Bitburg - History

History

The city’s name derives from its Celtic toponym, Beda.

Bitburg originated approximately 2000 years ago as a stopover for traffic from Lyon, through Metz and Trier to Cologne. The first mentioned name was “Vicus Beda”. Emperor Constantine the Great expanded the settlement to a road castle around 330, the central part of which forms the town centre to the present day. Bitburg is first documented only after the end of the Roman Empire around 715 as “castrum bedense”. It subsequently became part of Franconia.

In 1262, the castle gained municipal rights. In the middle of the 10th century the city came under the county of Luxembourg (later duchy), and in 1443 under the county of Burgundy. After 1506 the place belonged first to the Spanish Netherlands, and from 1714 to the Austrian Netherlands. In 1794 the city came under French administration, and in 1798 became the principal place of a canton of the newly-created Département des Forêts. This led to a short lived economic upturn, and Bitburg received among other things a court and a land registry.

In 1815 by the resolution of the Congress of Vienna, Bitburg was transferred to the Kingdom of Prussia, where until 1822 it belonged administratively as district town to the province of Niederrhein, and afterwards to the Rhine province.

Like the remaining parts of Eifel, Bitburg was very poor. Economic ascent began again with the seizure of power of Adolf Hitler and the measures for the creation of infrastructure that was important for war, particularly the Westwall, new armed forces barracks, and the development of the Kylltal railway. It is said that the building used as the post office at Bitburg Annex (what is left of Bitburg Air Base) was the headquarters building for Hitler when he was in the city.

On 24 December 1944, Bitburg was 85% destroyed by air raids, and later officially designated by the Americans as a “dead city”. Subsequently, Luxembourg soldiers occupied the city, replaced by the French from 1955. In 1965 a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) base was opened under American leadership. At the end of the 1980s, the French withdrew their last troops and NATO took over the former French barracks. After the First Gulf War large parts of the USAF 53rd were moved into the larger Spangdahlem base. In 1994, NATO finally quit most of Bitburg for the airport.