Archaeological digs have shown that there were settlers in the area who farmed the land in the
New Stone Age, about 5000 BC. About 670, the later
Franconian
Saint Kilian was preaching in Hallstadt and almost 50 years later
Saint Boniface tried to convert Hallstadt’s Germans. Eventually, sometime between 741 and 747, the town was first named as
Halazestat im Radensgove in a document issued by the
Frankish Dukes
Karlmann and
Pepin the Short, and in 793,
Charlemagne approved his father Pepin’s donations to the Würzburg Bishop Berwolf, among which was
Halazestat. From 794 to 820, the Hallstadt Church of St. Kilian was built as one of Charlemagne’s 14 Slavic churches (
Slavenkirchen), and in 805, Hallstadt became Charlemagne’s royal court after years earlier (793) he had spent the night here. Two hundred years later, in 1007,
Emperor Henry II donated the royal court to the Bishopric of Bamberg, which he had founded, and in 1013, by way of exchange, he acquired Hallstadt’s church and parish from the Bishop of Würzburg for the royal court at
Gerau on the
Upper Rhine. Once the bridge across the Main had been finished by Bishop Lambert von Brun, the town also became important to trade. In 1430, Hallstadt was burnt down by the
Hussites. By 1503 the town had recovered only well enough from this to be called a
market town. However, only two generations later, in 1553, Margrave Albrecht Alcibiades von Brandenburg-Kulmbach occupied and destroyed Bamberg and Hallstadt. From 1617 to 1618,
witch trials took place under Prince-Bishop Johann Gottfried von Aschenhausen, as a result of which 53 townsfolk were put to death. What the
plague had not wiped out three years earlier was razed in 1633 when Hallstadt was burnt down in the
Thirty Years' War. Between 1756 and 1763 came more occupations of Bamberg and Hallstadt by
Frederick the Great’s soldiers. In 1802, Elector
Max Joseph of
Bavaria made known his seizure of the High Monastery at Bamberg and of Franconia, and a few years later (1808), King Max – as he was by then known – visited the town. In the course of administrative reform in Bavaria, today’s community came into being under the
Gemeindeedikt (“Community Edict”) of 1818. In 1880, the town was connected to the
railway network, and Hallstadt Railway Station was opened.
Recent history In 1954, Hallstadt was raised to town and celebrated its 1,300th anniversary. In 1970 came the transfer of the outlying centres of Bruckertshof and Kramersfeld to
Bamberg, and the new bridge across the Main, work upon which had already begun after the
Second World War, was completed. In 1972, the community of Dörfleins was amalgamated with the town.
Population development Within town limits, 6,589 inhabitants were counted in 1970, 7,436 in 1987 and 8,427 in 2000. On 30 June 2004, 8,560 inhabitants were reported, and three years later in 2007, it was 8,526. ==Politics==