“[20:44:01] <Shaky> krautchan”
Krautchan was a German bulletin board website, established by former Einskanal users, that was established on May 1, 2007. Its domain was sniped on March 13, 2018, then “Der General” declared Krautchan dead in an IRC channel on March 21, 2018.
Prior to Krautchan, there was Onechan in 2005 which was sold to sketchy owners, so most people migrated to Einskanal in 2006.1) However, Einskanal was short-lived and closed on December 25, 2006, so some former users migrated to the a Dreikanal board or an IRC channel that would start the “Neukanal” project that later became “Krautchan” after a brainstorming session on February 12, 2007.
The “krautchan.net” domain would be registered on April 29, 2007, then Krautchan would formally open on May 1, 2007 with the boards running on the Wakaba script. The news spread to 4chan2) and Krautchan would quickly dominate Onechan in terms of popularity. However, within two months, their website temporarily died on June 30, 2007 due to a damaged disk.
Later on, Krautchan faked its death on October 13, 2008. There isn't much else to its history, aside from the apparent popularity of its /int/ board and cultivating Wojak memes. After several years, Krautchan lost its domain on March 13, 2018, then “Der General” quietly announced that Krautchan dead in an IRC channel on March 21, 2018 since he got too old and wasn't interested in transferring ownership.
Kohlchan was launched at the "kohlchan.net" domain on March 18, 2018 and it runs the Tinyboard fork, Vichan. It's said to be Krautchan's successor, but some disagree as it's more like what Sosach is to Dvach. Recently, it was accused for another imageboard's mass shooting4) and hid at "backdoor.kohlchan.net" for a few weeks, then opened "kohlkanal.net" due to issues with the cache server.
Ernstchan was launched at the “ernstchan.com” domain in February 2010, but they initially used Futabally for a month before using the Wakaba fork, Phutaba. They were mainly known as a Krautchan refuge, but they were also significantly strict. For some reason, it shut down three months after Krautchan did on June 3, 2018, but someone shortly resurrected it at the "ernstchan.xyz" domain.