Guided tours of the town
Guided tours of the historic town center "Alter Flecken", the historic church and the Kurpark with its famous photo view are offered by Freudenberg WIRKT e.V..
History of the town
Freudenberg Castle (called Schloss) was first mentioned in 1389. The remains of an outbuilding were found during construction work in 2002. To the east of the castle, a small castle settlement was built on a terrace within the walls. In 1456, the inhabitants were granted the rights of a town (town-like rights such as freedom of service and market rights) by the sovereign of the time.
The inhabitants of Freudenberg were obliged to defend the castle. Freudenberg was located on the Brüderstraße, an important trade route from Cologne to Marburg. Nevertheless, it remained an agricultural town, i.e. a place where the citizens were still dependent on their own agricultural activities.
In 1540, a fire destroyed the town of Freudenberg. This caused considerable damage, but a castle and the village of Freudenberg were rebuilt. In order to protect the castle, Count Wilhelm der Reiche von Nassau ordered the rebuilding of the village of Freudenberg at a new location outside the castle walls, on the hillside of the Schlossberg. The reconstruction also created the opportunity to expand the existing town. This resulted in the characteristic street pattern along the contour lines, consisting of Marktstraße, Mittelstraße, Unterstraße and Poststraße.
The houses were built with gables facing the streets. To improve the water supply, a so-called running pipeline was laid in the village. The construction of public wells, called "Groben", was also intended to contribute to fire safety. A wall was built and access to the town was secured by four gates. 1585 saw the creation of the parish of Freudenberg, which was expanded in 597 to include several neighboring villages. Due to the resulting increase in the number of parishioners, a new Protestant church was built in the years 1601-1606 above the village near Freudenberg Castle.
On August 9, 1666, lightning caused another fire in the town. As the townspeople were out in the fields and in the surrounding woods, the so-called Haubergen, during the storm, there was no personal injury. However, with the exception of one building, all the houses and the castle were destroyed by the fire. The reconstruction of the town, which began immediately after the fire, was ordered by the then sovereign Prince Johann Moritz von Nassau according to a uniform plan. The previous street pattern and the surviving foundation walls and vaults were adopted unchanged in the construction of the new houses.
The destroyed Freudenberg Castle was not rebuilt, as it would have been pointless to rebuild it due to the now newer military technology. The remains of the ruins were used as building material for the stone cellar vaults of the houses. For fire safety reasons, barns were now erected outside the town along the arterial roads.In the late Middle Ages and early modern period, Freudenberg was widely known for its iron smelting and steel production. After their decline in the middle of the 19th century, a leather industry developed. Industrial work changed the situation of many families. The need for both parents to work due to economic hardship made it necessary to look after the children. In 1866, some Freudenberg entrepreneurs therefore converted a former barn on the edge of the old village of Freudenberg and set up the Freudenberg Infant School there. It was one of the first institutions of its kind in Germany.
The historic town center survived the Second World War without major destruction. This makes Alter Flecken Freudenberg one of the few examples of a planned and uniformly half-timbered town from the 17th century that has retained its original building fabric to the present day. The cultural atlas of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia describes the "Alter Flecken Freudenberg" as an architectural monument "of international importance". The 86 buildings or halves of buildings have each been entered as individual monuments in the list of monuments of the town of Freudenberg. (Source text: www.historische-stadtkerne-nrw.de, Monument of the Month August 2006)
