Glonn


Glonn is a market town in the Ebersberg district in Upper Bavaria, Germany, about southeast of Munich.

Geography

The market town of Glonn is a health spa, and the Glonn Valley is ringed by wooded hills, carved by the former Inn Glacier. To the south, the Alps are clearly visible on the horizon.
The rivers Glonn, and Schrannenbach rise within Glonn's municipal area, where the lake Kastensee is also to be found. Just inside the neighbouring community of Moosach lies the Steinsee, another lake. Glonn is also home to three protected areas.
The community of Glonn includes nine small villages: Adling, Balkham, Frauenreuth, Haslach, Mattenhofen, Kastenseeon, Reinstorf, Schlacht, Steinhausen and Wetterling.

Neighbouring communities

Glonn's immediate neighbours are the communities of Baiern, Bruck, Egmating, Moosach and Oberpframmern, which together with Glonn form an administrative community.
The town of Grafing and the centres of Kirchseeon, Zorneding and Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn are about 15 km away. Nevertheless, it is there that regional and long-distance rail service is to be found.
Glonn lies roughly 30 km from the cities of Munich and Rosenheim.

History

Early settlement in the New Stone Age is witnessed by a number of finds, among them a dwelling pit, weapons and jewellery. The town's name derives from the Celtic description of the local river Glana – "Clear".
In a donation document signed by the bishop of Freising on 21 March 774, Glonn is named as "Glan"; this is taken to be the earliest evidence of the town's founding. From about 1015, it is known that there was a local lordly family called "da Glana", and in 1349, the building register Monumenta Boica mentioned the Church of St. Johann zu Glan.
The name changed during the 16th century to "Glon" and then later to "Glonn", as it is still known now.
In 1632, during the Thirty Years' War, the Swedes burnt Glonn almost down to the ground. It took a very long time for the town to build itself back up again. Only in 1823, almost two centuries after the fire, was the new church finished and consecrated.
Since 1901, Glonn has had market rights and has had leave to hold yearly markets. Since 1908 there has been electricity, generated at the town's own power station by water power in some of the former mills. By 1914, 50% of Glonn's households were supplied.
Glonn shifted from a mainly agrarian village with little in the way of crafts to a modern minor centre with trade and crafts for the other nearby communities. Agriculture has sharply shrunk in importance.
After World War II Glonn was a refugee destination for those driven out of their homelands, those whose homes were bombed out and those who had been evacuated, and this new inflow of people eventually grew to become more than a third of the town's population. Many new houses had to be built, and in 1959 it became necessary to name the streets once the house numbering system in use up to the time was no longer useful for distinguishing addresses.

Religion

The town has a Catholic parish church and an Evangelical church, each a centre of a corresponding parish.
John the Baptist as church patron points to an early Christian baptismal church. Already by 1600 there was a Gothic church in the middle of the village. The current parish church's sacristy is a remnant of this earlier house of worship.

Politics

Town council

The following parties and one local political organization are active:
On town council, the SPD/KOMMA has 5 seats, and the CSU has 8. Including Major.

Coat of arms

Glonn's arms might heraldically be described thus: In argent a four-spoked waterwheel sable above which a trout azure finned Or.
The waterwheel and the trout refer to the area's wealth in water and the seven former cornmills that were so important to the local economy.

Town partnership

With the French village of Bonnefamille, contact was established in 1998 and led to alternating visits of clubs and delegations.
At the beginning of 2007, an intra-Bavarian partnership with the community of Markt Schwaben in the same district was established. The goal of this unusual pairing is to be the dovetailing of regions in the northern and southern parts of the district that are otherwise split by the Ebersberg Forest.

Culture and sightseeing

Theatre

Every year in the autumn, the Glonn Costume Club's theatre show is held at the Neuwirtssaal. The amateur players present several locally themed plays in Bavarian dialect.

Museums

The Heimatmuseum Glonn, open at many times of the year, offers a glimpse into the town's history. Artefacts from prehistory as well as paintings and books by local artists and writers are on display. The writer Lena Christ's home life may be glimpsed in a faithfully reconstructed room at the museum.

Technological monument

The Stegmühle Glonn technological monument in the valley Mühltal houses the electricity-generating pumphouse preserved in the original form from 1906, still fully functional after more than a hundred years.
Until the mid-1990s, this apparatus was still generating electricity and feeding it into the local grid. Since then, however, it has fallen into disuse, but may be viewed on request to the owner who lives at the mill.

Buildings

Schloss Zinneberg

Schloss Zinneberg, a local castle lying on the town's eastern outskirts on a prominent knoll on its namesake mountain, the Zinneberg, can nowadays only just be made out through the thick woods that have grown there. Its history most likely stretches back to the 11th century, although its origins are quite uncertain. Only in 1332, in a donation document to the noble family of Preysing, was the placename "Zinnenberg" reliably mentioned. As time passed, the castle found itself owned by several noble families who were influential in Bavaria.
In 1350, Otto von Pienzenau became by marriage Lord of Zinneberg. The castle's ownership then passed in 1596, once again by marriage, to the Fugger family, in whose hands it remained for the next 230 years. In 1632, during the Thirty Years' War, Schloss Zinneberg was burnt down. At this time arose the legend that a secret passage, allegedly still existing today, between the castle and the town afforded some of the castle's inhabitants an escape to safety. Already by 1640, Count Johannes Friedrich, himself a Fugger, had the castle rebuilt. In 1825, the castle was bought by Bavarian Electress Maria Leopoldine, who was married to Count Ludwig of Arco. She had it remodelled to her own tastes, and the castle is still mostly in this form today. From 1850 to 1868, the castle was owned by the Marquis Fabio von Pallavicini, who in turn sold it to Friedrich Wilhelm Scanzoni von Lichtenfels. In 1898, became the new lord of the castle. He was responsible for further expansions to the building, which still lend the castle a feudal character today.
Some of the town's street names recall these noble families.
On 14 September 1927 the castle was bought for 735,000 Reichsmarks by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, who run it today as a residential school for girls from difficult social backgrounds. They also run a kindergarten there.
During the First World War, part of the castle was used as a military hospital with 60 beds. After the Second World War broke out, the training building was confiscated as a reserve Wehrmacht field hospital. In the Cold War, underground bunkers were built whose foreseen use was as a stationary auxiliary hospital.

Pfarrkirche St. Johann Baptist

The "Pfarrkirche St. Johann Baptist" stands out prominently in the middle of town when one comes into Glonn from one of the surrounding hills.
After the old church was destroyed in the Thirty Years' War, a new church was begun about 1768, but finished and consecrated only in 1823. It is built in the Rococo style and contains altar figures and a crucifix with Schmerzhafte Muttergottes by the artist Joseph Götsch. In 1994 the church was completely renovated.

Convent school

In 1899, building work began on a girls' school in downtown Glonn, and on 24 October 1902 it was handed over to the then mayor “for the purpose of a girls’ school to be run by Catholic sisters”. This task was taken on by the nuns of the Maria Stern convent from Augsburg.
In the Third Reich, however, they were expelled from the school on 25 March 1937. This led to fierce protests by the girls' parents and in the end drew the Gestapo's attention when somebody put what is known locally as a Pfingstlümmel on the neighbouring boys' school roof on Whitsunday. It was wearing a brown shirt such as was commonly worn by SA men, and also a Communist cap.
The nuns were able to start classes again after the war ended. As of 1964, there were mixed classes.
In the mid-1970s, the town acquired the convent and school building that had since been forsaken. Sometime later it was converted into a cultural and social centre for the community. The Homeland Museum mentioned above was given a home on the top floor. The "Altenstube" on the ground floor affords senior citizens a social venue. Also found in the building are the local chapter of the Bavarian Red Cross and a daycare centre. In the basement, a youth centre has been set up. For a time, the old classrooms were even once again used as such when the neighbouring elementary school needed overflow room to handle great numbers of pupils who were threatening to burst the school's seams.
However, most of the building nowadays is used as a kindergarten, together with a newly built building in the former park nearby.
The old chapel with its sacristy and siderooms in the west part of the building is now used as an exhibition gallery. One can also rent the room for events. The community offers it as an attractive alternative to the registry office for civil marriage ceremonies.