[1] Söflingen Abbey originated from a pre-Franciscan congregation of women that had acquired the rights over three farmsteads close to the river Danube near Ulm.

Its exposed position close to the river Danube also meant that it was vulnerable during the political upheaval in the reign of Emperor Frederick II and before 1253 a decision was made to move the congregation to Söflingen.

Finally, Pope John XXII (1316–34) explicitly appointed the Bishop of Constance as the official protector of the nunnery.

[5] From this time on, Söflingen Abbey attempted to discard Ulm's protection and claimed Imperial immediacy, which they achieved only much later, and kept repelling Protestant influences.

Söflingen Abbey was to be used as headquarters for troops again in the 18th century during the War of the Spanish Succession, this time by Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, in 1701 and in 1704 by the Duke of Marlborough.

Under the rule of abbesses Euphrosinia Rampf (1684–1687), Kleopha Veeser (1687) and Angela Gräfin Slawata (1687–1701) the abbey church was rebuilt in early Baroque style.

In 1773 the abbey reached a legal settlement with the city of Ulm whereby it relinquished its rights on the villages of Mähringen, Lehr, Jungingen, Breitingen, Holzkirch, Lonsee, Langenau, Weidenstetten, Söglingen and Bermaringen.

In exchange for this Ulm, which had been Protestant since the first half of the 16th century, gave up its protection, territorial and legal rights over Söflingen Abbey.

At the same time, the abbey finally achieved Imperial immediacy with the abbess receiving a seat and voting rights in the Swabian Circle and the Reichstag.

Together with the nuns the last abbess, Bonaventura Seelinger, chose to continue the monastic life but was ejected from the monastery in 1809 when the buildings were used as an army hospital and later as a Royal Bavarian court of law only to be allowed to briefly return in 1810 when, following a border treaty between Württemberg and Bavaria in 1810, the area around Söflingen, together with Ulm, came under the rule of the recently founded Kingdom of Württemberg.