Riedstadt
Encyclopedia
Riedstadt, with its municipal area of 73.76 km² is Groß-Gerau
district's biggest town by land area. It lies in Hesse
, Germany
, about 12 km southwest of Darmstadt.
, Wiesbaden
, Mainz
and Mannheim
. As its name suggests, it lies in the Hessisches Ried, the northeastern section of the Rhine rift. The community practises the structured settlement of environmentally friendly
business operations.
Local recreation sites near the community include the Kühkopf-Knoblochsaue nature reserve, the Bergstraße
, the Odenwald
and the Taunus
.
and the town of Groß-Gerau
, in the east on the towns of Griesheim
and Pfungstadt
(both in Darmstadt-Dieburg
), in the south on the town of Gernsheim
and the communities of Biebesheim
and Stockstadt am Rhein, and in the west on the communities of Ludwigshöhe
and Dienheim
as well as the town of Oppenheim
(all 3 in Mainz-Bingen
).
, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
spent two nights at the mayor's house in 1631 while his troops were crossing the Rhine. His building master Matthäus Staud built the Schwedensäule ("Swedes' column") at Erfelden which recalls the crossing.
and handicraft
activities. In 1588 there were roughly 180 inhabitants in Goddelau. The house in which writer and revolutionary Georg Büchner
would later be born was built in 1665, and still stands today.
in 766 when a man named Dodo made a donation to the Lorsch Monastery. Near the earlier village of Camba, the Salian
Conrad II
was chosen to be German King in 1024. Leeheim was shaped by several monastic properties, belonging to, among others, St. Alban's Monastery in Mainz. The overlords were the Wolfskehlers, and later the Katzenelnbogen
family. In 1536, Leeheim became Evangelical
, and in the Thirty Years' War, more than 70% of the village was destroyed. In 1666, almost half the inhabitants lost their lives to the Plague
.
In earlier times, Leeheim developed itself from a farming village into a workers' residential village with recreational lands on the Riedsee, a nearby lake, and a golf course
.
granted Bishop Burchard of Worms
the rights in the Forest of Forehahi. In 1252, the Lords of Wolfskehlen, who had taken their name from the village, sold Neuwolfskehlen Castle to the Archbishop of Mainz. In 1539, Barbara von Wolfskehlen wed Eberhard von Gemmingen-Hornberg, who introduced the Reformation
into Wolfskehlen. In 1579, the Mainz Palatinate (Kurmainz) ceded its rights to the Landgraves of Hesse. During the Thirty Years' War, and through the Plague, almost the whole population was killed; the reconstruction began in the 18th century. From 1868 to 1878, the building of the railway brought the dissolution of the village's purely agricultural structure. After the Second World War, the village absorbed about 800 refugees.
, France
, since 1979 Sortino
, Italy
Tauragė
, Lithuania
mammal
were unearthed at a gravel pit near Crumstadt. At first thought to be a mammoth
, it later turned out on further analysis, specifically of the teeth, to be a young forest elephant. The bones are now in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.
Groß-Gerau (district)
Groß-Gerau is a Kreis in the south of Hesse , Germany. Neighboring districts are Main-Taunus, district-free Frankfurt, Darmstadt-Dieburg, Bergstraße, Alzey-Worms, Mainz-Bingen, and the district-free cities Mainz and Wiesbaden....
district's biggest town by land area. It lies 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...
, about 12 km southwest of Darmstadt.
Location
Riedstadt is shaped not only by its preserved rural structure, but also by being near several cities, namely Frankfurt am Main, DarmstadtDarmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
, 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...
, 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...
and Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
. As its name suggests, it lies in the Hessisches Ried, the northeastern section of the Rhine rift. The community practises the structured settlement of environmentally friendly
Environmentally friendly
Environmentally friendly are terms used to refer to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies claimed to inflict minimal or no harm on the environment....
business operations.
Local recreation sites near the community include the Kühkopf-Knoblochsaue nature reserve, the Bergstraße
Bergstraße
Bergstraße is the name of a mountainous theme route, and the area around it, stretching across the western edge of the Odenwald in southern Hesse and northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany....
, the Odenwald
Odenwald
The Odenwald is a low mountain range in Hesse, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg in Germany.- Location :The Odenwald lies between the Upper Rhine Rift Valley with the Bergstraße and the Hessisches Ried in the west, the Main and the Bauland in the east, the Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin – a subbasin of...
and the Taunus
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...
.
Neighbouring communities
Riedstadt borders in the north on the community of TreburTrebur
Trebur is a community in Groß-Gerau district in Hesse, Germany. It is 13 km southeast of Mainz, and 8 km south of Rüsselsheim.-Location:Trebur is located in the Frankfurt Rhein-Main Region...
and the town of Groß-Gerau
Groß-Gerau
Groß-Gerau is the district seat of the Groß-Gerau district, lying in the southern Frankfurt Rhein-Main Region in Hesse, Germany, and serving as a hub for the surrounding area.-Location:...
, in the east on the towns of Griesheim
Griesheim
Griesheim is a town in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district, in Hessen, Germany. It is situated approx. 7 km west of Darmstadt.-History:...
and Pfungstadt
Pfungstadt
Pfungstadt is a German town of 25,117 inhabitants, in the district of Darmstadt-Dieburg in the state of Hesse.The town was first mentioned in 785 as property of the Monastery of Lorsch and got its town rights in 1886 due to its railway station...
(both in Darmstadt-Dieburg
Darmstadt-Dieburg
Darmstadt-Dieburg is a Kreis in the south of Hesse, Germany. Neighboring districts are Offenbach, Aschaffenburg, Miltenberg, Odenwaldkreis, Bergstraße, Groß-Gerau, and the district-free city of Darmstadt, which it surrounds.-History:...
), in the south on the town of Gernsheim
Gernsheim
Gernsheim is a town in Groß-Gerau district and Darmstadt region in Hesse, Germany, lying on the Rhine.-Location:The Schöfferstadt Gernsheim, as Gernsheim may officially call itself – it was Peter Schöffer's birthplace – lies 18 km southwest of Darmstadt and 16 km northeast of Worms, right...
and the communities of Biebesheim
Biebesheim
Biebesheim am Rhein is a community in Groß-Gerau district in Hesse, Germany.- Location :Biebesheim am Rhein lies in the Hessisches Ried, the northeastern section of the Rhine rift, west of Darmstadt and north of Worms...
and Stockstadt am Rhein, and in the west on the communities of Ludwigshöhe
Ludwigshöhe
Ludwigshöhe is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...
and Dienheim
Dienheim
Dienheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.- Location :Dienheim lies between Mainz and Worms, in Rhenish Hesse...
as well as the town of Oppenheim
Oppenheim
Oppenheim is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The town is well known as a wine town, the site of the German Winegrowing Museum and particularly for the wines from the Oppenheimer Krötenbrunnen vineyards.- Location :...
(all 3 in Mainz-Bingen
Mainz-Bingen
Mainz-Bingen is a district in the east of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Neighboring districts are Rheingau-Taunus, the district-free cities Wiesbaden and Mainz, the districts Groß-Gerau, Alzey-Worms, Bad Kreuznach, Rhein-Hunsrück.-History:During the French occupation under Napoleon the district...
).
Constituent communities
Riedstadt consists of the centres Crumstadt, Erfelden, Goddelau, Leeheim and Wolfskehlen.Amalgamations
The community came into being on 1 January 1977 with Hesse's municipal reforms, which merged the formerly independent communities of Goddelau, Wolfskehlen (which had already merged voluntarily with Goddelau in 1973), Erfelden, Crumstadt and Leeheim.Erfelden
Erfelden was first mentioned in a donation document from the Lorsch Monastery in 779. In the Thirty Years' WarThirty 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....
, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
Gustav II Adolf has been widely known in English by his Latinized name Gustavus Adolphus Magnus and variously in historical writings also as Gustavus, or Gustavus the Great, or Gustav Adolph the Great,...
spent two nights at the mayor's house in 1631 while his troops were crossing the Rhine. His building master Matthäus Staud built the Schwedensäule ("Swedes' column") at Erfelden which recalls the crossing.
Goddelau
Goddelau was first mentioned in a donation document when Count Gundram donated his property "in Terminis Gotalohono" to Fulda Abbey. Over the centuries, the village was shaped by its dwellers' agriculturalAgriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
and handicraft
Handicraft
Handicraft, more precisely expressed as artisanic handicraft, sometimes also called artisanry, is a type of work where useful and decorative devices are made completely by hand or by using only simple tools. It is a traditional main sector of craft. Usually the term is applied to traditional means...
activities. In 1588 there were roughly 180 inhabitants in Goddelau. The house in which writer and revolutionary Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
Karl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. Büchner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany...
would later be born was built in 1665, and still stands today.
Leeheim
Leeheim was first mentioned in the Lorsch codexLorsch codex
The Lorsch Codex is an important historical document created between about 1175 to 1195 AD in the Monastery of Saint Nazarius in Lorsch, Germany. It consists of 460 pages in large format containing more than 3800 entries...
in 766 when a man named Dodo made a donation to the Lorsch Monastery. Near the earlier village of Camba, the Salian
Salian dynasty
The Salian dynasty was a dynasty in the High Middle Ages of four German Kings , also known as the Frankish dynasty after the family's origin and role as dukes of Franconia...
Conrad II
Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor
Conrad II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1027 until his death.The son of a mid-level nobleman in Franconia, Count Henry of Speyer and Adelaide of Alsace, he inherited the titles of count of Speyer and of Worms as an infant when Henry died at age twenty...
was chosen to be German King in 1024. Leeheim was shaped by several monastic properties, belonging to, among others, St. Alban's Monastery in Mainz. The overlords were the Wolfskehlers, and later the Katzenelnbogen
Katzenelnbogen
Katzenelnbogen is the name of a castle and small city in the district of Rhein-Lahn-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Katzenelnbogen is the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde Katzenelnbogen.-History:...
family. In 1536, Leeheim became Evangelical
Evangelical 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 in the Thirty Years' War, more than 70% of the village was destroyed. In 1666, almost half the inhabitants lost their lives to the Plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
.
In earlier times, Leeheim developed itself from a farming village into a workers' residential village with recreational lands on the Riedsee, a nearby lake, and a golf course
Golf course
A golf course comprises a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, fairway, rough and other hazards, and a green with a flagstick and cup, all designed for the game of golf. A standard round of golf consists of playing 18 holes, thus most golf courses have this number of holes...
.
Wolfskehlen
Wolfskehlen is Riedstadt's northernmost constituent community. It was first mentioned in the document Historia Episcopatus Wormatiensis in 1002 in which Emperor Heinrich IIHenry II, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry II , also referred to as Saint Henry, Obl.S.B., was the fifth and last Holy Roman Emperor of the Ottonian dynasty, from his coronation in Rome in 1014 until his death a decade later. He was crowned King of the Germans in 1002 and King of Italy in 1004...
granted Bishop Burchard of Worms
Burchard of Worms
Burchard of Worms was the Roman Catholic bishop of Worms in the Holy Roman Empire, and author of a Canon law collection in twenty books, the "Collectarium canonum" or "Decretum".-Life:...
the rights in the Forest of Forehahi. In 1252, the Lords of Wolfskehlen, who had taken their name from the village, sold Neuwolfskehlen Castle to the Archbishop of Mainz. In 1539, Barbara von Wolfskehlen wed Eberhard von Gemmingen-Hornberg, who introduced 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...
into Wolfskehlen. In 1579, the Mainz Palatinate (Kurmainz) ceded its rights to the Landgraves of Hesse. During the Thirty Years' War, and through the Plague, almost the whole population was killed; the reconstruction began in the 18th century. From 1868 to 1878, the building of the railway brought the dissolution of the village's purely agricultural structure. After the Second World War, the village absorbed about 800 refugees.
Population development
Each time at 31 December- 1998 - 20,050
- 1999 - 20,393
- 2000 - 20,576
- 2001 - 20,805
- 2002 - 20,984
- 2003 - 21,167
- 2004 - 21,362
- 2005 - 21,707
Municipal council
Municipal council consists of 37 seats. At the last election on 26 March 2006, the seats were apportioned thus:- CDUChristian 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...
13 seats - SPDSocial Democratic Party of GermanyThe Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
16 seats - FDPFree 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 - GLR 3 seats
- WIR 3 seats
Town partnerships
Riedstadt maintains partnership links with the following places: Brienne-le-ChâteauBrienne-le-Château
Brienne-le-Château is a commune in the Aube department in north-central France. It is located from the right bank of the Aube River and 26 m. northeast of Troyes....
, France
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...
, since 1979 Sortino
Sortino
Sortino is a town and comune in the Province of Syracuse, Sicily . It is located in the Anapo river valley....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
Tauragė
Taurage
Tauragė is an industrial city in Lithuania, and the capital of Tauragė County. In 2011, its population was 26,444. Tauragė is situated on the Jūra River, close to the border with the Kaliningrad Oblast, and not far from the Baltic Sea coast....
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
Sons and daughters of the town
- Georg BüchnerGeorg BüchnerKarl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. Büchner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany...
(born 17 October 1813 in Goddelau; died 19 February 1837 in ZurichZürichZurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
), German writer and revolutionary - Peter Reuter (born 27 May 1955 in Goddelau), PhD in clinical biochemistry, MD, author of multiple medical dictionaries
Sundry
In August 1984, the remains of an ice ageIce age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
were unearthed at a gravel pit near Crumstadt. At first thought to be a mammoth
Mammoth
A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...
, it later turned out on further analysis, specifically of the teeth, to be a young forest elephant. The bones are now in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.