Backnang

Backnang grew beside a crossing of the River Murr in the hills northeast of Stuttgart. First recorded in 1067, it became a seat of the margraves of Baden. Margrave Hermann II and his wife Judith founded an Augustinian house there, confirmed by the pope in 1116; it served as the burial place of five generations of Baden's rulers. Backnang became a town in the thirteenth century and passed to Württemberg around 1300.

In 1525 the town was stormed during the Peasants' War and its religious house was plundered. Duke Ulrich introduced the Reformation in Württemberg in 1535. The Thirty Years' War brought plague, billeted troops and a great fire that devastated Backnang in 1635. In 1693 French forces attacked and burned the town again during the War of the Palatine Succession, destroying hundreds of buildings.