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
The estate holders’ names from 1514 are known without any gaps in the record. They discharged their hereditary pledge to the monastery, receiving as a reward usage and grazing rights in the “lordly monastery woodlands”, “free lumber and firewood”, the “sheep meadow on the estate’s area as well as the municipal area of the market town of Wolfstein with its own herd of maximally 200 head” (1786).