Bernburg - St. Stephani

Bernburg is today a city with about 32.000 inhabitants.

The current district Waldau was already mentioned in 782 for the first time and in 806 as "Waladala" in the chronicle of Moissac, about 1500 km southwest. (the chronicle is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris today). In 782, at the Diet of Lippspringe, what was then Saxony was divided into Frankish counties and thus became part of the Frankish Empire. The next mention of a Bernburg castle was in 1138, when it is reported that the enemies of Albrecht the Bear infected the "Berneburch".

Together with the reconstruction of the castle from the second half of the 12th century, a Slavic settlement was established in front of the castle. In the first half of the 13th century, the Nikolai settlement developed due to the targeted settlement of craftsmen and merchants.

The first record of a mill on the Saale dates back to 1219, and the first bridge over the Saale was mentioned in 1239. In 1278, Bernhard I of Anhalt-Bernburg granted the old town and the new town the town charter. In 1293, at the instigation of the abbot of the Nienburg monastery, Slavonic was banned as a court language in Anhalt-Bernburg.

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The church of St. Stephani in Bernburg-Waldau was mentioned in 964 as the parish of Gernrode. The current church, erected around 1180, is a flat-roofed dry-stone building with the characteristic staggering of the components apse, chancel, nave, and tower of a Romanesque complex. The west transept tower is older in the lower parts with (bricked-up) simple arched windows than the upper floor with the coupled sound openings. This floor was built at the same time as the construction of the nave and the eastern parts.