Niedernhausen
Encyclopedia
Niedernhausen im Taunus
is a municipality in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis
in the Regierungsbezirk
of Darmstadt
in Hesse
, Germany
, with almost 15,000 inhabitants.
. The main centre of Niedernhausen (which alone is home to more than half the community’s inhabitants) and the outlying centre of Königshofen stretch along the slopes of a dale. The heart of the community is found in the bottom of the dale. The community is surrounded by mixed forest covering 60% of the municipal area.
Niedernhausen lies on the south flank of the Taunus
low mountain range, a fold range
that stretches from the Niederwald (“Lower Forest”) near Rüdesheim am Rhein towards the northeast, on into the Wetterau
near Bad Nauheim
. This range is subdivided by two gaps, namely the Idstein
Basin and the Saalburg Basin, into three parts: the Rheingau-Taunus, the Hochtaunus (“High Taunus”) and the Wetterau-Taunus. The outliers of the Idstein Basin reach as far as Niedernhausen in the form of the Autal, putting the community right on the east-west dividing line between the Rheingau-Taunus and the Hochtaunus.
The Taunus Ridge, which at the same time forms the watershed between the Rhine and Main drainage basin
in the south and the Lahn
drainage basin in the north, runs through the municipal area from southwest to northeast. Parts of this ridge and also parts of the Rheingau-Taunus are the Hohe Kanzel (“High Pulpit”), at 592 m above sea level
the community’s highest elevation, and the Lenzenberg (492 m above sea level). South of these heights stretches the local recreation area and nature conservation area of Theißtal (or Theisstal) to the northeast on into the heart of Niedernhausen, north of which is the Engenhahn Valley (Engenhahner Tal), in which also runs the highway from high-lying Engenhahn to Niederseelbach in the outliers of the Idstein Basin. West of Niederseelbach stretches the Niedernhausen Basin. In the pit of the basin lies the community’s core (lowest point near the town hall at 254 m above sea level), on the south slopes Königshofen, and on the north the new municipal developments of Niedernhausen along with the outlying centre of Oberjosbach.
The massif
, which rises north of Niedernhausen, Oberjosbach and the more westerly Oberseelbach, is well into the Hochtaunus, and was once called Eichelberger Mark. It peaks with the Buchwaldskopf (492 m above sea level) and the Großer Lindenkopf (499 m above sea level). The highest elevation among the mountains south of the Theißtal (or Theiß Valley) is the Hahnberg (447 m above sea level).
Through the municipal area run four major brooks. The biggest is the Daisbach, which comes from Engenhahn through the Engenhahn Valley to Niederseelbach and goes on through the Autal through Niedernhausen. It leaves the municipal area in the southwest going towards Niederjosbach and Eppstein
, whereafter it is known as the Schwarzbach, emptying into the Main near Okriftel. The Theißbach rises in the Theißtal and empties into the Daisbach at Niedernhausen town hall. The Seelbach rises near Lenzhahn, flows through Oberseelbach and empties into the Daisbach near Niederseelbach. The Josbach rises near Oberjosbach, and in Niederjosbach likewise empties into the Daisbach.
Through the municipal area likewise run the tracks of the Main-Lahn railway, east-west through the Autal, from Frankfurt
to Limburg an der Lahn
. Running parallel thereto are the A 3 and the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line, which each cross the Theißtal on an imposing bridge.
, but also cracked and permeable quartzite
rock. Its layers are set steeply and often vertically. This yellowish-white, sometimes cherry-red-streaked Taunus quartzite arose from sandy sea depositions. Through the mountain range’s compression and the attendant exothermic reaction
, the original sedimentary
stone changed into metamorphic
quartzite.
In some spots in the Niedernhausen municipal area are found outcrops of this quartzite. Among these are a block on the peak of the Hohe Kanzel and the 479 m-high Hohler Stein (“Hollow Stone”) between Niedernhausen and Lenzhahn. The latter was placed under nature conservation in 1929. Near the Niedernhausen Autobahn on-ramp lies the so-called Grauer Stein (“Grey Stone”), near which is also found an old quartzite mine.
1. with the building areas of Lenzhahner Weg and Schäfersberg
2. with the building area of Wildpark
, in the west and north on the town of Idstein
(both in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis), in the east on the town of Eppstein
(Main-Taunus-Kreis
) and in the south on the district-free city of Wiesbaden
, the state
capital.
In 1974, a stone hatchet
was found near Oberjosbach that was dated to the time of the “Beaker Cultures” of the New Stone Age (2300-1600 BC). There is no hint as to whether the area was settled, although it does prove a human presence.
About the beginning of the Christian Era
, the Romans
came into what is now the Niedernhausen municipal area. Beginning in AD 86 they began work on the Limes
between the places now known as Oberseelbach and Idstein; on 15 July 2005, UNESCO
proclaimed it a World Heritage Site
. The Niedernhausen area lay on the Roman side of the frontier, and what would later become Idstein on the Germanic side. On the Dasbach Heights, on the highway between Niedernhausen and Idstein, a replica of a Roman watchtower
was built right near Niedernhausen municipal limits on the occasion of the 2002 Hessentag (state festival). Some 2 km north of Oberseelbach, near Idstein’s outlying centre of Heftrich, was where the Roman castrum
of Alteburg once stood.
The former had its first documentary mention in 1196 as Oberjosbach “augmented with God’s grace to the populace and estate” and thereby acquiring the “full freedom of a mother church” from the Archbishop
of Mainz
. Saint Michael’s parish actually had no existence in the Middle Ages
. However, the church developed into a church centre. The settlement of Oberjosbach, on the other hand, might have existed as early as the 10th century, which would make it the oldest in the current municipal area.
The old Johanneskirche (Saint John’s Church) in the meadowlands near Niederseelbach was, however, the hub of the so-called Seelbacher Grund, which comprised the centres of Oberseelbach, Engenhahn, Lenzhahn, Königshofen and Niedernhausen. Moreover, the parish priest at Niederseelbach was also responsible for the branch church in Dasbach. If the Seelbacher Grund also belonged to the parish of Oberjosbach, the ways were parted about 1220 when the House of Nassau
launched the independent parish of Niederseelbach. The church’s origins may well reach back into Carolingian
times about 800, when a rural church stood here.
Engenhahn’s founding goes back to the founding of the Bleidenstadt Monastery
in 775, within whose bounds so-called Meierhöfe (sing. Meierhof, roughly “chamberlain’s estate”) were built. A monk by the name of Enicho founded one such place, thereby becoming Engenhahn’s namesake, with the name first appearing as Enicho im Hag or Unechenhagin. The place had its first documentary mention in 1221.
Oberseelbach first cropped up, along with Lenzhahn, as Medietas Ville superioris Selebach in a Schloßborn tithe
register. This can be dated to some time between 1226 and 1233. Königshofen and Niedernhausen had their first documentary mentions about 1220 in a directory from Saint Stephen's
as Villa in Kunigishoue and Niederinhusin respectively.
. These came to a head in the 13th century with a feud
, during which the new parish church at Oberjosbach was once again destroyed, only being built anew and reconsecrated in 1321. The feud was settled in the 1283 Sühnevertrag (“Atonement Treaty”), in which territorial sovereignty
was newly ordered. Nevertheless, the rather fluid border between the two houses’ domains was not truly fixed until some time about 1500.
The small settlement of Obernhausen lying in the border area, a counterpart to Niedernhausen (Ober— and Nieder— are German
for “Upper” and “Nether” or “Lower”) fell victim during this time to the Plague. By 1544, the settlement no longer existed.
The Reformation
led to a further separation between the places in the Seelbacher Grund and Oberjosbach. The latter, after having been Protestant
from 1540 to 1604, became Catholic again because it had belonged to Electoral Mainz
since 1581. The parishioners in Niederseelbach, on the other hand, became Lutheran
as of 1581, matching their lords, the Counts of Nassau-Idstein, in religious affiliation.
This configuration remained in place even by the end of the Thirty Years' War
. The war had wrought great misfortune on the villages: Niedernhausen, Königshofen and Engenhahn were almost utterly depopulated; in Oberseelbach only 14 inhabitants survived.
After the Peace of Westphalia
, Count Johannes of Nassau-Idstein settled Walloons
from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège in the county’s emptied centres, among them Niedernhausen, Königshofen and Engenhahn. These settlers he gave leave to keep their Catholic faith, while nevertheless putting them under Niedernhausen’s Lutheran priest. Still today, a few Wallonian surnames can be found in Niedernhausen.
The Elector-Archbishop of Mainz, Anselm Franz von Ingelheim
, replaced the chapel
in Oberjosbach with a church in the Renaissance
style in 1680.
In 1723 the border between Idstein and Eppstein was marked with border stones, which on one side showed the Lion of Nassau and on the other the Wheel of Mainz
. These stones can still be seen between Niedernhausen and Oberjosbach. In 1728, the Elector-Archbishop Lothar Franz von Schönborn
revived the parish in Oberjosbach, in which the Catholics of the Seelbacher Grund found a new home, the border notwithstanding. The school
in Niederseelbach had its first documentary mention in 1778. It was attended by children from the surrounding villages.
, meaningless.
In 1859, Oberseelbach, together with the neighbouring places Dasbach and Lenzhahn, both of which now belong to Idstein, founded a school board
. The new school building was opened in 1863.
The great upswing came with the building of the railway, including Niedernhausen station
in 1877. The Main-Lahn Railway thereafter linked the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region with Limburg an der Lahn
. When the opening of the Ländches Railway to Wiesbaden
opened in 1879, Niedernhausen even became a railway junction
. The first railway station building arose in 1880, and in 1906 a new, representative building went up, and with it also came track and handling facilities for the steam locomotive
s. An old locomotive shed with a watertower is still preserved. In 1913, the line was double-tracked
. In 1903, Niederseelbach acquired its own halt, which was, however, closed again in 1971.
The population, which hitherto had for centuries been oriented towards agriculture and forest endeavours, now had the opportunity to pursue industrial occupations or work in crafts in the cities and towns that could now easily be reached. Not only Niedernhausen and Niederseelbach, but also the outlying villages profited from this. Given the now easy access, Niedernhausen even managed to rise to become a Luftkurort (roughly, “open-air resort”), which resort guests could comfortably reach by rail. Many old hotel villas from the Gründerzeit
in the former resort quarter at the Schöne Aussicht (“Lovely View”) bear witness to this time. Moreover, the old youth hostel is still to be found on Frankfurter Straße. The unofficial resort house was the former Pulvermühle (“Powder Mill”) in the Theiß valley on the boundary between Königshofen and Niedernhausen. About the turn of the 20th century, Niedernhausen’s population reached about 1,200.
, Koblenz
and Mainz and also areas within 30 km of each of them, were occupied by the Allies
. Niedernhausen and the places that are now its outlying centres found themselves under French
occupation; at times several hundred soldiers were present. From September 1919, troops had been withdrawn from the smaller centres. In November 1919, the first community representative elections were held, at which for the first time women were also allowed to vote.
Even after the First World War, many resort guests and summer visitors came to Niedernhausen, among them many Jews. Perhaps these circumstances and the Walloons’ settling in Niedernhausen centuries earlier explain why the presence of foreign cultures was considered normal. Whatever the truth is, there are no stories of political activity from the time of the Third Reich
worth mentioning, although there was a so-called Führer-Schule which served as a training centre for the Hitler Youth
.
As in many German municipalities, there were renamings in Niedernhausen of streets and buildings: there was a Hindenburgplatz
, and part of Niederseelbacher Straße in Königshofen and Austraße in Niedernhausen were each named Adolf-Hitler
-Straße. The teachers at the schools, according to reports from the pupils, seem all to have been quite in line with the Party and spurred their pupils into gathering relief supplies. There were, however, scattered reports here of voices critical of the régime. A staffer at the Führer-Schule, for instance, cancelled the subscription to the propaganda
newspaper Der Stürmer
out of hand, although she had to face consequences for this. When the mayor ordered the community’s evacuation shortly before the war ended, the populace simply laughed at him.
With the building of the Autobahn between 1937 and 1939 came a further upswing, as Niedernhausen also got an interchange
that could be used by the rising number of cars. The building of the Theißtalbrücke (“Theiß Valley Bridge”), which was finished before the outbreak of the Second World War, employed up to 700 workers, who were housed in Niedernhausen and had to be supplied.
After having been spared early on in the Second World War, things changed with the Allies’
advance beginning in 1944. Owing to the community’s importance as a railway junction and the resident Führer-Schule with its transmission facilities, the community was notably more heavily bombed than comparable places in the area. Between May 1944 and March 1945 there were at least eight air raid
s. In the heaviest, on 22 February 1945, the railway station building, a great deal of the trackage, roughly 30 parked locomotives and dozens of other pieces of rolling stock
were destroyed.
Struck by the air raid were not only the railway facilities, but also several dwelling buildings in Niedernhausen and Königshofen. In July 1944, a train coming from Eppstein was bombed; it is estimated that this resulted in 30 to 40 deaths. On the night of 25 to 26 August 1944, the Oberjosbach parish church burnt right down to the foundations after having been struck by an incendiary bomb
. All together, roughly 200 people were killed in these air raids. Even today, many bomb craters are still to be found in the woods around Niedernhausen.
In the air raids in August 1944, three US
servicemen who had parachute
d to earth were lynched
by the populace upon landing.
When the Americans came by way of Engenhahn and Niederseelbach to Königshofen and Niedernhausen, there was no resistance. The GIs’ quick advance may well be what spared the Theiß Valley Bridge the customary demolition by retreating German forces.
, many refugee
s and Germans driven out of their lands in the former eastern territories and the Sudetenland
came into the individual centres, above all Oberjosbach, Niedernhausen, Königshofen and Niederseelbach. Niederseelbach’s population, for instance, thereby swelled by 1960 to twice what it had been in 1939. In the 1950s, consequently, the first new municipal developments arose.
The rebuilt parish church in Oberjosbach had already opened in 1949.
In Engenhahn, the Wildparkgelände at first became an area for weekend houses. Beginning in 1975, it became an official and exclusive building area in which prominent persons such as Wim Thoelke
, Ebby Thust
and Susanne Fröhlich live (or lived).
In 1964, Oberseelbach took part for the first time in the contest Unser Dorf soll schöner werden (“Our Village Should Become Lovelier”), and in 1965 won the state victory for Hesse
.
When the Rhine-Main S-Bahn
was being planned and it could be foreseen that Niedernhausen would be one of the termini, the community experienced a sharp rise in population. The big building development of Lenzhahner Weg then came into being. In the 1970s, four highrise blocks of flats were built along with a dozen other major blocks. The first S-Bahn
train, running on line 2, reached Niedernhausen station on 25 August 1975.
In 1970, the Oberseelbach bypass
was opened, freeing the community’s narrow main street of through traffic.
In the course of municipal reform in Hesse, the community of Niedernhausen i. Ts
was eventually formed on 1 January 1977 out of the hitherto self-governing communities of Niedernhausen with the Ortsteil of Königshofen, Engenhahn, Niederseelbach, Oberseelbach and Oberjosbach. At the same time, the community became part of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis
, founded on the same date, whose seat is at Bad Schwalbach
. Formerly, Niedernhausen had belonged to the Main-Taunus-Kreis
.
Before this, there had been much earnest “courting” by Idstein and Niedernhausen of the communities in the Seelbacher Grund, giving rise to a third consideration that a self-governing community called Lenzenberg could be formed out of Engenhahn, Oberseelbach, Niederseelbach, Lenzhahn and Dasbach. In the end, though, Engenhahn, Oberseelbach and Niederseelbach chose to join Niedernhausen, while Lenzhahn and Dasbach, despite their centuries-long links with Oberseelbach and Niederseelbach, chose to join Idstein.
In the early 1980s, the old school building and town hall in Niedernhausen was expanded into the greater community’s town hall, and the Autalhalle was built.
Beginning in 1985, a further great building area on the Schäfersberg, near Niedernhausen (main centre) was begun.
Today, over half of the greater community’s population lives in Niedernhausen. The second biggest constituent community is Oberjosbach with 2,150 inhabitants; the smallest is Oberseelbach with 450. The centres of Oberjosbach, Oberseelbach, Niederseelbach and Engenhahn have therefore largely been able to keep their village character.
* Census result
). He also became Niedernhausen’s first directly elected mayor in 1995, later being reëlected in both 2001 and 2007.
The last direct mayoral election was held on 5 March 2007. With a voter turnout of 55%, the incumbent mayor Döring, who was running for the last time, got 49.55% of the vote. His opponent Andreas Knüttel (CDU) got 27.44%, and the independent candidate Isolde Ehrhart, a former CDU member and also former mayor Klaus Ehrhart’s wife, got 23.01% of the vote. This resulted in a runoff
between Döring and Knüttel, which was held on 25 March 2007, and from which Döring emerged victorious with 59.6% of the vote. Andreas Knüttel was left with 40.3% of the vote.
The community council (Gemeindevertretung), as Niedernhausen’s highest political body, is elected every five years by all citizens who are eligible to vote. It has 37 seats. The last municipal election, held on 26 March 2006, yielded the following seat distribution: CDU
: 15 seats, SPD
: 10 seats, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen: 4 seats, FDP
: 2 seats, Wählergemeinschaft Niedernhausen (WGN): 6 seats. The next municipal election will be held in 2011.
The council chooses a community executive (Gemeindevorstand). This has nine members (CDU: 3 members, SPD: 2 members, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen: 2 members). Among the members are also the mayor and the first deputy (Gerd Paustian, WGN).
The executive is supported by four boards which work on various issues, bringing them before the executive when a vote is needed. The four boards are the building board (Bauausschuss), the environmental board (Umweltausschuss), the social board (Sozialausschuss), and the main and financial board (Haupt- und Finanzausschuss). Each board has seven members (CDU: 3, SPD: 2, WGN: 1, Greens: 1).
The main and outlying centres’ concerns fall to the constituent community councils (Ortsbeiräte). They have an advisory function on community council and are composed according to municipal election results in each centre. The political bodies sit at the community’s town hall in the main centre of Niedernhausen.
* Wählergemeinschaft Niedernhausen (Freie Wähler)
The community administration is mostly housed at the Town Hall. Here, citizens can find the building office, the bylaw enforcement office, the licensing office, the register office, the local court and contact people for environmental, family, sanitation, and sundry other matters. Working at Town Hall are roughly 50 administrative employees. Furthermore, the community runs its own building yard. Here some 20 employees take care of winter services, street cleaning, graveyard, sporting ground, playground and greenspace maintenance, and also repair and maintenance of community-owned institutions and buildings. The waterworks and sewerage are kept running by the community works, which is attached to the building yard. Moreover, there is a recycling yard. At the six municipal kindergarten
s, about 35 kindergarten teachers are employed. Responsible for traffic and environmental infractions is the bylaw enforcement office. For all other security concerns, there is the police station
in Idstein. There are longstanding demands, however, for a local police
presence.
The community’s arms
might be described thus: Azure a lion rampant Or armed and langued gules among six billets of the second, in his forepaw sinister a sword argent held palewise.
The arms were created in 1977. The lion is from the arms borne by the Duchy of Nassau. The silver sword in the lion’s left forepaw refers to Oberjosbach’s Electoral Mainz
past; this outlying centre’s coat of arms shows a sword in Mainz’s heraldic tincture
s, and the sword is also one of the Archangel Michael’s
attributes, thus symbolizing Oberjosbach’s patron saint. The billets (small rectangles) stand for the community’s six centres.
)
The partnership has existed since 1980, when this was still a self-governing town (about 38,000 inhabitants). Since then, there has been a regular exchange, with cycling tours between the two places being arranged. Since 1984, Wilrijk has been a constituent community of Antwerp, which has changed nothing about the intensive relationship. The square before Niedernhausen’s town hall was named after Wilrijk, making the community administration’s address Wilrijkplatz (no house number).
Ilfeld
(Harz
, Thuringia
)
The connection with the Thuringian town in the Harz (3,000 inhabitants) was spurred shortly after German reunification
in 1990, likely also in the east to get some structural subsidies. The partnership between Ilfeld and Wilrijk, forged by Niedernhausen’s initiative, has created a three-way partnership. The square before Niedernhausen’s railway station has since its remodelling been known as Ilfelder Platz.
has the greatest share of commuters from Niedernhausen, followed closely by Frankfurt am Main. The number of jobs has risen along with the population, although given the local commuting structure, the share of the population employed locally has always been rather slight, at about 10%. In June 1987, 1,192 persons were employed in Niedernhausen. By June 2002 this had risen by about 21% to 1,443. The share engaged in service businesses in 1987 was about 65%, and in 2002, 71%. The local purchasing power
is about €21,346 for each inhabitant, putting it roughly 28.5% above the national average, and thereby also making it the highest figure for the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis
.
Niedernhausen is home to mostly small and midsize businesses, overwhelmingly in the service provision sector. Meanwhile, there are more than 30 high-technology firms, among them about 20 in information technology
, as well as seven companies in measuring and control technology
. The community’s biggest employer, with 220 on staff, is Hartmann Druckfarben GmbH in Niederseelbach (printing inks) which has been an established business here since 1968. Another big employer, the RAMADA Hotel Micador
, is a conference and convention hotel with 254 rooms and the adjoining Rhein-Main-Theater, which was built between 1993 and 1995 specially to present Andrew Lloyd Webber
’s musical
Sunset Boulevard
.
Beginning in 1976 in the Schöne Aussicht, the biggest publishing
house for German guidebooks, the FALKEN-Verlagsgruppe was resident. With 120 employees and roughly 1,200 available books, it generated a turnover of roughly €45,000,000. In 2000, however, the publishing house was taken over by the Bertelsmann
concern and closed.
All together there are four industrial areas, a small one in each of Königshofen, Oberseelbach and Niederseelbach as well as a somewhat bigger one in Niedernhausen near the Autobahn interchange
. Here it is planned to open up a further 5 ha or so of land to mixed and commercial development.
lies on the Main-Lahn Railway running from Frankfurt am Main to Limburg an der Lahn
. The line was opened early on, in 1877, and the station is the main junction on this line between Frankfurt-Höchst
and Eschhofen, as it is here that the Ländchesbahn
branches off, running to the main railway station
in Hesse’s state capital, Wiesbaden
. Given its importance as such, Niedernhausen station was targeted by Allied bombers several times in the Second World War.
Since 1975, Niedernhausen has also been the outermost stop on the Rhine-Main S-Bahn
’s line S2
, which links the community with Frankfurt’s main station
with a travel time of roughly 35 minutes. Furthermore, the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line, with its Niedernhausener Tunnel runs through the municipal area.
Besides the train connections to Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden
and Limburg an der Lahn
, there is also a city bus connection to Wiesbaden (route 22 of the ESWE – Wiesbaden’s transport system) linking the centres of Oberjosbach, Niedernhausen and Königshofen to the state capital with a travel time of roughly 30 minutes. There is also a local bus service linking all outlying centres to the main centre and the railway station. Long-distance buses likewise call at Niedernhausen railway station.
There are no pedestrian precincts in Niedernhausen. Nevertheless, the main shopping street, Bahnhofsstraße (“Railway Station Street”) is a traffic-free one-way street which is completely blocked to motorized traffic for various events (wine festival, Christmas market, and so on).
In the Taunus woods around the community is a tight web of signposted hiking
trails.
There is a “Park&Ride” facility available at Niedernhausen S-Bahn station. Likewise, a great number of parking spaces is on hand at the Niedernhausen forest swimming pool
and the Rhein-Main-Theater. There are parking spaces in the main centre, too.
Niedernhausen has an interchange
on the A 3 (Cologne
–Frankfurt) lying roughly 2 km south of the main centre. Past the interchange and through the municipal area runs Bundesstraße
455.
Frankfurt Airport
can be reached by Autobahn in about 20 minutes. By train – with a transfer at the main station in either Frankfurt or Wiesbaden – it takes roughly an hour. Given this easy access to the airport, Niedernhausen has also become a favourite choice among airport employees as a home.
with primary level and also Hauptschule
, Realschule
and Gymnasium
branches. The Lenzenbergschule in the outlying centre of Niederseelbach is a so-called Mittelpunkts-Grundschule (“midpoint primary school”, a central school, designed to eliminate smaller outlying schools) for the outlying centres of Engenhahn, Niederseelbach and Oberseelbach. In the outlying centre of Königshofen are also found a private Gymnasium and a music school.
and one New Apostolic
. The Catholic ones are Maria Königin in Niedernhausen, St. Michael in Oberjosbach and St. Martha in Engenhahn. The two Evangelical parishes are Christuskirche in Niedernhausen and another in Niederseelbach with Niedernhausen’s oldest church, the Johanneskirche from the 15th century. The old Catholic church in Niedernhausen is nowadays used as a cultural centre.
, among them two paved ones in Engenhahn and Niederseelbach as well as an artificial-turf
pitch in Niedernhausen. Besides those, there are three smaller sporting grounds in Niedernhausen, Königshofen and Oberjosbach as well as an athletics facility attached to the Theißtalschule. The great three-field sporting hall, the Autalhalle is used not only by local clubs, but also for trade fair
s and sundry other events. The schools and the bigger sport clubs each have their own halls. Furthermore, there are a tennis
club that plays on several courts and in a hall, a riding ring, several skittle
alleys and the Waldschwimmbad (“forest swimming pool
”) with several basins, slides and a diving tower. Right next to the pool, a rollerskating rink was opened in July 2006. The local Theißtal recreation area offers, besides several barbecue
areas, a great angling
pond. In the centre of Engenhahn, in severe winters, cross-country skiing
trails are laid out.
s are to be found in the centres of Niedernhausen (Ahornstraße and Schäfersberg), Königshofen, Niederseelbach, Oberjosbach and Engenhahn. Moreover, the Catholic Church runs the St. Josef kindergarten. A private parents’ association runs a rhythmic-musical kindergarten called TASIMU' with daycare and after-school care. Besides the great three-field sporting hall with caterer’s (Autalhalle), community buildings are to be found in every other centre for events. Furthermore, next to the town hall carpark is a revamped old slaughterhouse that now serves as a youth centre. Youngsters can play billiards or table football
, or simply “chill” and have a drink, or listen to bands that appear on the small stage.
, is used for many international events. The house, with 1,566 seats shared between the stalls and two galleries, was built between 1993 and 1995 at a cost of €25,000,000 specially to present the first German-language production of Andrew Lloyd Webber
’s musical Sunset Boulevard
. The play ran from December 1995 to August 1998, with the leads being played by the well known musical stars Uwe Kröger
und Helen Schneider
, and later also the actress Daniela Ziegler
. Nevertheless, the star-studded cast could not stave off insolvency. Today, changing events take place at the theatre. The halt on the Ländchesbahn (railway), built specially for the theatre, was opened in 1996 and after the theatre was for the time being closed in 1998, the halt, too, was closed.
Youths first organized themselves in the late 1980s with the community’s encouragement and support. Their first home was in a room in the Autalhalle, before the community acquired a shabby building across from the Town Hall in 1992. The youths made out of their Wiesbadener Straße 2 – W2 for short – a thriving place with many of their own initiatives. In the end, when the building was at last going to be torn down, they got ready to move. The former butcher’s shop with adjoining slaughterhouse they converted as a volunteer project into a concert and event venue. Taking place at I4 (for Idsteiner Straße 4) today, besides the regular operations and several working groups are also rock concerts and parties.
Not only does The Autalhalle serve the Theißtalschule and local clubs as a sport hall, but also it offers, with its wheel-away grandstand, the adjoining caterer’s and its configuration, which allows flexibility, a space for regular fairs, exhibitions and sundry other events. The Free Democratic Party and the Greens, for instance, have held their Hesse party conferences here in past years. Likewise, the community council sits here. At one time, the hall was even used as the “festival tent” at the Niedernhausen Kerb.
division of SV Niederseelbach has existed since 1981. SV Niederseelbach also offers an informal walking programme and Nordic walking
.
Turngemeinde 1896 Niedernhausen, with roughly 1,000 active members the community’s biggest club, Turn- und Sportverein Königshofen 1898, Turn- und Sportverein Engenhahn 1977 and Turngemeinde 1899 Oberjosbach all offer leisure sports. The two first ones each have an athletics and gymnastics
division, both of which regularly take part in competitions, among them the Deutsches Turnfest and the Hesse State Gymnastics Festivals. All four clubs each have their own clubhouse and training ground. TG Niedernhausen also runs a big basketball division, which sometimes boasts as many as 10 teams. The first men’s and the first women’s teams each play in district class A.
Tennis-Club Niedernhausen, with about 400 members, plays on 9 outdoor courts (sand) and three indoor. At the tennis hall, moreover, are several squash
courts. Worthy of notice are the Aikido
-Club with roughly 130 members, which commits itself to Japan
ese self-defence
arts, and the local DLRG
chapter with roughly 260 members, who use the forest pool for their swimming sport. In the winter, this is done in indoor pools in Wiesbaden.
Likewise worth mentioning is the Intressengemeinschaft Reiten und Fahren e.V., Niedernhausen/Ts. (IRFN, riding club). The riding facilities, Am Hahnwald, which belong to the club have at their disposal, besides stabling, a dressage
square, a show jumping
square and a riding hall.
High in membership are also Ski-Club Niedernhausen with about 600, Kerbegesellschaft Veilchenblau Oberjosbach and Kerbeborsch Königshofen (both kermis clubs) with about 130 members.
Furthermore, there are Kerbeverein Niederseelbach (another kermis club), Schäfersbergteam, which stages various events in the Schäfersberg new building area, among them the Schäfersbergfest, as well as Frohsinn 1875 Engenhahn (men’s singing), 1873 Niedernhausen, Eintracht 1885 Niederseelbach and fire brigade clubs in individual centres. In the smallest centre, the Heimat und Kulturverein Oberseelbach looks after, for instance, keeping up the baking
tradition, the cultural community and maintaining the scenic heritage.
The Schützenverein Königshofen 1959 e.V. with about 200 members can boast its own indoor shooting range with 10 ×10 m airgun enclosures and 10 ×25 m and 6 ×50 m stalls.
The Vocal-Ensemble Le Courage e.V. is a women’s choir
of national importance. It was founded in 1977 by music director Wolfgang Diefenbach and has been led by him ever since. The choir currently has roughly 55 active singers aged between 14 and 75. They have made a number of recordings, and the ensemble has won 36 victories in regional and international choral contests and come in first at the Hesse Choral Competition.
the Seelbacher Grund’s religious and spiritual hub. It is the most valuable historic building in the greater community of Niedernhausen. When the church was built is unknown, although there must have been a forerunner building at the time when the parish was founded about 1220 by the Counts of Nassau. The church’s somewhat off-centre location in relation to the Niederseelbach village core is a clue that the church might have begun as a rural church (Feldkirche), as was customary in Carolingian
times about 800.
The church is a plain building with a flat-ceilinged single nave and a quire. Adjoining it on the north side is the tower, which has an underground vault. A few jutting corbel
s on the walls and in the quire are all that is left of the former Gothic
vaulting, which itself might put the nave’s building date in the 15th century. The tower acquired its Welsche Haube (the particular kind of cupola seen here) in 1790.
The church St. Martha in Engenhahn was built in 1890 and 1891 in the Gothic Revival
style after the Catholic inhabitants split from the parish of Oberjosbach in 1888 and were assigned to the parish of Idstein.
The old Catholic church in Niedernhausen was consecrated in 1885, after the growing community’s Catholics made it known that they did not want to make the long trip to Oberjosbach anymore. After the so-called Kapellenstreit (“Chapel dispute”) over what Königshofen’s share towards the church should be, the community of Mariä Geburt was finally founded on 1 October 1904, which the Bishop of Limburg an der Lahn
raised to parish on 1 May 1921. Since the new church was built on Bahnhofstraße in 1960, the old church has been used as a cultural centre, and the parish has called itself Maria Königin.
house under monumental protection, as is the old bakehouse (Backes) in Oberseelbach.
The town hall in Niedernhausen, which today serves as the community’s administrative seat, was originally a school building built in 1903, in which the mayor’s office was also housed. In 1981, it was expanded into a representative building and is today a further community landmark.
. It was under monumental protection, but it was threatening to fall asunder, and was in the end torn down on 23 February 2008.
In Königshofen the old locomotive shed and an old watertower bear witness to Niedernhausen’s time as a railway stronghold.
Also worth seeing are the Gründerzeit
villas on the Schöne Aussicht, which still give one an impression of Niedernhausen’s time as an open-air resort.
. From west to east, a dale runs through the municipal area, over whose slopes Niedernhausen’s residential neighbourhoods stretch. In Oberjosbach is found a 500-year-old oak. North of Niedernhausen, on the Eselskopf, are a few bizarre crag formations in the middle of the forest (Hohler Stein – “Hollow Stone”).
Taunus
The Taunus is a low mountain range in Hesse, Germany that composes part of the Rhenish Slate Mountains. It is bounded by the river valleys of Rhine, Main and Lahn. On the opposite side of the Rhine, the mountains are continued by the Hunsrück...
is a municipality in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis
Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis
Rheingau-Taunus is a Kreis in the west of Hesse, Germany. Neighboring districts are Limburg-Weilburg, Hochtaunuskreis, Main-Taunus, district-free Wiesbaden, Mainz-Bingen, Rhein-Lahn.-Geography:...
in the Regierungsbezirk
Regierungsbezirk
In Germany, a Government District, in German: Regierungsbezirk – is a subdivision of certain federal states .They are above the Kreise, Landkreise, and kreisfreie Städte...
of Darmstadt
Darmstadt (region)
Darmstadt is one of the three Regierungsbezirke of Hesse, Germany, located in the south of the state.- External links :*...
in Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, with almost 15,000 inhabitants.
Location
Niedernhausen lies in the Rhein-Taunus Nature Park in the west of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region north of WiesbadenWiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
. The main centre of Niedernhausen (which alone is home to more than half the community’s inhabitants) and the outlying centre of Königshofen stretch along the slopes of a dale. The heart of the community is found in the bottom of the dale. The community is surrounded by mixed forest covering 60% of the municipal area.
Taunus
The Taunus is a low mountain range in Hesse, Germany that composes part of the Rhenish Slate Mountains. It is bounded by the river valleys of Rhine, Main and Lahn. On the opposite side of the Rhine, the mountains are continued by the Hunsrück...
low mountain range, a fold range
Fold mountain
Fold mountains are mountains formed mainly by the effects of folding on layers within the upper part of the Earth's crust. In the time before either plate tectonic theory developed, or the internal architecture of thrust belts became well understood, the term was used for most mountain belts, such...
that stretches from the Niederwald (“Lower Forest”) near Rüdesheim am Rhein towards the northeast, on into the Wetterau
Wetterau
The Wetterau is a fertile undulating tract, watered by the Wetter, a tributary of the Nidda River, in the western German state of Hesse, between the hilly province Oberhessen and the north-western Taunus mountains....
near Bad Nauheim
Bad Nauheim
Bad Nauheim is a town in the Wetteraukreis district of Hesse state of Germany. , Bad Nauheim has a population of 30,365. The town is located approximately 35 kilometers north of Frankfurt am Main, on the east edge of the Taunus mountain range. It is a world-famous resort, noted for its salt...
. This range is subdivided by two gaps, namely the Idstein
Idstein
Idstein is a town of about 25,000 inhabitants in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. Because of its well preserved historical Altstadt it is part of the Deutsche Fachwerkstraße , connecting towns with fine timber-frame buildings and...
Basin and the Saalburg Basin, into three parts: the Rheingau-Taunus, the Hochtaunus (“High Taunus”) and the Wetterau-Taunus. The outliers of the Idstein Basin reach as far as Niedernhausen in the form of the Autal, putting the community right on the east-west dividing line between the Rheingau-Taunus and the Hochtaunus.
The Taunus Ridge, which at the same time forms the watershed between the Rhine and Main drainage basin
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...
in the south and the Lahn
Lahn
The Lahn River is a -long, right tributary of the Rhine River in Germany. Its course passes through the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia , Hesse , and Rhineland-Palatinate ....
drainage basin in the north, runs through the municipal area from southwest to northeast. Parts of this ridge and also parts of the Rheingau-Taunus are the Hohe Kanzel (“High Pulpit”), at 592 m above sea level
Sea level
Mean sea level is a measure of the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation...
the community’s highest elevation, and the Lenzenberg (492 m above sea level). South of these heights stretches the local recreation area and nature conservation area of Theißtal (or Theisstal) to the northeast on into the heart of Niedernhausen, north of which is the Engenhahn Valley (Engenhahner Tal), in which also runs the highway from high-lying Engenhahn to Niederseelbach in the outliers of the Idstein Basin. West of Niederseelbach stretches the Niedernhausen Basin. In the pit of the basin lies the community’s core (lowest point near the town hall at 254 m above sea level), on the south slopes Königshofen, and on the north the new municipal developments of Niedernhausen along with the outlying centre of Oberjosbach.
The massif
Massif
In geology, a massif is a section of a planet's crust that is demarcated by faults or flexures. In the movement of the crust, a massif tends to retain its internal structure while being displaced as a whole...
, which rises north of Niedernhausen, Oberjosbach and the more westerly Oberseelbach, is well into the Hochtaunus, and was once called Eichelberger Mark. It peaks with the Buchwaldskopf (492 m above sea level) and the Großer Lindenkopf (499 m above sea level). The highest elevation among the mountains south of the Theißtal (or Theiß Valley) is the Hahnberg (447 m above sea level).
Through the municipal area run four major brooks. The biggest is the Daisbach, which comes from Engenhahn through the Engenhahn Valley to Niederseelbach and goes on through the Autal through Niedernhausen. It leaves the municipal area in the southwest going towards Niederjosbach and Eppstein
Eppstein
Eppstein is a town in the Main-Taunus-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany.-Geographical situation:Eppstein lies west of Frankfurt am Main, around 12 km north east of the state capital Wiesbaden, and is at the edge of the Taunus mountains....
, whereafter it is known as the Schwarzbach, emptying into the Main near Okriftel. The Theißbach rises in the Theißtal and empties into the Daisbach at Niedernhausen town hall. The Seelbach rises near Lenzhahn, flows through Oberseelbach and empties into the Daisbach near Niederseelbach. The Josbach rises near Oberjosbach, and in Niederjosbach likewise empties into the Daisbach.
Through the municipal area likewise run the tracks of the Main-Lahn railway, east-west through the Autal, from Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
to Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn is the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse, Germany.-Location:Limburg lies in western Hesse between the Taunus and the Westerwald on the river Lahn....
. Running parallel thereto are the A 3 and the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line, which each cross the Theißtal on an imposing bridge.
| Peak | Height | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Hohe Kanzel | 592 m above sea level | Rheingau-Taunus |
| Großer Lindenkopf | 499 m above sea level | Hochtaunus |
| Buchwaldskopf | 492 m above sea level | Hochtaunus |
| Lenzenberg | 462 m above sea level | Rheingau-Taunus |
| Hahnberg | 447 m above sea level | Rheingau-Taunus |
| Hellenberg | 436 m above sea level | Rheingau-Taunus |
| Eselskopf | 391 m above sea level | Hochtaunus |
Geology
The mountain ridge to which the Hohe Kanzel also belongs is made of hard, weatheredWeathering
Weathering is the breaking down of rocks, soils and minerals as well as artificial materials through contact with the Earth's atmosphere, biota and waters...
, but also cracked and permeable quartzite
Quartzite
Quartzite is a hard metamorphic rock which was originally sandstone. Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. Pure quartzite is usually white to gray, though quartzites often occur in various shades of pink...
rock. Its layers are set steeply and often vertically. This yellowish-white, sometimes cherry-red-streaked Taunus quartzite arose from sandy sea depositions. Through the mountain range’s compression and the attendant exothermic reaction
Exothermic reaction
An exothermic reaction is a chemical reaction that releases energy in the form of light or heat. It is the opposite of an endothermic reaction. Expressed in a chemical equation:-Overview:...
, the original sedimentary
Sedimentary rock
Sedimentary rock are types of rock that are formed by the deposition of material at the Earth's surface and within bodies of water. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause mineral and/or organic particles to settle and accumulate or minerals to precipitate from a solution....
stone changed into metamorphic
Metamorphic rock
Metamorphic rock is the transformation of an existing rock type, the protolith, in a process called metamorphism, which means "change in form". The protolith is subjected to heat and pressure causing profound physical and/or chemical change...
quartzite.
In some spots in the Niedernhausen municipal area are found outcrops of this quartzite. Among these are a block on the peak of the Hohe Kanzel and the 479 m-high Hohler Stein (“Hollow Stone”) between Niedernhausen and Lenzhahn. The latter was placed under nature conservation in 1929. Near the Niedernhausen Autobahn on-ramp lies the so-called Grauer Stein (“Grey Stone”), near which is also found an old quartzite mine.
Constituent communities
Niedernhausen’s Ortsteile are the formerly self-governing communities of Engenhahn, Königshofen, Niedernhausen, Niederseelbach, Oberjosbach and Oberseelbach. In Niedernhausen alone live more than half the inhabitants. This is also where the great building areas of Lenzhahner Weg and Schäfersberg are found.| Centre | Population |
|---|---|
| Niedernhausen 1 | 7,700 |
| Oberjosbach | 2,150 |
| Niederseelbach | 2,000 |
| Königshofen | 1,900 |
| Engenhahn 2 | 1,350 |
| Oberseelbach | 450 |
1. with the building areas of Lenzhahner Weg and Schäfersberg
2. with the building area of Wildpark
Neighbouring communities
Niedernhausen borders in the west on the town of TaunussteinTaunusstein
Taunusstein is the biggest town in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. It consists of more than 29,000 inhabitants.- Location :...
, in the west and north on the town of Idstein
Idstein
Idstein is a town of about 25,000 inhabitants in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. Because of its well preserved historical Altstadt it is part of the Deutsche Fachwerkstraße , connecting towns with fine timber-frame buildings and...
(both in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis), in the east on the town of Eppstein
Eppstein
Eppstein is a town in the Main-Taunus-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany.-Geographical situation:Eppstein lies west of Frankfurt am Main, around 12 km north east of the state capital Wiesbaden, and is at the edge of the Taunus mountains....
(Main-Taunus-Kreis
Main-Taunus-Kreis
Main-Taunus is a Kreis in the middle of Hesse, Germany and is part of the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region as well as the Frankfurt urban area...
) and in the south on the district-free city of Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
, the state
States of Germany
Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...
capital.
Beginnings and Roman border area (1st century AD)
Hatchet
A hatchet is a single-handed striking tool with a sharp blade used to cut and split wood...
was found near Oberjosbach that was dated to the time of the “Beaker Cultures” of the New Stone Age (2300-1600 BC). There is no hint as to whether the area was settled, although it does prove a human presence.
About the beginning of the Christian Era
Anno Domini
and Before Christ are designations used to label or number years used with the Julian and Gregorian calendars....
, the Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
came into what is now the Niedernhausen municipal area. Beginning in AD 86 they began work on the Limes
Limes Germanicus
The Limes Germanicus was a line of frontier fortifications that bounded the ancient Roman provinces of Germania Inferior, Germania Superior and Raetia, dividing the Roman Empire and the unsubdued Germanic tribes from the years 83 to about 260 AD...
between the places now known as Oberseelbach and Idstein; on 15 July 2005, UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
proclaimed it a World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site
A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...
. The Niedernhausen area lay on the Roman side of the frontier, and what would later become Idstein on the Germanic side. On the Dasbach Heights, on the highway between Niedernhausen and Idstein, a replica of a Roman watchtower
Watchtower
A watchtower is a type of fortification used in many parts of the world. It differs from a regular tower in that its primary use is military, and from a turret in that it is usually a freestanding structure. Its main purpose is to provide a high, safe place from which a sentinel or guard may...
was built right near Niedernhausen municipal limits on the occasion of the 2002 Hessentag (state festival). Some 2 km north of Oberseelbach, near Idstein’s outlying centre of Heftrich, was where the Roman castrum
Castra
The Latin word castra, with its singular castrum, was used by the ancient Romans to mean buildings or plots of land reserved to or constructed for use as a military defensive position. The word appears in both Oscan and Umbrian as well as in Latin. It may have descended from Indo-European to Italic...
of Alteburg once stood.
First traces in the Middle Ages and documentary mentions (1196–1283)
Niedernhausen’s two original centres were the parishes of Oberjosbach and Niederseelbach.The former had its first documentary mention in 1196 as Oberjosbach “augmented with God’s grace to the populace and estate” and thereby acquiring the “full freedom of a mother church” from the Archbishop
Archbishopric of Mainz
The Archbishopric of Mainz or Electorate of Mainz was an influential ecclesiastic and secular prince-bishopric in the Holy Roman Empire between 780–82 and 1802. In the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Archbishop of Mainz was the primas Germaniae, the substitute of the Pope north of the Alps...
of Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
. Saint Michael’s parish actually had no existence in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
. However, the church developed into a church centre. The settlement of Oberjosbach, on the other hand, might have existed as early as the 10th century, which would make it the oldest in the current municipal area.
The old Johanneskirche (Saint John’s Church) in the meadowlands near Niederseelbach was, however, the hub of the so-called Seelbacher Grund, which comprised the centres of Oberseelbach, Engenhahn, Lenzhahn, Königshofen and Niedernhausen. Moreover, the parish priest at Niederseelbach was also responsible for the branch church in Dasbach. If the Seelbacher Grund also belonged to the parish of Oberjosbach, the ways were parted about 1220 when the House of Nassau
House of Nassau
The House of Nassau is a diversified aristocratic dynasty in Europe. It is named after the lordship associated with Nassau Castle, located in present-day Nassau, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The lords of Nassau were originally titled Count of Nassau, then elevated to the princely class as...
launched the independent parish of Niederseelbach. The church’s origins may well reach back into Carolingian
Carolingian
The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the...
times about 800, when a rural church stood here.
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
in 775, within whose bounds so-called Meierhöfe (sing. Meierhof, roughly “chamberlain’s estate”) were built. A monk by the name of Enicho founded one such place, thereby becoming Engenhahn’s namesake, with the name first appearing as Enicho im Hag or Unechenhagin. The place had its first documentary mention in 1221.
Oberseelbach first cropped up, along with Lenzhahn, as Medietas Ville superioris Selebach in a Schloßborn tithe
Tithe
A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques, or stocks, whereas historically tithes were required and paid in kind, such as agricultural products...
register. This can be dated to some time between 1226 and 1233. Königshofen and Niedernhausen had their first documentary mentions about 1220 in a directory from Saint Stephen's
St. Stephen's Church, Mainz
|right|300 px|thumb|St. Stephan at Mainz. View of the great belfry, the highest spot in the city for centuries, and the nave.The Collegiate Church of St. Stephan, known in German as St. Stephan zu Mainz, is a Gothic hall collegiate church located in the German city of Mainz.-History:St...
as Villa in Kunigishoue and Niederinhusin respectively.
Border disputes between Nassau-Idstein and Eppstein (1283–1806)
From the Early Middle Ages, the Niedernhausen municipal area was in the thick of the border disputes between two lordly houses, Nassau and EppsteinLords of Eppstein
The Lords of Eppstein were a family of German nobility in the Middle Ages. From the 12th century they ruled extensive territories in the Rhine Main area from their castle in Eppstein, northwest of Frankfurt, Germany.-History:...
. These came to a head in the 13th century with a feud
Feud
A feud , referred to in more extreme cases as a blood feud, vendetta, faida, or private war, is a long-running argument or fight between parties—often groups of people, especially families or clans. Feuds begin because one party perceives itself to have been attacked, insulted or wronged by another...
, during which the new parish church at Oberjosbach was once again destroyed, only being built anew and reconsecrated in 1321. The feud was settled in the 1283 Sühnevertrag (“Atonement Treaty”), in which territorial sovereignty
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
was newly ordered. Nevertheless, the rather fluid border between the two houses’ domains was not truly fixed until some time about 1500.
The small settlement of Obernhausen lying in the border area, a counterpart to Niedernhausen (Ober— and Nieder— are German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
for “Upper” and “Nether” or “Lower”) fell victim during this time to the Plague. By 1544, the settlement no longer existed.
The Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
led to a further separation between the places in the Seelbacher Grund and Oberjosbach. The latter, after having been Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
from 1540 to 1604, became Catholic again because it had belonged to Electoral Mainz
Archbishopric of Mainz
The Archbishopric of Mainz or Electorate of Mainz was an influential ecclesiastic and secular prince-bishopric in the Holy Roman Empire between 780–82 and 1802. In the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Archbishop of Mainz was the primas Germaniae, the substitute of the Pope north of the Alps...
since 1581. The parishioners in Niederseelbach, on the other hand, became Lutheran
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
as of 1581, matching their lords, the Counts of Nassau-Idstein, in religious affiliation.
This configuration remained in place even by the end of the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
. The war had wrought great misfortune on the villages: Niedernhausen, Königshofen and Engenhahn were almost utterly depopulated; in Oberseelbach only 14 inhabitants survived.
After the Peace of Westphalia
Peace of Westphalia
The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October of 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the...
, Count Johannes of Nassau-Idstein settled Walloons
Walloons
Walloons are a French-speaking people who live in Belgium, principally in Wallonia. Walloons are a distinctive community within Belgium, important historical and anthropological criteria bind Walloons to the French people. More generally, the term also refers to the inhabitants of the Walloon...
from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège in the county’s emptied centres, among them Niedernhausen, Königshofen and Engenhahn. These settlers he gave leave to keep their Catholic faith, while nevertheless putting them under Niedernhausen’s Lutheran priest. Still today, a few Wallonian surnames can be found in Niedernhausen.
The Elector-Archbishop of Mainz, Anselm Franz von Ingelheim
Anselm Franz von Ingelheim (archbishop)
Anselm Franz of Ingelheim was Archbishop-Elector of Mainz from 1679 until his death in 1695.Anselm became prince-bishop of Mainz on 7 November 1679 and thus was an elector of the Holy Roman Empire...
, replaced the chapel
Chapel
A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...
in Oberjosbach with a church in the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
style in 1680.
In 1723 the border between Idstein and Eppstein was marked with border stones, which on one side showed the Lion of Nassau and on the other the Wheel of Mainz
Wheel of Mainz
thumb|150px|version until 1992thumb|150px|version from 1992 - 2008thumb|150px|version from 2008The Wheel of Mainz or Mainzer Rad, in German, was the coat of arms of the Archbishopric of Mainz and thus also of the Electorate of Mainz , in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It consists of a silver wheel...
. These stones can still be seen between Niedernhausen and Oberjosbach. In 1728, the Elector-Archbishop Lothar Franz von Schönborn
Lothar Franz von Schönborn
Lothar Franz von Schönborn was the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz from 1694 until 1729, and the Bishop of Bamberg from 1693 until 1729.Lothar Franz was born in Steinheim am Main in 1655 to Count Philip Erwin of Schönborn...
revived the parish in Oberjosbach, in which the Catholics of the Seelbacher Grund found a new home, the border notwithstanding. The school
School
A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
in Niederseelbach had its first documentary mention in 1778. It was attended by children from the surrounding villages.
Duchy of Nassau, railway building and open-air resort (1806–1914)
In 1806, the Duchy of Nassau was founded, rendering the border between Niedernhausen and Oberjosbach, which had been in force since the Middle AgesMiddle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, meaningless.
In 1859, Oberseelbach, together with the neighbouring places Dasbach and Lenzhahn, both of which now belong to Idstein, founded a school board
Board of education
A board of education or a school board or school committee is the title of the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or higher administrative level....
. The new school building was opened in 1863.
The great upswing came with the building of the railway, including Niedernhausen station
Niedernhausen station
Niedernhausen station serves the municipality of Niedernhausen in the German state of Hesse. It is the most important station on the Main-Lahn Railway between the stations of Frankfurt-Höchst and Eschhofen in Limburg an der Lahn...
in 1877. The Main-Lahn Railway thereafter linked the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region with Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn is the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse, Germany.-Location:Limburg lies in western Hesse between the Taunus and the Westerwald on the river Lahn....
. When the opening of the Ländches Railway to Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
opened in 1879, Niedernhausen even became a railway junction
Junction (rail)
A junction, in the context of rail transport, is a place at which two or more rail routes converge or diverge.This implies a physical connection between the tracks of the two routes , 'points' and signalling.one or two tracks each meet at a junction, a fairly simple layout of tracks suffices to...
. The first railway station building arose in 1880, and in 1906 a new, representative building went up, and with it also came track and handling facilities for the steam locomotive
Steam locomotive
A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...
s. An old locomotive shed with a watertower is still preserved. In 1913, the line was double-tracked
Double track
A double track railway usually involves running one track in each direction, compared to a single track railway where trains in both directions share the same track.- Overview :...
. In 1903, Niederseelbach acquired its own halt, which was, however, closed again in 1971.
The population, which hitherto had for centuries been oriented towards agriculture and forest endeavours, now had the opportunity to pursue industrial occupations or work in crafts in the cities and towns that could now easily be reached. Not only Niedernhausen and Niederseelbach, but also the outlying villages profited from this. Given the now easy access, Niedernhausen even managed to rise to become a Luftkurort (roughly, “open-air resort”), which resort guests could comfortably reach by rail. Many old hotel villas from the Gründerzeit
Gründerzeit
' refers to the economic phase in 19th century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. At this time in Central Europe the age of industrialisation was taking place, whose beginnings were found in the 1840s...
in the former resort quarter at the Schöne Aussicht (“Lovely View”) bear witness to this time. Moreover, the old youth hostel is still to be found on Frankfurter Straße. The unofficial resort house was the former Pulvermühle (“Powder Mill”) in the Theiß valley on the boundary between Königshofen and Niedernhausen. About the turn of the 20th century, Niedernhausen’s population reached about 1,200.
Weimar Republic, Third Reich and Second World War (1918–1945)
After the First World War, the Rhine’s left bank along with the three bridgeheads, CologneCologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, Koblenz
Koblenz
Koblenz is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated.As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the...
and Mainz and also areas within 30 km of each of them, were occupied by the Allies
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
. Niedernhausen and the places that are now its outlying centres found themselves under French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
occupation; at times several hundred soldiers were present. From September 1919, troops had been withdrawn from the smaller centres. In November 1919, the first community representative elections were held, at which for the first time women were also allowed to vote.
Even after the First World War, many resort guests and summer visitors came to Niedernhausen, among them many Jews. Perhaps these circumstances and the Walloons’ settling in Niedernhausen centuries earlier explain why the presence of foreign cultures was considered normal. Whatever the truth is, there are no stories of political activity from the time of the Third Reich
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
worth mentioning, although there was a so-called Führer-Schule which served as a training centre for the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
.
As in many German municipalities, there were renamings in Niedernhausen of streets and buildings: there was a Hindenburgplatz
Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg , known universally as Paul von Hindenburg was a Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and politician, and served as the second President of Germany from 1925 to 1934....
, and part of Niederseelbacher Straße in Königshofen and Austraße in Niedernhausen were each named Adolf-Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
-Straße. The teachers at the schools, according to reports from the pupils, seem all to have been quite in line with the Party and spurred their pupils into gathering relief supplies. There were, however, scattered reports here of voices critical of the régime. A staffer at the Führer-Schule, for instance, cancelled the subscription to the propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
newspaper Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer
Der Stürmer was a weekly tabloid-format Nazi newspaper published by Julius Streicher from 1923 to the end of World War II in 1945, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of the Nazi propaganda machinery and was vehemently anti-Semitic...
out of hand, although she had to face consequences for this. When the mayor ordered the community’s evacuation shortly before the war ended, the populace simply laughed at him.
With the building of the Autobahn between 1937 and 1939 came a further upswing, as Niedernhausen also got an interchange
Interchange (road)
In the field of road transport, an interchange is a road junction that typically uses grade separation, and one or more ramps, to permit traffic on at least one highway to pass through the junction without directly crossing any other traffic stream. It differs from a standard intersection, at which...
that could be used by the rising number of cars. The building of the Theißtalbrücke (“Theiß Valley Bridge”), which was finished before the outbreak of the Second World War, employed up to 700 workers, who were housed in Niedernhausen and had to be supplied.
After having been spared early on in the Second World War, things changed with the Allies’
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
advance beginning in 1944. Owing to the community’s importance as a railway junction and the resident Führer-Schule with its transmission facilities, the community was notably more heavily bombed than comparable places in the area. Between May 1944 and March 1945 there were at least eight air raid
Strategic bombing
Strategic bombing is a military strategy used in a total war with the goal of defeating an enemy nation-state by destroying its economic ability and public will to wage war rather than destroying its land or naval forces...
s. In the heaviest, on 22 February 1945, the railway station building, a great deal of the trackage, roughly 30 parked locomotives and dozens of other pieces of rolling stock
Rolling stock
Rolling stock comprises all the vehicles that move on a railway. It usually includes both powered and unpowered vehicles, for example locomotives, railroad cars, coaches and wagons...
were destroyed.
Struck by the air raid were not only the railway facilities, but also several dwelling buildings in Niedernhausen and Königshofen. In July 1944, a train coming from Eppstein was bombed; it is estimated that this resulted in 30 to 40 deaths. On the night of 25 to 26 August 1944, the Oberjosbach parish church burnt right down to the foundations after having been struck by an incendiary bomb
Incendiary device
Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices or incendiary bombs are bombs designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using materials such as napalm, thermite, chlorine trifluoride, or white phosphorus....
. All together, roughly 200 people were killed in these air raids. Even today, many bomb craters are still to be found in the woods around Niedernhausen.
In the air raids in August 1944, three US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
servicemen who had parachute
Parachute
A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag, or in the case of ram-air parachutes, aerodynamic lift. Parachutes are usually made out of light, strong cloth, originally silk, now most commonly nylon...
d to earth were lynched
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
by the populace upon landing.
When the Americans came by way of Engenhahn and Niederseelbach to Königshofen and Niedernhausen, there was no resistance. The GIs’ quick advance may well be what spared the Theiß Valley Bridge the customary demolition by retreating German forces.
Postwar era (1945–1975)
After the Second World War, as was so throughout West GermanyWest Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
, many refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
s and Germans driven out of their lands in the former eastern territories and the Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
came into the individual centres, above all Oberjosbach, Niedernhausen, Königshofen and Niederseelbach. Niederseelbach’s population, for instance, thereby swelled by 1960 to twice what it had been in 1939. In the 1950s, consequently, the first new municipal developments arose.
The rebuilt parish church in Oberjosbach had already opened in 1949.
In Engenhahn, the Wildparkgelände at first became an area for weekend houses. Beginning in 1975, it became an official and exclusive building area in which prominent persons such as Wim Thoelke
Wim Thoelke
Georg Heinrich Willem Thoelke was a German TV entertainer. He worked during the 1960s and 1970s for TV sport serie Aktuelles Sportstudio on German channel ZDF...
, Ebby Thust
Ebby Thust
Eberhard "Ebby" Thust, is a Boxing-Promoter, based in Germany.- His former boxers have included :* Rüdiger Schmidtke, European Light-Heavyweight Champion* Charly Graf, German Heavyweight-Champion...
and Susanne Fröhlich live (or lived).
In 1964, Oberseelbach took part for the first time in the contest Unser Dorf soll schöner werden (“Our Village Should Become Lovelier”), and in 1965 won the state victory for Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
.
When the Rhine-Main S-Bahn
Rhine-Main S-Bahn
The Rhine-Main S-Bahn system is an integrated rapid transit and commuter transport system for the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main region, which includes the cities Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Offenbach am Main, Hanau and Darmstadt...
was being planned and it could be foreseen that Niedernhausen would be one of the termini, the community experienced a sharp rise in population. The big building development of Lenzhahner Weg then came into being. In the 1970s, four highrise blocks of flats were built along with a dozen other major blocks. The first S-Bahn
S-Bahn
S-Bahn refers to an often combined city center and suburban railway system metro in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark...
train, running on line 2, reached Niedernhausen station on 25 August 1975.
In 1970, the Oberseelbach bypass
Bypass (road)
A bypass is a road or highway that avoids or "bypasses" a built-up area, town, or village, to let through traffic flow without interference from local traffic, to reduce congestion in the built-up area, and to improve road safety....
was opened, freeing the community’s narrow main street of through traffic.
Boundary adjustments and municipal reform (1971 to present)
On 1 October 1971, the communities of Niedernhausen and Königshofen signed – despite an age-old aversion towards each other – a boundary adjustment agreement and merged into the community of Niedernhausen im Taunus, with Königshofen keeping its identity as an Ortsteil.In the course of municipal reform in Hesse, the community of Niedernhausen i. Ts
Taunus
The Taunus is a low mountain range in Hesse, Germany that composes part of the Rhenish Slate Mountains. It is bounded by the river valleys of Rhine, Main and Lahn. On the opposite side of the Rhine, the mountains are continued by the Hunsrück...
was eventually formed on 1 January 1977 out of the hitherto self-governing communities of Niedernhausen with the Ortsteil of Königshofen, Engenhahn, Niederseelbach, Oberseelbach and Oberjosbach. At the same time, the community became part of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis
Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis
Rheingau-Taunus is a Kreis in the west of Hesse, Germany. Neighboring districts are Limburg-Weilburg, Hochtaunuskreis, Main-Taunus, district-free Wiesbaden, Mainz-Bingen, Rhein-Lahn.-Geography:...
, founded on the same date, whose seat is at Bad Schwalbach
Bad Schwalbach
Bad Schwalbach is the district seat of Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany.- Geographic Location :Bad Schwalbach is a spa town some 20 km northwest of Wiesbaden. It lies at 289 to 465 m above sea level in the Taunus, along the small river Aar...
. Formerly, Niedernhausen had belonged to the Main-Taunus-Kreis
Main-Taunus-Kreis
Main-Taunus is a Kreis in the middle of Hesse, Germany and is part of the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region as well as the Frankfurt urban area...
.
Before this, there had been much earnest “courting” by Idstein and Niedernhausen of the communities in the Seelbacher Grund, giving rise to a third consideration that a self-governing community called Lenzenberg could be formed out of Engenhahn, Oberseelbach, Niederseelbach, Lenzhahn and Dasbach. In the end, though, Engenhahn, Oberseelbach and Niederseelbach chose to join Niedernhausen, while Lenzhahn and Dasbach, despite their centuries-long links with Oberseelbach and Niederseelbach, chose to join Idstein.
In the early 1980s, the old school building and town hall in Niedernhausen was expanded into the greater community’s town hall, and the Autalhalle was built.
Beginning in 1985, a further great building area on the Schäfersberg, near Niedernhausen (main centre) was begun.
Today, over half of the greater community’s population lives in Niedernhausen. The second biggest constituent community is Oberjosbach with 2,150 inhabitants; the smallest is Oberseelbach with 450. The centres of Oberjosbach, Oberseelbach, Niederseelbach and Engenhahn have therefore largely been able to keep their village character.
Population development since the founding of the greater community in 1977
Niedernhausen has undergone since the founding of the greater community on 1 January 1977 a great rise in population. The figure rose from 12,055 at the census in May 1987 to 14,722 in June 2003. This represents a rise of more than 22% (district average: roughly 11%). The causes are, more than anything else, the community’s favourable location with regards to transport and its proximity to nature, as well as the Schäfersberg building development that was going on during this time. However, over the last few years, the population growth has been stagnating because there is now very little land left to develop in the Lenzhahner Weg and Schäfersberg development areas, and no new land is being opened up to development.| Year | Inhabitants |
|---|---|
| 01.01.1977 | 10,952 |
| 30.06.1985 | 12,220 |
| 31.05.1987 | 12,055 * |
| 31.12.1994 | 14,231 |
| 30.06.2003 | 14,722 |
| 31.12.2004 | 14,648 |
| 30.06.2005 | 14,664 |
* Census result
Politics
The community’s mayor (Bürgermeister), and thereby also its administrative chief, has been since 1989 Günter F. Döring (SPDSocial Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
). He also became Niedernhausen’s first directly elected mayor in 1995, later being reëlected in both 2001 and 2007.
The last direct mayoral election was held on 5 March 2007. With a voter turnout of 55%, the incumbent mayor Döring, who was running for the last time, got 49.55% of the vote. His opponent Andreas Knüttel (CDU) got 27.44%, and the independent candidate Isolde Ehrhart, a former CDU member and also former mayor Klaus Ehrhart’s wife, got 23.01% of the vote. This resulted in a runoff
Two-round system
The two-round system is a voting system used to elect a single winner where the voter casts a single vote for their chosen candidate...
between Döring and Knüttel, which was held on 25 March 2007, and from which Döring emerged victorious with 59.6% of the vote. Andreas Knüttel was left with 40.3% of the vote.
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...
: 15 seats, SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
: 10 seats, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen: 4 seats, FDP
Free Democratic Party (Germany)
The Free Democratic Party , abbreviated to FDP, is a centre-right classical liberal political party in Germany. It is led by Philipp Rösler and currently serves as the junior coalition partner to the Union in the German federal government...
: 2 seats, Wählergemeinschaft Niedernhausen (WGN): 6 seats. The next municipal election will be held in 2011.
The council chooses a community executive (Gemeindevorstand). This has nine members (CDU: 3 members, SPD: 2 members, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen: 2 members). Among the members are also the mayor and the first deputy (Gerd Paustian, WGN).
The executive is supported by four boards which work on various issues, bringing them before the executive when a vote is needed. The four boards are the building board (Bauausschuss), the environmental board (Umweltausschuss), the social board (Sozialausschuss), and the main and financial board (Haupt- und Finanzausschuss). Each board has seven members (CDU: 3, SPD: 2, WGN: 1, Greens: 1).
The main and outlying centres’ concerns fall to the constituent community councils (Ortsbeiräte). They have an advisory function on community council and are composed according to municipal election results in each centre. The political bodies sit at the community’s town hall in the main centre of Niedernhausen.
| Kind of election / Date | Eligible voters | Voter turnout | Votes cast | Share of valid votes | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| invalid | valid | CDU | SPD Social Democratic Party of Germany The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany... |
FDP Free Democratic Party (Germany) The Free Democratic Party , abbreviated to FDP, is a centre-right classical liberal political party in Germany. It is led by Philipp Rösler and currently serves as the junior coalition partner to the Union in the German federal government... |
GREENS | WGN * | Others | ||||
| Total | % | Total | % | Total | % | ||||||
| Municipal 26.03.2006 | 11,227 | 48.3 | 79 | 1.5 | 5,423 | 39.5 | 26.3 | 6.4 | 10.5 | 17.4 | -- |
| Federal German federal election, 2005 German federal elections took place on 18 September 2005 to elect the members of the 16th German Bundestag, the federal parliament of Germany. They became necessary after a motion of confidence in Chancellor Gerhard Schröder failed on 1 July... 18.09.2005 |
10,976 | 84.9 | 127 | 1.4 | 9,188 | 37.2 | 29.4 | 16.2 | 11.0 | - | 6.2 |
| State 02.02.2003 | 10,857 | 72.1 | 109 | 1.4 | 7,724 | 53.0 | 22.4 | 9.5 | 11.4 | - | 3.7 |
| Federal German federal election, 2002 The 15th German federal election, 2002 was conducted on 22 September 2002, to elect members to the Bundestag of Germany.-Issues and campaign:... 22.09.2002 |
10,891 | 84.8 | 119 | 1.3 | 9,116 | 40.0 | 33.3 | 11.1 | 12.7 | - | 2.9 |
| Municipal 18.03.2001 | 11,126 | 59.6 | 126 | 1.9 | 6,504 | 45.3 | 35.0 | 11.5 | 8.2 | - | - |
| State 07.02.1999 | 10,705 | 71.6 | 81 | 1.1 | 7,582 | 49.2 | 32.5 | 7.8 | 7.4 | - | 3.1 |
| Federal German federal election, 1998 A German federal election was conducted on September 27, 1998, to elect members to the 14th Bundestag, the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany.- Issues and campaign :... 27.09.1998 |
10,810 | 87,8 | 114 | 1.2 | 9,377 | 39.7 | 33.5 | 9.1 | 12.0 | - | 5.7 |
| Municipal 02.03.1997 | 10,895 | 65.4 | 176 | 2.5 | 6,952 | 35.9 | 31.4 | 11.8 | 7.4 | 13.5 | - |
* Wählergemeinschaft Niedernhausen (Freie Wähler)
Administration
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...
s, about 35 kindergarten teachers are employed. Responsible for traffic and environmental infractions is the bylaw enforcement office. For all other security concerns, there is the police station
Police station
A police station or station house is a building which serves to accommodate police officers and other members of staff. These buildings often contain offices and accommodation for personnel and vehicles, along with locker rooms, temporary holding cells and interview/interrogation rooms.- Facilities...
in Idstein. There are longstanding demands, however, for a local police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
presence.
Coat of arms
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...
might be described thus: Azure a lion rampant Or armed and langued gules among six billets of the second, in his forepaw sinister a sword argent held palewise.
The arms were created in 1977. The lion is from the arms borne by the Duchy of Nassau. The silver sword in the lion’s left forepaw refers to Oberjosbach’s Electoral Mainz
Archbishopric of Mainz
The Archbishopric of Mainz or Electorate of Mainz was an influential ecclesiastic and secular prince-bishopric in the Holy Roman Empire between 780–82 and 1802. In the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Archbishop of Mainz was the primas Germaniae, the substitute of the Pope north of the Alps...
past; this outlying centre’s coat of arms shows a sword in Mainz’s heraldic tincture
Tincture (heraldry)
In heraldry, tinctures are the colours used to emblazon a coat of arms. These can be divided into several categories including light tinctures called metals, dark tinctures called colours, nonstandard colours called stains, furs, and "proper". A charge tinctured proper is coloured as it would be...
s, and the sword is also one of the Archangel Michael’s
Michael (archangel)
Michael , Micha'el or Mîkhā'ēl; , Mikhaḗl; or Míchaël; , Mīkhā'īl) is an archangel in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic teachings. Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans refer to him as Saint Michael the Archangel and also simply as Saint Michael...
attributes, thus symbolizing Oberjosbach’s patron saint. The billets (small rectangles) stand for the community’s six centres.
Municipal partnerships
Wilrijk (constituent community of Antwerp, BelgiumBelgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
)
The partnership has existed since 1980, when this was still a self-governing town (about 38,000 inhabitants). Since then, there has been a regular exchange, with cycling tours between the two places being arranged. Since 1984, Wilrijk has been a constituent community of Antwerp, which has changed nothing about the intensive relationship. The square before Niedernhausen’s town hall was named after Wilrijk, making the community administration’s address Wilrijkplatz (no house number).
Ilfeld
Ilfeld
Ilfeld is a municipality in the district of Nordhausen, in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated at the south foot of the Harz, at the entrance to the Bährethal, north from Nordhausen by the railway to Wernigerode.-Establishments in 1911:...
(Harz
Harz
The Harz is the highest mountain range in northern Germany and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The name Harz derives from the Middle High German word Hardt or Hart , latinized as Hercynia. The legendary Brocken is the highest summit in the Harz...
, Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
)
The connection with the Thuringian town in the Harz (3,000 inhabitants) was spurred shortly after German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
in 1990, likely also in the east to get some structural subsidies. The partnership between Ilfeld and Wilrijk, forged by Niedernhausen’s initiative, has created a three-way partnership. The square before Niedernhausen’s railway station has since its remodelling been known as Ilfelder Platz.
Economy
Niedernhausen is generally said to be a bedroom town for the cities in Frankfurt Rhine Main Region. At 30%, WiesbadenWiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
has the greatest share of commuters from Niedernhausen, followed closely by Frankfurt am Main. The number of jobs has risen along with the population, although given the local commuting structure, the share of the population employed locally has always been rather slight, at about 10%. In June 1987, 1,192 persons were employed in Niedernhausen. By June 2002 this had risen by about 21% to 1,443. The share engaged in service businesses in 1987 was about 65%, and in 2002, 71%. The local purchasing power
Purchasing power
Purchasing power is the number of goods/services that can be purchased with a unit of currency. For example, if you had taken one dollar to a store in the 1950s, you would have been able to buy a greater number of items than you would today, indicating that you would have had a greater purchasing...
is about €21,346 for each inhabitant, putting it roughly 28.5% above the national average, and thereby also making it the highest figure for the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis
Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis
Rheingau-Taunus is a Kreis in the west of Hesse, Germany. Neighboring districts are Limburg-Weilburg, Hochtaunuskreis, Main-Taunus, district-free Wiesbaden, Mainz-Bingen, Rhein-Lahn.-Geography:...
.
Niedernhausen is home to mostly small and midsize businesses, overwhelmingly in the service provision sector. Meanwhile, there are more than 30 high-technology firms, among them about 20 in information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
, as well as seven companies in measuring and control technology
Control engineering
Control engineering or Control systems engineering is the engineering discipline that applies control theory to design systems with predictable behaviors...
. The community’s biggest employer, with 220 on staff, is Hartmann Druckfarben GmbH in Niederseelbach (printing inks) which has been an established business here since 1968. Another big employer, the RAMADA Hotel Micador
Ramada International
Ramada International is the company that owns, operates, and franchises hotels using the Ramada name outside of the United States and Canada. Ramada International was formerly owned by Marriott International, a competitor of Cendant, which owned Ramada in the United States and Canada...
, is a conference and convention hotel with 254 rooms and the adjoining Rhein-Main-Theater, which was built between 1993 and 1995 specially to present Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
’s musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard (musical)
Sunset Boulevard is a musical with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Based on the 1950 film of the same title, the plot revolves around Norma Desmond, a faded star of the silent screen era, living in the past in her decaying mansion on the...
.
Beginning in 1976 in the Schöne Aussicht, the biggest publishing
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
house for German guidebooks, the FALKEN-Verlagsgruppe was resident. With 120 employees and roughly 1,200 available books, it generated a turnover of roughly €45,000,000. In 2000, however, the publishing house was taken over by the Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann AG is a multinational media corporation founded in 1835, based in Gütersloh, Germany. The company operates in 63 countries and employs 102,983 workers , which makes it the most international media corporation in the world. In 2008 the company reported a €16.118 billion consolidated...
concern and closed.
All together there are four industrial areas, a small one in each of Königshofen, Oberseelbach and Niederseelbach as well as a somewhat bigger one in Niedernhausen near the Autobahn interchange
Interchange (road)
In the field of road transport, an interchange is a road junction that typically uses grade separation, and one or more ramps, to permit traffic on at least one highway to pass through the junction without directly crossing any other traffic stream. It differs from a standard intersection, at which...
. Here it is planned to open up a further 5 ha or so of land to mixed and commercial development.
Transport
Niedernhausen stationNiedernhausen station
Niedernhausen station serves the municipality of Niedernhausen in the German state of Hesse. It is the most important station on the Main-Lahn Railway between the stations of Frankfurt-Höchst and Eschhofen in Limburg an der Lahn...
lies on the Main-Lahn Railway running from Frankfurt am Main to Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn is the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse, Germany.-Location:Limburg lies in western Hesse between the Taunus and the Westerwald on the river Lahn....
. The line was opened early on, in 1877, and the station is the main junction on this line between Frankfurt-Höchst
Höchst (Frankfurt am Main)
Höchst is a district of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is part of the Ortsbezirk West, and is subdivided into 4 Stadtbezirke.Höchst am Main became part of Frankfurt am Main in 1928 together with its boroughs Sindlingen, Unterliederbach and Zeilsheim. It is situated 10 km west of downtown...
and Eschhofen, as it is here that the Ländchesbahn
Ländchesbahn
The Ländchesbahn is a single non-electrified branch railway line between Wiesbaden and Niedernhausen, Germany. The long line was opened in July 1879 by the Hessian Ludwig Railway...
branches off, running to the main railway station
Wiesbaden Hauptbahnhof
is the Hauptbahnhof for the city of Wiesbaden, the state capital of the German state of Hesse. It is a terminal station at the southern edge of the city center and is served by over 500 long-distance and regional trains and used by more than 30,000 travelers each day.-History:The current station...
in Hesse’s state capital, Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
. Given its importance as such, Niedernhausen station was targeted by Allied bombers several times in the Second World War.
Since 1975, Niedernhausen has also been the outermost stop on the Rhine-Main S-Bahn
Rhine-Main S-Bahn
The Rhine-Main S-Bahn system is an integrated rapid transit and commuter transport system for the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main region, which includes the cities Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Offenbach am Main, Hanau and Darmstadt...
’s line S2
S2 (Rhine-Main S-Bahn)
The S2 service of the S-Bahn Rhein-Main system bearing the KBS number 645.2 is a railway connection between the small Taunus town Niedernhausen and Dietzenbach.Usually DBAG Class 423 railcars are used on this service...
, which links the community with Frankfurt’s main station
Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof
is the central station for Frankfurt am Main. In terms of railway traffic, it is the busiest railway station in Germany. With about 350,000 passengers per day the station is the second most frequented railway station in Germany and one of the most frequented in Europe.- Proto-history :In the late...
with a travel time of roughly 35 minutes. Furthermore, the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line, with its Niedernhausener Tunnel runs through the municipal area.
Besides the train connections to Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
and Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn is the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse, Germany.-Location:Limburg lies in western Hesse between the Taunus and the Westerwald on the river Lahn....
, there is also a city bus connection to Wiesbaden (route 22 of the ESWE – Wiesbaden’s transport system) linking the centres of Oberjosbach, Niedernhausen and Königshofen to the state capital with a travel time of roughly 30 minutes. There is also a local bus service linking all outlying centres to the main centre and the railway station. Long-distance buses likewise call at Niedernhausen railway station.
There are no pedestrian precincts in Niedernhausen. Nevertheless, the main shopping street, Bahnhofsstraße (“Railway Station Street”) is a traffic-free one-way street which is completely blocked to motorized traffic for various events (wine festival, Christmas market, and so on).
In the Taunus woods around the community is a tight web of signposted hiking
Hiking
Hiking is an outdoor activity which consists of walking in natural environments, often in mountainous or other scenic terrain. People often hike on hiking trails. It is such a popular activity that there are numerous hiking organizations worldwide. The health benefits of different types of hiking...
trails.
There is a “Park&Ride” facility available at Niedernhausen S-Bahn station. Likewise, a great number of parking spaces is on hand at the Niedernhausen forest swimming pool
Swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...
and the Rhein-Main-Theater. There are parking spaces in the main centre, too.
Niedernhausen has an interchange
Interchange (road)
In the field of road transport, an interchange is a road junction that typically uses grade separation, and one or more ramps, to permit traffic on at least one highway to pass through the junction without directly crossing any other traffic stream. It differs from a standard intersection, at which...
on the A 3 (Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
–Frankfurt) lying roughly 2 km south of the main centre. Past the interchange and through the municipal area runs Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße , abbreviated B, is the denotation for German and Austrian national highways.-Germany:...
455.
Frankfurt Airport
Frankfurt Airport
Frankfurt Airport may refer to:Airports of Frankfurt, Germany:*Frankfurt Airport , the largest airport in Germany*Frankfurt Egelsbach Airport, a general aviation airport*Frankfurt-Hahn Airport , a converted U.S...
can be reached by Autobahn in about 20 minutes. By train – with a transfer at the main station in either Frankfurt or Wiesbaden – it takes roughly an hour. Given this easy access to the airport, Niedernhausen has also become a favourite choice among airport employees as a home.
Infrastructure
Schools
In Niedernhausen there are two public schools. The Theißtalschule in the main centre was expanded in the late 1990s from a primary school with orientation level (Förderstufe) into a coöperative comprehensive schoolComprehensive school
A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United...
with primary level and also Hauptschule
Hauptschule
A Hauptschule is a secondary school in Germany and Austria, starting after 4 years of elementary schooling, which offers Lower Secondary Education according to the International Standard Classification of Education...
, Realschule
Realschule
The Realschule is a type of secondary school in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It has also existed in Croatia , Denmark , Sweden , Hungary and in the Russian Empire .-History:The Realschule was an outgrowth of the rationalism and empiricism of the seventeenth and...
and Gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
branches. The Lenzenbergschule in the outlying centre of Niederseelbach is a so-called Mittelpunkts-Grundschule (“midpoint primary school”, a central school, designed to eliminate smaller outlying schools) for the outlying centres of Engenhahn, Niederseelbach and Oberseelbach. In the outlying centre of Königshofen are also found a private Gymnasium and a music school.
Churches
Within community limits are three Catholic parishes, two EvangelicalEvangelical Church in Germany
The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany. The EKD is not a church in a theological understanding because of the denominational differences. However, the member churches share full pulpit and altar...
and one New Apostolic
New Apostolic Church
The New Apostolic Church is a chiliastic church, converted to Protestantism as a free church from the Catholic Apostolic Church. The church has existed since 1879 in Germany and since 1897 in the Netherlands...
. The Catholic ones are Maria Königin in Niedernhausen, St. Michael in Oberjosbach and St. Martha in Engenhahn. The two Evangelical parishes are Christuskirche in Niedernhausen and another in Niederseelbach with Niedernhausen’s oldest church, the Johanneskirche from the 15th century. The old Catholic church in Niedernhausen is nowadays used as a cultural centre.
Sport and leisure facilities
In Niedernhausen there are several football pitchesAssociation football pitch
An association football pitch is the playing surface for the game of association football made of turf. Its dimensions and markings are defined by Law 1 of the Laws of the Game, "The Field of Play".All line markings on the pitch form part of the area which they define...
, among them two paved ones in Engenhahn and Niederseelbach as well as an artificial-turf
Artificial turf
Artificial turf is a surface manufactured from synthetic fibers made to look like natural grass. It is most often used in arenas for sports that were originally or are normally played on grass. However, it is now being used on residential lawns and commercial applications as well...
pitch in Niedernhausen. Besides those, there are three smaller sporting grounds in Niedernhausen, Königshofen and Oberjosbach as well as an athletics facility attached to the Theißtalschule. The great three-field sporting hall, the Autalhalle is used not only by local clubs, but also for trade fair
Trade fair
A trade fair is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products, service, study activities of rivals and examine recent market trends and opportunities...
s and sundry other events. The schools and the bigger sport clubs each have their own halls. Furthermore, there are a tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
club that plays on several courts and in a hall, a riding ring, several skittle
Skittles (sport)
Skittles is an old European lawn game, a variety of bowling, from which ten-pin bowling, duckpin bowling, and candlepin bowling in the United States, and five-pin bowling in Canada are descended. In the United Kingdom, the game remains a popular pub game in England and Wales, though it tends to be...
alleys and the Waldschwimmbad (“forest swimming pool
Swimming pool
A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, or simply a pool, is a container filled with water intended for swimming or water-based recreation. There are many standard sizes; the largest is the Olympic-size swimming pool...
”) with several basins, slides and a diving tower. Right next to the pool, a rollerskating rink was opened in July 2006. The local Theißtal recreation area offers, besides several barbecue
Barbecue
Barbecue or barbeque , used chiefly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia is a method and apparatus for cooking meat, poultry and occasionally fish with the heat and hot smoke of a fire, smoking wood, or hot coals of...
areas, a great angling
Angling
Angling is a method of fishing by means of an "angle" . The hook is usually attached to a fishing line and the line is often attached to a fishing rod. Fishing rods are usually fitted with a fishing reel that functions as a mechanism for storing, retrieving and paying out the line. The hook itself...
pond. In the centre of Engenhahn, in severe winters, cross-country skiing
Cross-country skiing
Cross-country skiing is a winter sport in which participants propel themselves across snow-covered terrain using skis and poles...
trails are laid out.
Kindergartens, daycare, after-school care and Gemeinschaftshäuser
All together six municipally owned kindergartenKindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...
s are to be found in the centres of Niedernhausen (Ahornstraße and Schäfersberg), Königshofen, Niederseelbach, Oberjosbach and Engenhahn. Moreover, the Catholic Church runs the St. Josef kindergarten. A private parents’ association runs a rhythmic-musical kindergarten called TASIMU' with daycare and after-school care. Besides the great three-field sporting hall with caterer’s (Autalhalle), community buildings are to be found in every other centre for events. Furthermore, next to the town hall carpark is a revamped old slaughterhouse that now serves as a youth centre. Youngsters can play billiards or table football
Table football
Table football, also known as gitoni or foosball, is a table-top game and sport that is loosely based on association football.-Names:...
, or simply “chill” and have a drink, or listen to bands that appear on the small stage.
Culture and sightseeing
Rhein-Main-Theater
The nationally known Rhein-Main-Theater, right on the Niedernhausen Autobahn interchangeInterchange (road)
In the field of road transport, an interchange is a road junction that typically uses grade separation, and one or more ramps, to permit traffic on at least one highway to pass through the junction without directly crossing any other traffic stream. It differs from a standard intersection, at which...
, is used for many international events. The house, with 1,566 seats shared between the stalls and two galleries, was built between 1993 and 1995 at a cost of €25,000,000 specially to present the first German-language production of Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer of musical theatre.Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of...
’s musical Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard (musical)
Sunset Boulevard is a musical with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Based on the 1950 film of the same title, the plot revolves around Norma Desmond, a faded star of the silent screen era, living in the past in her decaying mansion on the...
. The play ran from December 1995 to August 1998, with the leads being played by the well known musical stars Uwe Kröger
Uwe Kröger
Uwe Kröger is a famous musical star in the German-speaking countries of the world. Besides starring on stage, Kröger has taken part in numerous galas and concerts, as well as making a few television and film appearances...
und Helen Schneider
Helen Schneider
Helen Schneider is an American singer and actress working mainly in Germany.Born the daughter of Dvora and Abraham Schneider , she studied piano before starting to perform as a singer in venues in New England and New York.Between 1978 and 1984, she achieved success as a rock singer in Germany;...
, and later also the actress Daniela Ziegler
Daniela Ziegler
Daniela Ziegler is a German actress and singer.-Biography:After studying acting at the Drama School in Bochum, she had engagements in Trier, at the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen, at the State Theatre in Hanover, and at the Hamburg Theatre...
. Nevertheless, the star-studded cast could not stave off insolvency. Today, changing events take place at the theatre. The halt on the Ländchesbahn (railway), built specially for the theatre, was opened in 1996 and after the theatre was for the time being closed in 1998, the halt, too, was closed.
Other event venues and institutions
Besides the Rhein-Main-Theater there is also a whole series of further event venues in Niedernhausen. Particularly worthy of note are the Zentrum Alte Kirche (ZAK) and the youth club I4. The Old Catholic Church on Wiesbadener Straße was threatening to fall into disrepair after the Catholic parish shifted their house of worship to the new church on Bahnhofstraße. In 1980, a private club took over the leasehold for 99 years, had the building put under monumental protection and renovated it on its own initiative. Today, the house offers an unusual and appealing setting for a great number of events from readings to concerts and theatrical productions to art exhibitions.Not only does The Autalhalle serve the Theißtalschule and local clubs as a sport hall, but also it offers, with its wheel-away grandstand, the adjoining caterer’s and its configuration, which allows flexibility, a space for regular fairs, exhibitions and sundry other events. The Free Democratic Party and the Greens, for instance, have held their Hesse party conferences here in past years. Likewise, the community council sits here. At one time, the hall was even used as the “festival tent” at the Niedernhausen Kerb.
Clubs
In Niedernhausen there is a lively club life with a remarkable number of clubs – roughly 100 – and thousands of members. Many volunteer helpers make this possible. Most clubs give themselves over to sport. The most successful of these is SV Niedernhausen, which is almost purely a football club. Since advancing in 2006, the club has quickly established itself in the Gruppenliga Wiesbaden and is even in line for further promotion to the next highest league. The best known player is Christopher Ihm, who lives in Niedernhausen and is a former professional of 1.FSV Mainz 05. At Sportverein Niederseelbach 1951, it is mainly football that is played. The two clubs each have up to 18 teams in the various age groups from “G-Jugend” (those no older than 7) to the seniors’ team. Niederseelbach played for a time in the Bezirksoberliga Wiesbaden, and now currently plays in the "A-Klasse Rheingau-Taunus". The volleyballVolleyball
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...
division of SV Niederseelbach has existed since 1981. SV Niederseelbach also offers an informal walking programme and Nordic walking
Nordic walking
Nordic walking, originally known as ski walking, is a physical activity and a sport consisting of walking with poles similar to ski poles.-Origin:...
.
Turngemeinde 1896 Niedernhausen, with roughly 1,000 active members the community’s biggest club, Turn- und Sportverein Königshofen 1898, Turn- und Sportverein Engenhahn 1977 and Turngemeinde 1899 Oberjosbach all offer leisure sports. The two first ones each have an athletics and gymnastics
Gymnastics
Gymnastics is a sport involving performance of exercises requiring physical strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, and balance. Internationally, all of the gymnastic sports are governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique with each country having its own national governing body...
division, both of which regularly take part in competitions, among them the Deutsches Turnfest and the Hesse State Gymnastics Festivals. All four clubs each have their own clubhouse and training ground. TG Niedernhausen also runs a big basketball division, which sometimes boasts as many as 10 teams. The first men’s and the first women’s teams each play in district class A.
Tennis-Club Niedernhausen, with about 400 members, plays on 9 outdoor courts (sand) and three indoor. At the tennis hall, moreover, are several squash
Squash (sport)
Squash is a high-speed racquet sport played by two players in a four-walled court with a small, hollow rubber ball...
courts. Worthy of notice are the Aikido
Aikido
is a Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba as a synthesis of his martial studies, philosophy, and religious beliefs. Aikido is often translated as "the Way of unifying life energy" or as "the Way of harmonious spirit." Ueshiba's goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to...
-Club with roughly 130 members, which commits itself to Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese self-defence
Self-defense
Self-defense, self-defence or private defense is a countermeasure that involves defending oneself, one's property or the well-being of another from physical harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force in times of danger is available in many...
arts, and the local DLRG
DLRG
The Deutsche Lebens-Rettungs-Gesellschaft e.V. is a relief organization for life saving in Germany. The DLRG is a non-profit, independent organization based on volunteers.-Tasks:...
chapter with roughly 260 members, who use the forest pool for their swimming sport. In the winter, this is done in indoor pools in Wiesbaden.
Likewise worth mentioning is the Intressengemeinschaft Reiten und Fahren e.V., Niedernhausen/Ts. (IRFN, riding club). The riding facilities, Am Hahnwald, which belong to the club have at their disposal, besides stabling, a dressage
Dressage
Dressage is a competitive equestrian sport, defined by the International Equestrian Federation as "the highest expression of horse training." Competitions are held at all levels from amateur to the World Equestrian Games...
square, a show jumping
Show jumping
Show jumping, also known as "stadium jumping," "open jumping," or "jumpers," is a member of a family of English riding equestrian events that also includes dressage, eventing, hunters, and equitation. Jumping classes commonly are seen at horse shows throughout the world, including the Olympics...
square and a riding hall.
High in membership are also Ski-Club Niedernhausen with about 600, Kerbegesellschaft Veilchenblau Oberjosbach and Kerbeborsch Königshofen (both kermis clubs) with about 130 members.
Furthermore, there are Kerbeverein Niederseelbach (another kermis club), Schäfersbergteam, which stages various events in the Schäfersberg new building area, among them the Schäfersbergfest, as well as Frohsinn 1875 Engenhahn (men’s singing), 1873 Niedernhausen, Eintracht 1885 Niederseelbach and fire brigade clubs in individual centres. In the smallest centre, the Heimat und Kulturverein Oberseelbach looks after, for instance, keeping up the baking
Baking
Baking is the technique of prolonged cooking of food by dry heat acting by convection, and not by radiation, normally in an oven, but also in hot ashes, or on hot stones. It is primarily used for the preparation of bread, cakes, pastries and pies, tarts, quiches, cookies and crackers. Such items...
tradition, the cultural community and maintaining the scenic heritage.
The Schützenverein Königshofen 1959 e.V. with about 200 members can boast its own indoor shooting range with 10 ×10 m airgun enclosures and 10 ×25 m and 6 ×50 m stalls.
The Vocal-Ensemble Le Courage e.V. is a women’s choir
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
of national importance. It was founded in 1977 by music director Wolfgang Diefenbach and has been led by him ever since. The choir currently has roughly 55 active singers aged between 14 and 75. They have made a number of recordings, and the ensemble has won 36 victories in regional and international choral contests and come in first at the Hesse Choral Competition.
Regular events
What follows is a selection of regular events in Niedernhausen:- Gickellauf Engenhahn (established forest walk and family festival, third Sunday in September)
- Schäfersbergfest (Schäfersberg neighbourhood)
- Gemeindeschießen (“Community Shooting”, Königshofen Shooting Club, mid-November)
- Weinfest Niedernhausen (wine festival, Bahnhofstraße)
- Zeltkerb Königshofen (“tent kermis”, Königshofen fairground, third weekend in August)
- Oberjosbacher Kerb (kermis, Oberjosbach community centre)
- Niederseelbacher Kerb (kermis, Niederseelbach, mid-October)
- TuFuMaBa (Fastnacht masquerade ball in Niederseelbach, Lenzenberghalle)
- Sportwoche Niederseelbach (“sport week”, Niederseelbach sporting ground, late July)
- Sport-Spiel-Spaß Oberjosbach (“sport-play-fun”, Jahnhalle, early September)
- Weihnachtsmarkt Niedernhausen (Christmas market, Bahnhofstraße, first weekend in Advent)
- Ausstellung Form-Bild-Farbe (“Shape-Image-Colour Exhibition”, Autalhalle)
- Orchideenschau (“Orchid Show”, Autalhalle)
- Gewerbeausstellung (business fair, Autalhalle)
- SV Niedernhausen’s matches on the artificial-turf pitch at the Autalarena
- Sportfest Niederseelbach (Niederseelbach sporting ground, September)
- Great Dressage and Show Jumping tournament (Niedernhausen riding square)
Theiß Valley Bridge
The community’s landmark is the Theißtalbrücke (“Theiß Valley Bridge”), part of the A 3, which spans the narrow Theiß Valley on 16 arches stretching across 500 m with a maximum height of 46 m. Parallel to it in the 1990s arose another bridge that carries the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line, whose dimensions are roughly the same as the older bridge’s. The arch motif is used by the community’s administration and a few clubs as a symbol.Johanneskirche (Evangelical church)
The Johanneskirche in Niederseelbach was from the Middle AgesMiddle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
the Seelbacher Grund’s religious and spiritual hub. It is the most valuable historic building in the greater community of Niedernhausen. When the church was built is unknown, although there must have been a forerunner building at the time when the parish was founded about 1220 by the Counts of Nassau. The church’s somewhat off-centre location in relation to the Niederseelbach village core is a clue that the church might have begun as a rural church (Feldkirche), as was customary in Carolingian
Carolingian
The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the...
times about 800.
The church is a plain building with a flat-ceilinged single nave and a quire. Adjoining it on the north side is the tower, which has an underground vault. A few jutting corbel
Corbel
In architecture a corbel is a piece of stone jutting out of a wall to carry any superincumbent weight. A piece of timber projecting in the same way was called a "tassel" or a "bragger". The technique of corbelling, where rows of corbels deeply keyed inside a wall support a projecting wall or...
s on the walls and in the quire are all that is left of the former Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
vaulting, which itself might put the nave’s building date in the 15th century. The tower acquired its Welsche Haube (the particular kind of cupola seen here) in 1790.
Catholic churches
The church St. Michael in Oberjosbach goes back to the founding of the parish of Oberjosbach in 1196. The church has, however, been destroyed several times, having been built anew in 1321, 1728 and most recently in 1949.The church St. Martha in Engenhahn was built in 1890 and 1891 in the Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
style after the Catholic inhabitants split from the parish of Oberjosbach in 1888 and were assigned to the parish of Idstein.
The old Catholic church in Niedernhausen was consecrated in 1885, after the growing community’s Catholics made it known that they did not want to make the long trip to Oberjosbach anymore. After the so-called Kapellenstreit (“Chapel dispute”) over what Königshofen’s share towards the church should be, the community of Mariä Geburt was finally founded on 1 October 1904, which the Bishop of Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn is the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse, Germany.-Location:Limburg lies in western Hesse between the Taunus and the Westerwald on the river Lahn....
raised to parish on 1 May 1921. Since the new church was built on Bahnhofstraße in 1960, the old church has been used as a cultural centre, and the parish has called itself Maria Königin.
Historical town halls and school buildings
Historical town halls are to be found in the centres of Oberjosbach und Engenhahn. The Engenhahn town hall was built in 1768, served beginning in 1820 as a school and later housed the community administration until 1977. The building is a timber-frameTimber framing
Timber framing , or half-timbering, also called in North America "post-and-beam" construction, is the method of creating structures using heavy squared off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden pegs . It is commonplace in large barns...
house under monumental protection, as is the old bakehouse (Backes) in Oberseelbach.
The town hall in Niedernhausen, which today serves as the community’s administrative seat, was originally a school building built in 1903, in which the mayor’s office was also housed. In 1981, it was expanded into a representative building and is today a further community landmark.
Other secular buildings
The old Gasthaus zum Anker right near the town hall, built towards the end of the 17th century, had an eventful history behind it. From 1734, it was an innINN
InterNetNews is a Usenet news server package, originally released by Rich Salz in 1991, and presented at the Summer 1992 USENIX conference in San Antonio, Texas...
. It was under monumental protection, but it was threatening to fall asunder, and was in the end torn down on 23 February 2008.
In Königshofen the old locomotive shed and an old watertower bear witness to Niedernhausen’s time as a railway stronghold.
Also worth seeing are the Gründerzeit
Gründerzeit
' refers to the economic phase in 19th century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. At this time in Central Europe the age of industrialisation was taking place, whose beginnings were found in the 1840s...
villas on the Schöne Aussicht, which still give one an impression of Niedernhausen’s time as an open-air resort.
Nature
The Rhein-Taunus Nature Park, much of which is wooded, lies within community limits and abuts residential areas in places. Of particular scenic charm is the ridge running between a line between Niederseelbach and Engenhahn and the local recreation and conservation area of the Theiß valley running parallel thereto. The highest elevation is the Hohe Kanzel at 592 m above sea levelSea level
Mean sea level is a measure of the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation...
. From west to east, a dale runs through the municipal area, over whose slopes Niedernhausen’s residential neighbourhoods stretch. In Oberjosbach is found a 500-year-old oak. North of Niedernhausen, on the Eselskopf, are a few bizarre crag formations in the middle of the forest (Hohler Stein – “Hollow Stone”).
Famous people
- Curt Mahr (1907–1978), composer and accordionist, lived until his death in Niedernhausen
- Wim ThoelkeWim ThoelkeGeorg Heinrich Willem Thoelke was a German TV entertainer. He worked during the 1960s and 1970s for TV sport serie Aktuelles Sportstudio on German channel ZDF...
(1927–1995), master of ceremonies and creator of the quiz show Der große Preis, lived until his death in Engenhahn and is buried at the graveyard there - Peter Weck (1930– ), producer, theatre manager, stage and film actor, managed the Rhein-Main-Theater in 1996/1997
- Helen SchneiderHelen SchneiderHelen Schneider is an American singer and actress working mainly in Germany.Born the daughter of Dvora and Abraham Schneider , she studied piano before starting to perform as a singer in venues in New England and New York.Between 1978 and 1984, she achieved success as a rock singer in Germany;...
(1952– ), singer and actress, played the lead rôle of Norma Desmond from 1995 to 1997 in the musical Sunset Boulevard at the Rhein-Main-Theater - Gert Scobel (1959– ), journalist and television moderator, lives in Engenhahn
- Susanne Fröhlich (1962– ), author and radio moderator on Hessischer RundfunkHessischer RundfunkHessischer Rundfunk is the public broadcaster for the German state of Hesse. The main offices of HR are in Frankfurt am Main. HR is a member of the ARD.- Studios :...
, lives in Engenhahn - Uwe KrögerUwe KrögerUwe Kröger is a famous musical star in the German-speaking countries of the world. Besides starring on stage, Kröger has taken part in numerous galas and concerts, as well as making a few television and film appearances...
(1964– ), best known musical performer in the German-speaking world; worked from 1995 to 1997 as main performer at the Rhein-Main-Theater - Jens KellerJens KellerJens Keller is a retired German football defender, who was most recently head coach of VfB Stuttgart.-Career:...
(1970– ), former German footballer (last club Eintracht Frankfurt - until 2005) lived until 2005 in Königshofen
Further reading
- Heinz Hirt: 1877-2002: 125 Jahre Main-Lahn-Bahn Höchst-Limburg. Eppstein (Taunus) 2002, ISBN 3-00-010714-2
- Adolf Tham: Heimatgeschichte Niedernhausen. herausgegeben vom Gemeindevorstand der Gemeinde Niedernhausen, Heft 1 bis 4, 1986–1989
- Festschrift 700 Jahre Niedernhausen-Königshofen. 1983