Offenbach am Main

Offenbach am Main

Offenbach on the Main river

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Offenbach am Main
Coordinates: 50°6′0″N 8°48′0″E / 50.10000°N 8.80000°E / 50.10000; 8.80000Coordinates: 50°6′0″N 8°48′0″E / 50.10000°N 8.80000°E / 50.10000; 8.80000
Country Germany
State Hesse
Admin. region Darmstadt
District Urban district
Government
 • Mayor Horst Schneider (SPD)
Area
 • Total 44.90 km2 (17.34 sq mi)
Population (2014-12-31)[1]
 • Total 120,988
 • Density 2,700/km2 (7,000/sq mi)
Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes 63001 - 63075
Dialling codes 069
Vehicle registration OF
Website www.offenbach.de

Offenbach am Main (German pronunciation: [ˈɔfənbaχ am ˈmaɪ̯n]) is a city in Hesse, Germany, located on the left bank of the river Main and part of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area. Offenbach has a population of 126,934.[2]

In the 20th century the city's economy was dominated by the machine-building and leather industries, and it was also a major centre of the typography and design industries. Other important industries are the automobile and pharmaceutical industries. More than half of the city's population have a non-German background, with Turks, former Yugoslavs, Arabs, Italians, Greeks and Poles as major groups.

Geography

Subdivisions

The inner town of Offenbach is quite large and has only a few suburbs. In the east the three incorporated: Bürgel (incorporated 1908), Bieber (incorporated April 1, 1938), and Rumpenheim (incorporated April 4, 1942). In the south are the newer suburbs Lauterborn and Rosenhöhe, Tempelsee, the office town Kaiserlei and the industrial area Waldheim.

History

Offenbach in 1655
The main street Frankfurter Straße around 1900

The first documented reference to a suburb of Offenbach appears in 770.[3] In a document of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II dating to 977 exists the first mention of the place of Offenbach.[4] During the Middle Ages Offenbach passed through many hands. Only in 1486 could the Count Ludwig of Isenburg finally take control of city for his family, and 1556 Count Reinhard of Isenburg relocated his Residence to Offenbach, building a palace, the Isenburger Schloß (Isenburg Palace), which was completed in 1559. It was destroyed by fire in 1564 and rebuilt in 1578.

In 1635 Offenbach given to the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt but it was returned to the Isenburg-Birstein Count (later Prince) in 1642 and remained in that Principality until 1815 when the Congress of Vienna gave the city to the Austrian Emperor, Francis I. A year later it was given to the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt.

Always very close to the city centre of Frankfurt, Offenbach was a popular location for business. The town has its own trade fair, and many companies have opened facilities here because there are fewer restrictions and no closed businesses. French Protestants (Huguenots) came in the 17th century and settled in Offenbach and contributed to making Offenbach a prosperous city, e.g., bringing knowledge of tobacco with them and turning Offenbach into a centre for rolling cigars. The town was more cosmopolitan than Frankfurt; famous people such as Goethe and Mozart visited it several times.

The Rumpenheim Palace and its park were a popular destination for monarchs in the 19th century. The city was thereafter ruled by Grand Dukes of Hesse and by Rhine until the monarchy was abolished in 1918. Offenbach became the center of the traditional design with figures such as the architect Hugo Eberhardt, the typographer Rudolf Koch, the bookbinder and designer Ignatz Wiemeler and Ernst Engel and the painter Karl Friedrich Lippmann.

During the Second World War a third of the city was destroyed by Allied bombing, which claimed 467 lives. With the new district Lauterborn the city was expanded to the south in the 1960s. On the border with Frankfurt, the office district Kaiserlei was built. Offenbach is a so-called ´Sozialer Brennpunkt`(= multiple social problems area) because of unemployment, poverty, gang related crime and migration.[5]

Governance

Mayors from 1824 - present

  • 1824–1826: Peter Georg d'Orville
  • 1826–1834: Heinrich Philipp Schwaner
  • 1834–1837: Peter Georg d'Orville
  • 1837–1849: Jonas Budden
  • 1849–1859: Friedrich August Schäfer
  • 1859–1867: Johann Heinrich Dick
  • 1867–1874: Johann Martin Hirschmann
  • 1874–1882: Hermann Stölting
  • 1883–1907: Wilhelm Brink
  • 1907–1919: Andreas Dullo
  • 1919–1933: Max Granzin
  • 1947–1949: Johannes Rebholz
  • 1950–1957: Hans Klüber
  • 1957–1974: Georg Dietrich
  • 1974–1980: Walter Buckpesch
  • 1980–1986: Walter Suermann
  • 1986–1994: Wolfgang Reuter
  • 1994–2006: Gerhard Grandtke
  • 2006–: Horst Schneider

Town twinning

Offenbach am Main is twinned with:

Population history

The development of the population in Offenbach between 1540 and 1997.

Until the end of the 17th century, Offenbach remained a small town with less than a thousand habitants. With the coming into power of the earl Johann Philipp in 1685, the city began to develop and the population rose steadily. In the 19th century the city became industrialized and the population increased even tenfold.[7] Offenbach is one of the German cities where Germans without migrant background make up a minority of the population. As of 31 December 2012, approx. 44.3% of residents or 55,047 people had no foreign background. In contrast to that, there were 55.7% or 69,214 people of non-German descent.[8] The largest groups of those are:[9]

Turks: 15,000 or 12.2%

former Yugoslavians (e.g. Serbs, Croats): 13,000 or 10.5%

Arabs: 8,000 or 6.5%

Italians: 8,000 or 6.5%

Greeks: 7,500 or 6.0%

Poles: 4,000 or 3.2%

Afghans: 3,600 or 3%

Pakistanis: 2,700 or 2.2%

Year Population
1540 480
1685 600
1718 1,500
1800 5,000
1816 6,210
1825 7,147
1828 7,466
1830 7,498
December 1, 1834 9,433
December 1, 1840 9,597
December 3, 1843 9,883
December 3, 1846 11,565
December 3, 1852 11,087
December 3, 1855 13,724
December 3, 1861 16,708
December 3, 1864 19,390
Year Population
December 3, 1867 20,322
December 1, 1871 22,689
December 1, 1875 26,012
December 1, 1880 28,597
December 1, 1885 31,704
December 1, 1890 35,064
December 2, 1895 39,388
December 1, 1900 50,468
December 1, 1905 59,765
December 1, 1910 75,583
December 1, 1916 67,197
December 5, 1917 67,483
October 8, 1919 75,380
June 16, 1925 79,362
June 16, 1933 81,329
May 17, 1939 85,140
Year Population
December 31, 1945 70,600
October 29, 1946 75,479
September 13, 1950 89,030
September 25, 1956 104,283
June 6, 1961 116,195
December 31, 1965 117,893
May 27, 1970 117,306
December 31, 1975 115,251
December 31, 1980 110,993
December 31, 1985 107,090
May 25, 1987 111,386
December 31, 1990 114,992
December 31, 1995 116,533
December 31, 2000 117,535
September 30, 2005 119,833
March 31, 2007 117,224
Year Population
December 31, 2008 118,103
December 31, 2009 117,718
December 31, 2010 119,734
December 31, 2011 121,970
December 31, 2012 116,945
December 31, 2013 126,934
Rank Nationality Population (2014)
1 Turkey 6,309
2 Greece 4,698
3 Poland 4,359
4 Romania 3,742
5 Bulgaria 3,193
6 Croatia 2,459
7 Serbia 1,390
8 Bosnia & Herzegovina 1,284
9 Morocco 1,222
10 Portugal 886

Economy

The 120-meter high "City-Tower" is mainly used as the German headquarters of Capgemini

Until the early 1970s Offenbach was dominated by the machine-building and leather industries. The city hosts the German Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies to this day. The Deutscher Wetterdienst, commonly abbreviated as DWD, (translated from German as German Meteorological Service), residing in the Westend district.

Offenbach was also the European center of typography, with Gebr. Klingspor and Linotype (inventors of Optima or Palatino typeface) moving to nearby Eschborn in the 1970s and MAN Roland printing machines still a major employer today. Typography and design still remain important with a cluster of graphic design and industrial design companies, as well as the university level Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main design school and the Klingspor Museum.

In recent years Offenbach has become a popular location for a wide array of services, especially from the transport sectors. Offenbach is the host to the European headquarters of Honda,[10] Hyundai Motors[11] and Kumho Tires.[12]

Arts and culture

Attractions

Klingspor Museum
The Büsing-Park in winter
French Protestant church and City Tower

In Offenbach there is no specific Old Town, but there are several buildings which survived bombing during the war and have been restored. One of them is the Neo-baroque palace Büsingpalais with the Büsingpark, reconstructed in the 1980s. Today it is used as a congress center close to the Sheraton hotel. Between the shopping area and the Main, is the Lilipark and the Lilitemple, named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's fiancee Lili Schönemann. The most important building is the Isenburger Schloss (Isenburg Palace), a renaissance palace from 1576. It is today used by the Offenbach Design University which is next to it. There is also a neoclasssic palace in the borough Rumpenheim, the Rumpenheimer Schloss it now serves exclusively as domestic dwellings but the park is public.

Events

There are several festivals in Offenbach, some of these are:

Museums

Gallery

Sports

home to the football club Kickers Offenbach stadium "Bieberer Berg"

Offenbach hosts the German association football club Kickers Offenbach. The club was founded in 1901.

Infrastructure

Transport

S-Bahn station: Marktplatz
S-Bahn network in Offenbach

Roads

The streets of central Offenbach are usually congested with cars during the rush hour. Some areas, especially around the shopping streets, are pedestrian-only streets. There are numerous car parks located throughout the city. The Offenbacher Kreuz is an Autobahn interchange where the Autobahnen A 3 (Cologne-Würzburg) and A 661 meet. The A661 crosses the A 3 (Cologne-Würzburg) and A 5 (Basel-Hannover).

Public transport

The city is connected by a major line of the S-Bahn railway system to Frankfurt. The station in the city center is Marktplatz. In general, six stations are located in Offenbach: Offenbach-Kaiserlei, Offenbach-Ledermuseum, Offenbach-Marktplatz, Offenbach-Ost, Offenbach-Bieber, Offenbach-Waldhof. Trains run every 5–10 minutes between Offenbach and Frankurt. A 24 hours Service between both cities was introduced in 2013. The journey from Offenbach Marktplatz to Frankfurt Main Station takes 15 minutes, Frankfurt Airport can be reached within 26 minutes. The city's public transportation services OVB and NIO connect all city districts to downtown by bus lines. Since the construction of the S-Bahn, the central train station, the Offenbach Hauptbahnhof, is no longer considered important.

Frankfurt Airport

The city is accessed from around the world via the Frankfurt Airport, (Flughafen Frankfurt am Main) which is located 12 km (7 mi) from Offenbach. The airport can be reached by car or bus and has two train stations, one for regional and one for long-distance traffic. The S-Bahn lines S8 and S9 (direction "Offenbach Ost or "Hanau"), departing from the regional traffic station, take 25 minutes from the airport to get to Offenbach.

Notable residents

Notable people born in Offenbach include:

Helene Mayer

Others who have resided in Offenbach include:

People from Offenbach

References

  1. ↑ "Bevölkerung der hessischen Gemeinden". Hessisches Statistisches Landesamt (in German). September 2014.
  2. ↑ "Einwohner der Stadt Offenbach am Main nach Statistischen Bezirken am 31.12.2013" (PDF). Melderegister Offenbach.
  3. ↑ Braun, Lothar (12 February 2004). "Offenbach und seine Vororte". City of Offenbach. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  4. ↑ "Offenbach - Facts and Figures" (PDF). City of Offenbach. 2012. p. 2. Retrieved 4 February 2014.
  5. ↑ http://www.fnp.de/rhein-main/Gangster-Ghetto-Offenbach-was-ist-dran;art801,1166004
  6. ↑ "Puteaux - Qu'est-ce que le jumelage?". Mairie de Puteaux [Puteaux Official Website] (in French). Archived from the original on 2013-11-26. Retrieved 2013-12-28.
  7. ↑ "Offenbach - die kleine Großstadt am Main". City of Offenbach.
  8. ↑ "Einwohner mit Migrationshintergrund am 31.12.2012" (PDF). Melderegister Offenbach, MigraPro.
  9. ↑ "Bevölkerung mit Migrationshintergrund in Offenbach am Main : Erhebungsmethode und Ergebnisse" (PDF). Offenbach.de. Retrieved 2015-03-17.
  10. ↑ "Impressum." Honda. Retrieved on 22 April 2012. "Sprendlinger Landstraße 166 63069 Offenbach"
  11. ↑ "News & Events." Hyundai. Retrieved on 22 April 2012. "Kaiserleipromenade 5 63067 Offenbach"
  12. ↑ "Impressum." Kumho Tyres. Retrieved on 9 November 2011. "Brüsseler Platz 1 63067 Offenbach am Main"

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