Bergen-Enkheim

The district covers about 4.8 square miles and holds around 18,100 people, and none of that size has cost it its village character. Both halves were strategically important in the early Middle Ages and belonged to the county of Hanau-Münzenberg. Bergen appears in the records in 907 and had its own parish by 1151. The local noble family, the Schelme von Bergen, held the moated Gruckau castle, still known as the Schelmenburg, which today houses the youth music school.

Bergen never held town rights, but a wall protected it anyway, and one piece of that wall survives as the Weißer Turm, the White Tower. More impressive is the old town hall, built between 1300 and 1350 in Gothic style. Enkheim was settled in Roman times but first named in 806. The two villages were joined administratively in 1327, and Bergen-Enkheim finally received town rights only in 1968, shortly before Frankfurt took it in.

Before the merger the little town negotiated hard and kept several privileges, including its own budget for the local council. The best known is the Stadtschreiber von Bergen, a literary prize awarded since 1974 and worth 20,000 euros. The winner also gets to live free for a year in the Stadtschreiberhaus, a house in a quiet corner of the district with a panoramic view across the Rhine-Main region. On a clear day it reaches to the Spessart hills and the Odenwald, and most prize winners take the offer.

The landscape here is the transition from the Main valley into the gentle hills to the north. It begins with the Berger Rücken ridge, runs northeast and eventually opens into the Wetterau plain, which is why this corner of Frankfurt feels less like a city district and more like the countryside that happens to start at the tram stop.