Wanfried is a town in the Werra-Meißner-Kreis in northeasternmost Hesse, Germany. It is classified as a Landstadt, a designation given in Germany to a municipality that is officially a town (Stadt), but whose population is below 5,000. It literally means “country town”. Geography Location The town lies right on the boundary with Thuringia. It is found in the Werra valley northeast of the Schlierbachswald (range). Northeast of Wanfried, beyond the Thuringian boundary, is the neighbouring Eichsfeld-Hainich-Werratal Nature Park. The Hessian middle centre of Eschwege lies only some 11 km upstream to the west. Other nearby towns of its kind are Mühlhausen (some 25 km to the east) and Eisenach (some 28 km to the southeast), both of which lie in Thuringia. Neighbouring communities Wanfried borders in the north on the community of Geismar, and more particularly on its constituent community of Döringsdorf (in Thuringia’s Eichsfeld district), in the east on the communities of Hildebrandshausen and Katharinenberg (both in Thuringia’s Unstrut-Hainich-Kreis), in the southeast and the south on the town of Treffurt (in Thuringia’s Wartburgkreis) and in the west on the town of Eschwege and the community of Meinhard, and more particularly on its constituent community of Frieda (both in the Werra-Meißner-Kreis). Constituent communities Wanfried’s Stadtteile are Wanfried (main town), Altenburschla, Aue, Heldra and Völkershausen. History Wanfried is an ancient town. When Saint Boniface came to this area, it was already here. There were even already Christians here. He built the first churches. Even on the Hülfensberg he built a church and a monastery. While gazing from the Hülfensberg, Saint Boniface supposedly said, according to legend, “Wann wird endlich Frieden schweben über dieser schönen Aue?” (“When will peace at last hover over this lovely floodplain?). Folk etymology holds that this yielded the local placenames Wanfried, Frieda, Schwebda and Aue. As a place in a border area, Wanfried, which had already been mentioned by 813 under the names In wanen In Riden and Uuanenreodum, was often the object of territorial swaps and pledges by both the Hessian and Thuringian Landgraves, whose spheres of interest came up against each other here. After the Battle of Wettin (1264), the community mentioned at this time as Wenefridun was ceded to Thuringia. To expand his new Hessian Landgraviate, Henry I bought the communities of Wanfried and Frieda and a few villages in the Eichsfeld from the Thuringian Landgrave in 1306. A few years later, with and