According to folklore, towards the end of the 7th century a group of Franconian peasants and their families went up into the wilderness to found a new settlement. Their leader Onold led them to an area called the "Rezattal" (Rezat valley). This is where they founded the "Urhöfe" (meaning the first farms: Knollenhof, Voggenhof and Rabenhof). Gradually more settlers, such as the "Winden-Tribe" came, and the farms grew into a small village. Many villages around Ansbach were founded by the "Winden" during that period (even today, their settlements can easily identified by their names, like Meinhardswinden, Dautenwinden or Brodswinden). A
Benedictine monastery was established there around 748 by the
Frankish noble
St Gumbertus. The adjoining village of Onoltesbach was first noticed as a proper town in 1221. The counts of
Öttingen ruled over Ansbach until the
Hohenzollern burgrave of
Nürnberg took over in 1331. The Hohenzollerns made Ansbach the seat of their dynasty until their acquisition of the
Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1415. After the 1440 death of
Frederick I, a cadet branch of the family established itself as the
margraves of Ansbach.
George the Pious introduced the
Protestant Reformation to Ansbach in 1528, leading to
Gumbertus Abbey's secularization in 1563. The
Markgrafenschloß was built between 1704 and 1738. Its gardens continued to be a notable attraction into the 1800s. In 1791, the last margrave sold his realm to the
Kingdom of Prussia. In 1796, the
Duke of Zweibrücken,
Maximilian Joseph — the future Bavarian king— was exiled to Ansbach the French took Zweibrücken. In Ansbach,
Maximilian von Montgelas wrote an elaborate concept for the future political organization of Bavaria, which is known as the Ansbacher Mémoire. Napoleon forced Prussia to cede Ansbach and its principality to
Bavaria in the
Franco-Prussian treaty of alliance signed at
Schönbrunn Palace on 15 December 1805 at the end of the
Third Coalition. Ansbach became the capital of the ('Circle of the
Rezat'). Bavarian ownership was confirmed by the 1815
Congress of Vienna; Prussia was compensated with the Bavarian
Duchy of Berg. In 1837 the became the circle of Middle Franconia. Following the
unification of Germany Ansbach had a population of 12,635, which by 1925 had risen to 21,923. Jewish families were resident in Ansbach from at least the end of the 18th century. They set up a Jewish Cemetery in the Ruglaender Strasse, which was vandalised and razed under the Nazi regime in the
Kristallnacht. It was repaired in 1946, but it was damaged several times more. A plaque on the wall of the cemetery commemorates these events. The Jewish Congregation built its synagogue at No 3 Rosenbadstrasse, but it too was damaged by the SA, though it was not burnt down for fear of damaging the neighbouring buildings. It serves today as a "Symbolic House of God". A plaque in the entrance serves as a memorial to the synagogue and to Jewish residents who were murdered during the Holocaust. In 1940, at least 500 patients were deported from the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Ansbach [
Ansbach Medical and Nursing Clinic] to the extermination facilities Sonnenstein and Hartheim which were disguised as psychiatric institutions, as part of the
Action T4 euthanasia action. They were gassed there. At the clinic in Ansbach itself, around 50 intellectually disabled children were injected with the drug
Luminal and killed that way. A plaque was erected in their memory in 1988 in the local hospital at No. 38 Feuchtwangerstrasse. During
World War II, a subcamp of
Flossenbürg concentration camp was located here. Also during the Second World War the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht had bases here. The nearby airbase was the home station for the Stab & I/KG53 (Staff & 1st Group of Kampfgeschwader 53) operating 38
Heinkel He 111 bombers. On 1 September 1939 this unit was one of the many that participated in the
attack on Poland that started the war. All of its bridges were destroyed during the course of the war. During the
Western Allied invasion of Germany in April 1945, the airfield was seized by the
United States Third Army, and used by the
USAAF 354th Fighter Group which flew
P-47 Thunderbolts from the aerodrome (designated
ALG R-82) from late April until the German capitulation on 7 May 1945. At the end of the war, 19-year-old student
Robert Limpert tried to get the town to surrender to the US Forces without a fight. He was betrayed by
Hitler Youth and was hanged from the portal of the City Hall by the city's military commander, Col. (
Oberst) Ernst Meyer. Several memorials to his heroic deed have been erected over the years, despite opposition from some residents — in the Ludwigskirche, in the Gymnasium Carolinum and at No 6 Kronenstrasse. After the Second World War, Ansbach belonged to the American Zone. The American Military authorities established a displaced persons (DP) camp in what used to be a sanatorium in what is today the Strüth quarter.
Bachwoche Ansbach has been held in Ansbach since 1947. Since 1970, Ansbach has enlarged its municipal area by incorporating adjacent communities. Ansbach hosts several units of the U.S. armed forces, associated with German units under
NATO. There are five separate U.S. installations: Shipton Kaserne, home to
412th Aviation Support Battalion, Katterbach Kaserne, formerly the home of the
1st Infantry Division's 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, also home of 501st M.I. Bn and 501st Avn Bn. which has been replaced by the
12th Combat Aviation Brigade as of 2006, as part of the 1st Infantry Division's return to
Fort Riley, Kansas; Bismarck Kaserne, which functions as a satellite post to Katterbach, hosting their Post Theater, barracks, Von Steuben Community Center, Military Police, and other support agencies, Barton Barracks, home to the USAG Ansbach and Bleidorn Barracks, which has a library and housing, and Urlas, which hosts the
Post Exchange as well as a housing area opened in 2010. Ansbach was also home to the headquarters of the
1st Armored Division (United States) from 1972 to the early 1990s. On 24 July 2016,
a bomb was detonated in a restaurant in the city, killing only the bomber himself and injuring few people. The perpetrator was reported to be a Syrian refugee whose asylum application had been rejected but who had been given exceptional leave to remain until the security situation in Syria returned to a safe condition. Witnesses reported he had tried to enter a nearby music festival but had been turned away, before detonating his device outside a nearby wine bar. ==Boroughs==