Hanau: German town on the Main at the Kinzig confluence

Geographical position

Hanau is located in the Lower Main Plain and here in a depression between Wetterau and Vorspessart on the northern edge of the Upper Rhine Lowlands. It is enclosed by an extensive forest belt, the Bulau. The town forms the intersection of important traffic routes at the entrance to the Kinzig valley.

Neighboring communities

Hanau borders on ten cities or municipalities:

• in the north: Municipality of Schöneck, City of Bruchköbel
• in the north-east: municipality of Rodenbach, town of Erlensee
• in the south-east: the municipality of Kahl am Main (in the Bavarian district of Aschaffenburg)
• in the south: municipalities of Großkrotzenburg and Hainburg, town of Obertshausen (the latter two in the district of Offenbach)
• in the west: the town of Mühlheim am Main (district of Offenbach) and Maintal

City breakdown

Hanau is divided into ten districts. The districts are in turn divided into boroughs (number in parentheses). The districts are:

• Downtown (9)
• Northwest (10)
• Southeast (9)
• Lamboy (9)
• Steinheim (8)
• Klein-Auheim (6)
• Großauheim (9)
• Wolfgang (5)
• Middle beeches (5)
• Kesselstadt (8)

Confession statistics

 Source: Historical Local Encyclopedia

On 31 December 2003, 27,492 Hanau residents belonged to the Roman Catholic Church and 24,410 to the Protestant Church. Eight years later, on 31 December 2011, significantly fewer, namely 23,885 Hanauer belonged to the Roman Catholic Church and 20,499 to the Protestant Church, Others were 45,000. Of the residents in 2011, 22.9% were Protestant (previous year 23.4%), 26.7% Catholic (previous year 27.1%) and 50.3% (previous year 49.5%) were non-denominational or had another religion.

Christianity

Hanau on the right bank of the Main (the core city and most of the districts) belongs to the Protestant Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck or the diocese of Fulda, Hanau on the left bank of the Main (the districts of Steinheim and Klein-Auheim) belongs to the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau or the diocese of Mainz. In the Protestant Church, the four traditional Hanau parishes of Marienkirche, Johanneskirche, Christuskirche, and Kreuzkirche have been combined since 1 January 2014 to form the Protestant City Church Parish of Hanau in the Hanau Church District, one of the strongest parishes within the Protestant Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck. The Catholic Church continues to run four separate parishes in Hanau, which are combined in the Pastoralverbund Unsere Liebe Frau Hanau in the Hanau Deanery. The individual districts have for the most part their own parishes and parishes.

In addition, there is another Christian congregation in Hanau, the Walloon-Dutch congregation, which is an independent member of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe.

Islam

There are several mosques of different orientation in Hanau:

• Bosnian-Islamic Community Hanau
• DITIB Merkez Mosque, Turkish
• Hanau Mosque, Turkish
• Salahaddin Mosque Kurdistan, Kurdish
• Millî-Görüş Mosque Hanau, Turkish
• Omar-ibn-al-Chattab Mosque, Arabic
• Badr Mosque, Arabic
• Bait-ul-Wahid Mosque of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Hanau
• Islamic Information and Meeting Centre, German
• Alevi community

Judaism

Since a few years there is again a Jewish community in Hanau. The first Jewish community had been murdered in the Middle Ages by the plague pogrom in 1344. From 1603 Jews settled again parallel with the Huguenots. The building site was the Getto, today Nordstraße (Hanau). On December 28, 1605, Count Philipp Ludwig II of Hanau-Münzenberg issued a privilege for this, the so-called "Judenstättigkeit". The new community was directly subordinate to the count's administration, not to one of the two city administrations of the old or new city of Hanau, even though its inhabitants had to pay a poll tax in relation to the old city. The synagogue was built in the courtyard of the present property in Nordstraße. The street was closable at both ends by gates. On Sundays the Jews were not allowed to leave the ghetto. The community house of the Jewish community of Hanau stood in Nürnberger Straße. This was acquired by the community after the Hanau Ghetto had been opened by Napoleon Bonaparte at the beginning of the 19th century. The Jewish community school had been located here since 1890. After the National Socialists of Hanau had set fire to the synagogue and bricked it up in the course of the November Pogrom on November 9, 1938, the remaining congregation held its services in the community hall before the last 75 Hanau Jews were deported to concentration and extermination camps in 1942. Only so-called half-Jews and Jews who were married to so-called Aryans remained. They were deported to Theresienstadt in February 1945 and most of them managed to survive.