D E CZ

The Town of Vilshofen on the Danube
and its history of 800 years

Vilshofen is the second oldest foundation of a town in Lower Bavaria in the Middle Ages

“So devastating an inundation that people with towns and houses in Swabia perished. The Preachers´ Order comes into being. In the same year Vilshoven is erected by the Count of Ortinberch.”
This annotation in the annals of the monastery of Admont, Styria, for the year 1206 is tantamount to the document of elevation which raised the market-town of Vilshofen to the legal status of a chartered city 800 years ago.
The valleys of the Danube and the Vils have been areas of settlement since ancient times. From the late Stone Age, through the Celtic and the Roman period up to the early Bavarians, the Vilshofen area had always been settled. A short time after the emergence of the early Bavarians in the 5th and the 6th centuries AD, the year 776 marks the beginning of the history of Vilshofen: in a document concerning the donation of a manor to the monastery of Mondsee in the Austrian Salzkammergut, Vilusa (the name of that manor) is mentioned for the first time. In the 12th century we find the name Vilshouen.
At that time the bishop of Passau was the lord of the region around the Danube and the Vils, and the Count of Ortenburg, his vassal, was the feudal lord of Vilshofen. In 1206, Count Henry I. of Ortenburg raised his market-town Vilshofen, which had been in existence for an unknown time, to the legal status of a chartered city by constructing fortifications. Because of the feuds between the two powerful houses of the counts of Ortenburg and Bogen around the year 1200, Henry chose the strategically well-protected narrow stretch of land at the mouth of the Vils for the fortification of his town.
As early as around the year 1220, we hear of a bridge across the Vils which connects the new part of the town with the older housing estates on the right bank of the river (today´s Vilsvorstadt). In 1236, a parish church and a priest named Hainricus Plebanus de Vilshouen are first mentioned.
The counts of Ortenburg ruled the town they had founded in 1206 for merely 35 years. When Henry I. died on 15 February 1241, bitter controversies over his inheritance broke out in the house of the counts of Ortenburg, and Duke Otto II. of Bavaria (1231-1253) seized control over the young town by force in 1241. The subsequent protests from the actual landowner, Bishop Rüdiger of Passau, were eventually allayed by the successor of Otto II., Duke Henry of Lower Bavaria, by means of a contract he concluded with the bishop in 1262 after protracted negotiations. Thereby Vilshofen was incorporated into Bavaria for good.
Duke Otto II. established a court of law in Vilshofen whose juridical district reached from Künzing to St. Nikola near Passau and from the source of the river Wolfach near Haarbach to the Dreiburgenland area around Tittling and Neukirchen vorm Wald. For more than 700 years, the town of Vilshofen was the administrative centre of the local court of justice (until 1799), then of the district court (until 1862), the county court (until 1938) and eventually of the administrative district of Vilshofen that existed until 1972.
Furthermore, Vilshofen was a border town to the independent secular territory of the Prince Bishop of Passau, the so-called “Hochstift”, which reached to the West as far as Rathsmannsdorf and Windorf. The duke set up a tollgate in his protruding town of Vilshofen, which was to become one of the most profitable ones in the whole of Bavaria. Thus Vilshofen developed into one of the most important border towns of Bavaria in a relatively short period of time. As early as on 26 October 1345, Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian reaffirmed “the rights that our town of Vilshofen has had since the days of our forefathers”.
With regard to economy, the town primarily depended on the Danube to make a living. Commerce in connection with shipping and salt trade were thriving for centuries. According to the chronicle written by Professor Franz S. Scharrer, salt trade with Bergreichenstein, Bohemia (today´s Kasperské Hory), on the “old Golden Road” had already existed in the 14th century. In 1591 Duke William V. of Bavaria approved the erection of a salt deposit in Vilshofen, which was followed by the construction of the first bridge across the Danube and the creation of a wheat beer brewery. As the town is located on the Danube, the Vils and the Wolfach, fishing used to be another major line of business for more than 500 years. Trade, ten annual fairs, the important imperial road from Regensburg to Vienna, which crossed the town centre, and the Bavarian administrative offices always made people come to the town in large numbers. That is why many craftsmen settled down here, too.
The situation at the Danube, however, had negative effects as well. Several times, the inhabitants had to suffer famines, wars and epidemics such as the plague. Up to the Napoleonic era, marauding bands of soldiers from all over Europe, who came to stay in the town or just passed it by on their way, looted, raped, pillaged and set the town on fire.
In addition to that, natural disasters caused great suffering among the townspeople. On 12 May 1794 the Great Fire – the worst conflagration in the history of Vilshofen – destroyed almost the entire historical centre of the town. Besides, numerous instances of floods and ice blockages often caused immense damage. The construction of flood dams on the banks of the Danube and the Vils from 1957 to 1959 and in 1968 put an end to this constant threat after the last two devastating ice floods of 1956 and 1968.
With persistent diligence and unbroken vigour Vilshofen succeeded to retain its central economic importance for the surrounding area through many periods of crisis. Since the dissolution of the administrative district of Vilshofen in 1972, tourism and the creation of schools have gained primary importance. Having built a promenade on the bank of the Danube in 2000/2001, the town has regained access to the river. Recently, a large number of cruise liners have begun docking at the promenade during the season.
Dr Karl Wild († 1987), a local historian who rendered outstanding services to the historiography of Vilshofen, once characterized the exposed position of the town on the Danube very appropriately : “Vilshofen may be but a small town, but it can pride itself on sharing river banks and waters with Ulm, Regensburg and Passau, as well as with Linz, Vienna and Budapest.”

(Ludwig Maier)