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76-690: Idstein lies in the Taunus mountain range, about 16 kilometres (10 miles) north of Wiesbaden . The town's landmark is the Hexenturm ( Witches' Tower ), a 12th-century bergfried and part of Idstein Castle . The Old Town is found between the two brooks running through town, the Wolfsbach in the east and the Wörsbach in the west, on a high ridge reaching up to 400 m (1,300 ft) above sea level . This comes to an end in

152-758: A geographical region in Iceland but the name lives on in the names of two public libraries in Iceland that were established during the amt era. The Amts libraries in Akureyri and Stykkishólmur which were established as the designated archives for the North and East Amt and the West Amt respectively. Ambacht can be seen as the Dutch equivalent to amt . Ambachten existed in Holland , Zeeland and Flanders up to about 1800. From 1662 to 1919,

228-639: A great number of commuters put the great shopping centres in Limburg an der Lahn and Wiesbaden as well as those throughout the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region in direct competition with the local retailers. In the course of the 2002 Hessentag , many great building (and sometimes conversion) projects were undertaken. The building of the connecting road Tiergartenspange reduced traffic in the Old Town. Three new building areas have been developed: In 2008,

304-770: A residence town, although it became the seat of the Nassau Archives and of an Oberamt . Nassau-Usingen was united with Nassau-Weilburg in 1806 into the Duchy of Nassau , becoming a member of the Confederation of the Rhine . After the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, Prussia annexed the Duchy as the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau . The residential palace from the 17th century is used by

380-451: A round castle wall embattled with two portcullises open, the wall enclosing two towers, the whole Or, with peaked roofs gules, between the portcullises an inescutcheon azure with a lion rampant Or armed and langued gules among six billets Or. The inescutcheon is the arms borne by the House of Nassau . The town's flag also bears this design set against orange and blue, Nassau's colours. Idstein

456-629: A significant contribution to Wiesbaden's water supply. The largest unit of the Taunus in terms of area, the Hintertaunus unit, is mainly composed of the black rock series of the Hunsrück slate and the Singhofen layers of the lower Ems tier, often greywacke-like sandstones as well as siltstone and claystone . Younger rocks are only exposed here in small occurrences near Usingen and on the very eastern edge of

532-849: A supra-municipality or "municipal confederation". Normally, it consists of very small municipalities ( Gemeinden , plural of Gemeinde ). Larger municipalities do not belong to an Amt and are called amtsfreie Gemeinden (independent municipalities); some of these municipalities might also not be governed by or linked with a Kreis (district) and are called kreisfreie Gemeinden , and when they do also not belong to any other Land they are also called Stadtstaaten (plural of Stadtstaat ), i.e. city-states ( Berlin and Hamburg ). These large municipalities (cities, in German Städte , plural of Stadt ) may be further divided into local offices named Ortsämter (plural of Ortsamt ), each of them possibly grouping several suburbs (or small townships in rural areas) of

608-494: Is twinned with: Idstein has an interchange on the Autobahn A ;3 north of Wiesbaden between Niedernhausen and Bad Camberg , and a railway station with direct connections to Limburg an der Lahn , Frankfurt am Main and Wiesbaden . The building of a bypass, Bundesstraße 275, lessened the traffic in the historic Old Town. However, the traffic volume in the town core is still very high. At intersections in

684-692: Is a high-altitude landscape with dense forest cover, a harsher climate and poor soil in the Pferdskopf-Bergland ; but also the Usinger basin , a gently undulating, open basin landscape with fertile soil and a balanced climate. The Hintertaunus is divided into the Western and Eastern Hintertaunus by the Idstein Depression, which developed in the Idstein – Bad Camberg area. The Idstein depression widens towards

760-536: Is a mountain range in Hesse , Germany , located north west of Frankfurt and north of Wiesbaden . The tallest peak in the range is Großer Feldberg at 878 m; other notable peaks are Kleiner Feldberg (825 m) and Altkönig (798 m). The Taunus range spans the districts of Hochtaunuskreis , Main-Taunus-Kreis , Rheingau-Taunus , Limburg-Weilburg , and Rhein-Lahn . The range is known for its geothermal springs and mineral waters that formerly attracted members of

836-592: Is a type of administrative division governing a group of municipalities, today only in Germany, but formerly also common in other countries of Northern Europe . Its size and functions differ by country and the term is roughly equivalent to a British or U.S. county . The Amt (plural: Ämter ) is unique to the German Bundesländer (federal states) of Schleswig-Holstein , Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg . Other German states had this division in

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912-470: Is believed that the crags on which the palace is built were already built up in the 11th century. A bridged gap in the crags separates it from the old castle area from the 11th century; through this gap today runs an important road. During the time when the last Idstein prince, Georg August Samuel von Nassau-Idstein (1665–1721), was ruling, the building was given its interior design under Maximilian von Welsch 's guidance. The now partly missing ceiling stucco

988-656: Is composed of pure, mostly black mudstone and embedded sandstone banks and occurs in stratigraphically different positions in the Upper Siegen and in the Ems. The bulk of the Hunsrück Slate is attributed to the Elm Lower Stage . It is known for its exceptionally well-preserved fossils and is locally well suited for use as roofing slate . . In the western Hintertaunus, the almost sand-free Hunsrück slate can be easily separated from

1064-425: Is divided according to morphology , geological structure , climate and partly by the prevailing vegetation into sub-landscapes that are more uniform in themselves. The cultural landscape, i.e. the natural landscape shaped by man, shows the following structure in terms of land use, the location and distribution of settlements and the course of traffic routes. In the south are the more wooded and higher parts, namely

1140-687: Is geologically divided from south to north into the units Vordertaunus unit (also northern phyllite zone or metamorphic southern edge zone), Taunus ridge unit and Hintertaunus unit. Finally, south of the Lahn, the Taunus natural region has a share in the Lahn trough and the Giessen nappe . The Vordertaunus Unit is a narrow zone of weakly metamorphic rocks such as phyllites, greenschists and sericite gneisses .[5] They are appear greenish through chlorite and epidote . The starting products of these rocks were mudstones and volcanic rocks . The rock strata occurring in

1216-541: Is used to offer decentralized services of the municipality within local administrative offices for the residents in neighbouring suburbs. The Ortsteil itself may also be confusingly translated as a "municipality", but it is incorrect because it belongs to a city which is the only effective municipality ( Gemeinde ). The amt (plural, amter ; translated as "county") was an administrative unit of Denmark (and, historically, of Denmark-Norway ). The counties were established by royal decree in 1662 as replacements for

1292-731: The Autobahn A 3 and the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line (in the Idsteintunnel along the slope). On the other side of the Rügert are the constituent communities of Oberauroff and Niederauroff in the valley of the Auroffer Bach. North of Idstein, the Wörsbach valley reaches into the Goldener Grund , fertile cropland that stretches all the way to the Lahn valley. Idstein borders in

1368-665: The Bunte Schiefer are greenish-grey or strikingly violet in color due to finely distributed hematite . Agnaths (jawless fish) found in the Bunte Schist are from the Gedinne (Lochkovian); just like the formation of the rock , they show a deposit of the colorful slate in rivers or lakes . The rocks of the colorful slate are found on the Großer Feldberg , where they were mined in tunnels to extract roofing slate (slate tunnel below

1444-566: The Dutch school of Rubens . Several well known works by Rubens form the basis of scenes from the life of Christ on the walls and ceiling; for example The Wedding at Cana on the south wall is largely based on Rubens's painting The Feast of Herod which hangs today in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh . The church's name refers to the church union declared in Idstein in 1817 whereby

1520-701: The Eschbacher cliffs near Usingen are such a quartz vein ( Härtling ) exposed by erosion . This vein, also known as the Usinger quartz vein, can be traced over a length of about 12 km, making it one of the longest German quartz veins after the Bavarian Pfahl. The northwestern part of the Eastern Hintertaunus (Langhecker Lahntaunus) , which leads to the Weilburger Lahntalgebiet, belongs geologically to

1596-580: The Lahnmulde and is rich in magmatism . of mineral resources from the Middle Devonian such as iron in the form of red ironstone with up to 50 percent iron content, or river ironstone with up to 35% iron, as well as silver ore , roofing slate and diabase . The ore was mined in numerous mines here, as in the Montan area Lahn-Dill area ; some have been converted to visitor mines. The Mining that operated from

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1672-647: The Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen (Hesse State Welfare Federation) with its SPZ ( paediatric centre) Kalmenhof, an institution aiding youths and people with handicaps. As an historically important and modern middle centre and the heart of the Idsteiner Land , Idstein has at its disposal a multi-faceted retail structure. Its location on the Frankfurt/Wiesbaden – Limburg railway and the A ;3 and

1748-525: The Pestalozzischule as a school building. It was expanded with a new building below the palace. From the late 18th century to the mid 20th, Idstein was the centre of an important leather industry. During the Second World War , many women became forced labour for work in the tanneries. In 1959, the dominant tannery in the middle of the town core was shut down for economic reasons. The lands right at

1824-692: The Red Cross ). Quartzite sandstones are embedded in them, from which the Brunhildis rock on the summit of the Großer Feldberg consists. The Hermeskeil layers are exposed below the Großer Feldberg and consist of mudstones, weakly consolidated micaceous sandstones and quartzites of the Lower Siegen (Lower Pragian). They are covered by several 100 m thick layers of Taunus quartzite (Middle Siegen, Pragian/Emsian). The very weather-resistant rock forms many summits of

1900-624: The Reformed and Lutheran churches in the Duchy of Nassau united to the Protestant Church in Nassau , today the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau . The Renaissance -style Schloss was built in 1614–1634 by Jost and Henrich Heer (Höer) for Count Ludwig (d. 1627) and his son Count Johann (d. 1677) by incorporating older building materials. It stands on a craggy massif between the town's two brooks. It

1976-622: The Rheingau and the Main-Taunus foothills form natural borders. The last three landscapes are part of the Rhine-Main lowlands. On the southern edge are the towns of Rüdesheim am Rhein , Wiesbaden , Hofheim am Taunus and Bad Homburg vor der Höhe at the junctions with the valleys of the Upper Rhine and Main ; the towns of Bad Nauheim and Butzbach are on the eastern edge at the junction with

2052-798: The Upper Ordovician and Silurian using uranium-lead dating . They are overlaid by the Eppstein slates of the Silurian and the Lower Devonian Lorsbach slates . At the very southern edge and in a small deposit near Mühlbach in the east of the Vordertaunus unit, limestones are exposed that are attributed to the Middle Devonian . To the north of the Vordertaunus is the Taunuscrest, also known as

2128-623: The Vordertaunus (naturally also called Vortaunus) and the Hohe Taunus (around Taunus main ridge ), where in the Feldberg massif the highest heights not only of the Taunus but of the entire Rhenish Slate Mountains are reached. That is why the climate here is rougher than in the upstream landscape areas - it is colder on average, it rains and, in particular, it snows more. The turbulent relief offers little space for settlements and agricultural use. On

2204-598: The Wetterau ; in the north on the Lahn the towns of Wetzlar , Weilburg , Bad Ems and Lahnstein border on the Hintertaunus ; in the west in the Middle Rhine is, among other things, Lorch at the seam (each in an anti-clockwise direction). The Taunus is a heterogeneous landscape area, but it is usually quite distinct from the surrounding landscapes and is classified as a main natural area unit group. The natural landscape

2280-425: The amter were composed of a number of municipalities ( kommuner ). The reform granted the counties wider areas of responsibility, most notably running the national health service and the gymnasium secondary schools. The municipal reform of 1 January 2007 abolished the amter and replaced them with five administrative regions , now mainly charged with running the national health service. In contrast to

2356-416: The amter , the regions hold no authority to levy taxes. The reform re-delegated all other areas of responsibility to either the municipalities or the state. At the same time, smaller municipalities were merged into larger units, cutting the number of municipalities from 270 to 98. In Germany an Amt was a medieval administrative district covering a manorial estate or the land owned by a castle or village. It

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2432-411: The 17th to the 20th centuries has now ceased. In the eastern Taunus between Idstein in the west and Usingen in the east, from the late Middle Ages to the early 20th century, there was a large number of pits in which there was mining of varying intensity on post-varistic, i.e. only after the varistic orogeny ore veins formed in the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous. The last active lead and silver ore mine,

2508-615: The European aristocracy to its spa towns . The car line Ford Taunus is named after it. The Taunus is the southeastern part of the Rhenish Slate Mountains . The low mountain range is about 75 km long from southwest to northeast and about 35 km wide across it from northwest to southeast,it covers an area of about 2700 km . In the west, the Upper Middle Rhine Valley borders the Taunus and separates it from

2584-678: The Frankfurt/Wiesbaden–Niedernhausen–Limburg line run into the evening. In Niedernhausen there is also a transfer point with S-Bahn line S2 towards Dietzenbach through the Frankfurt and Offenbach S-Bahn tunnels. The Idstein town bus ( de Idstaaner ) serves 3 lines: The town bus is run by ORN ( Omnibusverkehr Rhein-Nahe ). It uses mainly Midi low-floor buses built by MAN . Most journeys made by bus 223 are arranged in response to demand . Moreover, many regional buses also serve Idstein, linking important areas not served by

2660-594: The Giessen Nappe, which lies flat today, on rocks from the Hintertaunus and the Lahn Mulde is of even greater extent. Their rocks are not otherwise found in the Taunus, they must have been deposited south of the Vortaunus and were thrust at least 25 km over the Taunus and Hintertaunus, possibly significantly more due to large-scale considerations. In addition to the deformation of the layers, these are clearly metamorphic in

2736-427: The Heftrich pit with the Hannibal and Hasdrubal tunnels, was closed around 1924. Exploration drilling carried out by the Hessian State Office for Soil Research in the 1980s no longer provided any indication of deposits worth building. Due to its hardness, the Taunus quartzite was often mined in the past, currently only one quarry near Köppern is in operation. Some limestone and diabase quarries are still in operation in

2812-522: The High Taunus, which mainly consists of Lower Devonian clastic rocks . It is composed of the stratigraphic sequences Graue Phyllite , Bunte Schiefer , Hermeskeilschichten and Taunusquarzit . The Lower Devonian sub-layer only appears in two small outcrops, metavolcanites of the type found in the Anterior Taunus rocks. The Graue Phyllite consist of slates and sandstones . They contain impressions of Upper Silurian brachiopods and corals and were deposited in shallow water . The clay slates of

2888-432: The Hintertaunus in the Oberkleen area. The geology of the Hintertaunus is not as well known as that of the Vortaunus and Hochtaunus in the south or that of the Lahnmulde in the north due to the often monotonous sandy and slate rocks that form only a few continuous reference horizons and provide hardly any index fossils . The Hunsrück slate refers to a rock facies occurring mainly in the Hunsrück and Hintertaunus, which

2964-417: The Lahn valley towards the Limburg Basin and is also known as the Goldener Grund in the northern area, probably because agriculture found more favorable conditions here. The relief is gently undulating, the soil is fertile due to the high proportion of loess and the climate is milder due to the basin location. The Taunus (main unit group 30) is subdivided in terms of natural space as follows: The Taunus

3040-412: The Lahnmulde and Dillmulde typical rocks of this time such as Schalstein , Massenkalk and deck diabase absent here. The greywacke occurring here and at other places in the eastern Hintertaunus cannot or can hardly be distinguished from the Carboniferous Kulm greywacke and are considered by some scientists to be the remains of the ' Viewed 'Giessen Ceiling . The strata of the Taunus were formed in

3116-408: The Nassau-Viertel for €19,000,000. The town is subsidizing the more than €2,500,000 plot on Bundesstraße 275 and the yearly €500,000 operating costs. For the manufacturer, it is, with its cupola, biomass power plant and natural bathing pond a demonstration project near Frankfurt Airport . The Unionskirche , whose outer appearance is quite plain, holds within its splendour. The building history of

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3192-416: The Old Town's north end with the castle and palace crags, behind which the two brooks run together. On the Wolfsbach, remnants of the like-named, now forsaken village can still be made out. The estate agent Gassenbach in the town's south goes back to an old settlement called Gassenbach; for the last few years, it has belonged to the Domäne Mechtildshausen , an organic farming operation. West of town, beyond

3268-419: The Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis). The town is made up of a main town bearing the same name as the whole and eleven other, formerly independent villages: Until 1977, Idstein belonged to the Untertaunuskreis (district seat, Bad Schwalbach ), which in the course of district reform was merged with the Rheingau-Kreis into the new Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis . With about 25,700 inhabitants, Idstein is the second biggest town in

3344-472: The Taunus range are Bad Schwalbach (formerly Langenschwalbach ) mentioned in documents dating back to the 16th century, Bad Ems , one of the most reputed therapeutic spas in Germany since the 17th century, as well as Bad Weilbach , where a spring reached wide fame for some time. By the 19th century the most famous spa towns in the area were Wiesbaden , Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Bad Nauheim , and Bad Soden am Taunus . Amt (country subdivision) Amt

3420-460: The Taunus ridge ( Altkönig , Kleiner Feldberg , Glaskopf ), but also individual rock elevations (such as the Hohle Stein ). The Celtic ring walls and the rubble heap on the "White Wall" on the Altkönig consist of Taunus quartzite. The fractured groundwater of the Taunus quartzite is of local interest for water extraction. They are dammed by the underlying Hermeskeilschichten and pumped through groundwater tunnels. Four such groundwater tunnels make

3496-440: The Vordertaunus are divided from north to south into the metavolcanic sequence, the Eppstein slate and the Lorsbach slate. The oldest sedimentary rocks of the Taunus are the phyllites of Bierstadt from the lower Ordovician era, known only from a borehole in Wiesbaden , with an age of about 480 million years determined by the evidence of spores . The volcanic rocks of the metavulcanite unit are younger, they could be dated to

3572-428: The Vordertaunus – the latter clearly decreases to the north. In later uplift phases between the Late Jurassic and the Tertiary , cross-fractures were applied perpendicular to strike. The rift valley of the Idstein Depression divides the Hintertaunus into an eastern and western part, while the Limburg Basin divides the Lahn Mulde as it sinks. Some of the fractures are now filled with quartz . The free-standing rocks of

3648-399: The Wörsbach valley, lies another high ridge with peaks ranging from the Hohe Kanzel (592 m or 1,942 ft) to the Roßberg (426 m or 1,398 ft) and the Rügert (402 m or 1,319 ft) to the Rosenkippel (379 m or 1,243 ft); to the south, the Galgenberg (348 m or 1,142 ft) forms another high area over to the Dasbach Heath. Just under the western heights run

3724-400: The bigger businesses in town are, for instance, Motorola Solutions Germany GmbH, Serviceware SE, Jack Wolfskin , DG-Verlag (distribution and logistics), ERNST SCHMITZ Logistics & Technical Services GmbH, Black & Decker Deutschland GmbH, INGENIUMDESIGN, Hochschule Fresenius gGmbH, Lebensmittelmärkte Uwe Georg e.K. and Titleist . Another important employer and factor in the economy is

3800-455: The church, originally consecrated to Saint Martin of Tours as a monastery church, reaches back to the 13th century. In the mid 14th century a new building in the Gothic style arose, which was remodeled in the 17th century. In 1553 Idstein turned Lutheran . The church was decorated in Baroque style in the 17th century, unusually rich for a Protestant church. The ceiling in the main nave was thoroughly covered with large-scale oil paintings from

3876-425: The churches, the Kalmenhof itself, in the course of Aktion Brandt , became a killing institute; patients here were murdered with poison injections. Shortly after the war, reports of young wards being mishandled came to light. Eleven formerly independent villages were merged as of 1971 into Idstein, under the framework of municipal reform. (as of 31 December) The town's arms might be described thus: Azure

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3952-432: The course of the Variscan Orogonese foliated , scaled and in the southwest-northeast strike saddles and troughs folded. The folds are predominantly northwestvergent . Widespread to the northwest, the rock series were thrust onto younger ones. Thus, at the fault zone of the Taunuskamm overthrust , the entire length of the southern Taunus nappe-like was thrust over rocks of the Younger Lower Devonian. The overthrust of

4028-401: The district (after Taunusstein ). Idstein, which had its first documentary mention in 1102 as Etichenstein , was granted town and market rights in 1287 by King Rudolph of Habsburg . Besides the above-mentioned Hexenturm near the old Nassau castle, the town has a mediaeval town centre with many timber-frame buildings. The town's oldest preserved house was originally built in 1410. From

4104-406: The documentary mention in 1102 until 1721, Idstein was, with interruptions, residence of the Counts of Nassau-Idstein and other Nassau lines. One of the Counts, Adolf of Germany , was, as a compromise candidate, the Holy Roman Emperor from 1292 to 1298, later falling in battle against the anti-king Albrecht I of Habsburg . The Nassau Counts' holdings were subdivided many times among heirs, with

4180-437: The edge of the Old Town lay empty and were used until the 1980s as a carpark. Today, new shops and apartments surround the Löherplatz, which is now a marketplace. The private Kalmenhof clinic in Idstein was drawn into the Nazi Euthanasia programme. Under Action T4 , the Kalmenhof served as a way station for Hadamar killing centre . After the gassings at Hadamar came to an end in the face of public protests, especially from

4256-457: The former fiefs ( Len ). The amter were originally composed of market towns ( købstæder ) and parishes , and held only small areas of responsibility. There were some changes to the borders of these counties over time, most notably when Roskilde County ( da ) was merged into Roskilde County ( da ) in 1808, and when Skanderborg County ( da ) was periodically merged into Århus County Skanderborg County ( da ). After Southern Jutland

4332-428: The hospital moved into a new €22,000,000, 90-bed building on an 18,000 m (190,000 sq ft) plot on Robert-Koch-Straße. The state provided a subsidy of €17,200,000 (earlier, €3,000,000 came from the district, which had forgone part of the buying price for the former district hospitals at Idstein und Bad Schwalbach). A partly prefabricated all-weather pool came into being (after some delays) in spring 2010 in

4408-402: The hospital services of the købstader without paying taxes for them, it became evident that reform was necessary. In 1958, interior minister Søren Olesen set in motion administrative reforms that would culminate in 1970. The municipal reform of 1 April 1970 reduced the number of counties to fourteen and eliminated the administrative distinction between (rural) parish and town. From then on,

4484-403: The mostly shallow and fertile soils , which developed from acidic rock , there is mainly forest here. The Vortaunus is more inconsistent than the main ridge, it is morphologically more fragmented and the bays of the foothills divide it more. Hintertaunus is the name given to the area north of the Hoher Taunus up to the Lahn valley . The landscape here is lower and less mountainous than in

4560-406: The municipality named Ortsteile (plural of Ortsteil ), named from small villages or hamlets or localities. The Ortsteil (suburb or township) may have been a former parish, but today it is meant only for civil purpose and essentially used for planning within the municipality; the Ortsamt (sometimes just named informally but confusingly as an Amt , or informally translated as an "urban district")

4636-406: The north on the town of Bad Camberg ( Limburg-Weilburg ) and the community of Waldems (Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis), in the east on the community of Glashütten ( Hochtaunuskreis ), in the southeast on the town of Eppstein ( Main-Taunus-Kreis ), in the south on the community of Niedernhausen , in the southwest on the town of Taunusstein and in the west on the community of Hünstetten (all three in

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4712-463: The palace itself in the 17th century, this area also underwent far-reaching changes, partly losing its defensive functions, which, it is worth noting, were no longer up to date anyway. The castle's keep , known as the Hexenturm , 42 m or 138 ft tall, walls more than 3 m or 9.8 ft thick, even given overall diameter of just under 12 m or 39 ft, is Idstein's oldest building. Dendrochronological borings show that work began on

4788-416: The part of the Lahnmulde that belongs to the Taunus. In addition, there are countless smaller quarries to supply the local population with building blocks. The Roman Limes was built across the Taunus. The Saalburg , a restored Roman castellum, now houses a museum. After the fall of the Limes (in 259/260 AD), the Alamanni settled in the range and for this reason there are some Alemannic cemeteries in

4864-439: The parts being brought together again whenever a line died out. This yielded an older Nassau-Idstein line from 1480 to 1509, later merging once again with Nassau-Wiesbaden and Nassau-Weilburg and, from 1629 to 1721, a newer Nassau-Idstein line. In the 17th century, Count Johann of Nassau-Idstein persecuted witches in Idstein. In 1721, Idstein passed to Nassau-Ottweiler, and in 1728 to Nassau-Usingen, thereby losing its status as

4940-495: The past. Some states have similar administrative units called Samtgemeinde ( Lower Saxony ), Verbandsgemeinde ( Rhineland-Palatinate ) or Verwaltungsgemeinschaft ( Baden-Württemberg , Bavaria , Saxony , Saxony-Anhalt , Thuringia ). An Amt , as well as the other above-mentioned units, is subordinate to a Kreis ( district ) and is a collection of municipalities. The amt is lower than district-level government but higher than municipal government, and may be described as

5016-420: The sandy rocks of the Singhofen layers, in the east, rocks in the Facies of the Hunsrück slate recede. Transposed volcanic tuffes and ashes , the so-called porphyroides , are integrated into the Singhofen layers, they can be traced in some cases over several tens of kilometers. The Middle Devonian to Lower Carboniferous of the Usinger Mulde is only about 250 m thick and strongly tectonically disturbed, in

5092-414: The southern Taunus. Between the valleys, some of which are quite deep, there are pronounced plateaus (leveled areas) with heavy agricultural use. Since mostly only the slopes of the valley are forested, the Hintertaunus is generally more open. The landscape of the Hintertaunus is more inconsistent because of its different elevations. This is clearly evident in the eastern Hintertaunus. Here, for example, there

5168-437: The southern foothills of the Taunus ( Eschborn ). This area of the Taunus became part of the Frankish confederation of Germanic tribes after the Battle of Tolbiac around 500 AD. In past centuries the Taunus became famous among aristocrats for its therapeutic hot springs . Certain towns in the area, such as Bad Homburg vor der Höhe with its Kurpark , have geothermal spas that were formerly renowned. Other spa towns in

5244-413: The tower as early as 1170 (not, as had long been assumed, about 1350). It received its "butter churn" shape, built in stages, about 1500. (Building researchers see in it a rare time capsule, because in the 20th century, almost nothing was changed beyond the last work in 1963, which entailed nothing more than some new plastering outside and small touch-ups with cement inside). Taunus The Taunus

5320-600: The town bus as they go. Since timetable changes in July 2007, many journeys, particularly on weekends or in the evening, have been served by demand-responsive buses. Bus services in the countryside around Idstein (the Idsteiner Land ) are likewise run by ORN, which contracts the work out to companies such as Omnibus Mester from Eppstein-Bremthal, Omnibus Weber, Paul-Reisen or Wahl-Reisen (all from Hünstetten). Roughly 200 small and midsize businesses, mainly in crafts and retail sales, characterize Idstein's business life; four out of every five have fewer than ten employees. Among

5396-484: The town core, roundabouts have improved the traffic flow, in some places noticeably. The Südtangente (south "tangent" road), which had been planned since 1981, was completed in 2009, reducing traffic in town further. It links two new development areas. Of the €9,000,000 for the project, roughly 60% was borne by the state of Hesse. Within Idstein town limits are two railway stations on the Main-Lahn Railway ( Main-Lahn-Bahn ), Idstein and Wörsdorf. Hourly trains serving

5472-581: The western Hunsrück . In the north, the valley of the Lahn (Giessen-Koblenzer Lahntal ) with the Limburg Basin forms a very sharp scenic border to the northern Westerwald . In the east, the Giessen Basin (southernmost part of the West Hessian Uplands ) with Dießenbach and Kleebach border to the north, the Wetterau with Wetter and Nidda to the south of the slate mountains; in the south,

5548-465: Was done by Carlo Maria Pozzi. At the main entrance door is a great alliance coat of arms of Count Johann and his consort from about 1635. The palace has been home to the Pestalozzischule since 1946 and may be visited on guided tours. The castle in the area stretching from the gateway arch building on the town side to the bridge over to the Schloss arose between 1497 and 1588. With the remodelling done on

5624-575: Was headed by an Amtmann , usually a lesser nobleman or cleric, appointed by a territorial lord to administer and dispense justice within the Amt . While Iceland was a territory of the Danish-Norwegian realm, amts (singular: amt ; plural: ömt ) were established in the country on top of the existing counties . From 1684 to 1770, Iceland as whole was a single amt in the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway but

5700-543: Was returned to Denmark after the 1920 Schleswig plebiscites , four new counties were created in the area. During the 20th century, the powers of the counties were expanded, when they were granted responsibility for the hospital service. The købstæder , which by this time had been separated from the counties and were overseen by the Interior Ministry , assumed the same responsibility. As the population became increasingly urbanized, and many rural communities came to rely on

5776-482: Was then split into two amts: North and East Amt ( Norður- og Austuramt ) and South and West Amt ( Suður- og Vesturamt ). The latter was in 1787 split into a West Amt ( Vesturamt ) and South Amt ( Suðuramt ). Iceland was thus divided into three amts until 1872, when the South and West amts were again merged. Amts were abolished in 1904, when Iceland gained home rule from Denmark. Amts are not used to denote

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