Родгау: Город в земле Гессен, Германия.

Rodgau is a town in the Offenbach district in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. It lies southeast of Frankfurt am Main in the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region and has the greatest population of any municipality in the Offenbach district. It came into being in 1979 when the greater community of Rodgau was raised to town, after having been formed through a merger of five formerly self administering communities in the framework of municipal reform in Hesse in 1977. The current constituent communities’ history reaches back to the 8th century.

Rodgau is part of the metropolitan area known as the Rhein Main Gebiet in German, one of Germany's economically strongest areas. The fiftieth parallel of north latitude (50°N) passes right through Puiseaux Platz (square) in Nieder Roden. The town lies on the so called Untermainebene, or Lower Main Plain, the northern outlying part of the Rhine rift. The flat land around Rodgau is set against hillier country in the nearby Spessart, Taunus, Vogelsberg, Odenwald and Bergstraße, which all serve as recreational areas for the people. The state boundary with neighbouring Bavaria runs only a few kilometres away, at the Main. About a third of the municipal area is made up of woodland, and another third of land under agricultural use and of open water, while the remaining third is built up with residential and commercial areas and transport facilities. The brook, the Rodau, runs for 15 km through the whole municipal area. Climatically the area is among Germany's mildest and least rainy areas (mean yearly measurements for 1982 2004: 10.5 °C, 639.1 mm).

Rodgau borders in the north on the towns of Heusenstamm and Obertshausen, in the east on the community of Hainburg and the town of Seligenstadt, in the southeast on the town of Babenhausen and the community of Eppertshausen (both in Darmstadt Dieburg), in the southwest on the town of Rödermark and in the west on the town of Dietzenbach.

Rodgau's Stadtteile are Weiskirchen, Hainhausen, Jügesheim, Dudenhofen and Nieder Roden with its own Ortsteil of Rollwald.

On 1 January 1977, in the course of municipal reform in Hesse, the greater community of Rodgau came into being as the communities of Weiskirchen, Hainhausen, Jügesheim, Dudenhofen and Nieder Roden, along with the settlement of Rollwald belonging to Nieder Roden were amalgamated. The greater community was granted town rights on 15 September 1979. The old cropfield name Rodgau, like Bachgau and Kinziggau belonging to the Maingau, gave the town its name. The original communities, though, have existed for hundreds of years. Today (as at 31 December 2007), Rodgau has 45,236 inhabitants (including 2,035 whose main residence is elsewhere), of whom 22,120 are male and 23,116 female. Foreigners from 52 different nations account for 4,471 inhabitants (9.9%). Those who have lived in Rodgau longer than ten years account for 64.6% of the population.

Around Saint Peter's Church (Peterskirche) arose the settlement of Wichenkirchen (or Wizzinkirchin) in Frankish times as a thorpe (one street village). It had its first documentary mention in 1287 in the Seligenstadt Monastery's accord with the Auheimer Mark. Weiskirchen was at this time Mother Church to the villages of Jügesheim, Hainhausen and Rembrücken. The first landlords, the Lords of Hagenhausen – later of Eppstein – sold the Amt of Steinheim in 1425 along with Weiskirchen, a village belonging to it, to the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz, to whom the village belonged until 1803. With this, Weiskirchen formed an ecclesiastical and economic hub in the Rodgau. When the Auheimer Mark (a communally held parcel of land to which belonged several villages) was divided up in 1786, Weiskirchen received a share of the forest. After Secularization in 1803, the Amt of Steinheim along with Weiskirchen passed to Hesse. In 1896 the Rodgaubahn (railway) with a railway station in Weiskirchen opened. In the course of the 19th century, Weiskirchen shifted from a farming village to a worker's community. Of the once well known village with its timber frame houses very little is left. During National Socialist times, the small Jewish community was driven out. In March 2005, the small, restored former synagogue was ceremoniously reopened as a memorial. Since 1967, the Weiskirchen transmitter, a medium wave transmitter owned by Hessischer Rundfunk, has been in operation on Weiskirchen's northwestern outskirts on a frequency of 594 kHz although this has now been dismantled.

In 1576, Weiskirchen had 37 households. In 1681, 111 inhabitants lived in 26 households. In 1834, 655 people lived in the village. A century later, in 1939, that figure had risen to 1,740. By 1970, the population had risen to 4,840 inhabitants. In late 2007, the constituent community had 6,115 inhabitants. This has further yielded the following seat apportionment: CDU = 22, SPD = 14, Grüne = 4, Bürger/FWG = 2, FDP = 2, Deutsche Liste = 1. The escutcheon is divided in half by a wavy bend beginning at the upper sinister (armsbearer's left, viewer's right) side. This symbolizes the Rodau, which runs through the whole municipal area. The five mullets (stars) stand for the five constituent communities. On the dexter (armsbearer's right, viewer's left) side stands the “Luther rose” as a charge. This recalls Dudenhofen's time as an Evangelical enclave surrounded by Catholic neighbours. On the sinister (armsbearer's left, viewer's right) side is the Wheel of Mainz, borrowed from the arms borne by the Archbishops of Mainz. This recalls the time when Electoral Mainz succeeded the Lords of Eppstein in all constituent communities in 1425. Mainz's overlordship lasted in most constituent communities until Secularization in the early 19th century, but in Dudenhofen ended as early as the 17th century. Until 1977, each constituent community had its own coat of arms as a self administering community.

(Granted in 1958) The four waterwheels refer to the mills that were once found in Weiskirchen, and the white churchtower is canting, referring to the community's name, from the German for “white church”.

(Granted in 1954) The arms show a stylized image of the former moated castle that once stood on the Rodau's right bank south of the road that leads to Weiskirchen, and that was once the family seat of the Lords of Hainhausen, who were first mentioned in 1122. Out of this family grew the Eppstein dynasty, whose arms with three chevronnets are included here in an inescutcheon. The tinctures silver and red refer to the arms borne by the Archbishops of Mainz, into whose ownership the village was sold in 1425.

(Granted in 1955) The charges in these arms, both the oak sprig and the pair of hart's horns, were chosen to recall the days when Jügesheim was part of the Wildbann (royal hunting forest). The silver and red here likewise refer to the Wheel of Mainz arms borne by the Archbishops of Mainz.

(Granted in 1954) The three chevronnets recall the community's former allegiance to the County of Hanau. Below these is the Luther rose, which recalls Dudenhofen's time as an Evangelical enclave surrounded by Catholic neighbours. This charge is now also in the town's arms.

(Granted in 1949) The churchtower shown in these arms is the one found at the local church, and is interesting from an art history point of view. It is flanked in the arms by two inescutcheons, the chevronnets borne by the Lords of Eppstein on the dexter (armsbearer's right, viewer's left) side, and the Wheel of Mainz borne by the Archbishops of Mainz on the sinister (armsbearer's left, viewer's right) side. These stand for former feudal overlords.

Much as agriculture may have defined life in the formerly self administering communities until the early 19th century, this changed with creeping industrialization, above all that in Offenbach. Most farmers took work in the nearby cities of Offenbach and Frankfurt and thereafter ran their farms only as a sideline. In the mid 20th century, many small and midsize businesses in the leatherworking industry set up shop in the Rodgau's communities. Its products – handbags, suitcases, belts, wallets and purses – were made mostly in private homes as a kind of cottage industry. By 1975, this had led to the almost complete disappearance of the farming sideline. In 2004, only eleven farms were still being worked as main income earners, mostly to grow asparagus, and four were still being worked as a sideline. Besides leatherworking, metalworking also locally became a field of endeavour at roughly the same time to supply belt buckles, suitcase handles and suchlike. Major works were located in Weiskirchen, Jügesheim and Nieder Roden. Nowadays, though, leatherware manufacturing and metalworking play only a subordinate rôle. In 1954, a new field of industry for this region established itself on Dudenhofen's outskirts, the Dudenhofen Sand Lime Works (Kalksandsteinwerk Dudenhofen), which quarried the fine dune sand available there for making up to 73 million bricks in one year. In the 1990s the company shifted its production focus to manufacturing porous concrete precision blocks (Plansteine), today known under the name Porit. In the early 1960s, Adam Opel AG chose Dudenhofen as the location for their test centre, which came into service in 1966. In the middle of a 4.8 km long high speed loop track are found a crash test facility and a 6.7 km long test track with all conceivable road types for longterm tests. Beginning in the 1960s, Rodgau opened up six major industrial parks with a combined area of 219 ha in which settled mainly service businesses such as the IBM product distribution centre (until 2005, thereafter Mann Mobilia logistics centre), the firm Atlas Rhein Main, the FEGRO wholesale market, MEWA Textilservice, GEODIS, Pepsi Cola Deutschland, PerkinElmer Life and Analytical Sciences and a DHL postal freight centre. All together, in mid 2005, there were reported to be 3,871 businesses in Rodgau, among them 23 supermarkets from the best known chains and 16 hotels with 795 beds. The trend of shifting from producing industries and crafts to service industries became clear when 2003 is compared to 1987: ten years after the greater community was founded, service industries comprised 52% of the economy, but this share rose over the next 15 years to 73%. In Rodgau, roughly 150 high technology companies are resident. Dominating the technological field is information and communications technology for aviation and space travel, followed by sensor, measuring, control and analytical technology. Furthermore, production technology, automatic surface finishing, microelectronics and optoelectronics are also represented. In 2005, Rodgau's commercial operations made available all together 9,076 jobs on the social insurance rolls. Moreover, there were roughly 3,000 jobs for the self employed, officials and those marginally employed.

Given each constituent community's original village structure, their natural centres each lay around the church. This was so even after the merger into the greater community in 1977, except for Nieder Roden. There, beginning in 1950, the fivefold swelling of the population demanded that residential building be expanded heavily towards the northwest, establishing the so called Gartenstadt (“Garden Town”), and that a new community core be developed, with a post office, shops, a clinic, and a community and social services centre. Here, under planning by the Baugilde Süd (“Building Guild South”) also arose in the late 1960s several developments of compact dwellings with up to twelve floors. Most striking in today's skyline is the development known locally as the Chinamauer (“China Wall”), a roughly 300 m long block of maisonette flats. The original plan called for the development to be 900 m long, but this never came about. Despite the town's neverending growth, it has no hospital. The nearest one is found in Seligenstadt. Carefully laying out new building developments since 1979 has on the one hand made possible the population growth that has led to the current levels, but on the other hand it has also led to the establishment of the needed social infrastructure such as kindergartens, schools, and sport and leisure facilities. Although the town has slowly been growing together, as yet there is no true town centre. The individual constituent communities look after their own structures as they have thus far grown. Since 1998, the Lokale Agenda 21 has been flowing as the leading stream of thought in shaping the town. A board of dedicated citizens developed a guiding image for the townsfolk whose goal is sustainability as a “roof” for economy, environment, social services, culture, one world, and so on. The board was granted an advisory function to town council and the right to speak at council meetings, and it worked out suggestions for, among other things, renaturalization and desegregation. Since 2002, the Agenda 21 Quality Phase has been running, that is to say the actual implementation of the suggestions until 2017. The board itself was dissolved in 2003 after the end of the Growth Phase (1998–2002).

At five Evangelical and six Catholic churches and community centres, regular services are held. The Islamic community gathers at a small mosque in Nieder Roden. Evangelical Christians number 25.5% in Rodgau, Catholics 39.0%. The other 35.5% either belong to other denominations, or adhere to no faith. On Rodgau Weiskirchen's eastern outskirts, there has been since 1982 a conference and training centre of the Catholic International Apostolic Schönstatt Movement in the Bishopric of Mainz.

Besides 25 kindergartens, there is in Rodgau – owing in some measure to the long time during which the current constituent communities were self administering – a broad array of different kinds of school. There is the Gymnasium upper level at the Claus von Stauffenberg Schule in Dudenhofen with grade levels 11 to 13. There are the Georg Büchner Schule in Jügesheim and the Geschwister Scholl Schule in Hainhausen, both coöperative comprehensive schools, and also the Heinrich Böll Schule in Nieder Roden, an integrated comprehensive school. There are six primary schools: the Freiherr vom Stein Grundschule in Dudenhofen, the Carl Orff Schule in Jügesheim, the Gartenstadt Schule in Nieder Roden, the Grundschule am Bürgerhaus in Nieder Roden, the Münchhausen Schule in Hainhausen and the Wilhelm Busch Schule in Jügesheim. The Georg Büchner Schule, the Heinrich Böll Schule, the Geschwister Scholl Schule and a few other schools located elsewhere form a school league within whose framework an exchange of experience and the planning of common projects and classwork take place. Moreover, there is in Weiskirchen the Friedrich von Bodelschwingh Schule für Praktisch Bildbare (special school for trainable pupils). The town also maintains a folk high school and promotes the Freie Musikschule Rodgau.

Besides the bathing beach and free beach on the 32.4 ha Rodgausee with its up to 300,000 visitors yearly, there are several forest recreational facilities, barbecue pits and two miniature golf courses within town limits. Those who play sports have on hand three sport centres, five sport fields, five sport halls with several functions, four gymnasia, two fitness paths and several horseback riding facilities. Seven tennis facilities and a tennis hall are likewise among the offerings, along with a beach volleyball facility with three courts at the bathing beach and a big skating facility. Sporting life in Rodgau is in the care of 55 sport clubs in the town. Among the regular yearly highlights in municipal sport are the 50 km Ultramarathon Rodgau run by RLT Rodgau in January, a triathlon in August, the 24 Stunden Lauf Rodgau (24 hour walk) in September and the Drachenfest (“Dragon Festival”), likewise in September.

Forty nine clubs nurture the town's cultural life with many choir and orchestra concerts, readings, theatrical productions, dance tournaments, art exhibitions and workshops. The town's cultural office yearly offers a theatre season (three subscription series) with well known artists and the regionally noted art exhibition at the Nieder Roden community centre. Two other community centres are found in the constituent communities of Weiskirchen and Dudenhofen. In the constituent communities of Weiskirchen Jügesheim and Nieder Roden, “homeland clubs” take it upon themselves to run museums whose collections deal with each community's history. On Friedensstraße in Nieder Roden is found the region's only DDR Museum (“East Germany Museum”). This museum offers a detailed overview of what were once the consequences of a divided Germany. Four cinemas and seven public libraries round the cultural life out. Since 1979, the €2,500 “Cultural Prize of the Town of Rodgau” (Kulturpreis der Stadt Rodgau) for outstanding performance by a Rodgau artist or project has been given out every year, since 1992 alternating with the “Cultural Promotion Prize” (Kulturförderpreis), specially for young artists. Rodgau became well known countrywide for hits by the band the Rodgau Monotones, for example St. Tropez am Baggersee (“St. Tropez on the Quarry Pond”, which is the nickname for the local bathing beach in the town) or Erbarme, die Hesse komme (“Have mercy, the Hessians are coming”). The Rodgau Monotones received the Cultural Prize of the Town of Rodgau in 1983. In Rodgau, four amateur theatrical groups, whose productions are a firm part of Rodgau's cultural life, are active on a club level. The Nieder Roden group Das Große Welttheater, having gained note among thousands of spectators both in and beyond the region for its theatre projects, won the Cultural Prize in 1996 and the Cultural Promotion Prize in 2000.

Fasching (Fastnacht, Fassenacht) is celebrated lustily in Rodgau. Said to be the Carnival's stronghold in Rodgau is Jügesheim (dialectal name: Giesem). Here, before the Town hall on 11 November, the opening of the “campaign” takes place, and on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday the opening of the “Town Hall storm”, the symbolic transfer of the town's administration to the fools. On the Thursday before Ash Wednesday the Carnival parade winds its way through Jügesheim's streets. The Carnival representatives, the Carnival Prince and Princess and the Child Prince and Princess, have in more recent times not always come from Jügesheim. Other constituent communities may now enter contestants.

An historic town core is something that Rodgau, given the way it came into being, simply cannot offer. A lack of awareness of the worth of old buildings led, especially in the years after the Second World War, to the wholesale destruction of many timber frame buildings in the old communities. Only in the early 1970s were historical buildings that were still standing systematically catalogued and ranked according to criteria for monumental protection. The five former village churches from the 13th to 19th centuries even today still mark the old village cores. In the 1990s, with the church parishes’, the municipality's and many volunteers’ support, they were renovated and also put back in their original states. The Gothic tower at the Matthias Kirche (“Saint Matthew’s Church”) in Nieder Roden is Rodgau's oldest preserved building. Within the churches themselves are found objects of importance to art history from various epochs. Particularly worthy of mention among these is the Late Gothic Marienaltar ("Mary’s Altar") in Nieder Roden's Catholic Matthias Kirche, which comes from the time about 1520, and is ascribed to the Riemenschneider school. Single timber frame houses scattered about the municipal area from the 16th to 19th centuries have been restored and today adorn the old village cores. A few buildings, such as the bakehouse (Backes) in Dudenhofen have been built once again from old plans. The watertower in Jügesheim, opened in 1938 and operated until 1979 is said from its architectural uniqueness and bold static construction to be an industrial monument. It shows clear echoes of the expressionistic style of the 1920s. Three of the four railway station buildings on the former Rodgaubahn opened in 1896 are said to be worthy of preservation, but are still awaiting renovation and new uses. Another historical building is an old fire station in which is housed the Weiskirchen local history museum. Worth seeing, too, are the eleven artistically made fountains as well as many sculptures and façade paintings that characterize the town. Many dedicated citizens contribute to the further bettering of the town's appearance through donations, street festivals and hands on work, and to the building and expansion of a civic culture. A further highlight of Rodgau is the Drachenfest ("Kite Festival") with its firework contest, held every year in late September.

Hermann Bonifer: Giesemer Platt – ein kernig derber Dialekt im Kreis Offenbach. Jügesheim 1993. Ilse Eberhardt u. a.: Jedes Örtchen hat sein Wörtchen – Nieder Röder Wörterbuch. Nieder Roden um 1989.

Hans F. Busch: Kleine Geschichten aus dem Rodgau. Nidderau 1992. Adam Geißler: Dudenhofen zwischen Gestern und Morgen. Frankfurt 1971. Ljubica Perkman u. a.: Rodgau – Stadt im Herzen. 2002. Philipp Rupp: Geschichten aus Alt Nieder Roden. Nieder Roden 1985
Helmut Trageser u. a.: Geschichte und Geschichten, 700 Jahre Weiskirchen. Weiskirchen 1986