Neu-Isenburg

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1699 as a town of exiles by Huguenots, French Protestants who had had to flee their homeland after the Edict of Nantes was revoked.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:

• 1860 The firm Müller markets Frankfurter Würstchen (sausages, but not the kind often called "Frankfurters" in the English-speaking world) for the first time.
• 1865 First postal station in Neu-Isenburg
• 1875 Volunteer fire brigade was founded
• 1885 The Waldeisenbahn, a steam tramway to Frankfurt, was opened (now tramline 17, and electric).
• 4 February 1889 Town rights were granted.
• 1889 The Waldbahn, a railway, began running to Frankfurt.
• April 1896 The Höhere Bürgerschule (now Goetheschule) took on its task as Neu-Isenburg's first secondary school.
• 1899 On the occasion of its bicentenary, Neu-Isenburg received a coat of arms.
• 1907 The Jewish Women's Federation's home for Jewish girls was founded by Bertha Pappenheim.
• 23 October 1911 Consecration of the first Catholic church, St. Josef.
• Between 1943 and 1945 the town suffered heavy damage from air raids.
• 1945 A broad area in the town's west had to be evacuated for the Occupying Power
• 1959 Building work began on Gravenbruch, a residential neighbourhood, after the woods there had been cleared.
• 1960 The Autokino Gravenbruch, Europe's first drive-in cinema, was opened.
• 1 January 1977 Amalgamation of the formerly self-administering community of Zeppelinheim, which itself had been cobbled together from parts of the self-administering municipal areas of Mitteldick and Gundwald (the latter in Groß-Gerau district) and parts of the community of Kelsterbach on 1 January 1938.
• 1997 Neu-Isenburg was linked to the Rhine-Main S-Bahn.

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  Count Johann Philipp von Isenburg-Offenbach, the town's founder
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  Haus zum Löwen
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  The Autokino Gravenbruch, opened in 1960, was Europe's first drive-in cinema
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  House on Zeppelinstraße, Neu-Isenburg, where Bertha Pappenheim housed her home for displaced Jewish girls

Neu-Isenburg is twinned with:[6]

Ärzte-Zeitung, a newspaper for physicians, has its headquarters in Neu-Isenburg.[10]

Bertha Pappenheim 1882

• Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936), feminist and social worker
• Franz Völker (1899–1965), operatic singer
• Wilhelm Leichum (1911–1941), athlete
• Anny Schlemm (born 1929), operatic singer
• Peter Dietrich (born 1944), footballer
• Horst Ludwig Störmer (born 1949), physicist, Nobel laureate
• Volker Steinbacher (born 1957), artist and graphic artist
• Torsten de Winkel (born 1965), guitarist

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Neu-Isenburg.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Neu-Isenburg.

Wikinews has related news:

• Neu-Isenburg

• Official website (in German and English)
• Hugenottenhalle cultural link (in German)
• Verein für Geschichte Heimatpflege und Kultur (in German)
• Neu-Isenburg at Curlie (in German)
• Der Isenburger – Quarterly publication and online archive