A settlement called "Mimelebo" was already documented in a 780 register of the Hersfeld Abbey estates, issued by Archbishop Lullus of Mainz. In the 10th century the "Pfalz" or "villa regia" of Memleben, a kind of seasonal king's court, was one of the favourite places of the German king Henry the Fowler and his son Emperor Otto I. Henry the Fowler died here, probably by a stroke, on 2 July 936; his son Emperor Otto I also used Memleben as a temporary residence and died here on 7 May 973. According to the "Res gestae saxonicae" by the contemporary chronicler Widukind of Corvey, his intestines were buried in a Memleben church.