Ellwangen

Ellwangen grew beside a Benedictine monastery founded in the forest between Franconia and Swabia. The abbey became an imperial abbey in 817, and its abbots were princes of the empire from 1215. In 1460 the monastery was transformed into a house of secular canons headed by a prince-provost, who ruled the surrounding ecclesiastical territory from the castle above the town. Its lands expanded with the acquisition of Rötlen, Wasseralfingen and Heuchlingen.

Reformation preaching and the Peasants' War shook Ellwangen in 1525. Peasants forced their way into the town and castle, but were defeated by the Swabian League; the preachers Georg Mumpach and Johann Kreß were executed. Later, witch trials claimed about 450 lives in 1588 and between 1611 and 1618. Swedish troops occupied the town in 1632 during the Thirty Years' War. The prince-provost's rule ended when the territory was secularised and assigned to Württemberg in 1802.