While the settlements of Endorf, Reinstedt and Wieserode in the Saxon
Schwabengau were already mentioned in the 10th century, Ermsleben is documented as
Anegremislebo in a 1045 deed, then a possession held by the
edelfrei Lords of
Konradsburg Castle. In 1070 one
Egeno I of Konradsburg accused the mighty Saxon count
Otto of Nordheim of a conspiracy against King
Henry IV. About ten years later, his grandson
Egeno II killed the
Ascanian count
Adalbert II of Ballenstedt; for the atonement, his castle was converted into a
Benedictine abbey. About 1120 the Konradsburg dynasty erected Falkenstein Castle as new ancestral seat. Under the rule of the Ascanian count
Henry I ( 1170 – 1252), the Schwabengau estates became the nucleus of the
Anhalt principality, named after
Anhalt Castle in the upper Selke valley. Ermsleben already appeared as a
town (
oppidum) in 1298. When the
Princes of Anhalt-Aschersleben became extinct in 1315, their estates fell to the
Bishops of Halberstadt. In 1437 the Falkenstein lands passed to the
House of Asseburg as a fief. Attacked and plundered in the
German Peasants' War of 1525, Ermsleben was vested with
market rights by Emperor
Charles V in 1530. While its citizens turned
Protestant and the Halberstadt prince-bishopric was ruled by
Brandenburg and
Brunswick-Lüneburg administrators, the town was devastated in the
Thirty Years' War. According to the 1648
Peace of Westphalia, it became part of the secularized
Principality of Halberstadt, a province of
Brandenburg-Prussia. ==Politics==