View from the upper town (Oberstadt) down into the Eder valley"Neuburg" (New Castle) (de:Neuburg (Battenberg)), sometimes also called "Schloss Battenberg" (Battenberg Palace)View from the ruin of the Kellerburg (de:Kellerburg)Church of Battenberg-Frohnhausen (de:Frohnhausen (Battenberg))
Geography
Location
The centre of Battenberg lies in the Ederbergland, or Eder Highland, to which the Burgwald abutting the town to the east also belongs, on the southern edge of the Sauerland and the Rothaargebirge. Lying between 320 and 650 m above sea level, the town is also crossed by the river Eder.
Right next to Battenberg proper on the western side of the Eder is Battenfeld (de:Battenfeld), a district of the neighbouring town of Allendorf (Eder).
The course of the Eder. Battenberg (not on the map) is located approximately in the middle between Frankenberg (Eder) and the Sackpfeife mountain. The Eder flows into the Fulda near Edermünde-Grifte (de:Grifte). Kassel is visible in the northeast, on the Fulda, and Marburg in the south, on the Lahn.
In 778 fighting took place near Laisa and Battenfeld as part of Charlemagne's Saxon Wars. A branch of the Wittgenstein noble family began calling themselves the "Counts of Battenberg" in 1214 – compare Sayn-Wittgenstein. In 1232, Battenberg had its first documentary mention, and two years later it was granted town rights. The early-Gothic church dates from 1249. In 1297, the town's ownership was transferred to the Archbishops of Mainz. In 1464, the Amt of Battenberg passed to Hesse. In 1932, Battenberg became part of the Frankenberg/Eder district. As part of municipal reform in 1974, the districts of Frankenberg (including Battenberg) and Waldeck united to form the district of Waldeck-Frankenberg.
The dynasty of the counts of Battenberg ceased to exist in 1314, their castle was demolished throughout the following centuries. When Prince Alexander von Hessen-Darmstadt, the brother of the grand duke of Hesse, married Julia von Hauke, the orphaned daughter of the former Deputy Minister of War[3] of Congress Poland, their liaison was not considered befitting of his rank. Therefore her brother-in-law made her countess of Battenberg in 1851 and princess of Battenberg in 1858. With her husband, who agreed to carry the same title and name, she lived near Seeheim-Jugenheim at "Schloss Heiligenberg", a re-modelled manor. Her sons Ludwig Alexander and Heinrich Moritz both served the British empire, their families anglicized their name to Mountbatten (Berg means "mountain, hill" in German) in 1917.
Population development
31 December 1988
: 5,099 inhabitants
31 December 1991
: 5,602 inhabitants
31 December 1995
: 5,693 inhabitants
31 December 2000
: 5,752 inhabitants
31 December 2004
: 5,701 inhabitants
Politics
Town council
Municipal elections held on 6 March 2016 apportioned the town council's 31 seats thus:
Note: Bürgerlisten are "citizens' lists", not actual political parties.
Coat of arms
Battenberg's civic coat of arms might heraldically be described thus: Per pale sable and argent.
The tinctures come from the arms borne by the town's old overlords, the Counts of Battenberg(a branch of the Counts of Wittgenstein). Battenberg's arms have their roots in the 13th century, putting them among Hesse's oldest municipal coats of arms.
Various other charges have appeared in the arms over the centuries, however. Sometimes it was a tower, the Count of Battenberg and the Archbishop of Mainz, the Archbishop by himself, or the Wheel of Mainz. One version even showed the same simple composition seen here, but with gules (red) instead of sable (black). This would have made the arms identical to those currently borne by Buchloe in Bavaria.[1]
^Danielewicz, Jerzy (1954). Generał Ignacy Pradzyński, 1792-1850 [Generał Ignacy Pradzyński, 1792-1850] (in Polish). Warsaw: Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej. p. 34. Retrieved 21 March 2010. Zastępca ministra wojny gen. Maurycy hr. Hauke[...] [Translation: The Deputy Minister of War, General Count Maurice Hauke...
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