After the Second World War, this was founded as a "Neutrowerk" by committed returned and immigrant experts - after the most difficult negotiations with the Soviet military administration - in the "old building" of the air base, which was therefore not blown up.

The "Jahnstadt" Kölleda is also known as the place of exile for the "gymnastics father" Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (memorial plaque east of the Roßplatz intersection; around 1960 also with "Jahnsportspiele" and today again with the Jahnplatz).

Kölleda was first mentioned in a document as the village Collide in 786 in the property register of the Hersfeld Abby, the Breviarium Sancti Lulli.

Short vowels, on the other hand, are found in the Old and Middle High German words kolo and kol for coal/charcoal and Alemannic cholle(n) for glow/glow.

This place name appears in an old record in 1487, which according to a legend written down by the chronicler Friedrich Heinrich Grüning in 1833 is said to have the following origin: A distinguished gentleman once wanted to travel through the city, and when he came through the gate, he met a very large number of cattle, which were driven to the beautiful pastures belonging to the city.

As he had to wait for some time in front of the gate to let the cattle coming towards him in a long line pass, he asked what the place was called.

Well,' says the foreign gentleman, 'it might be called Kuhcölln, in contrast to other towns, because the inhabitants can keep such a large herd of cattle.

When the Peter-Paul-Church in the village slowly became too small for the growing population, the St. Johannes Monastery Church was built in its place in 1266.

During the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), military activity, looting and epidemics occurred repeatedly in the town.

To commemorate the peace after the war, a memorial stone was erected on 19 April 1649 along the boundary between Cölleda and Großneuhausen.

In 1848, during the March Revolution, civil defence units stood up to the Prussian military and forced the soldiers to withdraw from the town.

This assembly was an expression of a popular movement that had forced the expropriation of the large estates in two neighbouring communities of Sömmerda and their division among the peasants and day labourers.

At the turn of the century in 1900, a gasworks was built in Cölleda, the new school in Hundtgasse street was handed over and the first telephone connection went into operation.

During the National Socialist era, Kölleda experienced strong population growth, justified by the rearmament policy of the 1930s.

A woman protected until then by her non-Jewish husband was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944, where she died two days after her arrival.

[3] Despite an air raid in 1944 on the airfield in Kölleda, the city centre was spared during the Second World War and was handed over to the US without a fight on 11 April 1945.

Immediately after the takeover, the Soviet Army set up a prison in the villa on the corner of Bahnhofstraße and Hopfendamm.

In the same year, the citizens of Kölleda and their guests celebrated the 600th anniversary of the granting of the town and market rights by Count Friedrich VI of Beichlingen.

The administrative community now included the municipalities of Beichlingen, Großmonra, Großneuhausen, Kleinneuhausen, Ostramondra and Schillingstedt.

In 1999, the town sought to terminate its membership in the Kölleda administrative community, which had existed since 1994, because it felt that this violated its right to local self-government.

In 2001, the exhibition Against Forgetting - Central Germany's Air War History was opened in the Backleber Tor.

When a location was sought for the MDC Power GmbH engine plant, Kölleda was chosen from 49 possible sites.

In 2006, after more than a year of consideration, the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior made the decision to admit the town of Rastenberg to the Kölleda administrative community.

The Protestant regional parish of Kölleda is served jointly by the pastor couple Gerlinde and Joachim Justus Breithaupt.

Since the granting of the town charter in 1392, the most important right of the citizens of Kölleda was to elect a twelve-member council, headed by the "Ratsmeister", who soon had the title of "Burgemeister".

Until 1832, the mayors were part-time.It was not until the introduction of the revised Prussian Town Code of 1831 that the mayoralty in Kölleda was held on a full-time basis.

In a run-off election on 29 April 2018, Lutz Riedel (SPD) prevailed against Patric Nowak, who has held the mayoralty since 1 July 2018.

[6][7] The coat of arms of Kölleda depicts St Wippertus, patron saint of the town.

Below St. Wippertus is a shield representing a golden branch of an oak tree with three leaves on a black background.

But St. Wippertus brought a freshly picked grape, pressed its juice with his hands into the communion chalice and had fermented wine in it.