Litzendorf

Litzendorf is a community in the Upper Franconian district of Bamberg. Owing to administrative reform it has been a unified community since 1 May 1978.

Geography

Litzendorf and most of its outlying centres lie in the Ellern Valley, which is surrounded by wooded heights with the Bamberg district's two highest elevations, the Geisberg (585 m) and the Stammberg (560 m).

Constituent communities

Litzendorf's namesake centre is not the biggest of its Ortsteile. Pödeldorf is somewhat bigger. The community has these centres, each given here with its own population figure:

Neighbouring communities

History

The derivation of the name Litzendorf is unclear. It could have come from the Slavic word lyko ("bast") or from the Germanic word litzel ("little").

In Merovingian and Carolingian times, when the villages, which were likely of Frankish and Slavic origin, arose, the Ellern Valley was still heavily wooded.

The name Litzendorf first cropped up in 1129 in a document from Bishop of Bamberg Otto, which mentions an Otgoz von Licindorf. Otgoz belonged to the lower subservient nobility and was a court and administrative official to Saint Otto.