zwischenstopp: neustädtles

One of my new low-stakes but hopefully rewarding projects is to document all the scenic but not at first blush distinct places that I pass through when going from home to work on what’s been several years of a long weekly commute. I’d like to stop for a moment in each place with one of the first villages that I go through to being one of a population of about two hundred called Neustädtles (little new town).
Documented for the first time in the 1420s when the village was sold to the Knights of Tann, the territory on the mountainous border of Bavaria and Thüringen exchanged hands several times until finally coming under the ownership of Julius von Soden, count of Ansbach (the previous owner a casualty of the French Revolution).
Charged with managing the surrounding forest he established the manor with several apartments and offices en suite to issue fishing and hunting permits in the early eighteenth century. Though broader events informed the village’s allegiances in the following centuries, its character is essentially unchanged.  Stay tuned to see where we’ll pause next time.