Bad Sassendorf

Bad Sassendorf is a municipality in the district of Soest, North Rhine Westphalia. Until the 8th century AD, the location of the Soester Borde belonged to the Merovingian Franconia culture. The first records of salt mining on the Hellweg are already in the tenth century within the land registers of the abbey Werden Ruhr. Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, the envoy of the Caliph of Cordoba, described in his travelogue at the way to Emperor Otto the Great in 973 the Westphalian salt production in Soest.

Sassendorf changed into first referred to in documents among 1169 and 1179 at the event of the donation of diverse goods by the archbishop of Cologne Philip I von Heinsberg to the monastery of St. Walburgis in Soest. Among them became additionally a salt residence in Sappendorf, which shows a miles earlier agreement and salt extraction. The exploitation of the Sassendorfer salt springs and the right of the inhabitants became the right of loose farmers' households. The salt mining came about as a loose personal, unencumbered by the Landesregalrecht.