It was formed on 1 January 2010 by the merger of the former municipalities Altjeßnitz, Jeßnitz, Marke, Raguhn, Retzau, Schierau, Thurland and Tornau vor der Heide.

[4] During World War II, Raguhn was the location of a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, in which some 500 women and girls were imprisoned and subjected to forced labour.

[5] The prisoners were almost exclusively Jewish, but there was also one non-Jewish American, Hungarian, Italian and Turkish woman each.

His main rival was the independent Nils Naumann who managed to get 36.9% of the vote.

[6] Hannes Loth [de] won with 51.13% of the vote in a second run-off round on 2 July 2023 despite the fact that his party is under the surveillance of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution of the State of Saxony-Anhalt.