Franconia is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and East Franconian dialect . Franconia is made up of the three Regierungsbezirke of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia in Bavaria, the adjacent, Franconian-speaking, South Thuringia, south of the Thuringian Forest—which constitutes the language boundary between Franconian and Thuringian—and the eastern parts of Heilbronn-Franconia in Baden-Württemberg.
Thuringia, officially the Free State of Thuringia, is a state of central Germany, covering 16,171 square kilometres (6,244 sq mi), the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million.
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, or Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, was an Ernestine duchy in Thuringia ruled by a branch of the House of Wettin, consisting of territories in the present-day states of Thuringia and Bavaria in Germany. It lasted from 1826 to 1918. In November 1918, Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was forced to abdicate. In 1920, the northern part of the duchy was merged with six other Thuringian free states to form the Free State of Thuringia: Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxe-Altenburg and Saxe-Meiningen, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, as well as the People's State of Reuss. The southern part of the duchy, as southernmost of the Thuringian states, was the only one which, after a referendum, became part of the Free State of Bavaria.
Hildburghausen is a district in Thuringia, Germany. It is bounded by the district of Schmalkalden-Meiningen, the city of Suhl, the districts of Ilm-Kreis, Saalfeld-Rudolstadt and Sonneberg, and the state of Bavaria. Located roughly halfway between the mountain chains of the Rhön and the Thuringian Forest, the district is densely forested and covered by hilly countryside. Its territory is similar to that of the former Ernestine duchy, Saxe-Hildburghausen.
Kronach is a Landkreis (district) in Bavaria, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Hof, Kulmbach, Lichtenfels and Coburg, and the state of Thuringia.
Saalfeld is a town in Germany, capital of the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district of Thuringia. It is best known internationally as the ancestral seat of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha branch of the Saxon House of Wettin.
Waltershausen is a town in the south-western part of the district of Gotha in the state of Thuringia, Germany.
Ilmenau is a town in Thuringia, central Germany. It is the largest town within the Ilm district with a population of 38,600, while the district capital is Arnstadt. Ilmenau is located approximately 33 km south of Erfurt and 135 km north of Nuremberg within the Ilm valley at the northern edge of the Thuringian Forest at an elevation of 500 metres.
Schalkau is a town in the district of Sonneberg, in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated 13 km west of Sonneberg, and 15 km north of Coburg. The former municipality Bachfeld was merged into Schalkau in December 2019.
The House of Henneberg was a medieval German comital family (Grafen) which from the 11th century onwards held large territories in the Duchy of Franconia. Their county was raised to a princely county in 1310.
The Rennsteig is a ridge walk as well as a historical boundary path in the Thuringian Forest, Thuringian Highland and Franconian Forest in Central Germany. The long-distance trail runs for about 170 km from Eisenach and the Werra valley in the northwest to Blankenstein and the Selbitz river in the southeast.
The Eisenach–Lichtenfels railway is a single-tracked main line with a standard gauge of 1,435 mm in Thuringia and Bavaria in southern and central Germany, that runs mostly along the river Werra. It runs from Eisenach via Meiningen to Eisfeld and, formerly, continued to Coburg and Lichtenfels. It was opened in 1858 and is one of the oldest railways in Germany. The railway company that built it, the Werra Eisenbahngesellschaft with its headquarters in Meiningen was also often called the Werrabahn. The company also ran various lines branching off the Werra Railway.
Sonneberg (Thür) Hauptbahnhof is a railway station for the city of Sonneberg in the German state of Thuringia and is on the Coburg–Sonneberg line. The station was built as part of the construction of the Hinterland Railway and still plays a central role in public transport of Sonneberg and the surrounding area. It was built in 1907 to replace the old station, which was built in 1857 and 1858 by the Werra Railway Company, together with the single-track Coburg–Sonneberg line, a branch line of the Werra Railway.
Röthen is a river of Thuringia and Bavaria, Germany. It passes through Sonneberg and Neustadt bei Coburg, and flows into the Itz near Rödental.
Itzgründisch is an East Franconian dialect, which is spoken in the eponymous Itz Valley and its tributaries of Grümpen, Effelder, Röthen/Röden, Lauter, Füllbach and Rodach, the valleys of the Neubrunn, Biber and the upper Werra and in the valley of Steinach. In the small language area, which extends from the Itzgrund in Upper Franconia to the southern side of the Thuringian Highlands, East Franconian still exists in the original form. Because of the remoteness of the area, this isolated by the end of the 19th century and later during the division of Germany, this language has kept many linguistic features to this day. Scientific study of the Itzgründisch dialect was made for the first time, in the middle of the 19th century, by the linguist August Schleicher.
The Free State of Coburg emerged from the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha at the end of the First World War. It existed from November 1918 until its union with the Free State of Bavaria on 1 July 1920.
Ernst Heubach was a company in Köppelsdorf, Thuringia, Germany, that manufactured porcelain-headed bisque dolls from 1885 onwards
Franconia is a region that is not precisely defined, but which lies in the north of the Free State of Bavaria, parts of Baden-Württemberg and South Thuringia and Hesse in Germany. It is characterised by its own cultural and linguistic heritage. Its history began with the first recorded human settlement about 600,000 years ago. Thuringii, Alemanni and Franks, who gave the region its name, settled the area in the Early Middle Ages. From the mid-9th century, the Stem Duchy of Franconia emerged as one of the five stem duchies of the Empire of East Francia. On 2 July 1500, during the reign of Emperor Maximilian I, as part of the Imperial Reform, the empire was divided into Imperial Circles. The Franconian Circle, which was formed as a result of this restructuring, became decisive in the creation of a Franconian national identity. A feature of Franconia in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period was its Kleinstaaterei, an extreme fragmentation into little states and territories. In the 19th century under Napoleon, large parts of Franconia were incorporated into the newly created Kingdom of Bavaria.
South Thuringia refers to all the Franconia regions in the German Free State of Thuringia south of the Rennsteig and the Salzbogen, but including the entire former county of Bad Salzungen. The region is, if the Eisenach area is excluded, almost identical with the Southwest Thuringian Planning Region in the state of Thuringia.
The State of Thuringia was a state of the German Empire in the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era, as well as a state of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany and the East Germany. The state capital was Weimar, the largest city Gera.
