Königsfeld, Bavaria

To the community of Königsfeld belong the following Ortsteile:

		Huppendorf was before municipal reform a community in its own right; the children, however, went to school in Königsfeld.	143
		Königsfeld was for centuries the centre of a Catholic parish to which most of the villages now in the community belonged.	569
		Kotzendorf already formed a community together with Königsfeld before municipal reform.	107
		Laibarös formed a small community together with Poxdorf until municipal reform; the children, however, went to school in Hohenpölz.	148
		Poxdorf was the seat of the former community of Poxdorf/Laibarös and had its own school, which was exclusively attended by Poxdorf children.	159
		Treunitz was before municipal reform a community in its own right and had its own school.	160
		Voitmannsdorf originally formed with Drosendorf an der Aufseß, where the children went to school, a community.	125

• Litzendorf (in the west)
• Scheßlitz (in the northwest)
• Stadelhofen (in the north)
• Hollfeld (in the east)
• Heiligenstadt (in the north)

The community of Königsfeld belongs to the administrative community (Verwaltungsgemeinschaft) of Steinfeld, to which the communities of Wattendorf and Stadelhofen also belong. The administrative community's seat is Steinfeld, a constituent community of Stadelhofen.

The community of Königsfeld has borne its current arms since municipal reform in 1973. They might heraldically be described thus: Gules, two flails argent per saltire, thereover a coronet Or and thereunder a scallop reversed Or.

The crown stands for the community's name (Königsfeld in German means “king’s field”). The two flails come from the coat of arms borne by the Lords of Königsfeld, ministeriales from Bamberg in the service of the Counts of Truhendingen. The scallop refers to the Catholic parish church's patron, St. Jacob the Elder.

As a Carolingian royal court, the place was known in the 8th century as Chunigeshofen in montibus versus Bohemiam (“King’s court in the mountains towards Bohemia”) and had its first documentary mention in 741 in a donation document to the Bishopric of Würzburg. The Carolingians had built a royal court at the source of the river Aufseß whose fortifications served to safeguard the road network in a border region with the Frankish Empire. Emperor Charlemagne wanted to control the weapons trade in 805 with the Slavic regions lying to the east, and to that end he put commissaries to work in both Hallstadt and Scheßlitz.

The Imperial forest of Hauptsmoorwald reached to Königsfeld's outlying rural area as late as the 16th century.

The economic estate lay on the community's western edge. Another settlement centre was found right on the Aufseß in the community's east. Slavic ceramic finds have been unearthed here.

Iron ore was mined and smelted around Königsfeld since prehistoric times and likely had economic importance for the royal court. Today, exploratory diggings, slagheaps and field names, such as Arzberg (which would be rendered Erzberg in Modern High German – “Ore Mountain”) still recall these times.

In 1008, Emperor Heinrich II donated this royal estate (“his property with all that belongs thereto”) to the Bishopric of Bamberg. Bamberg ministeriales, that is to say, the bishop's followers, have appeared in the historic record since 1121.

King Karlmann assigned Königsfeld in 741 or 742 to the newly formed Bishopric of Würzburg. Würzburg still had tithing rights in Poxdorf, Brunn and Voitmannsdorf after the Bishopric of Bamberg was founded. The Bishop of Würzburg was until sometime in the 14th century the patron lord of Saint Kilian’s Church at Königsfeld.

In the 14th century, Königsfeld passed to the Lords of Aufseß.

During the Thirty Years' War, the community was burnt down by the Swedes. At the time of this attack, the village’s priest, Father Funk, was murdered at the source of the Aufseß. He is memorialized by a wayside shrine that stands at the source.

As part of the High Monastery of Bamberg, it came with the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803 to Bavaria. In the course of administrative reform in Bavaria, today’s community came into being under the Gemeindeedikt (“Community Edict”) of 1818.

By the 17th century, the community had grown to more than 1,000 inhabitants. However, the population shrank sharply in the Thirty Years' War and the community could never again build up to this former figure. Königsfeld could only reach the figure that it has today – roughly 1,400 – through the amalgamation of six outlying communities. After 1945, refugees driven from the formerly German lands east of the Oder and Neiße raised the population somewhat, but since the community's agriculture-based economy afforded few a livelihood, many left again to seek work in towns.

Königsfeld and the surrounding places weathered the First World War without great losses. However, in the last days of the Second World War, Königsfeld lay for several hours under fire from United States soldiers. It could have been worse but for a wounded US soldier, whose retrieval forestalled further damage.

In the course of administrative reform in May 1978, the communities of Stadelhofen and Wattendorf became along with Königsfeld the administrative community (Verwaltungsgemeinschaft) of Steinfeld.