Creglingen is a town in the

Main-Tauber Main-Tauber-Kreis is a ''Landkreis'' (district) in the northeast of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Neighboring districts are (from northwest clockwise) Miltenberg, Main-Spessart, Würzburg, Neustadt (Aisch)-Bad Windsheim and Ansbach (all in Bavar ...

district of

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

. It has around 4,700 inhabitants.

Geography

Subdivision

The town Creglingen contains the following ''

district A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municipa ...

s'' (since the municipal reform of 1972): Archshofen, Blumweiler, Craintal, Erdbach, Finsterlohr (together with the villages Schonach, Burgstall and Seldeneck), Frauental, Freudenbach, Münster, Niederrimbach, Oberrimbach, Lichtel, Reinsbronn (together with the village of Niedersteinach), Reutsachsen, Schirmbach, Schmerbach, Schön, Schwarzenbronn, Waldmannshofen (together with the village of Sechselbach and the hamlets Fuchshof und Seewiesenhof), Wolfsbuch, Weiler.

History

The

Celts The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancien ...

who founded the town between 200 and 100 B.C. also farmed the surrounding plateaus and valleys. In 1349, Creglingen received its town charter from Emperor

Karl IV Charles IV may refer to: * Charles IV of France (1294–1328), "the Fair" * Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor (1316–1378) * Charles IV of Navarre (1421–1461) * Charles IV, Duke of Anjou (1446–1481) * Charles IV, Duke of Alençon (1489–1525) * ...

(Charles IV).

Attractions

Creglingen is known for the Herrgottskirche outside of the town. It contains a masterwork of late-Gothic sculpture by Tilman Riemenschneider, the ''Marienaltar''. The church is a pilgrimage chapel, established following a reported discovery of an undamaged

communion wafer Sacramental bread, also called Communion bread, Eucharistic bread, the Lamb or simply the host ( la, hostia, lit=sacrificial victim), is the bread used in the Christian ritual of the Eucharist. Along with sacramental wine, it is one of two elemen ...

by a peasant ploughing his field in 1384. This wafer was thought to be the cause of miracles and people flocked to the site. The local lords, Konrad and Gottfried von Hohenlohe-Brauneck, had a

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

chapel built in 1386–96. At the pilgrimage's peak around 1500 a number of altars were ordered that remain in the church today. The central altar by Riemenschneider was built on the spot where the wafer was reportedly found. The figures are made from the wood of linden trees, the surrounding frames from pine trees. At a total height of 11 meters the altar dominated the small church. Although

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and i ...

reached the area in 1530, its iconoclasm spared the local church. The altar wings of the main altar were closed, however, as the depicted

Assumption of Mary The Assumption of Mary is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII defined it in 1950 in his apostolic constitution '' Munificentissimus Deus'' as follows: We proclaim and define it to be a dogma revealed by ...

was offensive to the Protestant congregations. Its good state of preservation is owed to the fact that the wings of the altar remained closed and the whole was covered by funeral wreaths until 1832.

Notable people

Crago (Alamanni) Crago was the head of an Alamannic ''sippe'' who supposedly founded the town of Creglingen in Germany in the late fourth or early fifth century. His name apparently means crow A crow is a bird of the genus ''Corvus'', or more broadly a synonym fo ...

), mythical founder * Gustav Vorherr (1778-1847), architect and economist, Royal Bavarian Baurat * (1835-1896), member of the Reichstag *

Wilhelm Michler Wilhelm Michler (27 December 1846 – 27 November 1889) was a German chemist. He studied under Hermann von Fehling and Victor Meyer in Stuttgart and followed Meyer to the ETH Zurich in 1871. Michler became professor at the ETH Zurich in 1878. H ...

(1846-1899), chemist * (1866-1933), Holocaust victim * Ernst Stuhlinger (1913-2008), rocket scientist * (born 1946), mayor, politician (CDU), Member of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg * (born 1956), writer, literary critic and essayist

References

External links

* Main-Tauber-Kreis Württemberg Historic Jewish communities {{MainTauber-geo-stub