[1][2] It was founded in 936 on the initiative of Saint Matilda, the widow of the East Frankish King Henry the Fowler, as his memorial.

[4] Quedlinburg Abbey was founded on the castle hill of Quedlinburg in the present Saxony-Anhalt in 936 by King Otto I, at the request of his mother Queen Mathilda, later canonised as Saint Mathilda, in honour of her late husband, Otto's father, King Henry the Fowler, and as his memorial.

[5][6][7] In the early and high Middle Ages, next to the abbey there was an imperial palace in Quedlinburg (a Kaiserpfalz), which was often used by the Holy Roman Emperor for Easter celebrations.

The later "Kaiserlich freie weltliche Reichsstift Quedlinburg" ("Free secular Imperial abbey of Quedlinburg"), as its full style was until its dissolution in 1802, consisted of a proprietary church of the Imperial family to which was attached a college of secular canonesses (Stiftsdamen), a community of the unmarried daughters of the greater nobility and royalty leading a godly life.

In the course of the German Mediatisation of 1802 and 1803 the Imperial Abbey was secularized and its territory, properties and subjects were absorbed by the Kingdom of Prussia as the Principality of Quedlinburg.

All later clearances (i.e., of previously uncultivated land) in the immediate vicinity were also theirs, but in addition they acquired far more distant possessions, such as Soltau, 170 kilometres away, given by Otto I in 936.

[14] At the end of World War II a number of the most valuable items were stolen by an American soldier, Joe Tom Meador, including the reliquary of Saint Servatius, from the time of Charles the Bald; the 9th century Samuhel Evangeliary (Samuhel Evangeliar); the printed St. Wipert's Evangeliary (Evangelistar aus St Wiperti) of 1513; and a liturgical ivory comb.

The most famous illuminated manuscript associated with the town, the 5th-century Quedlinburg Itala fragment, once in the church, had been moved to a museum in Berlin and was not stolen.

The immediate predecessor building where Henry I was initially buried in 936 in front of the main altar had been a small three-aisled church with narrow side aisles.

The graves of Heinrich der Vogler (Henry the Fowler), King of East Francia and his wife Mathilda are located in the crypt of the church.

Heinrich's grave only contains a battered empty stone coffin; the whereabouts of the king's remains and time and circumstances of their disappearance are unknown.

Under the Nazis, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer SS, came to Quedlinburg several times to hold a ceremony in the crypt on the anniversary of the King's death, 2 July.

[18] After the war, this sarcophagus and its content, a rather clumsy fake,[citation needed] were removed; remains are on display in the museum.