Korbach

Korbach Hansestadt Korbach
Town
Saint Nicholas Church
Coat of arms
Location of Korbach within Waldeck-Frankenberg district
Korbach Show map of Germany Korbach Show map of Hesse
Coordinates: 51°17′N 8°52′E / 51.283°N 8.867°E / 51.283; 8.867
Country	Germany
State	Hesse
Admin. region	Kassel
District	Waldeck-Frankenberg
Government
• Mayor (2018–24)	Klaus Friedrich[1]
Area
• Total	123.98 km2 (47.87 sq mi)
Elevation	384 m (1,260 ft)
Population  (2022-12-31)[2]
• Total	23,706
• Density	190/km2 (500/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
Postal codes	34497
Dialling codes	05631
Vehicle registration	KB
Website	Stadt Korbach

Korbach (pronunciation: ˈkoːɐˌbax), officially the Hanseatic City of Korbach (German: Hansestadt Korbach), is the district seat of Waldeck-Frankenberg in northern Hesse, Germany. It is over a thousand years old and is located on the German Timber-Frame Road. In 2018, the town has hosted the 58th Hessentag state festival.

Geography and geology

Korbach lies at the north-east edge of the Rhenish Slate Mountains (here known as the Waldeck'sches Upland, the second word being a German proper name, not the English word "upland"). Neighbouring towns and communities are, clockwise from the northwest, Willingen, Diemelsee, Twistetal, Waldeck, Vöhl, Lichtenfels (likewise all in Waldeck-Frankenberg) and Medebach (Hochsauerlandkreis in North Rhine-Westphalia).

The town lies on an unwooded tableland called the Waldecker Tafel that once harboured a great many wild chickens, leading to the townsfolk's nickname as "Feldhühnerchen" ( ≈ "little field chickens"). Not only the main town, but also outlying centres such as Lelbach (615 inhabitants), Lengefeld (512 inhabitants), Nordenbeck (195 inhabitants), Ober-Ense (228 inhabitants) and Nieder-Ense (272 inhabitants) lie on the Waldecker Tafel or at its edge. In the eastern part of the municipal area, where the outlying centres of Helmscheid (202 inhabitants), Strothe (250 inhabitants) and Meineringhausen (947 inhabitants) lie, begins the North Hesse Hills (nordhessisches Hügelland), which stretch from the Rhenish Slate Mountains to the Habichtswald range west of Kassel. In the west lie the constituent communities of Alleringhausen (91 inhabitants), Eppe (686 inhabitants), Nieder-Schleidern (193 inhabitants) and Hillershausen (334 inhabitants) in the foothills of the Sauerland. The highest peaks in the Korbach municipal area are the Widdehagen (635 m) near Rhena (584 inhabitants) and the Eisenberg (562 m), which despite its name – meaning "Iron Mountain" – is well known for gold-bearing ore found there. Perhaps more fittingly, the outlying community lying on the Eisenberg is called Goldhausen (329 inhabitants).

Through the main town runs the Kuhbach, a tributary to the Itter, itself a tributary to the Eder. In a grammatical quirk, the name "Kuhbach", which most German speakers would regard as masculine, is often locally inflected as though it were feminine – die Kuhbach instead of der Kuhbach.

The Korbacher Spalte, a 20 m-deep, up to 350 cm-broad and roughly 1 km-long cleft in the Earth's surface near Korbach, discovered in 1964, has yielded important fossil finds, indeed the only finds of Procynosuchus in the Northern Hemisphere.

Worth seeing is the Korbach Village Church, which stands in the middle of the town. Likewise worth visiting is the old castle inside the "Hühnenkeller" ringwall near Lengefeld.

Panorama of Korbach from Eisenberg hill

Population

(each time at 31 December)

• 1998 - 24,510
• 1999 - 24,552
• 2000 - 24,515
• 2001 - 24,490
• 2002 - 24,537
• 2003 - 24,503
• 2004 - 24,540

History

Protohistory

On the hill upon which

In the Thirty Years' War, Korbach had to make ever greater contributions to the troops who were passing through. By the time the war ended, only half the town's houses were still fit to live in, and the town's population had fallen from 2600 to 1100. In 1664, a great town fire burnt almost all the residential houses down. There is only one half-timbered house in town today that was built before the fire. The Gothic stone churches and the stone warehouses from that time, on the other hand, are still well preserved.

Nieder-Ense

The constituent community of Nieder-Ense had its first documentary mention about 1010.

Modern Times

During the

It was only towards the end of the 18th century that a modest prosperity was restored to Korbach. The town first achieved a new economic boom late in the 19th century. Contributing to this in no small measure was the new

The rubber factory continues to dominate the development of the city. It is one of the production sites of Continental AG, one of the major companies in its sector.

Politics

Town council

The town council's 31 seats are apportioned thus, in accordance with municipal elections held on 6 March 2016:

Coat of arms

Korbach's civic coat of arms might heraldically be described thus: Party per fess, above, in azure a bishop argent with shawl and mitre trimmed Or, in his hand dexter upraised a book Or, in his hand sinister a crozier Or dexter, below, in Or a halved eight-pointed star sable.

The arms come from the town's oldest known seal, from 1236. The human figure in the chief is the Bishop of Paderborn, who granted Korbach town rights in 1188, although it could be his successor Bishop Wilbrand, who had the townsfolk swear him in as their overlord in 1227. The aforesaid seal was made not long after this. There is an erroneous belief that the human figure is Saint Kilian, the town's patron saint, but this is believed to be rather unlikely, as the figure looks like a bishop.

The eight-pointed star – only half of which appears in these arms – is quite a common charge in civic heraldry in Waldeck, the region in which Korbach lies, for the simple reason that it was the arms borne by the Counts of Schwalenberg-Waldeck, who were the town's rulers as the bishops' vassals beginning in 1227. The star shown on the original seal, however, was six-pointed (and again, halved). This was eventually changed to the eight-pointed version still seen now, to match the star in the counts' arms.

The objects that the bishop holds changed in the early days, with some old seals showing him without the book. Also, the original 1236 seal shows him with the two objects transposed, holding the staff in his right hand, not the book. Since 1377, however, the composition still seen today seems to have been settled on. The colours were chosen in 1947.[1]

Twin towns – sister cities

Korbach is twinned with:^[3]

• Avranches, France (1963)
• Waltershausen, Germany (1990)
• Pyrzyce, Poland (1998)
• Vysoké Mýto, Czech Republic (2000)

Transport

Korbach lies on Federal Highways (Bundesstraßen) 251 (Kassel-Brilon) and 252 (Marburg-Paderborn), which both conveniently connect to the Korbach bypass (road). There is no direct connection to the Autobahn network anywhere in the municipal area, the nearest interchanges being on the A 44 near Diemelstadt and Zierenberg, either way about 30 km away. The town is also connected by state highways (Landesstraßen) to Medebach and Diemelsee.

Korbach is a

In 1997, a bus service was instituted in Korbach with two looping routes that partly intersect. These buses run at 40-minute intervals, thereby meet each other at the main railway station every 20 minutes. The system also connects important places within the town, such as the inner town, the town hospital or the school centre to both routes.

There are two airfields in Korbach, used only for sport flying and gliding.

Sights

• Wolfgang-Bonhage-Museum Korbach [de] dedicated to the city's history.^[4]
• Kilianskirche (1450) and Nikolaikirche (1460)
• Alte Landesschule (1579)
• A medieval pillory
• Well preserved town wall and old town
• Several medieval stone buildings (warehouses)
• The bronze Night Watchman ("Nachtwächter") in the
  pedestrian precinct
• The Gold Trail (Goldspur), passing goldmining sites and explaining the history of gold at the Eisenberg.
• Nieder-Ense Church, built between 1130 and 1140, with Baroque altar by Josias Wolrad Brützel about 1700.
• Visitors' Mine, illustrating a goldminer's situation in the Middle Ages
  and his everyday work.
• Georg-Viktor Tower (tower), 24 m high, affords a panoramic view into the
  Upland as far as the Eder Uplands (Ederbergland), and of Eisenberg Castle
  ruins.

• Kiliansmarkt
• Viehmarkt (cattle market)
• Altstadt-Kulturfest (Old Town Cultural Festival)
• Mittelalterlicher Markt (Medieval Market)
• Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market)

Notable people

• Daniel Angelocrater [de] (1569–1635), theologian
• Konrad Samuel Schurzfleisch [de] (1641–1708), historian, polymath and librarian
• Wilhelmine Halberstadt (1776–1841), educator and writer
• Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen (1791–1860), diplomat and scholar.^[5]
• Hermann Kümmell (1852–1937), surgeon
• August Bier (1861–1949), surgeon
• Horst Bingel [de] (1933–2008), writer
• Ernst Welteke (born 1942), economist and politician
• Elke Heidenreich (born 1943), writer and television star
• Matthias Reim (born 1957), singer-songwriter
• Jochen Behle (born 1960), cross-country skiing trainer
• Bernd Noack (born 1966), physicist
• Stephan Welk (born 1967), business economist
• Rainer Schüttler (born 1976), tennis player

Literature

• Stöcker, Hilmar G.: Niederense. Korbach : Stadtarchiv, 1978. 229 S. Waldecksche Ortssippenbücher ; 16

References

This article includes a improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message )

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Korbach.

• Korbach
• Goldhausen
• Gold Trail
• Korbach at
  Curlie