Diez () is a town in Germany's Rhein-Lahn district in Rhineland-Palatinate, on the borders of Hesse. Diez is the administrative seat of the municipality of Diez.

Sitting on the confluence of the Lahn and Aar rivers, the town and the area have been inhabited by humans since the Stone Age. The old town is dominated by an eleventh-century castle, now a youth hostel and museum. It is the ancestral home of the House of Nassau-Dietz, which in 1815 became the Dutch royal family.

Geography

Geographical Location

The center of Diez is located four miles southwest of Limburg an der Lahn and 31 miles east of Koblenz. Diez, in Rheinland-Pfalz, and the adjoining city of Limburg, in the state of Hessen, are so close that in modern times they have increasingly merged into a single urban area, although they remain historically and politically distinct. The low rolling hills around Diez form part of the Rhenish Slate Mountains. The Lahn Valley serves as the boundary between the highlands north of the Westerwald with the forest of Taunus rising to the south. This valley, the Diezer gate, begins in the Limburg Lahn basin and rises towards Fachingen in the Lower Lahntal.

Geology The soils in the region Diez mainly belong to the brown or Luvisols. Diez itself is in a low area and traditionally has less snow than the surrounding uplands.

Prehistory The first evidence of human settlement in the Diez area dates from the Stone Age (v. 20000-12000 BC), as demonstrated by discoveries in the caves of Wildweiberlei (between Diez and Altendiez).caving Rhein-Lahn-Kreis history of Rhein-Lahn-Kreis Other prehistoric evidence includes burial mounds and pottery finds of Latène which would seem to indicate primitive cultures present during the Celtic period. The fertility of the Diez valley and its location at the confluence of the Lahn and the Aar clearly made it a natural place for primitive peoples to settle.

Medieval times

The name "Diez" itself seems to be a corruption of the Frankish Theodissa, which evolved to Diedisse, which mutated over time to Dietz and finally to today's spelling of Diez. The settlement was known as Theodissa by the year 790 A.D. according to the charter of Charlemagne where it is listed as property of the Abbey of Prüm. Other early mentions In the post-Carolingian period include a reference to one Diez in the area of Niederlahngau, ruled by the Conradines.

In 1073 that the Count of Die(t)z was mentioned for the first time in a deed of sale for goods in Bodenheim. Early references show that Heinrich II of Diez (1145–1189) accompanied Frederick Barbarossa on his Italian campaign where he was involved in diplomatic negotiations.To Count Henry II of Diez see: Italia et Germania. Liber amicorum Arnold Esch, ed. H. Keller and W. Paravicini / W. Schieder (Tübingen 2001) p. 425-438 His son Henry III was part of the regency council and circle of tutors of for Henry VII, which seems to indicate an atmosphere of growing influence for the town. The Graf Gerhard IV (1276–1308) founded in 1289 a collegiate church at the foot of the castle hill. The founding community came from the Abbey of Salz. The monastery was named Saint Mary's after the patron saint of the church. The town continued to prosper. By 1329, Ludwig of Bavaria bestowed the right of municipal law to Diez, and at that time the town was fortified with a wall with five entry gates.

The dynasty of the Counts of Diez ended in 1386 with Gerhard VII. His daughter Jutta of Diez had married Adolf I, Count of Nassau-Siegen in 1384 and inherited the county. Their only daughter, Jutta, married Godfrey VII, Lord of Eppstein-Münzenberg and inherited half of the county while the other half came to Adolf's brothers John II ʻwith the Helmetʼ, John III ʻthe Youngerʼ and Engelbert I of Nassau. The latter's descendants, the counts of Nassau-Siegen, acquired further parts of the Eppstein share in 1530, parts that had come down to the Counts of Katzenelnbogen and, after they died out in 1479, to Landgraf Heinrich III of Hesse. From 1564 on, Diez Castle was solely owned by Nassau-Siegen.

The modern era

William I, Count of Nassau-Siegen (1487–1559), called the rich, owned the counties of Nassau-Dillenburg, Nassau-Siegen, Nassau-Diez and Vianden. His eldest son William the Silent inherited the principality of Orange in Southern France from his cousin René of Chalon, as well as from his father the vast properties of the House of Nassau-Dillenburg in the Netherlands, which Engelbert I of Nassau had received by marriage in 1403. William the Silent originally served the Habsburgs as governor of the Spanish Netherlands, but later defected and became the main leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs that set off the Eighty Years' War and in 1581 resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces of which he became the stadtholder. He was the founder of the House of Orange-Nassau.

The early House of Orange-Nassau extinguished in the male line with William III of England (d. 1702), while the later House of Orange-Nassau (and the present Dutch royal family) descend in the male line from William I's younger brother John VI, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg, and subsequently from the latter's fifth son, Count Ernst Casimir of Nassau-Dietz. The Nassau-Dietz branch is also known as the "Friesian branch" because its ruling counts served as stadtholders in Friesland and Groningen at the same time.

In 1702, the Nassau-Dietz branch followed the House of Orange that had become extinct. The counts of Nassau-Dietz not only descended from William I., the Silent's, brother, but in female line also from himself, as William Frederick, Prince of Nassau-Dietz, had married Countess Albertine Agnes of Nassau, the fifth daughter of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange in 1652. She had Schloss Oranienstein built from 1672 as her new residence at Diez.

Their grandson Johan Willem Friso (1687–1711) became Stadholder in Friesland and Groningen, and in 1702 became the heir of William III of England and thus the founder of the younger House of Orange-Nassau and of the Dutch royal family. However, he had to split the Dutch properties with the King of Prussia who also descended from William I. Johan Willem Friso's son, William IV, Prince of Orange, inherited a number of Nassau territories besides his paternal Nassau-Dietz, namely Nassau-Hadamar in 1711, Nassau-Siegen in 1734, and Nassau-Dillenburg in 1739. In 1732, Frederick William I of Prussia left him his Dutch properties, including Huis ten Bosch palace and Het Loo Palace. William IV became stadtholder of the Netherlands in 1747 and reunited all of the Dutch and German possessions of his family (except for Nassau-Weilburg) in his hand, styling himself Prince of Orange and Nassau.

The county of Nassau-Diez, like other Nassau territories, was occupied by Napoleonic France in 1795 and in 1806 was annexed by the Duchy of Nassau (ruled by the branch of Nassau-Weilburg) on 16–17 September 1796 as a consequence of the 2nd Coalition war between Austrians and French in the area between Diez and Limburg. By the end of the 18th century the entire west bank of the Rhine went to France and in 1803 a new Principality of Orange was formed from other territories, however only to be divided between the Duchy of Nassau and the Grand Duchy of Berg in 1806. William I of the Netherlands recovered his former counties in 1813, but gave Nassau-Diez, Nassau-Hadamar und Nassau-Dillenburg to Prussia, in exchange with Luxembourg, two years later. Prussia kept only Nassau-Siegen and soon ceded the other counties to the Duchy of Nassau which was however annexed by Prussia, including Diez, after the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, for Nassau's support of Austria.

As a result of the Prussian Administrative Reforms of 1867 the Lahn district was created with the county seat of Diez. It Initially belonged to the lower Lahn Limburg circle. The episcopal city became, however, in 1886 the seat of the newly established district of Limburg. In the course of municipal reform in 1969 Loreley circle the lower Lahn (located in St. Goarshausen) Rhein-Lahn-Kreis merged with the spa town of Bad Ems, which became the country seat. Diez was no longer even a regional administrative capital.

In World War II, 16 young Luxembourgers were executed in 1944Text of Adolf Morland The execution is remembered in a memorial park with a memorial stone for the victims of Nazi tyranny.

A catastrophic flood which crested on 7 February 1984 led to millions of euros in losses in Diez.

Religions

Christianity

Roman Catholic Church The city of Diez, the Roman Catholic parish of the Sacred Heart in Diez and is associated with her to the Pastoral Area Diez, which in turn the district in the diocese of Limburg is incorporated.website of the Catholic parish of the Sacred Heart in Diez

Evangelical Church (EKHN) On the Protestant side, the main town of Diez collegiate church community and the district of the parish of St. Freiendiez James, each of the dean's office of the provost Diez South Nassau in the Evangelical Church in Hessen and Nassau (ECHN), belong.

Judaism Almost nothing remains of the Jewish presence in Diez despite the nearly-seven-hundred year span of continuous Jewish survival in this town, a history virtually obliterated during the Holocaust. The Jewish population of Diez in the Middle Ages can be traced back to around 1286 and 1303. Already, by 1337 and then again in 1348–49, the Jewish population suffered pogroms, giving early evidence of antisemitism in Diez. Nonetheless, a small Jewish population persisted throughout the centuries, although the maximum number of Jewish residents was likely reached in 1895, when 130 Jews resided in the city. Diez was also the seat of the district rabbinate at the end of the 18th century, then the seat of the Rabbi of Nassau-Orange. From 1860, it would be the Jewish community in Diez Rabbinatsbezirk Ems.information on the Jewish community and synagogue Diez

Diez hosted a German-Israelite children's home until its closure in 1935. A plaque on the Schlossberg (Castle Hill above the stairs) remembers the expulsion and deportation of Jewish children and their caregiver (s) on 20 August 1935.information on the sides of the Rhein-Lahn-Kreis

Diez's synagogue was desecrated in the November 1938 pogroms, when the interior was destroyed. The building was demolished after the war, in 1951. The Nazis also destroyed Diez's Jewish cemetery (built early 17th century). On this site now sits the tax office. A more recent Jewish Cemetery from the late 19th century survives and continues to overlook Diez from a hill above the town, all that remains of the Jewish history there.information on the Jewish cemeteries in Diez

Politics

City council

Seats in the local council:Der Landeswahlleiter Rheinland-Pfalz: Kommunalwahl 2014, Stadt- und Gemeinderatswahlen Year SPD CDU FDP FWG BfD WGR Total 2014 8 9 2 6 3 – 28 Seats 2009 7 7 3 6 5 – 28 Seats 2004 7 9 2 3 6 1 28 Seats FWG = Freie Wählergruppe Diez-Freiendiez e. V. BfD = Bürger für Diez e. V.

Sister City Twinned with Diez is the Saxon spa town of Bad Düben.

Arts and culture

Structures