Bad Camberg

Bad Camberg is, with 14,500 inhabitants, the second largest town in Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany, as well as the southernmost town in the Regierungsbezirk of Gießen. It is located in the eastern Taunus in the Goldener Grund some 30 km north of Wiesbaden, 18 km southeast of Limburg an der Lahn, and 44 km northwest of Frankfurt, as well as on the German Timber-Frame Road. Bad Camberg is the central community of the Goldener Grund with good infrastructure, and a lower centre partly with a middle centre's function.
The recognized Kneipp resort is Hesse's oldest and Germany's third oldest. In the outlying centre of Oberselters is found a mineral spring that gives forth the well known Selterswasser, often known in English as “seltzer”. The town's landmark is the Kreuzkapelle.

Geography

Location

Bad Camberg lies north of the Taunus’s main ridge, 18 km southeast of Limburg an der Lahn, making it Middle Hesse’s southernmost town. The nearest cities are Wiesbaden, Frankfurt am Main, Wetzlar, Koblenz, and Gießen.

Heights

The town’s elevation is 209 m. The Limburg-Weilburg district’s highest elevation, the Kuhbett, lies within the limits of the outlying centre of Erbach on the boundary with the community of Weilrod in the Hochtaunuskreis. The greatest elevation in the central community – also called Bad Camberg – is the Kapellenhügel, which is somewhat more than 300 m high.

Neighbouring communities

Bad Camberg's neighbours are, clockwise from the north, Selters, Weilrod, Waldems, Idstein, Hünstetten and Hünfelden. All but the two lying within Limburg-Weilburg lie not in the Regierungsbezirk of Gießen, but rather in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt.

Constituent communities

The town comprises six Stadtteile.

Stadtteil	Population	Area	Wooded in km²	in %	Pop. density
Bad Camberg	6,903	19.91	10.89	54.7	346.7
Erbach	2,804	10.66	4.91	46.0	263.0
Würges	2,545	13.82	6.27	45.4	184.1
Oberselters	1,173	4.22	0.84	19.9	278.0
Schwickershausen	585	2.77	0.66	23.8	211.2
Dombach	382	3.26	1.38	42.3	105.5
Totals	14,397	54.64	24.95	45.7	263.5

History

Early history

To the Linear Pottery culture from the New Stone Age, which draws its name from the ceramics that it produced, belong the oldest archaeological finds in the Camberg area. While most groups at that time were hunter-gatherers, the Linear Pottery people were already producing their own food by raising crops and livestock, the latter being mainly sheep, swine, goats and above all cattle; this covered up to 90% of the people's meat requirements.
It is known how these cultures built houses. The houses were mostly 20 to 25 m long and 5 to 7 m wide, consisting of five rows of posts, the three inner ones bearing the roof's weight, and the two outer ones the wattle-and-daub walls’. These houses served to house people, supplies and animals, and they were always oriented in a certain direction. Within the settlements, irregular pits are encountered that, when houses were being built, were used as the houses’ excavations. They were then filled more and more with rubbish such as charcoal, animal bones, ashes, stones and potsherds. In a few built-up areas in the town's main centre, the streets have cut across several garbage pits. When opening up new cropfields, the farmers preferred loess.
The second wave of settlers has been determined to have come between 600 and 500 BC. The barrow fields on both sides of the road to Tenne are from this time.

Middle Ages

On 6 February 1000, Emperor Otto III donated the Cagenberg estate to the Burtscheid Monastery. Cagenberg means Cargo's Mountain, Cargo being a short form of the name Garganhardt. From the name Cagenberg developed Cainburg, Camburg, Kamberg and Camberg, and by other sources Cagenberc, Kamberch, Kahberg ''Kamberc and later Kaynburg''. In 1281, King Rudolph I granted town rights on the model of the Imperial city of Frankfurt am Main; these were renewed in 1300, 1336 and 1365.
Legend has it that after Epiphany in 1357, all the Camberg townsfolk were drunk and asleep when robber knights from Walsdorf came to try to rob the town. The town wall had not yet been finished and the knights therefore only needed to cross a hedge. However, there lived some magpies, who noticed the attempted robbery and gave out an alarm call, waking the townsfolk up, who then fended the attack off, putting the Walsdorf knights to flight. To this day, the magpie is still regarded as the town's “unofficial heraldic bird”.

Modern times

From 1535 to 1794, the Amt of Camberg was in force, to which all current constituent communities belonged under the common administration of the House of Nassau and by the Electorate of Trier. After a short French occupation, the town was, as of 1806, part of the Duchy of Nassau. In 1866 it passed to Prussia. Since 1945, the town has been part of the German Federal state of Hesse.
In 1630 and again in 1659, great witch trials took place. Thirteen women and one man were found guilty and five women were put to death; one also died in custody. The others were released, often after having been tortured.
In 1810, Baron Hugo von Schütz zu Holzhausen, himself born deaf, was first teaching deaf students in rooms at the Amthof, making him a pioneer in this field in Germany. In the years that followed, a scholastic institution grew out of these classes and in 1820 the “Ducal Nassau Deaf-Mute Institute”. Until 1875 it was housed in a side building of the Guttenberger Hof in the Old Town. As of 1894, however, the school had its own building which was built on a plot of land on Frankfurter Straße donated by the town of Camberg. Under the name Freiherr-von-Schütz-Schule, it is still found there today.
In 1861, Moritz Lieber founded a hospital, the Lieber'sches Hospital, on Gisbert-Lieber-Straße. It was dissolved in 1959. Today, the Freiherr-von-Schütz-Schule uses the building.
During the Second World War, and especially in 1944, many Wehrmacht units were in the town. In 1942 alone, eight Jewish inhabitants were deported and murdered.

Land ownership in 1788

This table shows how much land was held by each class in 1788 :

Centre	Townsmen	Nobles	Church
Bad Camberg	70.2	26.2	3.6
Erbach	80.2	18.8	1.0
Würges	65.2	34.8	-
Oberselters	72.4	24.3	3.3
Schwickershausen	83.9	16.1	-
Dombach	96.5	3.5	-

Health resort

Camberg has been a Kneipp resort since 1927. In 1937 it was granted the title Anerkanntes Heilbad. Since 1977, Camberg has been a Staatlich Anerkanntes Kneippheilbad. In 1981, on the occasion of the town's 700-year jubilee of the granting of town rights, Camberg was awarded the official designation Bad. Ever since then, the town has been known as Bad Camberg. In 1973, the Hohenfeld Clinics were completed.

Amalgamations

In the 1970s there was administrative reform throughout Germany, which also had its consequences in the Bad Camberg area. On 13 August 1970, the “Municipal Working Community of the Goldener Grund” came into force. Its goal was to unite the communities of the Goldener Grund through a voluntary merger. Ten communities, today's six constituent communities along with the Selters constituent communities of Niederselters, Eisenbach and Haintchen as well as Hasselbach, now belonging to Weilrod, signed this. On 11 December 1969, the Hessian interior minister announced that suggestions for municipal rearrangements were to be worked out for all communities in the state. This envisaged Camberg, Würges, Erbach, Schwickershausen and Dombach being merged into the Town of Camberg, whereas Oberselters, along with Niederselters, Eisenbach and Haintchen, would form the Community of Selters. The Dombach community representatives were of the opinion, however, that they should keep their village's autonomy until such time as the state chose to force an amalgamation. Also, the Würges community representatives feared that building projects in their village would be shelved and that Camberg would become the town's cultural hub.
In January 1971, the district of Limburg once again suggested the small solution. All the current constituent communities but Oberselters were to form the new Town of Camberg. Also brought into question, however, was whether Oberselters, Hasselbach, Walsdorf and Steinfischbach might be amalgamated with the Town of Camberg. The Oberselters community representatives favoured amalgamation, if it had to happen, with Camberg, whereas Hasselbach inclined towards Weilrod. Walsdorf's and Steinfischbach's people had voted for Idstein and Waldems respectively so that the planned merger at the time agreed with the current town limits. The communities of Camberg, Erbach, Schwickershausen and Oberselters backed this merger, whereas Dombach first wanted to “wait and see”, and Würges wanted no voluntary amalgamation. The Bundesland of Hesse named 31 December 1971 as the latest possible deadline for voluntary amalgamation.
On 9 November 1971 came the signing of a boundary-changing agreement among today's five Camberg constituent communities other than Würges along with Eisenbach and Haintchen to found the new Town of Camberg. This agreement, however, was not recognized by the Hesse government, which demanded that Eisenbach, Haintchen and Oberselters be amalgamated with the community of Niederselters and suggested uniting Camberg with Erbach, Schwickershausen and Dombach. The communities complained before the Hessian Administrative Court to get it to uphold the merger of Oberselters, Eisenbach and Haintchen at 1 January 1972 anyway. The government was obliged to allow the amalgamation, but it wanted to revise the plan. There was, however, no actual hearing before the Federal Administrative Court in Kassel and the appellate proceedings were suspended in May 1975.
On 1 July 1974, Camberg, Würges, Erbach, Schwickershausen and Dombach were forcibly merged. The community of Oberselters joined.