Modautal is a municipality in the Darmstadt-Dieburg

Darmstadt-Dieburg

Darmstadt-Dieburg is a Kreis in the south of Hesse, Germany. Neighboring districts are Offenbach, Aschaffenburg, Miltenberg, Odenwaldkreis, Bergstraße, Groß-Gerau, and the district-free city of Darmstadt, which it surrounds.-History:...

 district, in Hesse

Hesse

Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. Around 5,050 inhabitants live in 11 districts on an area of 31 km² (of which 38.7% is woods). The first historical chronicles date back to the 13th century.

History

The municipality was formed in 1977 by putting together eleven districts during the so-called Gebietsreform. During the time of the Celts the area must have already been inhabited since the so-called "Heuneburg" on a hill in Fischbachtal

Fischbachtal

Fischbachtal is a municipality in southern Hesse in the district Darmstadt-Dieburg. The municipality has a total population of 2,686 inhabitants...

 was a celtic castle where the people and their animals from the region could flee (German: Fluchtburg). To construct such a building, a lot of helping hands must have been living nearby.

In the Middle Ages, the eleven villages of Modautal belonged to different knight's families: The family of Rodenstein, the family from Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...

, the one from Mosbach, the family of Wallbrunn as well as Stumpf von Asbach and Kalb von Reinheim just to name a few. The oldest available documents date back to 1651 and are the so-called "Haingerichtsbücher" (written rules of the peasants in Brandau).

During the revolution in 1848 and due to failure of crops, huge parts of the inhabitants of the villages emigrated to North America.

Allertshofen and Hoxhohl

Both villages are really close to each other. In a quiet valley of the small river Modau, they are located at 280 to 290 meters above sea level.

Asbach

The village lays at 225 m above sea level in a valley next to the one with the Modau. There is a rehabilitation center there.

Brandau

The biggest district of Modautal can easily be recognized from the hills surrounding it by the Cemetery of Honor with a little bell-tower with a metallic roof right at the border of the village.

Ernsthofen

The sights of the village are an old water mill, the castle and the small Protestant church. An important institution is the primary school Modautalschule.

Lützelbach

This little village lays at 420 meters above sea level. Its fire brigade has existed since 1655. Nowadays, it is famous among tourists for its restaurants.

Neunkirchen

The books of the Protestant church in Neunkirchen date back to the times of the [Thirty Years' War] in the 17th century. Back then, most of the villages belonged to this parish

Parish

A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...

. It is 520 meters above sea level at the top of a hill. The turning radar station can be seen from afar.

Neutsch

Already long before it became fashionable, three wind turbines were erected in the fields above the village.

Webern

There is only one small road, which comes from Klein-Bieberau, to this village, so it literally lays at the end of the road. During summer, the water reservoir of the fire brigade (German: Löschwasserteich) serves as a swimming pool for the kids.