The individual word elements are "Onold" (the city founder's name), the Suffix "-es" (a possessive ending, like "-'s" in English) and the Old High German expression "pah" or "bach" (for brook).

[5] According to folklore, towards the end of the 7th century a group of Franconian peasants and their families went up into the wilderness to found a new settlement.

Many villages around Ansbach were founded by the "Winden" during that period (even today, their settlements can easily identified by their names, like Meinhardswinden, Dautenwinden or Brodswinden).

George the Pious introduced the Protestant Reformation to Ansbach in 1528, leading to Gumbertus Abbey's secularization in 1563.

[9] Napoleon forced Prussia to cede Ansbach and its principality to Bavaria[8] in the Franco-Prussian treaty of alliance signed at Schönbrunn Palace on 15 December 1805 at the end of the Third Coalition.

They set up a Jewish Cemetery in the Ruglaender Strasse, which was vandalised and razed under the Nazi regime in the Kristallnacht.

[citation needed] In 1940, at least 500 patients were deported from the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Ansbach [Ansbach Medical and Nursing Clinic] to the extermination facilities Sonnenstein and Hartheim which were disguised as psychiatric institutions, as part of the Action T4 euthanasia action.

[citation needed] During World War II, a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp was located here.

The nearby airbase was the home station for the Stab & I/KG53 (Staff & 1st Group of Kampfgeschwader 53) operating 38 Heinkel He 111 bombers.

Several memorials to his heroic deed have been erected over the years, despite opposition from some residents — in the Ludwigskirche, in the Gymnasium Carolinum and at No 6 Kronenstrasse.

The American Military authorities established a displaced persons (DP) camp in what used to be a sanatorium in what is today the Strüth quarter.

which has been replaced by the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade as of 2006, as part of the 1st Infantry Division's return to Fort Riley, Kansas; Bismarck Kaserne, which functions as a satellite post to Katterbach, hosting their Post Theater, barracks, Von Steuben Community Center, Military Police, and other support agencies, Barton Barracks, home to the USAG Ansbach and Bleidorn Barracks, which has a library and housing, and Urlas, which hosts the Post Exchange as well as a housing area opened in 2010.

The perpetrator was reported to be a Syrian refugee whose asylum application had been rejected but who had been given exceptional leave to remain until the security situation in Syria returned to a safe condition.

Around the time of the unification of Germany in 1871, the chief manufactures of Ansbach were woollen, cotton, and half-silk goods; earthenware; tobacco; cutlery; and playing cards.

The bulk of the novel concerns efforts by an American law firm to trace his descendants to claim an inheritance.