first abbot of Fritzlar, transferred to Hersfeld. This made the monastery a place of pilgrimage. On July 28, 782, Charlemagne visited the Hersfeld Abbey. Four years later, on October 16, 786, Lullus died. He and Witta , the first and only bishop of Büraburg , were buried in the monastery church. Witta's sarcophagus, with a stone pillow, can still be seen in the monastery ruins. The grave of Lullus no longer exists.

The monastery church was not accessible to settlers who did not belong to the monastery, as it was located in the monks' enclosure. A small Frauenkirche was therefore built above the monastery around 800 . She was consecrated to Our Lady (Our Lady); hence the Frauenberg got its name. In 820 Emperor Ludwig the Pious took the Hersfeld Abbey under his protection and confirmed the donations made by his father Karl.

Construction of a basilica began in 831 and completed in 850. The transfer of the bones of St. Lullus to this new collegiate church in 852 gave rise to the Lullus Festival, which is still celebrated today. The market square, previously called Ebenheit, was laid out as a refuge in 915, at the time of the first Hungarian invasions . Around 1000 a monastery on the Petersberg was consecrated to St. Peter . By a papal decree of 966, which came about through the influence of Emperor Otto I , the abbey was placed directly under the papal chair. This meant the end of the Mainz influence in Hersfeld. In 1058 the monk Lambert, later known as Lampert von Hersfeld (an important historian of the Middle Ages), entered the monastery and ran the monastery school. It is believed that he wrote the Vita Lulli (biography of Lullus) between 1063 and 1073.

High Middle Ages

One of the north school ponds (remains of the former city moat), behind it the remains of the city wall with a perfort (a square tower stump on which a half-timbered structure was later placed)

Asbach was first mentioned in a document around 1070 in the Vita Lulli . Between 1073 and 1074, Emperor Heinrich IV gathered his army near Hersfeld to face the uprising of the Saxons and Thuringians. In 1074 his son Konrad was born in Hersfeld. Around 1100 a larger Frauenkirche was built on the Frauenberg , which later became a hermitage of the Beguines .

Due to the location of the city at the intersection of some old streets , such as the Via Regia or Geleit- and Heerstraße through the short Hessen , which crossed the Fulda and Haune on bridges, Hersfeld was first mentioned as a market place in 1142. This also favored the further development of the settlement. Hersfeld is first mentioned as a city (civitas, i.e. city with wall, moat and market rights) in 1170. On April 4, 1182 Abbot Siegfried installed the first mayor ("scultetus") named Beringerus.

From 1249 to 1252 the city was recognized as an imperial city ​​by the anti-king Wilhelm of Holland . During this time, Flemings also immigrated here . The street name Vlämenweg still reminds of this today. Flemings brought with them the technology of woolen cloth making and cloth dyeing. In the following century, the wool weavers were one of the leading guilds in the city. This created the basis for the flourishing textile industry in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Late Middle Ages

Town hall of Bad Hersfeld

From around 1230 the city began to be expanded and the city walls were laid. Work on the new city wall, the moat and the front of it moat wall lasted about one hundred years. The course of the fortifications can still be seen today in the street layout as well as in the cityscape. The city now had four gates, which were named after the nearest church buildings. They were called Peterstor (southeast), Johannistor (southwest), Frauentor (north) and Klaustor (northeast). From the Peterstor one came over the old Fulda and Haunebrücke to the Propstei Petersberg. Over the bridges, the Altstrasse also led "through the short Hessen" over the suburb to the Peterstor and on the "Breite Strasse" in the city. From the Johannistor one came to the Johannesberg provost, from the Frauentor one came to the first parish church of the city on the Frauenberg and from the Klaustor one came to the Klauskirche (a church in the open field on the bank of the Fulda).

In 1255 the city joined the Rhenish Association of Cities . The first documentary mentions of the places Heenes ("villa Heynes") in 1322, Allmershausen in 1331, Beiershausen ("Beigershusen") in 1332 and Kathus ("Katens") in 1340 were made in short intervals the city from the abbey showed itself in 1323 through the inauguration of the Gothic choir of the city ​​church and in 1344 through the purchase of the hospital at Johannestor with the hospital church from the abbey. In 1356 there was the first great plague epidemic , in which 3,000 inhabitants of the city were killed. There were further epidemics in 1410, 1470 and 1486. ​​In 1362 Kohlhausen ("Collhusen") was mentioned for the first time in a document and from 1371 there are first documents about the city's Gothic town hall . It was expanded in the 16th century and redesigned in the Weser Renaissance style in the 17th century . An alliance between the city and the Hessian landgrave was concluded on January 28, 1373, and renewed in 1414 and 1430. In it, the Landgrave committed himself to support the city in feuds .

Vitaliskreuz in Bad Hersfeld

On April 28, 1378, the Hersfelders wanted to elect a new mayor . As a result, the abbot lost direct control of the city. To prevent this, the acting abbot was Berthold II. Of Völkershausen in Vitali night of allied knights with the city. However, the knight Simon von Haune warned the city beforehand and the attack could be repulsed. While climbing the city wall, the knight Eberhard von Engern, a leader of the Sternerbund, was fatally hit by a crossbow shot. His perforated balaclava hung on the town hall for a long time; today it is exhibited in the Bad Hersfeld City Museum. At the place where the Sterner wanted to climb over the city walls, the Hersfelders set up the Vitaliskreuz. Next to the year, on the base of the cross, there is: "ISTIC HERSFELDIS FRUT TRADITA POST VITALIS" (Here Hersfeld was betrayed on Vitalsnacht). The citizens also vowed to hold a procession in honor of St. Vitalis every year in gratitude for the thwarted attack . This strained the relationship between the city and the abbey every year.

In the following years there were further disputes between the city or the allied Hessian landgrave and the abbot. These disputes were mostly to the detriment of the abbot and the monastery, and the abbey lost influence and property. In 1432 Abbot Albrecht von Buchenau signed an inheritance protection contract with Landgrave Hermann, which was renewed in 1458 and 1490. Since then, the principality of Hersfeld has been considered a state belonging to Hesse .

reformation

In 1518 a healing well was mentioned for the first time in Hersfeld. The Reformation began in Hersfeld in 1520 with the pastor Heinrich Fuchs . Fuchs and from 1523 his chaplain Melchior Ringk preached in the town church that no one could earn heaven through their own works. On the way back from the Reichstag in Worms , Martin Luther preached in 1521 at the invitation of the Hersfeld abbot Crato I in the collegiate church. Pastor Fuchs married under the impression of personal encounter. Abbot Crato then expelled Pastor Fuchs and his chaplain from the city. On December 17, 1523, the house of the monastery chancellor and some houses in the monastery district of Hersfeldern were looted because of the expulsion and after sermons by Fuchs and Ringk. Fuchs and Ringk were captured on the orders of the Landgrave. However, they were freed from Hersfeld and brought across the Hessian border. The escape of the two was not investigated further. In 1524 Magister Adam Krafft , who preached in Fulda in the Lutheran sense, was expelled from Fulda and accepted into Hersfeld. He became the real reformer of Hersfeld. In addition to Martin Bucer , Krafft is considered the reformer of the Landgraviate of Hesse.

Led by Mayor Ottensaß, the citizens of Hersfeld went over to the rebels in the Peasants' War of 1525. They stormed the monastery district and looted the abbot's apartment. The abbot retired to Eichhof Palace . Landgrave Philipp von Hessen threw down the uprising and had himself paid for with the suzerainty over parts of Hersfeld and some administrative districts. After the prostration, Landgrave Philipp heard Magister Adam Krafft preach and appointed him his court preacher. Then Balthasar Raid, like Adam Krafft from Fulda, came to Hersfeld as the first Protestant preacher. The replica of his house, built in 1563, is on Untere Frauenstrasse.

During this time of the Reformation, Sorga was first mentioned in 1526.

Modern times

Copper engraving by Hersfeld around 1600 by Matthäus Merian, who had a pen drawing by Wilhelm Dilich as a template.

In 1570 Abbot Michael founded the grammar school in the abandoned Franciscan monastery . After the death of the last abbot Joachim Roell in 1606, who was already appointed by Landgrave Moritz von Hessen-Kassel , he appointed his son Otto as administrator. However, Otto died at the age of 22 on August 7, 1617 in Hersfeld from a gunshot wound. His successor was the later Landgrave Wilhelm V. In 1608, Landgrave Moritz, according to his Calvinist belief, had the images removed from the town church . From 1609 the Calvinist rite was also practiced instead of the Lutheran in Hersfeld. In 1611 there was a plague epidemic in Hersfeld, in which 181 residents died.

The oldest city ​​vedute of Hersfeld, which was painted in oil. Painted by Conrad Schnuphase in 1696

During the Thirty Years' War , the imperial general Count Tilly had his headquarters in the city from 1623 to 1625 . There were monks again in the monastery, and from 1629 to 1631 Catholic services were again held in the town church. Emperor Ferdinand II entrusted his son Leopold Wilhelm of Austria with the office of Commendatar abbot of the imperial abbey with the aim of recatholicization . Landgrave Wilhelm V. Hersfeld recaptured in 1631 . But since he the Peace of Prague declined in 1635, the emperor imposed on him the imperial ban and continue to deny him the possession of Hersfeld.

The landgrave only received legal security in 1648 when, after the end of the war, the abbey became a secular principality and was replaced by Emperor Ferdinand III. von Habsburg was awarded as an imperial fiefdom to the House of Hessen-Kassel. The peace treaty to Munster and Osnabrück regulated this in the 15th article, § 2. The Landgraves of Hessen-Kassel had since then, as princes of Hersfeld, an additional vote in the Reichstag .

In the former Franciscan monastery, a new building for the grammar school was built between 1688 and 1689. It still stands today above the foundation walls of the southern wing of the monastery area . These foundation walls have a slightly different floor plan than the newer building above. Two vaulted cellars there are therefore still attributed to the monastery building. Until 1906, this new building was the only school building in the "Old Monastery School", as it was called for a long time. The building has been used as a school building to the present day ( Konrad Duden School). Conrad Mel came to this school in 1705 as "Inspector of the Churches of the Principality" and Rector of this school in Hersfeld. In 1709 he founded the orphanage. In the field of natural science, he invented a self-cultivating plow and initiated the cultivation of the potato in the Hersfeld region.

At the end of 1760, the slender top of the steeple was destroyed by lightning. Renewal was not possible during the Seven Years' War . The tower was therefore provided with a truncated temporary roof, which is still the top of the tower today. This unusual roof shape may have contributed to the fact that the church tower is the city's landmark today .

Tower of the Hersfeld town church

During the Seven Years' War , French troops under Marshal Victor-François de Broglie occupied Hersfeld. He used the premises of the no longer used monastery buildings and the collegiate church as a store of food and supplies. When troops under Duke Ferdinand von Braunschweig , who were allied with Prussia, advanced quickly against Hersfeld in 1761 , the French could no longer hold their position in the city. To prevent the supplies from falling into the hands of the enemy, they were set on fire. On February 19, 1761, the collegiate church and surrounding abbey buildings burned down . The tower over the crossing with the copper-gilded hand, which allegedly still came from Charlemagne, and the roof of the church collapsed, among other things due to flour dust explosions. Half a year later, flames broke out of the mountains of rubble. Only the east wing of the Romanesque cloister quarter has been preserved. This is where the museum is now housed.

In 1798, the landgrave bought the colorful windows from the town church from the town. He used it for the Löwenburg in the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel .

Fourth coalition war in Hersfeld

Monument to Lingg von Linggenfeld in Bad Hersfeld

In the fourth coalition war , Hersfeld was again occupied by French troops. A company of the first Italian light infantry regiment (part of the coalition arms of Napoleon ) under Captain Guillien moved into Hersfeld on December 24, 1806 . The next day they were to march on to Kassel and then on to the front in Poland . Many of the company's soldiers (around 160 men) were billeted in private households. According to the parish register of the town church , there was a dispute between the cloth maker Pforr in the Wallengasse and the sergeant major Martinelli over the night camp. Martinelli drew his sword and a fight broke out. Because of the noise in the house, other Italian soldiers who were just outside the house came to the aid of the sergeant major. Thereupon Pforr ran to a window and shouted "Bürgerrecht". The crowd in front of the house and on the streets grew and rumors were circulating about the dismissed Kurhessian soldiers who were still in the city. So the situation got out of hand. Many citizens armed themselves with "axes, scythes, poles and the like murder rifle" and attacked the Italians who were on the streets. Shots were fired, an Italian soldier was killed and a captain was injured. The others were disarmed and taken prisoner.

It was only when the situation subsequently calmed down that the citizens became aware of the situation they had gotten into as a result of the riot. Elector Wilhelm I had already been deposed by Napoléon at this point, so Mayor Johann Michael Gesing asked the French Governor General in Kassel for mercy for the city. Hersfeld first had to pay billing costs for the advancing Baden troops and a reparation payment (e.g. 5000 pairs of shoes, 1000 soldiers' coats and 5000 thalers).

Napoléon decided to plunder the city anyway and set fire to all four corners. The Baden lieutenant colonel Johann Baptist Lingg was commissioned with the execution . On February 20, 1807, with the tacit tolerance of his French superiors, he only carried out the order verbatim. Only four separate houses were set on fire. There was a hay and straw magazine on the monastery, a boarded drill house next to the brewery on the market, a small building near the Braun cloth factory and the special hospital on the Fulda bridge. Thus Lingg saved the city from pillage and utter annihilation. He was honored and ennobled with the Grand Cross of the Hessian Order of Lions for his actions by the Hessian electors Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II . He later carried the name Lingg von Linggenfeld.

After the Peace of Tilsit , Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed the Kingdom of Westphalia by decree of August 18, 1807 . As part of the Electorate of Hesse , the Principality of Hersfeld and the city belonged to the newly created kingdom. Hersfeld belonged to the Werra department . The administrative seat of the district of Hersfeld and the canton of Hersfeld was in Hersfeld . In 1813, after the Battle of Leipzig , the Electorate of Hesse was restored.

Modern

Former gatekeeper house of the Frauentore built in 1829, probably on a cellar that was part of the medieval gate construction.

The city fortifications were dismantled around the turn of the 19th century. The battlements of the city walls were removed and used in many places as a retaining wall for new buildings, as can still be seen today in many places around the old town. In 1795 the outer Johannestor and the outer Klaustor were demolished. In 1820 the gate towers over the Klaustor and at the Peterstor were demolished, in 1829 the tower over the Frauentor as well. Subsequently, the city ditches were also filled in, for example, this is documented in 1839 between the Johannes and Peter Gate. After that, simple gates still existed into the 20th century, which were initially lockable with lattice doors and until the end of the 19th century there were still city guards at these gates.

In the years 1818 and 1819 there was the first road from Kassel to Hersfeld in the city area . Street lighting had existed since 1814 and was switched from oil to gas between 1862 and 1864. During this time, the first gas factory was built on Schillerplatz. From 1856, the city's fountains were replaced by iron water pipes. The only fountain that remained from this period is on the town hall square.

At that time, the city also grew outside the city walls and the Hersfeld cloth industry expanded significantly. As early as 1142, Hersfeld was rich in textile manufacturing and textile processing guilds, e.g. B. Garment tailors , wool weavers and linen weavers. In 1264, Hersfeld cloth makers were first mentioned in a document. In the 18th century the "Hersfeld cloth" became known nationwide. The Hersfeld cloth industry expanded significantly in 1817, supported by the introduction of the Cockerill spinning machine. The further mechanization (mainly operated by the water power of the Geis ) of all operations of the cloth production followed until 1843, when weaving by a machine (mechanical loom from the Sächsische Maschinenbau-Compagnie) could finally be taken over. In 1853 the first steam engine was installed in Hersfeld , which enabled all machines to be used industrially. Therefore, the first cloth mills outside the city walls, which previously produced as factories in the old town, were built during this time . The cloth industry developed from this in the following decades. The largest and most important factories were the Rechberg and Braun cloth factories. These two companies merged between 1920 and 1937 to form Mitteldeutsche Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH. At that time it was one of the largest cloth mills in Germany. The mechanical engineering industry, which developed and sold apparatus for the cloth factories, developed parallel to the cloth industry. First and foremost, Schilde AG should be mentioned here, which was active in drying technology. The decline of the cloth industry occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2006 the last textile manufacturer (Adam Wever KG) in the city closed. The last company that can still be assigned to the textile manufacturing industry is the polyester manufacturer for high-strength fibers, Performance Fibers GmbH (former Hoechst factory).

Historical map of the Hersfeld district

The Principality of Hersfeld was incorporated into the Electorate of Hesse as the District of Hersfeld in 1821 and Hersfeld became a district town . In 1836, the community school at Neumarkt was built according to plans by Leonhard Müller. He worked from 1827 to 1851 as a master builder in the city. He also undertook the first repair and securing work on the ruins of the monastery and a wing of the monastery area, in which the museum is now housed. Since 1866 there has been a statue of the city's founder Lullus on the fountain in front of the town hall .

With the inauguration of the extension of the Bebra – Fulda railway from Bebra to Hersfeld on January 22, 1866, the city received a railway connection; the route from Kassel via Bebra to Halle had existed since 1848. On October 1, 1866, it was extended via Fulda to Neuhof . From December 15, 1868, the line to Frankfurt am Main was completed. From 1848 this led to the discontinuation of the Fulda shipping .

Lullus Sturmius Church from 1885 (2007)

After the German War in 1866, Kurhessen and with it Hersfeld were incorporated into the Prussian state. Hersfeld became a garrison town when a barracks was built opposite the main portal of the monastery ruins, in which the fusilier battalion of the 2nd Thuringian Infantry Regiment No. 32 was stationed in 1871 . From 1890 a Prussian war school was housed in the building . Today the tax office is located there.

From 1876 to 1905 Konrad Duden was the director of the royal high school in Hersfeld. During this time, the first edition of Dudens appeared in 1880 . The school where he taught bears his name today.

Religious minorities built their own houses of worship in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1885 the Catholic parish of St. Lullus-Sturmius built their church in Seilerweg, in 1886 the Baptists built their chapel and in 1896 the Jewish community built a synagogue on Am Vogelgesang 1.

A memorial was built in 1896 in honor of the city's savior - Lingg von Linggenfeld . With the new drilling of the Lullus spring in 1904, which had been known in documents since 1518, the city began to develop into a spa. The healing water of this spring comes from a depth of 422 m. It is a source of iron and Epsom salts that is used for diseases of the stomach and intestines. The Wigbertshöhe sanatorium was opened in the middle of 1906. In 1928 the Linggbrunnen was drilled. The water is used for arteriosclerosis, sagging and aging symptoms.

Younger story

National Socialism and World War II

During the National Socialist era, the Wehrmacht barracks for the motor vehicle department 9 was built on the Hohe Luft in 1935 . In 1936, the “Culture Hall” was completed on the occasion of the city's twelve hundredth anniversary. This building is today, after a renovation in 1999 , the town hall.

Main building of the former Wehrmacht barracks, from 1948 McPheeters barracks of the US Army, in the Bad Hersfeld district of Hohe Luft

The November 1938 pogroms began in the city on November 8th. According to the police report, the synagogue on Am Vogelgesang 1 burned down at 9:30 p.m. and was demolished that same year. Furthermore, the Jewish school and four private houses were badly damaged. The police report reported that several thousand people were on the streets that evening (many in front of the synagogue), witnessing the property damage and arson. Some Jewish citizens were taken into “protective custody” and physical assaults are also said to have occurred. The police report concluded that the damage was between 42,980 and 45,000 Reichsmarks that night.

The handover of traffic from the Frankfurt autobahn to Berlin took place in 1942. For the construction of the motorway bridge over the valley of the Asbach , a warehouse for workers of the Reich Labor Service (RAD) was set up in 1938 in the middle of the Pfaffenwald (west of Beiershausen , near the Asbach valley bridge, over which the Federal Motorway 4 now runs). After the bridge was completed, the camp served as a prisoner-of-war camp from 1940 to 1942, mainly for French soldiers. From 1942 to 1945 the " Pfaffenwald Camp " was a death and birth camp for foreign forced laborers. At least 374 people died in this camp as a result of catastrophic medical care and completely inadequate nutrition. The camp cemetery (today the cemetery of honor) commemorates the events of that time and the names of the victims. It is located above Beiershausen about three kilometers south of the former camp. On March 30, 1945 the 37th Tank Battalion (part of the 3rd US Army under George S. Patton ) reached the city. Major Georg August Moeller, appointed as city commander, withdrew all military units from the city on March 31. These units were partially captured by the Americans. Among them were Major Georg August Moeller and Captain Karl Güntzel, who led the Americans to the unoccupied city on March 31, 1945. Thus it did not come to the planned artillery bombardment of the city by the Americans. The Langemarck barracks were taken over by the United States Army in 1945 and renamed McPheeters barracks. The 3rd Squadron of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment was then used here until 1994 for border surveillance in the Fulda Gap .

Post-war and recent past

Spring pavilion in the spa gardens

By drilling the Vitalisbrunnen in 1949, the development of the spa continued after the war . The water contains a lot of Glauber's salt and is used for diseases of the stomach, liver, intestines, gall bladder and the metabolism. From March 4, 1949, Hersfeld is a therapeutic bath and is allowed to call itself Bad Hersfeld. In 1963 Bad Hersfeld becomes a state bath. The Vitalisklinik (for the rehabilitation center for digestive, metabolic and degenerative diseases) opened in 1973 and the Hainbergklinik (for psychosomatic diseases) followed in 1977. A year later, construction began on the Wigbertshöhe specialist clinic (for psychosomatically oriented therapy for addicts). The larger hotel at the Kurpark was opened in 1985. Bad Hersfeld was privatized in 1997 as the first state spa in Hessen. However, in 2004 the KTE clinics and therapy facilities AG filed for bankruptcy, so that the health resort was communalized in 2006. As a result, both the Kurpark and the Kurhaus were redesigned. In 2008 this newly designed “Park of the Seasons” received an award from a competition initiated on behalf of an engine manufacturer. The new source pavilion on the corner of Wittastraße and Am Kurpark received the Simon-Louis-du-Ry badge from the BDA, Bund Deutscher Architekten im Lande Hessen e. V.

A student of Max Reinhardt at the “State Academy for Music and Performing Arts” (today University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna ), Johannes Klein founded the Bad Hersfeld Festival in 1951 in the ruins of the monastery with art-interested citizens . They begin with Hofmannsthal's Jedermann and Sophocles King Oedipus in front of a parquet that can hold 1,600 people. In 1952 the festival took place under the patronage of the Federal President Theodor Heuss . Until 2009, the festival took place under the patronage of the incumbent Federal President. Johannes Klein was director of the festival until 1959 . In 1972 an electrically retractable and extendable rain canopy was installed in the monastery ruins. In 1985 the monastery district was redesigned and five years later the festival celebrated its 40th anniversary.

The Eichhofsiedlung was built in 1952 to create living space for displaced persons who came from formerly German areas. In the same year, the interior of the Bad Hersfeld town church was destroyed by fire. One year later, in 1953, the redesigned interior with pulpit, stalls and organs was inaugurated again. In 1957, Zuse KG moved its headquarters to Bad Hersfeld. This company was later taken over by Siemens AG . In 1967 the seventh Hessentag took place in the city , which attracted around 150,000 visitors in three days.

Due to the municipality reform in 1972, the old districts of Hersfeld and Rotenburg were merged into one large district. Bad Hersfeld became the district town of Hersfeld-Rotenburg . In May 1983, 5,000 people demonstrated in the city against an alumni meeting of Waffen SS soldiers. The ensemble of the Bad Hersfeld Festival was also one of the initiators of the protest. In 1984 excavations took place at the south gate, it is now open to pedestrians again. In 1986, the city celebrated the 1250th anniversary and in the same year commemorated the fire of the monastery ruins 225 years ago with fireworks in the ruins. In 1988, the Klausturm, from the city's former fortifications, was restored. In the same year the Hersfelder Zeitung celebrated its 225th anniversary.

1980 Bad Hersfeld was the site of a spectacular murder by the Stasi of the GDR dissident Bernd Moldenhauer . During the division of Germany after the Second World War, Bad Hersfeld belonged to the so-called zonal border area because of its proximity to the GDR and therefore received state funding. After reunification it was suddenly in the heart of the republic. In 1993 the American armed forces were withdrawn.

Because of its central location, Bad Hersfeld benefits particularly from the increase in mail order business due to the spread of the Internet. In 1999 Amazon.de and Libri relocated their logistics centers to Bad Hersfeld. In 2019, Hersfeld hosted the 59th Hessentag , which, according to the city, was attended by around 862,000 guests in ten days.

literature

  • Louis Demme: News and documents on the Chronicle of Hersfeld in 3 volumes, published by Hans Schmidt Hersfeld 1891, 1893 and 3rd volume published by A. Webert Hersfeld 1900
  • Otto Abbes: Hersfeld's Jewish History 1330 to 1970 , Association for Hess. History and Landeskunde eV Kassel 1834 - branch association Bad Hersfeld, Bad Hersfeld 2002, ISBN 3-9806842-3-7
  • Wilhelm Neuhaus: History of Hersfeld , Ott-Verlag Bad Hersfeld 1954, 3rd edition (revision) 2018, ISBN 978-3-9820068-1-9
  • Wilhelm Neuhaus: From 12 centuries , Ott-Verlag Bad Hersfeld 1984, ISBN 3-9806842-2-9
  • Peter Braun: “The Hersfeld textile industry. Past and Present ”, association for hess. History and Landeskunde eV Kassel 1834 - Branch Association Bad Hersfeld, Bad Hersfeld 2003, ISBN 3-9806842-5-3

Individual evidence

  1. When did Luther actually preach in Hersfeld? . Website hersfelder-zeitung.de. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
  2. Audio book “Der Mann von Hersfeld” ( Memento from October 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  3. Susanne Hohlmann, "Pfaffenwald", dissertation, GHS Kassel, 1984 - ISBN 3-88122-171-9
  4. schoenste-parks.de
  5. 862,000 visitors celebrated Hessentag in Bad Hersfeld! , Notification from June 17, 2019 on the website of the city of Bad Hersfeld

Web links