History
In the 8th century, a royal court and a palace were built in Forchheim.
In 805, the town was mentioned in the Diedenhofener Kapitular, a capitulary (royal order) from Charlemagne forbidding the two towns that it named – Magdeburg was the other – to trade weapons with the Slavs, issued at Diedenhofen (now Thionville, France). This is the first documentary evidence of the town’s existence.
In the following centuries, Forchheim saw many imperial diets and princely gatherings. On 10 November, 911, Conrad I was elected and crowned the first “German” king.
On 1 November 1007, Emperor Heinrich II granted Forchheim, then under Crown ownership, the Bishopric of Bamberg. By 1039, however, Emperor Heinrich III had brought the town back under Imperial administration until it was finally made part of the Bishopric of Bamberg on 13 July 1063, a status which lasted up until the secularization in 1802-1803.
In Heinrich IV’s time, Rudolf von Rheinfelden was chosen to be the Gegenkönig (“anti-king”) on 15 March 1077, in Forchheim.
Sometime between 1200 and 1220, Forchheim was raised to city, and was given its current coat of arms.
Owing to Forchheim’s fortifications, it got through the Thirty Years' War without being overrun even once. The Prince-Bishop of Bamberg fled the Swedes in this war, seeking shelter for himself, and also for his cathedral treasure, in the strongly defended fortress town of Forchheim. The Swedes laid siege to the town several times from 1632 to 1634. It was also in this era of Forchheim’s history that some of the townsfolk earned the rather unflattering nickname Mauerscheißer (“wall shitters”). This came from their practice of defecating over the city walls during the siege, to demonstrate to the Swedes that there was still enough to eat in the city, and that their siege was ineffective and pointless.
On 6 September 1802, Forchheim was occupied by Bavarian troops and annexed to the Electorate of Bavaria.
In 1889, Forchheim became a kreisfreie Stadt, conferring on it certain enhanced local powers. It lost this status in 1972 under Bavarian regional government reform, and was united with Landkreis Forchheim, the local district. Since then its title is Große Kreisstadt.
The local lore has it that Forchheim was Pontius Pilate’s birthplace.
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