Hallstadt

Hallstadt (German pronunciation: [ˈhalʃtat] ) is a town in the Upper Franconian district of Bamberg on the left bank of the Main, 4 km north of Bamberg, Germany.

Geography

Hallstadt borders in the south on the city of Bamberg and in the west on the Main. There are two constituent communities named Hallstadt (population 7,588) and Dörfleins (population 1,380). The town also has these traditional rural land units, known in German as Gemarkungen: Hallstadt and Dörfleins (it is traditional for a Gemarkung to be named after a town or village lying nearby)

History

Archaeological digs have shown that there were settlers in the area who farmed the land in the New Stone Age, about 5000 BC.

About 670, the later Franconian Saint Kilian was preaching in Hallstadt and almost 50 years later Saint Boniface tried to convert Hallstadt’s Germans. Eventually, sometime between 741 and 747, the town was first named as Halazestat im Radensgove in a document issued by the Frankish Dukes Karlmann and Pepin the Short, and in 793, Charlemagne approved his father Pepin’s donations to the Würzburg Bishop Berwolf, among which was Halazestat. From 794 to 820, the Hallstadt Church of St. Kilian was built as one of Charlemagne’s 14 Slavic churches (Slavenkirchen), and in 805, Hallstadt became Charlemagne’s royal court after years earlier (793) he had spent the night here.

Two hundred years later, in 1007, Emperor Henry II donated the royal court to the Bishopric of Bamberg, which he had founded, and in 1013, by way of exchange, he acquired Hallstadt’s church and parish from the Bishop of Würzburg for the royal court at Gerau on the Upper Rhine.

Once the bridge across the Main had been finished by Bishop Lambert von Brun, the town also became important to trade. In 1430, Hallstadt was burnt down by the Hussites.