Leonberg - History

History

The town of Levinberch was founded by Count Ulrich 1st of Württemberg in 1248 where Leonberg still stands today. The position on the brow of the hill was chosen as a defence from enemies to the west, the towns of Markgröningen, Weil der Stadt and the counts in Tübingen and Calw. At the time, the town was surrounded by stone fortifications with the count's castle in the south west. A moat stood to the east, leading to two gates complete with towers and swing-bridge. The gates and almost all of the walls were demolished in and after 1814/1815 leaving only the coat of arms, still on display in the Altes Rathaus (old town hall)). The moat was filled in 1786.

The only surviving building from the old town fortifications was the "Stonehouse" near the uppermost tower, probably because it was the only one used for housing and was not destroyed by the great fire of 1498. Today it has become the Schwarzer Adler guesthouse and is a defining feature of the old town. According to an analysis carried out in 1999, the wooden-timber gabled roof on top of the Schwarzer Adler was built in the 15th century. Three stories high, it is one of the largest and oldest original timber gable roofs in southern Germany.

A great fire swept through the town in 1498, destroying 46 houses and making around 200 people homeless. Most of the homeless left the town.

During the Holy Roman Empire, Leonberg fell under the jurisdiction of Esslingen before finally becoming part of Württemberg in 1383 when it first gained administrative rights. The population of Leonberg was halved during the Thirty Years' War as a result of the bubonic plague.

On 16 November 1457, the first Württemberg parliament (Württemberg-Urach) convened in Leonberg to administer the custodianship of the underage Eberhardt V. Although there is no documentary evidence to confirm the fact, many locals claim this parliament met in the "Stonehouse" .

During the era of witch hunts, the Leonberg governor Lutherus Einhorn sent 15 women to trial under suspicion of witchcraft. Eight women were condemned to death with the full assent of the Leonberg judiciary and the local community.

One of the most famous Württemberg witch trials in Leonberg took place in 1615 and involved Katharina Kepler, mother of the royal astronomer Johannes Kepler. Kepler's mother was nearly tortured to death in the cellars of the "Stonehouse" before being transferred to Güglingen where she was subsequently released in October 1620.

In 1846 the Leonberger dog breed was first successfully registered and named after the town.

After the rise of the Nazis in 1933, a number of bloody street battles were fought between stormtrooper (Sturmabteilung) followers, mostly backed by residents from Leonberg who attacked supporters of the German communist party, mainly resident in Eltingen. In 1938, Eltingen - a staunchly proletarian community of small landowners - was finally merged with the more bourgeois Leonberg.

Later the same year the Engelberg tunnel - Germany's first motorway tunnel - was completed. During the Second World War the Engelberg tunnel was used regularly for producing and storing aeroplane parts made by concentration camp prisoners held in Leonberg concentration camp, an outlying camp belonging to Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace. The old tunnel was replaced by a new tunnel in the 1990s. Above the tunnel there now stands a memorial to the people who died in Leonberg concentration camp.

By 1961 the population of Leonberg passed the 20,000 mark. Boundary reforms in 1973 resulted in rural districts of Leonberg being merged with the rural districts of Böblingen in the south and Enzkreis/Ludwigsburg in the north. Leonberg has existed in its current form since 1975.

In 2004 Leonberg became one of the first communities in Germany to switch its office systems to Linux and start using freeware.