The entire area of Ebringen near Freiburg is located in the Schoenberg range, foothills of the Black Forest, which is geologically a part of the Rhine Rift Valley.

The Schoenberg is characterized by a very diverse surface geology from the Triassic and Jurassic periods of the Mesozoic, Paleogene conglomerates and volcanism and glacial loess deposits.

Ebringen extends from west to east with the neighbourhoods Herrengaerten (1970), Kaiserstuhl (1960), Gruben (1980), Hinterdorf (old), Unterdorf (old), Wiedenhut (2000), Mitteldorf (old), Siedlung (1937), Oberdorf (old), Dammen (1970), Rebstall (2000), Birkental (old), Jennetal (1995) and Tirol (old, formerly ''Beim Schlemmer'').

In 1207 St. Gall became an independent (immediate) principality, over which the abbots ruled as territorial sovereigns ranking as Princes (prince-abbots) of the Holy Roman Empire.

Before then, St Gall's administration of its Breisgau possessions had been located in Wittnau, 5 km (3 miles) east of Ebringen in the Hexental between Schoenberg and the Black Forest.

St Gall wasn't able to maintain direct rule in a distant territory any longer and needed the support of a local noble family.

As Berghausen's church once belonged to the monastery St Trudpert - from which the Lord of Staufen was the protector - Pfaffenweiler saw the opportunity to expand its territory.

The revenge campaign of Freiburg was considered a breach of peace and illegal by the government, so the dispute ended in a comparison by the bailiff of Anterior Austria on 30 October 1495.

The second St Gall rule was, despite notable emigration, also an age of immigration of new families especially after 1713, when French interventions in the Breisgau became rare, of continuous population growth.

Between 1760 and 1785 Emperor Joseph II attempted to legislate a series of drastic reforms to remodel Austria in the form of the ideal Enlightened state.

Deeds of ownership, church records, the census of 1792 and also Ildefons von Arx in his chronicle mention wives and widows always with their birth name, sometimes referring to their husbands with wife of.

On 21 November 1621 the Abbey of St Gall bought back the undivided rule over Ebringen for 71,800 guilders from Hans Dietrich von Hohenlandenberg.

[16] The self-administration of the blood court inflicting corporal punishment, including the death penalty, was an important factor of imperial immediacy.

Sweden was allied with the Margravate of Baden-Durlach, the predecessor of the later Grand-Duchy of Baden, which ruled over Ebringen's neighbouring villages Wolfenweiler and Schallstadt.

[26] The new alliance did not improve the situation of St Gall's Breisgau possessions, as France occupied Freiburg in 1677 and the region was from then on de facto French controlled.

In 1678 the forest at the Herrenbuck, south of the Schoenberg summit, was felled for the French fortification of Freiburg by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban.

[31] But due to the political isolation of the abbey in Switzerland after its alliance with Austria, Governor Grass convinced Buergsisser instead to strengthen St Gall's presence in the Breisgau.

[32] So in spite of the war going on, between 1711 and 1713 a new manor house - the Schloss, today's Town Hall - was built as a representative office of the St Gall governor, which replaced the old one.

In the words of annalist Ildefons von Arx the project is described like a modern economic recovery programme, while the people of Ebringen and Norsingen saw it more like an exploitation of distress and poverty.

In May 1712 Abbot Buergisser was exiled to Neuravensburg, the abbey's territory north of Lake Constance in the Holy Roman Empire, where he died in 1717.

They sued the St Gall administration in the court for provincial estates of Anterior Austria against the rights of local authorities towards the people.

[37] In 1744 French troops, commanded by King Louis XV himself, captured Freiburg after a siege of six weeks in the War of the Austrian Succession.

[41] In 1770, the Austrian Princess Maria Antonia married the later French King Louis XVI, symbolizing a new alliance of France and Austria after 250 years of antagonism.

[43] On 1 July 1782 Johann Adam von Posch, Governor of Anterior Austria, abolished the right of the local authorities to the first instance of jurisdiction (judicium primae instantiae) and established a new common law system, the Vorderoesterreichische Landrechte.

1788/89 Prince-Abbot Beda Anghern sent four leading opponents - Ildefons von Arx, Gerald Brandenberg, Ambrosius Epp and Pankraz Vorster - to Ebringen.

Heir was the husband of his daughter Maria Beatrice, Ferdinand Charles of Austria, uncle of Emperor Francis, so the region remained Habsburgian - now ruled by the cadet branch Austria-Este - and de facto Austrian, as the new ruler lived at the imperial court in Vienna.

So from his new exile in Vienna Pankraz Vorster tried to negotiate with the canton of St Gall, not with Baden, about his future, claiming a lifelong dominion over Ebringen.

Although outbreaks of the plague in 1584 and 1629 reduced the number of inhabitants, there was a remarkable population growth in the decades after the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 due to a birth surplus and immigration.

The table also reflects the high infant mortality as reported in the church records: 41 babies younger than one year, while in the group 1-4 only 73 children are listed.

Between the reformation and the end of the rule of the Princely Abbey of St Gall in 1806 Ebringen's population was at least de jure all Roman Catholic, although the 1781 Patent of Toleration formally allowed other Christian cults.