Country Germany Admin. region Darmstadt Elevation 130 m (430 ft) Local time Friday 9:36 PM Postal code 63263 | State Hesse District Offenbach Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) Population 35,636 (30 Jun 2009) Dialling code 6102 | |
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Weather 10°C, Wind NE at 18 km/h, 65% Humidity | ||
Neu-Isenburg is a town in Germany, located in the Offenbach district of Hesse. It is part of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area and has a population of 35,472 (2007). The town is known nowadays mainly for its regionally used shopping centre, the Isenburg-Zentrum (IZ), the Hugenottenhalle, the Hotel Kempinski Frankfurt, the Autokino Gravenbruch (the oldest drive-in cinema in Europe), the Sportpark, the Waldschwimmbad (swimming pool) and not least of all its central location near Frankfurt Airport.
Contents
- Map of Neu Isenburg Germany
- Neighbouring communities
- Constituent communities
- History
- Population development
- Town council
- Mayors
- Town partnerships
- Town friendships
- Economy
- Transport
- Hugenottenhalle
- Open Doors Festival
- Fastnacht
- Education
- Media
- Notable people
- References
Map of Neu-Isenburg, Germany
Neighbouring communities
Neu-Isenburg borders in the west and north on the district-free city of Frankfurt am Main, in the east on the district-free city of Offenbach and in the south on the towns of Dreieich, Langen and Mörfelden-Walldorf (Groß-Gerau district).
Constituent communities
In 1959, building work began on the Wohnstadt im Grünen (“Living Town in the Green”), as it was marketed. This was Gravenbruch. Almost 7,000 people found a new home in this satellite town between the main town and Heusenstamm, lying in the woods. Owing to the great number of young families that moved there, this constituent community was known as the town with Europe’s densest population of children. It is also well known for the Kempinski-Hotel and the drive-in cinema.
With the amalgamation of the formerly self-administering community of Zeppelinheim in the course of municipal reform in 1977, Neu-Isenburg also stretched farther westwards. Here is found the Zeppelinmuseum.
History
Neu-Isenburg was founded on 24 July 1699 as a town of exiles by Huguenots, French Protestants who had had to flee their homeland after the Edict of Nantes was revoked. Their new landlord, Count Johann Philipp von Isenburg-Offenbach, guaranteed them safety, the free use of the French language and religious freedom.
He gave them leave to settle in the Wildbann Dreieich, an old royal hunting forest, in the place where in the Middle Ages the pilgrimage chapel Zum Heiligen Kreuz (“To the Holy Cross”) once stood. By way of thanks to the Count, the town was named Neu-Isenburg after him. The town plan was laid out by Andreas Loeber in a right-angled grid pattern. From corners ran diagonal streets to the marketplace. Also, the middles of the outer sides were linked by streets to the square marketplace. This township survives today in the streets of Kronengasse, Pfarrgasse, Löwengasse and Hirtengasse.
Neu-Isenburg was one of the planned towns of the 17th and 18th centuries. The settlers at first worked at farming, but later turned back to the handicraft trades that they had learnt, such as the stocking knitter’s craft, thereby laying the groundwork for Neu-Isenburg’s economic development. The surrounding communities eyed the French settlers with great mistrust and called the town welsches Dorf (the German word welsch refers to peoples who speak Romance languages, especially French; it is cognate with the English word Welsh, but does not have the same meaning).
On 20 May 1700 – a Thursday – the clergyman Isaac Bermond held the first church services under an old oak in the middle of the church square.
About 1701, the Forsthaus was built (today an inn called Frankfurter Haus) by the city of Frankfurt am Main at the city limits with Neu-Isenburg. The first French Reformed church was built of wood between 1702 and 1706. The foundation stone was laid on Ascension Day 1702. Likewise in 1702, the Town Hall was built at the marketplace, and the Haus zum Löwen was mentioned for the first time. This was used until 1918 as an inn called Au Lion d'Or (“At the Golden Lion”), and today it houses the local history museum.
The first school followed in 1704, and in 1705 the Bansamühle (mill). The wooden church was replaced between 1773 and 1775 with a stone building. In 1781, the first German-language school was built.
After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the County of Ysenburg, together with the Oberamt of Offenbach and its member municipalities, passed to the Grand Duchy of Hesse. In 1828, the Prussian-Hessian Customs Union built a customs house (Frankfurter Straße 10) as its main customs office on the border with what was then the Free City of Frankfurt.
Despite considerable reservations, German families, too, were moving into the town beginning in the 18th century, leading to the church’s having to hold services alternately in German and French as of 1761, much to the French-speaking population’s chagrin. In the end, German was confirmed as the town’s official language in 1829.
In 1846, the Main-Neckar railway near Neu-Isenburg was completed, but the town did not get its own railway station until 1852.
Other events in Neu-Isenburg’s history, in brief, are as follows:
Population development
In 1834, Neu-Isenburg had only 1,762 inhabitants. By 1939, there were 15,081. After Zeppelinheim was amalgamated and Gravenbruch had been built, the population reached 35,000 by 1983.
Town council
The municipal elections held on 6 March 2016 yielded the following results, compared to earlier municipal elections:
The CDU formed a coalition with Die Grünen (“The Greens”), the FDP and the Freie Wähler (“Free Voters”).
Mayors
Past mayoral elections have yielded the following results:
At the last election on 27 September 2015, the independent candidate Herbert Hunkel, who was supported by the CDU, was reelected with 77.4% of the vote over Thilo Seipel (FDP, 22.6%). Voter turnout was 30.3%.
Town partnerships
Town friendships
Economy
Given its proximity to the trade fair city of Frankfurt and to Frankfurt Airport, Neu-Isenburg is an attractive location for businesses of the most varied sectors. Among them are many hotels, which see more than 230,000 overnight stays every year, the highest figure in the Offenbach district.
Over time, the town has converted itself from a location for producing businesses to a service-industry-based location and is among the biggest high-technology locations in the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region.
Some of the businesses established here are:
Around the 1980s and 1990s the airline Condor was headquartered in Neu-Isenburg.
Transport
The town is close to several routes of the German Autobahn network (A 3, A 5, A 661).
Neu-Isenburg station is on the Main-Neckar Railway and is served by Rhine-Main S-Bahn lines S 3 and S 4, although the station is somewhat remote from the town centre. It is the only station in Hesse that has loading tracks for a motorail service, connecting to several destinations in Austria, Italy and southern France. Line S 7 runs over the Mannheim–Frankfurt railway, stopping at Zeppelinheim station.
The Frankfurt tram network has a terminal at Isenburger Schneise, just within the Frankfurt boundary for reasons of municipal identity, linking the northern margin of Neu-Isenburg with Frankfurt city centre and Frankfurt-Bornheim by way of Frankfurt South railway station.
Frankfurt Airport lies at the town limits.
Hugenottenhalle
Neu-Isenburg is known far beyond its limits for the various events staged at the Hugenottenhalle. In this multipurpose hall with a variable capacity of up to 2,000 people, rock concerts are held, guest theatrical performances are given and dancing and music are performed. Citizens are offered a comprehensive cultural programme covering every genre.
Open-Doors-Festival
Neu-Isenburg is especially well known in the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region for its yearly summertime Open-Doors-Festival (formerly Musikspektakel). For three days, some 40 different bands and artists from all genres of music play. The event is attended by some 15,000 guests who enter free of charge, and is held on several different stages throughout the town area.
Fastnacht
The parade on Shrove Monday (Rosenmontag) – sometimes called Lumpenmontag in Neu-Isenburg – running across the town enjoys great popularity.
Education
Media
Ärzte-Zeitung, a newspaper for physicians, has its headquarters in Neu-Isenburg.