Bisingen

Bisingen is a municipality in the Zollernalbkreis district, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located about 65 kilometers south of the state capital Stuttgart.Bisingen is one of the oldest settlements in the region. There have been numerous discoveries of artifacts from the Neolithic, bronze, and iron ages. Bisingen and the nearby settlement of Wessingen were founded by the Alemanni tribes around 300 C.E., while the neighboring settlements of Steinhofen, Thanheim and Zimmern were founded by the Franks around 400 C.E. The first documented reference to Bisingen and Wessingen dates to 786 C.E., when the Frankish Count Gerold gave property from "Pisingen and Uassingun" to St. Gallen Abbey. Bisingen's local nobility were the Der Walger family, vassals of the Earls of Hohenzollern, seated at Castle Ror on an outcropping of Mt. Hundsrücken. The castle ruins still evoke the Der Walger family and their meaning for the history of the village.From 1944 through the end of the war, a concentration camp in the village held 4,163 prisoners, of whom at least 1,187 lost their lives.In Bisingen was broken a black stone for the Operation Desert (German fuel project) near the railway station in the Kuhloch.An air raid by the U.S. Air force targeting railway equipment stored in the town killed 24 people and destroyed over 150 buildings.The municipal governments of Bisingen, Wessingen, and Zimmern were merged on March 1st, 1972 during the Baden-Württemberg land reforms. A merger with the town of Thanheim followed on January 1st 1974.