[1] Elbingerode is situated in the eastern Harz mountain range, approximately 8 km (5.0 mi) south of neighbouring Wernigerode.

[2] The lands around Elbingerode had been a feudal hunting ground since the Middle Ages, when it was part of the Harzgau territory within the Duchy of Saxony.

King Henry the Fowler stayed several times at Bodfeld, a royal hunting lodge or Königspfalz, demonstrably in 935, as did his successors of the Ottonian and Salian dynasty.

Finally in 1564, the Brunswick dukes of Calenberg seized the fief and granted town privileges to the citizens of Elbingerode, which became the seat of a local Amt administration.

In 1932 Elbingerode passed to the Ilfeld district in the Prussian Province of Saxony; it became part of the Soviet occupation zone and East Germany after World War II.