While gazing from the Hülfensberg, Saint Boniface supposedly said, according to legend, “Wann wird endlich Frieden schweben über dieser schönen Aue?” (“When will peace at last hover over this lovely floodplain?).

As a place in a border area, Wanfried, which had already been mentioned by 813 under the names In wanen In Riden and Uuanenreodum, was often the object of territorial swaps and pledges by both the Hessian and Thuringian Landgraves, whose spheres of interest came up against each other here.

To expand his new Hessian Landgraviate, Henry I bought the communities of Wanfried and Frieda and a few villages in the Eichsfeld from the Thuringian Landgrave in 1306.

To this end, he acquired in 1365 from the Lords at Völkershausen their court rights over the villages of Altenburschla, Döringsdorf, Heldra, Helderbach, Rambach and Weißenborn.

Before Wanfried passed for good to the Hessian Landgraves, there were once again conflicts with neighbouring Thuringia in the course of the Sternerkrieg (war), in the late 14th century.

In 1616, the town of Wanfried was named in the Verzeichnis der fürnembsten Städte Europas (“Directory of Europe’s Finest Cities”) as an important trading centre.

After the goods had cleared the Auf der Schlagd customs office, they were consigned to the town's warehouses, shortly thereafter to be shipped out again overland.

The shippers brought mostly goods from the coastal cities bound especially for Thuringia and Bavaria, important destinations there being the trading centres of Leipzig and Nuremberg.

The small Catholic parish (founded in 1908) grew greatly after the Second World War from all the Ethnic German refugees from Eastern Europe .

The time from March through June 1945 in nazi-administered and American liberated Wanfried is described by Agnes Humbert from her viewpoint as a former French political prisoner and badly mistreated slave-labourer in her diary Notre guerre, souvenirs de Resistance (Résistance, Memoirs of Occupied France).

Wanfried – or Friedheim – stood for a very quiet place about which not much was ever heard, but into which a local newspaper editor sought to bring some life by himself secretly initiating incidents on the border so that he could then report them in his paper.

The municipal election held on 26 March 2006 yielded the following results: Heading the town council is Frank Susebach (SPD).

The outlying centre of Altenburschla has the following sister village: Through Wanfried, which lies on the "Deutsche Fachwerkstraße" (“German Timber Frame Road”), run Bundesstraßen 250 and 249.