Founding
seat of Main-Kinzig-Kreis and town in Hesse, Germany
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Gelnhausen (German pronunciation: [ɡɛlnˈhaʊzn̩] ⓘ) is a town, and the capital of the Main-Kinzig-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany. It is located approximately 40 kilometers east of Frankfurt am Main, between the Vogelsberg mountains and the Spessart range at the river Kinzig. It is one of the eleven towns (urban municipalities) in the district. Gelnhausen has around 22,000 inhabitants.
Gelnhausen is located on the German Fairy Tale Route, a tourist route, and nicknamed "Barbarossastadt". The Imperial Palace Gelnhausen was founded by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa between 1169 and 1170 because the Gelnhausen settlements were at the intersection of the Via Regia trade road. Gelnhausen received town privileges. The emperor also granted trade privileges like the staple right which forced traveling merchants to offer their goods in the town for three days. In 1180 the Gelnhausen Act was passed and Henry the Lion exiled. Westphalia became a district of Cologne, while the rest of Henry's Saxony territory passed to Count of Anhalt Bernhard. Henry's Bavarian territories were bestowed upon Otto of Wittelsbach who had been a loyal ally of Emperor Barbarossa.
Gelnhausen was a thriving trade town and head of a league of 16 towns of the Wetterau region. However prosperity came to an end in 1326 when Emperor Louis IV gave the town in pawn to the counts of Hanau, redeemed shortly afterwards. In 1349 Count Günther von Schwarzburg received Gelnhausen from Emperor Charles IV for renouncing his claims as elected King of the Romans, in condominium with the counts of Hohnstein, who sold their share to Schwarzburg in 1431. Schwarzburg was acquired in 1435 by Elector Palatine Louis III and the Hanau, since raised to a county.
Repeated plundering in the Thirty Years' War as depicted by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen in his novel Simplicius Simplicissimus made it nearly uninhabitable. In 1736, the extinction of the comital line of Hanau meant the condominium share was inherited by the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, who acquired the Palatinate's share ten years later.
The varying lords made continued attempts to challenge Gelnhausen's imperial immediacy, it however formally remained a Reichsstadt. During the German Mediatisation of 1803 the city became a part of the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, which was raised to an electorate and, after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, was annexed by Prussia. At this time Gelnhausen had completely recovered, and with the Gründerzeit economic boom it became a centre of the German rubber industry.
In 1996, the town hosted the 36th Hessentag state festival.
During the Nazi era, Gelnhausen was reported judenfrei on November 1, 1938, by propaganda newspaper Kinzigwacht after its synagogue was closed and remaining local Jews forced to leave the town.
From the 1930s Gelnhausen was a garrison town of the German Wehrmacht and, after World War II, of the United States Army. The US Army closed Coleman Kaserne in 2007.
Gelnhausen is twinned with:
Gelnhausen lies directly on the German autobahn A66. Gelnhausen station is located on the Kinzig Valley Railway, a major line between Frankfurt and Fulda. Regional services from Frankfurt to Fulda or Wächtersbach stop in Gelnhausen.
Like many American soldiers, in 1959 Colin Powell, then lieutenant of the 3rd Armored Division, served at Coleman Kaserne. A street was named after him. During the Second Gulf War, there was some discussion about renaming the street because of Germany's stance on the war. The mayor of Gelnhausen strongly objected.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Gelnhausen”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.