The community with its houses under memorial protection and its historically interesting church is a well known outing destination.

Unusual for an Evangelical church is the elaborate Baroque painting on the wooden galleries and the panelled ceilings.

The villages on the heights from Volkmannsreuth to Teuchatz belong to the Lange Meile ("Long Mile").

Heiligenstadt, in the Naturpark Fränkische Schweiz-Veldensteiner Forst (nature park), is the most important place in the Leinleiter Valley.

[3] Prehistoric finds establish that the market community's municipal area was already populated thousands of years ago, at least at times.

However, permanent small communities only arose about the year 500 at the time of the Migration Period (or Völkerwanderung).

In 1690, the Prince-Bishop of Bamberg, Marquard Sebastian Schenk von Stauffenberg inherited the knightly estates of Greifenstein and Burggrub together with patronage over Heiligenstadt.

The Counts Schenk von Stauffenberg still live at Greifenstein Castle and the palatial estate of Burggrub today.

By paying an immense sum of money, the Margrave Friedrich, who had been summoned for help, managed to get the Hussite leader Prokop to turn away.

The Kastner (“bursary officer”) of the Streitburg wrote in 1633 to the Margrave in Kulmbach telling him that “the subjects had all their livestock and grain taken away and many were horridly murdered.

In some villages more than half the subjects are said to have died wretchedly.” Farms were forsaken in Volkmannsreuth, Brunn, Oberleinleiter, Burggrub and Stücht.

In the Napoleonic Wars, an army corps under General Jourdan on a retreat overran the Franconian Switzerland.

French military police rode through the villages and extorted protection money from the peasants – sometimes many times in quick succession.

With the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, many of those called up for military service were stationed at the Metz garrison, some of whom stayed for ever and took wives.

In a report from the time of the Franconian Switzerland's discovery (that is, as a tour destination), Dr. Gottlieb Zimmermann describes in 1840 a hiking route along the Leinleiter wherein he shows by mentioning the community's old name that the name Heiligenstadt has nothing to do with Heiligen (“Holy Ones” or “Saints”), but rather with the word Halde: The community was called Lutherisches Hallstadt to distinguish it from Hallstadt near Bamberg, which was (and is) mostly Catholic.

In the heart of the main community, mostly Lutherans live, whereas in the outlying newer developments, most people are Catholic.

It has its seat in the family centre (sponsored by the Familienzentrum der Evangelisch-Freikirchlichen Gemeinden in Nordbayern e. V. ) Already by 1430 there were Jews from nearby towns doing trade with peasants in Heiligenstadt.

According to a directory kept by a clergyman named Knab from Heiligenstadt, there were 1,758 souls in his parish all together, 239 of them Catholic and 58 Jewish.

An unknown witness noted in the 1950s: The community council is made up of 16 members, listed here by party or voter community affiliation, and also with the number of seats that each holds:[6] The community's arms show the Archangel Michael with golden wings, red cloak and blue robe, golden helmet with a red tuft of feathers on the head standing on a silver cloud and holding a blue flaming sword in his right hand and a green olive twig in his left.

The Archangel Michael is, along with Saint Vitus, the holy protector of the now Evangelical St.-Veit- und St.-Michaels-Kirche in Heiligenstadt.

Even the refugees driven from formerly German lands east of the Oder and Neiße after the Second World War did not decisively change this emigration pattern.

It was only in the 1970s that an upswing was brought about when Mayor Daum did all that he could to make Heiligenstadt more attractive to those seeking work.

Put forth as arguments in its favour were the basalt mined on the Upper Leinleiter, iron ore finds near Königsfeld, the wood from the Stauffenberg and Aufseß forests, loading grain and livestock, and the looming tourism in the Franconian Switzerland.

Even communities farther away from the railway were ready to throw their lot in with those that were nearer in the hope that there would one day be an extension to Hollfeld or Scheßlitz.

There was 117 000 m³ of earth to be moved, 11 bridges to be built, and the Leinleiter riverbed had to be shifted in five places, making plenty of work for more than 100 workers and many residents.

The motorized postal line to Hollfeld was abandoned again in the autumn of 1931 because the abutting communities of Zoggendorf and Stücht were not using the service enough for it to be justifiable.

Roads fit for motor vehicles within the community's limits came into being only in the 1930s through work done by the Reichsarbeitsdienst, mainly through their job creation schemes.