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.
Wolfstein, Rhineland-Palatinate
Archaeological finds from both the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age on the Königsberg's and the Selberg's west flank, barrows in the Jungenwald (forest) at the town limits with Aschbach and Lohnweiler that have been explored and many finds of Roman coins with effigies of Roman emperors at the old Celtic settlement, which was once surrounded by a ringwall, on the Kreimberg at the town limit with Kreimbach-Kaulbach (known as the "Heidenburg", or “Heathen Castle”) bear witness to the presence of people in what is now Wolfstein in prehistoric times and early historic times. Leading over the ridge of the Königsberg was the “Roman road”, one of the Palatinate's oldest settlement roads. Nevertheless, there was never any Roman settlement within what are now Wolfstein's limits.