Heiden Town Center

Heiden - steps in 1,000 years of history
The area of the later communities Heiden, Wolfhalden and Lutzenberg originally belonged to Hof Thal SG, which was a fiefdom of the Diocese of Constance and was called "Vogtei Rheineck" since the 12th century.
In the wake of the Appenzell Wars of Freedom at the beginning of the 15th century, a development began during which the area of the later communities Heiden, Wolfhalden and Lutzenberg broke away from the association of Hof Thal. This area ("the people of the mountain") has since formed the eastern part of the country of Appenzell, the Kurzenberg.
The first documented mentions of the name Heiden - "Heiden" derived from "Heide" = "undeveloped land" - appeared in 1512, 1536 and 1540. The area of today's municipality of Heiden was made arable in the 14th and 15th centuries.
According to Thal, the Kurzenberg was - according to its original political affiliation - ecclesiastical. In 1529 the area accepted the Reformation. In 1652 Heiden and Wolfhalden broke away from the mother church in Thal because of the long path to the church and built their own places of worship. The Kurzenberg thus split up into the three independent communities Heiden, Wolfhalden and Lutzenberg, which remained ecclesiastically near Thal.
On September 7, 1838, a devastating village fire, favored by a violent foehn storm, destroyed 129 buildings including the church in the village center and the northern parts of the community. The village was rebuilt within two years, in a regular classical-Biedermeier layout.
From 1848 Heiden developed into a whey health resort. The work of the ophthalmologist Albrecht von Graefe and the neurologist Heinrich Frenkel made Heiden one of the most famous health resorts in Europe after 1860. The heyday of the health resort ended with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Since the end of World War II in 1945, Heiden has experienced a renaissance as a health resort and holiday resort.
From 1850, mail connections were opened on the developed roads. The first line led via Grub to St.Gallen. Further connections were made to Rheineck, Trogen, Oberegg and the Rhine Valley. From 1906 the post bus replaced the horse-drawn carriages. In 1875 the Rorschach-Heiden-Bergbahn, one of the few standard-gauge rack-and-pinion railways in the world, connected Heiden to the Swiss rail network.
In 1874, the district hospital in the fore region, today's cantonal hospital, started operations. Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, spent the last 23 years of his life here from 1887 to 1910. During this time, in 1901, Henry Dunant experienced a great honor: he was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1902 the first Catholic church was built in Heiden, which gave way to a new building in 1963. In 1936 the Protestant church fell victim to another fire disaster. The reconstruction preserved the classicist exterior, the interior was changed from the transverse to the longitudinal church.
Text / source: Heiden municipal administration
heiden.ch/geschichte/5050