Offenbach am Main

Offenbach am Main (, ) is a city in Hesse, Germany, on the left bank of the river Main. It borders Frankfurt and is part of the Frankfurt urban area and the larger Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area. It has a population of 138,335 (December 2018).

In the 20th century, the city's economy was built on machine-building, leather-making, typography and design, and the automobile and pharmaceutical industries.

History

The first documented reference to a suburb of Offenbach appears in 770. In a document of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II dating to 977 exists the first mention of the place of Offenbach. During the Middle Ages Offenbach passed through many hands. Only in 1486 could the Count Ludwig of Isenburg finally take control of city for his family, and 1556 Count Reinhard of Isenburg relocated his Residence to Offenbach, building a palace, the Isenburger Schloß (Isenburg Palace), which was completed in 1559. It was destroyed by fire in 1564 and rebuilt in 1578.

In 1635, Offenbach was given to the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt, but it was returned to the Isenburg-Birstein Count (later Prince) in 1642. It remained in that principality until 1815, when the Congress of Vienna gave the city to the Austrian Emperor, Francis I. A year later it was given to the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt.

Always very close to the city centre of Frankfurt, Offenbach was a popular location for business. The town has its own trade fair, and many companies have opened facilities here because there are fewer restrictions and no closed businesses. French Protestants (Huguenots) came in the 17th century and settled in Offenbach and contributed to making Offenbach a prosperous city, e.g., bringing knowledge of tobacco with them and turning Offenbach into a centre for rolling cigars. The town was more cosmopolitan than Frankfurt; famous people such as Goethe and Mozart visited it several times.

The Rumpenheim Palace and its park were a popular destination for monarchs in the 19th century. The city was thereafter ruled by Grand Dukes of Hesse and by Rhine until the monarchy was abolished in 1918. Offenbach became the center of the traditional design with figures such as the architect Hugo Eberhardt, the typographer Rudolf Koch, the bookbinder and designer Ignatz Wiemeler and Ernst Engel and the painter Karl Friedrich Lippmann.

During the Second World War, a third of the city was destroyed by Allied bombing, which claimed 467 lives. With the new district Lauterborn the city was expanded to the south in the 1960s. On the border with Frankfurt, the office district Kaiserlei was built. Offenbach is a so-called "Sozialer Brennpunkt" (deprived area) because of unemployment, poverty, gang related crime and migration.

Before its eradication in the Holocaust, the city had a Jewish population. Jews settled in the city as late as the late 16th century, and it is believed that out of the 871 residents of the town as of 1829, the 40 Jewish families accounted for nearly a quarter of the town's population. They also established their own cemetery.

Geography Subdivision The inner city area of Offenbach is quite large and consists of the historic center of the city and its expansions of the 1800s. Three formerly independent suburbs were incorporated in the first half of the 20th century: Bürgel being the first in 1908, then Bieber and Rumpenheim in 1938 and 1942.

South of the inner city area are the suburbs Lauterborn, Rosenhöhe and Tempelsee. Kaiserlei is a commercial district in the far west of the city bordering Frankfurt. In the west Waldheim is a residential neighborhood on the city limits with Mühlheim am Main. In 2010 the eastern part of the city center was officially named Mathildenviertel, as the area was already unofficially called by the locals.

Unlike most larger cities in Germany, Offenbach was not completely divided into districts. Only the nine neighborhoods mentioned above were officially districts, leaving the largest parts of the city officially unnamed. Although specific names for neighborhoods and areas were already in use among the locals and residents.

In June 2019, the city council approved a new act that subdivides the city's area entirely into 21 districts. The nine existing districts largely remained the same, most of them were even expanded. The new districts were laid out after the already by locals commonly known neighborhoods, such as the Westend, the Nordend or Buchhügel. A completely new name was only needed to be found for one neighborhood south of the city center, which never had commonly used name before: Lindenfeld. The name derived from an old name of a land lot in this area, when it was still fields in agricultural use prior to the 1800s.

As of July 2019, there are the following 21 districts:

Bieber Bieberer Berg Buchhügel Buchrain Bürgel Carl-Ulrich-Siedlung Hafen Kaiserlei Lauterborn Lindenfeld Mathildenviertel Musikerviertel Nordend Offenbach-Ost Rosenhöhe Rumpenheim Senefelderquartier Tempelsee Waldheim Westend Zentrum

Climate Offenbach experiences a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb). Due to its location in the Upper Rhine Plain, the whole Rhein-Main Metropolitan Region generally experiences one of the warmest climates in Germany, making it possible to grow plants such as vineyards, palm trees and olive trees.

Governance Mayor

The current mayor of Offenbach is Felix Schwenke of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He was first elected in 2017, and was re-elected for a second term in 2023.Amtsinhaber Schwenke siegt schon im ersten Wahlgang deutlich, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 September 2023.

The following is a list of mayors since 1824:

1824–1826: Peter Georg d'Orville 1826–1834: Heinrich Philipp Schwaner 1834–1837: Peter Georg d'Orville 1837–1849: Jonas Budden 1849–1859: Friedrich August Schäfer 1859–1867: Johann Heinrich Dick 1867–1874: Johann Martin Hirschmann 1874–1882: Hermann Stölting 1883–1907: Wilhelm Brink 1907–1919: Andreas Dullo 1919–1933: Max Granzin 1947–1949: Johannes Rebholz 1950–1957: Hans Klüber 1957–1974: Georg Dietrich 1974–1980: Walter Buckpesch 1980–1986: Walter Suermann 1986–1994: Wolfgang Reuter 1994–2006: Gerhard Grandtke 2006–2018: Horst Schneider 2018–: Felix Schwenke

City council The Offenbach city council (Stadtverordnetenversammlung) governs the city alongside the mayor. The most recent city council election was held on 15 March 2026, and the results were as follows:

! colspan=2| Party ! Lead candidate ! Votes ! % ! +/- ! Seats ! +/- |- | bgcolor=| | align=left| Social Democratic Party (SPD) | align=left| Helena Wolf | 721,116 | 35.0 | 6.6 | 25 | 5 |- | bgcolor=| | align=left| Christian Democratic Union (CDU) | align=left| Andreas Bruszynski | 384,360 | 18.7 | 0.6 | 13 | ±0 |- | bgcolor=| | align=left| Alliance 90/The Greens (Grüne) | align=left| Sabrina Engelmann | 268,672 | 13.0 | 5.1 | 9 | 4 |- | bgcolor=| | align=left| The Left () | align=left| Gizem Erinç-Çiftçi | 248,143 | 12.1 | 3.5 | 9 | 3 |- | bgcolor=| | align=left| Free Democratic Party (FDP) | align=left| Anja Schwalbach | 114,398 | 5.6 | 0.7 | 4 | ±0 |- | bgcolor=| | align=left| Free Voters (FW) | align=left| Dennis Lehmann | 70,979 | 3.4 | 0.8 | 3 | ±0 |- | bgcolor=| | align=left| Alternative for Germany (AfD) | align=left| Olaf Schwaier | 69,843 | 3.4 | 3.9 | 2 | 3 |- | bgcolor=| | align=left| Human Environment Animal Protection Party (Tierschutzpartei) | align=left| Miriam Schönauer | 45,830 | 2.2 | New | 2 | New |- | bgcolor=| | align=left| Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) | align=left| Jassin Khatem | 39,484 | 1.9 | New | 1 | New

| align=left| Alliance for Innovation and Justice (BIG) | align=left| Burhan Denizli | 38,421 | 1.9 | 0.6 | 1 | ±0

Twin towns – sister cities

Offenbach am Main is twinned with:

Puteaux, France (1955) Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg (1956) Mödling, Austria (1956) Saint-Gilles, Belgium (1956) Tower Hamlets, England, United Kingdom (1956) Zemun (Belgrade), Serbia (1956) Velletri, Italy (1957) Rivas, Nicaragua (1986) Kawagoe, Japan (1983) Oryol, Russia (1988)

Yangzhou, China (1997)

Demographics Offenbach has a large non-German population. In 2016, foreign nationals made up 37% of the population. The largest communities are, in that order, from Turkey, Greece, Romania, Poland and Italy.

As of 2019, residents with a migration background enumerated 88,608, or 63.4% of the population, while Germans without a migration background enumerated 51,241 residents. Only one-in-three, 29.5%, of foreign residents originated from Europe, particularly from countries like Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Croatia and Italy.

According to census data, Offenbach and Duisburg had the highest share of Muslim migrants of all German districts in 2011. Muslims were between 14% and 17% of the city's population as of 2011. Turks made up 11% of the city's population in 2019.

Population history

Until the end of the 17th century, Offenbach remained a small town with less than a thousand inhabitants. With the coming into power of the count Johann Philipp in 1685, the city began to develop and the population rose steadily. In the 19th century the city became industrialized and the population increased even tenfold. Offenbach is one of the German cities where Germans without migrant background make up a minority of the population. As of 31 December 2012, approx. 44.3% of residents or 55,047 people had no foreign background. In contrast to that, there were 55.7% or 69,214 people with at least one non-German grandparent. The largest of those groups are:

+Largest groups of foreign residents by 2022 Country Population6,1795,6315,4165,1804,9844,1124,0523,9193,4693,1272,7152,3801,8071,3861,234

Year Population1540 4801685 6001718 1,5001800 5,0001816 6,2101825 7,1471828 7,4661830 7,4981 December 1834 9,4331 December 1840 9,5973 December 1843 9,8833 December 1846 11,5653 December 1852 11,0873 December 1855 13,7243 December 1861 16,7083 December 1864 19,390

Year Population3 December 1867 20,3221 December 1871 22,6891 December 1875 26,0121 December 1880 28,5971 December 1885 31,7041 December 1890 35,0642 December 1895 39,3881 December 1900 50,4681 December 1905 59,7651 December 1910 75,5831 December 1916 67,1975 December 1917 67,4838 October 1919 75,38016 June 1925 79,36216 June 1933 81,32917 May 1939 85,140

Year Population31 December 1945 70,60029 October 1946 75,47913 September 1950 89,03025 September 1956 104,2836 June 1961 116,19531 December 1965 117,89327 May 1970 117,30631 December 1975 115,25131 December 1980 110,99331 December 1985 107,09025 May 1987 111,38631 December 1990 114,99231 December 1995 116,53331 December 2000 117,53530 September 2005 119,83331 March 2007 117,224

Year Population31 December 2008 118,10331 December 2009 117,71831 December 2010 119,73431 December 2011 121,97031 December 2012 116,94531 December 2013 126,93431 December 2014 129,97431 December 2015 132,06831 December 2016 133,82731 December 2017 135,69231 December 2018 137,47731 December 2019 139,84931 December 2020 140,49631 December 2021 140,85731 December 2022 143,57831 December 2023 144,96231 December 2024 145,666

Economy

Offenbach am Main

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