Pegnitz

Pegnitz developed from two settlements in the Franconian uplands. The older village appears in a document of 1119; between 1347 and 1355 the landgraves of Leuchtenberg founded a planned town under the protection of a castle. Emperor Charles IV granted the new town its rights in 1355. Two years later the landgraves sold it to him and it became part of the kingdom of Bohemia.

In 1402 Pegnitz was pledged to the Hohenzollern burgrave of Nuremberg and remained in that family's hands. In 1542 Margrave Albert Alcibiades granted brewing rights attached to properties in the town, shaping a distinctive local tradition. The former Bayreuth territory became Prussian in 1792 and passed to Bavaria in 1810 after French administration.