Ostheim vor der Rhön

Ostheim vor der Rhön (, ) is a town in Northern Bavaria in the district of Rhön-Grabfeld in Franconia. Though politically part of Bavaria since 1947, it was historically a part of Thuringia, and remains religiously, architecturally, and to some extent culturally distinct from its immediate surroundings.

==History== Ostheim was first mentioned in 804. During the Reformation, Ostheim (along with much of the surrounding region) became Protestant. However, in the 1580s and 1590s, a powerful Counter-Reformation effort led by Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, reconverted most of the Streutal (the Streu valley, in northern Franconia) back to Catholicism. Ostheim and a few villages nearby became Protestant islands in a solidly Catholic region. (The town's heavily fortified Lutheran church dates from this period.) Ostheim was sacked by Imperial troops in 1634 during the Thirty Years War, but survived and retained its distinctive character. From the 17th century until 1920 the town was an exclave of Protestant Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, first in Catholic Franconia and then in Bavaria after Franconia came under the Bavarian crown. After the First World War, it became an exclave of Thuringia in Bavaria from 1920 until 1947.