On 8 March 1198 the princes of the Holy Roman Empire gathered in Arnstadt and elected Philip of Swabia as King of Germany.

On 21 April 1266, the abbot of the Abbey of Hersfeld granted a charter; thereafter, Arnstadt became a hub for trade in timber, grain, wine and wood.

On 30 January 1349, Count Günther XXI of Schwarzburg, an adversary of King Charles IV, was elected and crowned sovereign of Arnstadt in Frankfurt.

Arnstadt is a manufacturing centre with glassworks and foundries, a solar panel production plant, and glove-manufacturing and wood-finishing businesses.

Its noteworthy buildings include: In 1703, at the age of eighteen, the composer Johann Sebastian Bach was appointed as organist at the New Church.

Bach was fortunate to be able to play on such a modern and fully operational instrument: it had well-tempered tuning, permitted diverse harmonic effects, and did not require constant repair.

His period in Arnstadt ended in 1707, but already by then Bach had acquired an almost complete mastery of organ and keyboard technique, that would remain with him throughout his life.

His organ works ranged from large-scale chorales to more diverse pieces, such as fugues, preludes, fantasias, toccatas, passacaglias, sonatas and concertos.

He also drew inspiration from his contemporaries, as well as the Italian, German and French masterworks of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, such as the Fiori Musicali of Girolamo Frescobaldi.

As Wolff & Zepf (2012) point out, for the critical period between 1703 and 1707, Bach has ideal conditions "to strengthen and expand his virtuosity and, as a composer, build and develop his harmonic fantasy and tonal ideas".