Feuchtwangen today is a city in Ansbach district in the administrative region of Middle Franconia in Bavaria, Germany. Using Google Earth mapping services this city is located at 49° 10' 04" N 010° 19' 50" E.
Feuchtwangen's origins can be traced back to the Benedictine monastery, which was mentioned in a document in 818 or 819 as being "fairly well off." The state of affairs at the monastery was described in 16 letters by the learned monk Froumund and the abbot Wigo in the years 991 to 995. By no later than 1197, however, Feuchtwangen had become a house of secular canons (Chorherrenstift). The canons were not monks and lived in their own houses, but said their canonical prayers together at the monastery church.
Besides the monastery, there was already, since the earliest times, a village. With the help of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa came the establishment of a town sometime between 1150 and 1178. In 1241, Feuchtwangen became an imperial free city. From that time forth, Feuchtwangen consisted of two independent communities: the free city south of the line along Untere Torstraße ("Lower Gate Street") and Postgasse, and the monastery lands to the north. Together with other imperial free cities like Rothenburg ob der Tauber or Dinkelsbühl, the town tried to assert its interests to the princes through the Swabian League (founded in 1376 by 14 free cities). Feuchtwangen had become wealthy owing to its fortunate location on travel routes, and was many times given in pledge by the kings. In the end, in 1376, both the town and the monastery were pledged, or transferred, to the Burgravate of Nuremberg, which later became the Margravate of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The townsfolk could no longer buy their town's freedom, thus leading to a relatively early end to Feuchtwangen's status as an imperial free city.
About 1400, after the city was destroyed in 1388 by the Swabian League, both parts of Feuchtwangen were surrounded by a common wall, which helped to meld the two formerly separate communities into one. The margravate town, seat of a higher administrative office and place of many markets grew in importance and in the 15th and 16th centuries blossomed once again. The troubles in the Peasants' War afforded an opportunity to introduce the Protestant Reformation, which happened throughout the margravate in 1533. The monastery was confiscated in 1563, with its possessions going to the margrave. The Thirty Years' War brought woe and hardship to Feuchtwangen, especially with the plundering of the city wrought by Tilly's unruly men. In 1632 and 1634, Swedish and Imperial forces took away what was left, and so it went on for decades before the town and its surrounding area recovered.
Until 1791, Feuchtwangen remained an administrative town of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The last Margrave, who was childless, ceded his land to the Kingdom of Prussia. Only 14 years later, the French briefly took over control of the city, losing it once more only a year later, in 1806, to the Kingdom of Bavaria. Feuchtwangen became the seat of a regional court set up by the regional office and the local court.
In the long era of peace in the 19th century, the city's face was changed. The lower gate tower, along with great parts of the city defences were demolished. The Spitaltor burnt down in 1811. The city was connected by a railway branchline to the Nuremberg-Stuttgart mainline. Nevertheless, development stagnated in the 19th and 20th centuries until the Second World War. Although some of the communities that were later incorporated into Feuchtwangen were destroyed in the world wars, Feuchtwangen itself was left unscathed.
A renewed upswing took root after the Second World War, spurred on by the arrival of people driven out of their lands in the east. Feuchtwangen became a Bundeswehr garrison town. The town did lose its status as an administrative centre, but won itself a place among the ten largest cities in Bavaria (by land area) once Bavarian municipal reform had amalgamated ten other communities with it. The barracks were closed in 1997, but the lands came into use again only two years later when the Bavarian Building Academy (Bayerische Bauakademie) came to town to establish a continuing education institution. In 2000, the Feuchtwangen Casino opened, which in 2005 was once again the most visited and highest earning of all Bavarian casinos.
