Frohnlach is located on Bundesstraße 303, 6.4 miles (or 10.3 km) southeast of Coburg near the Thuringian border and at the northern edge of the Lichtenfels Forest.

It came in the year 1070 by the hand of the Markgräfin [Countess of the Marches] Alberada with the founding of the Banz Abbey to the Diocese of Bamberg, and was later of greater importance for the Sonnefeld Monastery and its surrounding villages.

The first mention of Frohnlach was in the year 1260 when the founder of the Sonnefeld Monastery, Graf [Count] Henry II von Sonneberg, bought the village of “Otnandus de sleten” (from Kirchschletten near Zapfendorf).

She was instructed, with the nuns from her cloister, to build a new nunnery, “Sunnental [Valley of the Sun]”, at a place called “Superius Eberharts-Dorf [Upper Village of Eberhard]”, which they took under their separate protection.

In 1508, for its defense, Frohnlach had 25 able-bodied men who were armed with 25 morions [Sturmhauben], 12 rollers [Gollers], 19 breastplates, 3 pairs of arm-guards, 28 pikes, 5 halberds, 2 guns and 25 knives.

Over the centuries, even individual craftsmen, such as coopers [Weißbüttner], butchers [Metzger], bakers [Bäcker] and innkeepers [Gastwirte] worked for the monastery.

So the inhabitants of Frohnlach were making their livings with the Monastery, and we can sum up everything with the old quote: “Under the Crosier was the good life [Unter dem Krummstab war gut leben]”.

By then, the first privately owned properties were already beginning to appear in Frohnlach because of the decades of mismanagement of the Monastery and of the aftereffects of the revolutionary Bauernkrieg (German Peasants War).

The one-street village was overrun and impoverished not only by long and frequent billeting but also the wild hordes of soldiers who plundered at will, tore down houses and burned others.

The back and forth brought Imperial troops, Hungarians, Croats, and Lombards, and Generalwachtmeister (Major General)] Heinrich Holk’s cavalrymen and even ravagers from Kronach to the place.

In the year 1635 the country was so impoverished, “that also here many people had to leave houses and farms, many because of lack of the necessary nourishment had to fill themselves with earth, bran and dusty flour bread, tree bark, oil-cakes, skins of grapes, dogs, cats, and, yes, even carrion.

Since the soldiers had taken away all the horses and cattle, the farmers have to push themselves against the plow, so that they might only grow something [daß auch hier viele Leute Haus und Hof verlassen mußten, viele wegen Mangel der notwendigen Nahrung sich mit Erde, Kleie und Staubmehlbrot, Baumrinde, Leinkuchen, Treber, Hunden, Katzen, ja sogar mit Aas sättigten.

At the boundary between northern and southern Germany, where the "Field Barrier" was put in force at Frohnlach by the Deutschen Zollverein [German Customs Union] on 1 January 1834, lively organized smuggling flourished.

Up to 500 men came in the darkness with packs up to 60 Pfund (30 kilograms or 66 American pounds) over the border and provided good extra income.

Since the 14th century, Frohnlach was in the coopering trade at home, ultimately enshrining in the village's image the arches (piles of the tub handles).

Through a series of construction, fuel and commercial rights [Bau-, Brenn- und Nutzholzrechte], they were able to obtain favorable trunks from the Lichtenfels Forest.

Attempts by a few of Frohnlach's basketmakers after World War I to establish a business and the basketwares in industrial production failed to produce results and the companies perished again.

The years 1934 to 1939 brought another recovery, caused by the rise of the Third Reich, but by the beginning of World War II, the boom stopped and 1945 ended in total collapse.

After the currency reforms of 1948, in the beginning of the 1950s, the first independent contractors had to build and deliver their goods directly to the department stores and large buying groups.