Nikolaustor, Heidingsfeld, Lower Franconia, Franconia, Bavaria, Germany

"Heidingsfeld is a left-wing Main district and also a district in the south of Würzburg with around 10,200 inhabitants. The former urban area, which existed before the incorporation in 1930, stretched from the Steinbachtal to the current Heuchelhof district. The locals call their place Hätzfeld in the dialect.

Heidingsfeld was mentioned in a document in a market description from 779. The name originally comes from “Hedans Feld”, i.e. the town of the Thuringian Duke Hedan. The place belonged to the Würzburg Mark and has been a royal estate since 849. Louis the German gave the place away to the Fulda monastery, from which it came to the Hohenstaufens in the 12th century. In 1160, the monastery of St. Burkard (Würzburg) in Heidingsfeld (and Leinach) acquired the tithe “with great difficulty”. In 1297, Heidingsfeld was pledged to the Würzburg Monastery by Adolf von Nassau.

In 1273, Bishop Hermann I of Lobdeburg decreed that Beguines living in front of St. Nicholas Gate should found a Benedictine monastery (“To Paradise”) in Heidingsfeld. In Heidingsfeld on today's Wenzelstrasse, the St. Nikolausspital, a hospital founded as a foundation for poor citizens of Heidingsfeld, had existed since the 14th century. For the hospital chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, the dean of Haug Abbey in Würzburg, Conrad Minner, donated a vicarage of St. Peter and Paul, confirmed in 1413. In 1516 the hospital operations were stopped. The hospital church was renovated again under Julius Echter. As in neighboring Würzburg and other cities, there were also bathing rooms in Heidingsfeld. A barber named “Sygel” is documented for the year 1433 and the barber “Hans Beckman in der Klinge” a year later.

In 1367 Heidingsfeld was granted city rights. In 1565, Jews expelled from Würzburg settled in Heidingsfeld. Heidingsfeld thus became an important religious center for the Jewish community and was the seat of the Chief Rabbi of Lower Franconia from the early 18th century until the rabbinate was moved to Würzburg in 1814. As a result, the Jewish cemetery in Heidingsfeld was inaugurated in 1811. In the early 19th century, Heidingsfeld had the second largest Jewish community in what was then the Kingdom of Bavaria after Fürth. There is evidence of an infirmary in Heidingsfeld from around 1321. According to data from the Society for Leprosy, there was evidence of a medieval leprosy in Heidingsfeld from 1325 onwards.

The Swedes under Gustav Adolf conquered the city in the Thirty Years' War.

Heidingsfeld was an independent town from 1367 to 1929. This is where today's colloquial name “Städtle” (for the old town of Heidingsfeld) comes from, since Heidingsfeld (in 1818, with fewer than 500 families living there, still referred to as a “third class town”) was essentially a small town within the big city Würzburg represents. Since 1909 there have been efforts to connect Heidingsfeld to Würzburg. After the Würzburg city council rejected incorporation with a narrow majority on March 28 and October 28, 1913, Heidingsfeld was reorganized on January 1, 1930 under the mayors Hans Löffler (Würzburg) and Max Schnabel (Heidingsfeld) at the request of the citizens incorporated into Würzburg after a vote. With this (increased by 5,700 inhabitants and 2,466 hectares of district area), Würzburg became a major city. In 1850 a hospital was built in Heidingsfeld. In 1855, the Poor School Sisters founded a secondary school for girls and then expanded their care activities to two more girls' schools in 1857 and 1867 and to the district orphanage in 1859. In 1864 Heidingsfeld received a fire department.

In 1892, the Sisters of Mercy founded a municipal retirement home in the former tithe of the Würzburg noble secular canon monastery of St. Burkard.

The Protestant parish church of St. Paul was built from 1912 to 1913.

During Kristallnacht in 1938, the synagogue, a central reference point for Heidingsfeld Jews, was set on fire and destroyed by the National Socialists at 2:30 a.m. On March 16, 1945, 85% of the town was severely damaged in the heavy British air raid on Würzburg, including the rectory in which the Heidingsfeld doctor and world-famous Japan researcher Philipp Franz von Siebold and his mother lived. On April 2nd, three days before Würzburg's surrender, American troops reached Heidingsfeld.

During the term of office of Bishop Matthias Ehrenfried (1924 to 1948), the “Werkinghaus” was set up, supported by the Working Group for Charitable and Social Tasks of the Catholic parish of Heidingsfeld. It is the first church community center in what is now the city of Würzburg.

On July 18, 2016, an attack occurred on a regional train near Würzburg, which ended with the assassin being shot in Heidingsfeld.

The redesign of the town hall square, which has been planned since 1979/1980, began with the groundbreaking ceremony on October 11, 2018 and was completed with the handover to the citizens on December 11, 2019. The redesign introduced new traffic routing and larger areas for pedestrians.

Lower Franconia (German: Unterfranken) is one of seven districts of Bavaria, Germany. The districts of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia make up the region of Franconia. It consists of nine districts and 308 municipalities (including three cities).

After the founding of the Kingdom of Bavaria the state was totally reorganised and, in 1808, divided into 15 administrative government regions (German: Regierungsbezirke, singular Regierungsbezirk), in Bavaria called Kreise (singular: Kreis). They were created in the fashion of the French departements, quite even in size and population, and named after their main rivers.

In the following years, due to territorial changes (e. g. loss of Tyrol, addition of the Palatinate), the number of Kreise was reduced to 8. One of these was the Untermainkreis (Lower Main District). In 1837 king Ludwig I of Bavaria renamed the Kreise after historical territorial names and tribes of the area. This also involved some border changes or territorial swaps. Thus the name Untermainkreis changed to Lower Franconia and Aschaffenburg, but the city name was dropped in the middle of the 20th century, leaving just Lower Franconia.

From 1933, the regional Nazi Gauleiter, Otto Hellmuth, (who had renamed his party Gau "Mainfranken") insisted on renaming the government district Mainfranken as well. He encountered resistance from Bavarian state authorities but finally succeeded in having the name of the district changed, effective 1 June 1938. After 1945 the name Unterfranken was restored.

Franconia (German: Franken, pronounced [ˈfʁaŋkŋ̍]; Franconian: Franggn [ˈfrɑŋɡŋ̍]; Bavarian: Frankn) is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and Franconian dialect (German: Fränkisch).

Franconia is made up of the three Regierungsbezirke of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia in Bavaria, the adjacent, Franconian-speaking, South Thuringia, south of the Thuringian Forest—which constitutes the language boundary between Franconian and Thuringian— and the eastern parts of Heilbronn-Franconia in Baden-Württemberg.

Those parts of the Vogtland lying in Saxony (largest city: Plauen) are sometimes regarded as Franconian as well, because the Vogtlandian dialects are mostly East Franconian. The inhabitants of Saxon Vogtland, however, mostly do not consider themselves as Franconian. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Hessian-speaking parts of Lower Franconia west of the Spessart (largest city: Aschaffenburg) do consider themselves as Franconian, although not speaking the dialect. Heilbronn-Franconia's largest city of Heilbronn and its surrounding areas are South Franconian-speaking, and therefore only sometimes regarded as Franconian. In Hesse, the east of the Fulda District is Franconian-speaking, and parts of the Oden Forest District are sometimes regarded as Franconian for historical reasons, but a Franconian identity did not develop there.

Franconia's largest city and unofficial capital is Nuremberg, which is contiguous with Erlangen and Fürth, with which it forms the Franconian conurbation with around 1.3 million inhabitants. Other important Franconian cities are Würzburg, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Ansbach and Coburg in Bavaria, Suhl and Meiningen in Thuringia, and Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Württemberg.

The German word Franken—Franconians—also refers to the ethnic group, which is mainly to be found in this region. They are to be distinguished from the Germanic people of the Franks, and historically formed their easternmost settlement area. The origins of Franconia lie in the settlement of the Franks from the 6th century in the area probably populated until then mainly by the Elbe Germanic people in the Main river area, known from the 9th century as East Francia (Francia Orientalis). In the Middle Ages the region formed much of the eastern part of the Duchy of Franconia and, from 1500, the Franconian Circle. The restructuring of the south German states by Napoleon, after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, saw most of Franconia awarded to Bavaria." - info from Wikipedia.

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Taken in: Germany / Bavaria / Kreisfreie Stadt Würzburg / Heidingsfeld (show map)

Taken on: July 7, 2019

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Sets appears in: • Europe Cycling Tour 2019 • Germany more » • Bavaria, Germany • Franken/Franconia Wine Region, Bavaria « less

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