Hildburghausen

Hildburghausen was recorded in 1234 when the counts of Henneberg sold it to the bishops of Würzburg. The counts bought it back in 1316, granted town rights in 1324 and built walls around it. In 1353 it passed by inheritance to the Wettin landgraves of Thuringia, and after the division of their lands in 1485 it belonged to the Ernestine branch.

The citizens adopted Protestantism in 1528. Later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century partitions placed the town in Saxe-Coburg and then Saxe-Altenburg. From 1680 Hildburghausen was the residence of the dukes of Saxe-Hildburghausen, one of the small Ernestine states. The duchy lasted until 1826, when its territories were rearranged and the town passed to Saxe-Meiningen. The succession and division of the Wettin lands had repeatedly changed the rulers of this fortified Thuringian town.