Wolfstein, Rhineland-Palatinate
Wolfstein was founded in 1275 on Habsburg King Rudolph I's orders, which called for a “fortified and free” town near his castle, “Woluisstein”, now known as the "Alt-Wolfstein" (“Old Wolfstein”) ruin. Rudolph forthwith granted the new town the same town rights and freedoms as the town of Speyer. As an “everlasting marketplace”, it was to be a sanctuary for commerce, trade and dealing. The first townsmen and -women came from the surrounding, much older villages.
Freyung-Grafenau
The district was established in 1972 by merging the former districts of Grafenau and Wolfstein. In medieval times Wolfstein (east of the Ilz River) was the property of the bishop of Passau and the site of Wolfstein Castle, now a "schloss". Grafenau (west of the Ilz River) successively belonged to different countries, before it was annexed by Bavaria in 1438. Wolfstein became a part of Bavaria two years after the dissolution of the clerical states in Germany (1803).