Wattendorf

Wattendorf is the smallest community in the Upper Franconian district of Bamberg and a member of the administrative community (Verwaltungsgemeinschaft) of Steinfeld.GeographyThe community lies on the edge of the “Franconian Switzerland” on the rise to the Franconian Jura in the east of the Bamberg district.Constituent communitiesThe community has 5 traditional rural land units, known in German as Gemarkungen, each given here with its own population figure: Bojendorf (157)Gräfenhäusling (211)Mährenhüll (74)Schneeberg (60)Wattendorf (216)HistoryWattendorf is very old as a settled place, having been settled in the time around 3000 to 1800 BC by the Linear Pottery culture.It had its first documentary mention in 1180, when the community was owned by the Counts of the Duchy of Merania. From 1260 to 1274, Wattendorf was owned by the Count of Truhendingen. In 1274 he donated the estate to the Cistercian Monastery at Langheim, to which it belonged until Secularization in 1803. The Monastery’s ties with the High Monastery at Bamberg grew weaker over time, so that by the time the Old Empire came to an end, the Langheim Monastery could almost be thought to be the High Monastery’s Mediat. Since the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803, the community has belonged to Bavaria. In the course of administrative reform in Bavaria, today’s community came into being under the Gemeindeedikt (“Community Edict”) of 1818.