Eisenach

Eisenach lies on the Hörsel beneath the Wartburg, the castle of the landgraves of Thuringia. Markets grew here on the Via Regia, and by the late twelfth century the Wartburg was the principal residence of the Ludowingian rulers. Saint Elizabeth lived at their court after marrying Landgrave Louis IV in 1221. Following the dynasty's extinction in 1247, the Thuringian succession was contested and Eisenach passed to the Wettins.

Fire in 1342 and plague in 1349 and 1393 struck the town hard. After the Leipzig partition of 1485 it belonged to the Ernestine Wettins. Martin Luther found refuge in the Wartburg after the Diet of Worms and translated the New Testament into German there. Eisenach later served as an Ernestine residence, and Johann Sebastian Bach was born here in 1685. In 1817 students gathered at the Wartburg to call for German unity and constitutional liberties.