[3] It is located about 45 km north-northeast of Strasbourg on the northern edge of the Forêt de Haguenau, the largest undivided forest in France.

The 7th-9th century Traditiones Wizenburgenses, chronicles of the Benedictine monastery of Wissembourg, mention a donation by Helphant of Batanesheim, grandson of Battacho.

His successors, the counts of Hanau-Lichtenberg, retained property rights after the area fell under French control via the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, and were inherited by the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1736.

Back in France after World War I, the housewares pottery business ran into stiff competition from high-volume industrial producers.

Local potters began a transition to more highly decorated art pottery, still in the city's traditional blue and gray colors.