The community's name stems from the
Amt of Wildeck, to which some of today's constituent communities belonged, and which in the
Middle Ages was under the
Fulda Abbey's rule. The
Amt seat lay at Wildeck Castle, which stood on the Schloßberg near Raßdorf. In 1277, Richelsdorf had its first documentary mention when the Fulda Abbey temporarily relinquished the community to build a convent at St. Nicholas's Monastery (
Nikolaikloster) in
Eisenach, which was, however, never built. In 1325, the brothers Friedrich and Hermann von Colmatsch were enfeoffed with the
Amt, in exchange for which today's constituent communities of Eisenach and Hötzelsroda went to St. Nicholas's Monastery. The fief passed in 1539 to the
Landgraves of Hesse. After the family von Colmatsch had died out in 1562, the community passed to Hesse. The craggy state boundary in the south and east still bears witness to the disputes between the Landgraves of Hesse and
Thuringia and the Fulda Abbey, which lasted throughout the
Middle Ages and on into modern times.
Coppermining in Wildeck was mentioned for the first time in 1460. At the Richelsdorf foundry,
cobalt was also mined beginning in 1708, which raised the foundry's importance, as well as another's in Iba (nowadays an outlying centre of
Bebra), causing the mining office of
Sontra to move to Richelsdorf. During the 18th century, the landgraves of Hesse-Rotenburg had their summer palace and gardens in Wildeck,
Schloss Blumenstein. Potash has been mined in the Wildeck region for over 100 years. From 1945 to 1990, the community found itself right near the
Inner German border. The station in Hönebach, a component of Wildeck, served as West German border crossing for
rail transport. The crossing was open for
trains travelling between the
Soviet Zone of occupation in Germany (till 1949, thereafter the East
German Democratic Republic, or
West Berlin and the American zone of occupation (till 1949) and thereafter the West German
Federal Republic of Germany. The traffic was subject to the
Interzonal traffic regulations, that between West Germany and West Berlin followed the special regulations of the
Transit Agreement (1972). Within the framework of municipal reform, the new community of Wildeck came into being on 31 December 1971 through the merger of the above-named communities. By November 2020, the population had declined to 4,980. == Politics ==