Gladenbach

Gladenbach [] is a town in Hesse, Germany, in the west of Marburg Biedenkopf district.

The town of Gladenbach lies on the eastern edge of the Westerwald in the Hessian Highland (Bergland). This part of the Lahn Dill Highland is often also called the Gladenbach Uplands. This has arisen from the great degree of correspondence between today's municipal area and the area covered by the historical Amt of Blankenstein, the eastsoutheastern part of the so called Hessian Hinterland and the later, albeit now former, Biedenkopf district. Within the bounds of the community's southern centres of Weidenhausen, Erdhausen, Gladenbach and Mornshausen runs the river Salzböde, which rises in Bad Endbach and flows through the municipal area, then running farther eastwards through the communities of Lohra, Fronhausen and Lollar, where it empties into the Lahn at Odenhausen. Farther north in Gladenbach, mostly west–east through the centres of Runzhausen, Bellnhausen, Sinkershausen, Frohnhausen and Friebertshausen runs another river, the Allna, which flows onwards to Weimar, likewise emptying into the Lahn. The two waterways are separated from each other by high ridges which even make for a local drainage divide where smaller streams are concerned. Nonetheless, the town of Gladenbach as a whole is commonly said to lie in the Salzböde valley. An important east–west traffic thoroughfare in Gladenbach is the Federal Highway (Bundesstraße) 255 crossing the municipal area from Marburg through the constituent communities of Weimar and Lohra, leaving the municipal area at Weidenhausen in the area of the Zollbuche ("Customs Beech" – it once marked the border between Hesse Darmstadt and Hesse Nassau) southwestwards towards the community of Bischoffen in Lahn Dill district. The highway runs thence alongside the Aartalsee (a reservoir) on to Herborn, ending at Montabaur. Bundesstraße 453 ends within the town of Gladenbach after running through the community of Dautphetal to the north and Gladenbach's constituent community of Runzhausen. The Aar Salzböde Bahn, a single track railway line that ran through the municipal area along the Salzböde valley, has been in desuetude since 1995, and owing to a level crossing being torn up at Weidenhausen, meagre maintenance and the resulting overgrowth by bushes and trees, the line has also largely fallen apart.

In the north, Gladenbach borders on the community of Dautphetal, in the northeast on the town of Marburg, in the east on the community of Weimar, in the southeast on the community of Lohra (all in Marburg Biedenkopf), in the southwest on the community of Bischoffen (Lahn Dill Kreis), and in the west on the community of Bad Endbach (Marburg Biedenkopf).

Within Gladenbach's current municipal area, between Mornshausen and Erdhausen, the so called Postraub in der Subach took place in 1822. A gang of poor farmers and poachers robbed a money bearing mail coach running between Gladenbach and Gießen in a narrow pass above a small brook called the Subach, making off with the then unheard of sum of more than 10,000 Gulden. These details and others are contained in a contemporary police report, which also laid the groundwork for the German made for TV film The Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach (1971) by Volker Schlöndorff.

The town's coat of arms might be described thus: Party per fess, above in azure the Hessian lion rampant striped in argent and gules armed Or crowned Or langued gules, below in vert a saltire Or. The lion is an emblem of the town's early affiliation with Hesse, and the saltire (X shaped cross) stands for the influence wielded before this time by the Lords of Merenberg.

In 2004, there were four marches, declared legal but guarded by great police presence, by neo Nazis from outside the town, which set off even bigger counterdemonstrations. In the end, the citizens' league, a group created at the instigation of headmaster Siegfried Seyler uniting churches, Jusos, DGBers and ordinary citizens, made an appeal. The centres for this rightwing extremism were Gladenbach, Kirtorf (Vogelsberg) and Marburg. The biggest rightwing extremist group with about 30 rightwing extremists and a large body of sympathizers was the Aktionsbündnis Mittelhessen (Middle Hesse Action League; ABM), a fusion of regional "free comradeships". Late in 2004, the ABM dissolved itself unilaterally to get around a ban imposed by the Hessian Interior Ministry. The activists resumed their activities in other neo Nazi groups. The ABM was the most active and biggest neo Nazi group in Hesse.