In 1888, the town of Laasphe lay in the Prussian administrative region of Arnsberg in Wittgenstein district and was connected to the Kreuzthal-Marburg line of the Prussian State Railway (Preußische Staatsbahn). In 1888 Laasphe had a junior teachers' college, a local court and knitwear and hosiery factories. In 1885, Laasphe had 2225 mostly Evangelical inhabitants. Schloss Wittgenstein owned two ironworks. (From Meyers Konversations-Lexikon)
Since 1960, Laasphe has been a Kneipp spa. On 1 January 1984 the town became a Kneipp curative spa for its mild climate, and since then has been called Bad Laasphe.
Government
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (June 2021)
The results of the local council elections in May 2014[3] were:
Bad Laasphe's civic coat of arms might heraldically be described thus: In sable a town wall with open gate tower argent flanked by two crenellated towers argent, between which an inescutcheon in argent two pallets sable.
A stamping of the town's seal from the 14th century has been preserved, which shows the same composition as the arms shown here. The inescutcheon (smaller shield within the main one) bears the same arms as the town's former overlords, the Counts of Wittgenstein. When the arms were revised in 1908, the town came up with another composition which looked the same, but the inescutcheon, owing to a misunderstanding, was rather different, being quartered with two opposite quarters showing in gules (red) a castle argent (silver), and in the two other quarters the Wittgenstein pallets. The castle charge was a modern addition and related to the Wittgensteins' overlordship in Homburg. The town archive suggested even then that the inescutcheon bear the old Wittgenstein arms as seen in the town's oldest known seal, but no decision was made about it at that time. Only in 1936 did the town finally decide to revert to the composition shown in the old seal. This was confirmed as the town's arms on 10 March 1937.
