Rollwald
Rollwald (sometimes called the Rollwald or Rollwald settlement ) is a district of Nieder-Roden in the town of Rodgau . It was established as a prison camp in 1938. Due to its location two kilometers south of the main town and its special history, but also due to its own train station ( Rodgau-Rollwald ), it is often wrongly perceived as a district of Rodgau. Until 1976 Nieder-Roden was an independent community in the Dieburg district , after which it was merged with four other communities from the Offenbach district to form the town of Rodgau. According to the city of Rodgau, Rollwald had 1,469 inhabitants in June 2013 in the 75th year of its existence.
Geography and location
Nieder-Roden is located about thirty kilometers south-east of Frankfurt in the southern Main Valley. The climate is, apart from the low mountain range , relatively windy and low in precipitation; the area was considered poor until the 20th century because of the sandy, poorly productive soils.
On the situation up to 1938
Up until 1938, the Rollwald was part of Nieder-Roden and had existed for at least a hundred years. It was on, and partly beyond, the border to the neighboring town of Ober-Roden . In the area of what is now the Rollwald district, there was also a large inland dune , the high-quality sand of which was completely removed for private house construction after the war. The rolling forest was predominantly a light mixed forest of pine and beech trees , which was popular with the Nieder-Röder people as a walking forest . One of the field names was called Am Schöne Rollwald . Local residents also liked to call the forest the Poussier forest , as couples in love liked to meet here. The old Stockum-Börnchen fountain was particularly popular , where several benches above a bubbling spring surrounded by stones invited guests to linger.
In addition, part of the forest was known to the locals as a camp site for traveling Sinti and Roma and other traveling people , who were left alone by the authorities for a few days on the road between the two places, some of whom were also assigned here. Some Nieder-Röder therefore avoided the road to Ober-Roden.
In the 1920s, a brick factory in the forest east of Reichsstraße 45, the Ludwig Schmidt & Co. company , was set up for a short time , and the local Nieder-Rödern moved it to Lutschko .
Model village "Mittel-Roden" and penal camp Rollwald
After Hitler came to power in 1933, Rollwald became part of a comprehensive project to revitalize the peasantry around Rodgau. With the construction of the Rodgau Railway in 1896 at the latest, the localities had undergone a comprehensive structural change, from remote villages with dominant agriculture to urban settlements with many commuters and home workers in the leather industry; Agriculture was mostly only pursued as a sideline .
For the project, the predominantly sandy, less fertile soils were to be improved over a large area with the help of a sprinkler system. This system was supposed to distribute the faeces and waste water from Frankfurt, 30 kilometers away , which were brought in large pipes and processed into suspended particles, to sandy areas in southern Hesse. The hygienic and olfactory problems of this major project were ignored, as was the resistance of the affected communities. Because of the beginning of the war, the sewage sprinkling was no longer implemented.
After the soil improvements, Rollwald was to become a National Socialist model farming village that was to bear the name Mittel-Roden . The model was the artificially built villages of Riedrode and Allmendfeld near Gernsheim . A total of 80 farms with fifteen hectares each and 400 houses for workers were planned. The farms should be leased and the preparatory work for the entire project should be carried out by prisoners . In the planning year the prisons were well occupied due to the Nazi persecution measures. Prisoners with experience in the building trade were requested from all German penal institutions.
In a first step, the old workhouse in the district town of Dieburg was converted into a prison by inmates . Prisoners from Darmstadt were moved here. The correctional facility that still exists today was initially called Rodgau-Dieburg I main camp. From mid-1938, the prisoners had to start clearing the rolling forest, despite protests from the Nieder-Roden community. The compensation paid into a Sperrmark account for the loss of wood for the municipality of Nieder-Roden was worthless after the war. Until 1965 the community tried unsuccessfully to obtain financial compensation for this. The first barracks were prepared in the prison in Dieburg and erected on the deforested site: the Rollwald penal camp was created.
Situation after 1945
Because of the prisoners released by the armed forces of the United States at the end of the war, many people in Nieder-Roden and the other Rodgau locations were afraid. There was increased crime, which was often blamed on former prisoners. In August 1945, around 500 members of the SS were detained in the empty camp for several months until they were transported on. The released prisoner-of-war soldiers of the German army , who were subsequently housed in Rollwald in 1946 , were also perceived as dangerous by many locals. Most of them had been captured during the surrender in France, but came from Eastern European countries and could not or did not want to return to the countries occupied by the Soviet Army - for example because they had voluntarily served in the Wehrmacht.
In addition, about thirty American soldiers and civilian employees lived in Rollwald from 1946 to 1950, and they kept an archive of index cards for all German prisoners of war in the barracks .
In 1950 the American army cleared the site and the civilian use that had long been desired by the community of Nieder-Roden could begin. The 21 houses of the former guards ( officials' houses ) - which were actually planned as model houses for workers in the future farming village - were sold cheaply to private individuals. Apartment-seekers, mostly refugees and displaced persons , were placed in the barracks and other houses . Their accommodation had always been problematic in the less affluent communities of Rodgau.
The long-time SPD mayor of Nieder-Rodens, Johann Philipp Weyland, also bought a house shortly after 1950 and moved to the district. In 1952 a stop was set up on the train line that passed the district ( Rodgaubahn , today S-Bahn line 1 ). The two farms were leased to two farmers by the state government (the Schäfer and Werlé families ). They were the only ones actually built of the eighty courtyards planned by the National Socialists.
On the grounds of the kindergarten established in 1963, there was a former camp fire extinguishing pool that was used as a public swimming pool until autumn 1952 . The detention building of the prison camp, which comprised 60 individual cells, was used as an inn after 1950 ( Lokal Stelzmüller ) and, in the center of the district, has remained a restaurant to this day.
In 1976, as part of the merger of the five Rodgau communities into one city , streets were renamed , also in Rollwald: the former Lagerstraße became Rhönstraße , Waldstraße became Isarstraße , and Feldbergstraße became Lahnstraße . At the time of the prison camp, Lagerstraße was actually called Wohnstraße (because the officials' houses were located here), but the central main street of the camp from the main entrance to the camp was called Lagerstraße at that time (today Am Kreuzberg ). The main entrance of the prison camp was on the corner of today's Rhönstrasse / Am Kreuzberg.
Extension of the district
Gradually, more and more building land was designated next to the old warehouse, where an architecturally colorful mix of apartment blocks, villas, row bungalows with small front gardens and single-family houses was created. The district of Rollwald still had to struggle with a bad reputation for a long time due to its dark past and the many refugees and uprooted people living here.
At the beginning of the 1950s, the first new buildings, called settler houses , were built (Am Mühlfeldchen 1-11, Taunusstraße 2-12). The developers were Offenbach businessmen ( Gewobag ). In 1958 a dormitory for displaced persons and refugees was built (today at the corner of Am Kreuzberg / Mühlfeldchen), shortly afterwards through the Dieburg district the residential blocks with social housing, still known today as the Dieburger Block (today Zum Rauhen See). Around 1961, the last two remaining prison camp barracks were demolished and a six-story high - rise was built in their place (today Rhönstrasse 5-9). These two barracks had served as laundry and bathing facilities in the prison camp; after the war, refugees were housed here; in 1953 there were 21 people. Only the old, specially secured detention building remained of the old prison camp buildings to this day (today Restaurant Alt Athen ), because the old security systems, made of solid reinforced concrete , reached too deep into the ground.
Also in 1961 the first of the small terraced houses on the western edge of Rollwald, which were built there by SEG from Frankfurt (87 houses), were moved into. In 1980 the so-called Birkenwäldchen residential park was added on Moselstrasse, and after 2000, the small residential area between Elbestrasse and Lahnstrasse on the site of the former Hillebrecht film factory. This means that the building areas are exhausted.
In 1970 a Catholic church pavilion with 120 seats was built on the eastern edge of the village. It consisted of reinforced concrete prefabricated parts. A steel frame bell tower carried the former bell of a French prisoner-of-war camp. The Holy Cross Church was inaugurated on June 12, 1971. A second pavilion was built in 1985 to create space for events and family celebrations. For the 20th anniversary of the church pavilion, a second, larger bell with the name of St. Walburga was hung in 1991 .
In 2013 and 2014 the dilapidated pavilions were replaced by the construction of a small church with an adjoining community hall. It was the first new church in the diocese of Mainz for more than 20 years. Architect Uwe Kollmenter from Rollwald based the external shape of the church on the typical settlement houses. The foyer and community hall are in the shape of a cuboid that penetrates the church. The new Holy Cross Church was built in solid construction. The facade is mostly made of wood. The west gable with the entrance to the church is clad with Corten steel , the facade of the east gable is plastered. The Bishop of Mainz, Karl Lehmann , consecrated the church on May 25, 2014.
Today Rollwald is located at the extreme southern end of the town of Rodgau. Since the district is bounded by some nature reserves , the district planning authority forbade the expansion of the building land planned by the municipality in the 1960s up to the house boundary of Nieder-Roden. In this way, the natural character of the district was partially preserved.
On the sandy soils, however, the deforestation in 1938 in the 1950s caused severe signs of erosion , so that much fertile soil was carried away by the wind. This process was partially stopped by reforestation.
Business
Due to the small population and the growing competition in the area with increasing mobility , all grocery stores, butchers and bakeries, except for one kiosk that still existed, gradually closed. This was also closed on May 31, 2019. Most of the once numerous businesses had to close or relocated. There were, among other things, several haulage companies , a scrap shop , a tool factory , a cabinet maker , a department store supermarket (the large Rollwälder company Pflaum ), a textile dyeing factory , the aforementioned film factory and several small shops and hairdressers. Only the Kleemann concrete plant (formerly Ostertag) has survived to this day in larger commercial enterprises .
literature
- Gisela Rathert u. a .: Nieder-Roden 786–1986 . Working group for local history, Rodgau 1986.
- Werner Stolzenburg: From the forest to the settlement: Development and life of the Rollwald settlement . Self-published, Rodgau 1992.
- Michael Jäger: Rodgau 1945: Politics and everyday life between war, occupation and a new democratic beginning . Frankfurt 1994.
- Heidi Fogel: The Rollwald camp: penal system and forced labor 1938 to 1945 . Association for the historical processing of the history of the Rollwald camp, Rodgau 2004.
- Werner Stolzenburg: 75 years of Rollwald. Exhibition in the local history museum Nieder-Roden . Working group for local history; Archive Rollwald Documentation, Rodgau 2013.
- Ekkehard Wolf: 75 Years of Rollwald , series of articles in Offenbach-Post , June – August 2013.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Offenbach-Post , Series 75 Years Rollwald, June-August 2013 (Ekkehard Wolf / eh)
- ↑ a b Gisela Rathert u. a. Nieder-Roden 786-1986. Working group for local history, 1986
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Werner Stolzenburg. From forest to settlement: the origin and life of the Rollwald settlement. 1992
- ↑ a b c d e f Heidi Fogel: The Rollwald camp: prison system and forced labor 1938 to 1945 . Association for the historical processing of the history of the Rollwald camp, 2004.
- ^ "Inconvenient memories" in Frankfurter Rundschau from August 15, 2011.
- ↑ Michael Jäger. Rodgau 1945: Politics and everyday life between war, occupation and a new democratic beginning. Frankfurt 1994
- ↑ Kita Rollwald turns 50 . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , April 12, 2013.
- ^ Chronicle of the Holy Cross , Catholic Parish of St. Matthias Nieder-Roden, accessed on July 4, 2019.
- ↑ Maurice Farrouh: New Church for Rollwald , Frankfurter Rundschau , January 15, 2010.
- ↑ Groundbreaking ceremony for the Holy Cross Church: construction of the church begins . In: Offenbach-Post , March 23, 2013.
- ↑ From concept to execution , building description for the consecration on May 25, 2014 (PDF; 9.3 MB), sanktmatthias.de, accessed on July 4, 2019.
- ↑ Ekkehard Wolf: Rollwald celebrates his new church. In: Offenbach-Post. May 26, 2014, accessed July 4, 2019 .
Weiskirchen | Hainhausen | Jügesheim | Dudenhofen | Nieder-Roden with rolling forest