Mühlheim am Main is a town of roughly 28,500 inhabitants on the Main’s left bank in the Offenbach district in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. Its municipal area measures 20.67 km² (including outlying centres’ areas).
Geography
Location
Mühlheim is one of 13 towns and communities in the Offenbach district. It lies in the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region south of the Main between Offenbach am Main and Hanau in the historic Maingau region. The Bieber empties into the Rodau within town limits, and the Rodau then empties into the Main.
Population development
(each time at 31 December) 1998 - 26,124 1999 - 26,210 2000 - 26,082 2001 - 26,210 2002 - 26,396 2003 - 26,436 2004 - 26,557 2005 - 26,582 2006 - 26,625 2007 - 28,279
Neighbouring communities
Mühlheim borders in the north, along the Main, on the town of Maintal, in the east on the town of Hanau (both in Main-Kinzig-Kreis), in the south on the town of Obertshausen (Offenbach district) and in the west on the district-free city of Offenbach.
Constituent communities
Mühlheim's Stadtteile are Mühlheim, Dietesheim and Lämmerspiel. The main centre itself also has an Old Town and an inner town, as well as residential neighbourhoods named Markwald and Rote Warte.
History
Emperor Louis the Pious donated in 815 Untermühlheim together with Obermühlheim (today called Seligenstadt), which were then in the Frankish Maingau to Einhard. The name Mühlheim goes back to the ten mills (Mühlen in German) which in earlier times stood on the banks of the brooks Rodau and Bieber. Today, though, only one mill has been preserved, the Brückenmühle. This can be visited each year on Whit Monday (German Mill Day).
For a long time in the Middle Ages Mühlheim was Mother Church to the surrounding places of Bürgel, Offenbach, Bieber, Heusenstamm, Dietesheim and Lämmerspiel. The spiritual court for the affiliated communities belonging to the Mother Church sat in this time in Mühlheim. From the 14th century, the Lords of Hagenhausen-Eppstein exercised lordly rights (Hoheitsrechte) in Mühlheim. From the Middle Ages until 1819, Mühlheim and the once self-administering communities of Dietesheim and Lämmerspiel belonged to the Biebermark (a communally owned cadastral area), and the outlying woodlands belonged to the Wildbann Dreieich, a royal hunting forest. Within current town limits once lay a place called Meielsheim.
In 1435, Mühlheim, as was so with many places in the area, was sold along with the Amt of Steinheim by the Lords of Eppstein to the Electorate of Mainz. After the Archbishopric of Mainz was secularized, Mühlheim became Hessian. In 1819, after the Biebermark was partitioned, Mühlheim got what is today called the Markwald (forest). In 1873, the Frankfurt-Hanau railway by way of Mühlheim was brought into service. Ever since 1939, when in the framework of National Socialist administrative reform the rural community of Mühlheim and the village of Dietesheim were forcibly merged to become the town of Mühlheim am Main, Mühlheim has had town rights. In 1977, in the framework of municipal reform, Lämmerspiel was amalgamated with the town.
Politics
Town council
The municipal election held on 27 March 2011 yielded the following results:
Coat of arms
The town's arms might be described thus: Azure a six-spoked waterwheel argent with twelve buckets, in chief three Immertreu of the second with centres Or.
Culture and sightseeing
Theatre
The travesti theatre Gerda’s kleine Weltbühne (Gerda's Little World Stage”) has for more than 30 years been a constant in Mühlheim's cultural life, and been known far beyond Mühlheim and very popular. Its shows are often fully booked months ahead of time.
In the “SCHANZ” cultural hall, the converted former apprentice's workshop of the firm Stahl-Schanz, the Kulturfabrik EigenArt e.V. (a club) has been staging theatrical, cabaret and musical events weekly since 1998.
Museums
Mühlheim has its own town museum. Moreover, there are also private collections, among them Mühlheim entrepreneur Hans-Günter Zach's Rolls-Royce Museum, visits to which are on request, upon payment of a donation for social purposes.
Buildings
Mühlheim's watertower, an historic basalt structure near the Mühlheim railway station, is a widely visible landmark of the town, and is still in use.