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Rötha was first mentioned in a document in 1127. However, since there is no certificate of incorporation, the exact time at which the city was formed is unclear. For example, the mention of March 31, 1292, when Rötha was first mentioned as a city, was the occasion for the 700-year celebration in 1992. In 1217 Margrave Dietrich became the oppressed and his lands, including Rötha, because of territorial disputes by the church with the ban. Church life was impossible for the time being. In the following centuries, the population was decimated by the plague, the invasion of the Hussites and migrating Swabians (after the Battle of Lucka).
Owner of the city Rötha in the 16th century was Ritter von Pflugk, but was in debt and had to sell Rötha. First, the town suggested itself as a buyer and took over the administration in 1584. However, the town could not afford the purchase price, so in 1592 Carol von Friesen, the palace captain of Altenburg, jumped in and acquired Rötha for 28,400 guilders. In the first half of the 17th century, a large part of the population was wiped out by the Thirty Years' War and the recurring plague, and then the Seven Years War also claimed many victims. When the Battle of Leipzig was raging in 1813, the Russian Emperor Alexander I and the Austrian Kaiser Franz I were quartered in the Schloss Rötha. Rötha was the location of the Allied headquarters.
In 1839 the villages Theka and Podschütz were incorporated. They lay like Rötha until 1856 in the Electoral Saxon or Royal Saxon District Office Leipzig. From 1856 Rötha was the capital of the judicial office Rötha. From 1875 Rötha belonged to the Amtshauptmannschaft Borna. In the 1870's, Heinrich Freiherr von Friesen began redesigning Rötha into a garden city - a nickname that she still bears today. In addition to traditional viticulture, which has been practiced at least since the 15th century in the town and surrounding areas, he established the fruit growing in Rötha. Since qualified personnel for this project was missing, he founded in 1875 a gardener-teaching institution. The harvest became more extensive year by year and finally in 1883 was so large that it exceeded the capacity of the Leipzig market. This year began to produce cider with the surplus and founded for this purpose today's large winery. Influenced by the nearby fur trade center Leipzig (Brühl), skinning in Rötha had a significant importance until the middle of the 20th century. After the founding of the large winery, the inn "Obstweinschänke" was built in 1882 at the reservoir and put into operation. After the turn, in the early 1990's, it was closed and decayed ever since. On May 20, 2016, the ruins of the former inn completely burned out, which was the culmination of a series of arson attacks, which raided Rötha for several years and until then concerned mainly allotment gardens and private businesses.
Before World War I, technical progress began to be felt in the city. In 1913, it got a water network - the water tower still stands today and is one of the landmarks of Rötha- and a year later it was connected to the electricity grid. In addition, the gas station and the public telephone network went into operation.
In preparation for World War II, works were built in the neighboring towns of Böhlen and Espenhain, for whose workers new apartments were built in Rötha. In 1944 and 1945 parts of the city fell victim to several bombs. On April 14, 1945, the citizens raised Rötha's white flags, and two days later US troops entered. In July, the Red Army took over the occupation. Thus Rötha became part of the Soviet-occupied zone SBZ and from 1949 the GDR.
In 1952, the district Geschwitz (incorporated in 1924) had to be dismantled to make room for the increasingly carried out coal-mining Espenhain. In 1960, the areas of 1955 devastated place beets (open pit Espenhain) and 1971, the areas of the devastated in 1968 Kreudnitz (Witznitz opencast mine) were assigned to the city Rötha. In December 1969, at the behest of the SED, the castle Rötha was blown up under protest and demolished. The castle park of the historic castle, which was removed in 1969, is to be restored. For 2017, the construction of a memorial with replica of Verbündeten-Zimmers planned, in which the Allied monarch had advised.
In 1971 the "VEB Elektrotechnische Werkstätte Rötha" was founded, which in 1980 was incorporated into the Leipzig plant "VEB Elektroakustik Leipzig".
On August 1, 2015 Espenhain was incorporated with the districts Mölbis, Oelzschau and Pötzschau to Rötha, thus the administrative community Rötha was dissolved.
Source: German Wikipedia (February 2018) |
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Sons and daughters of the town
Heinrich von Rothowa (von Rötha), founder of the noble family of Dohna, called in 1144
Heinrich Baron von Friesen (1610-1680), Saxon Receding Director
Otto Heinrich Freiherr von Friesen (1654-1717), Saxon Chancellor
Johann Georg Friedrich Freiherr von Friesen (1757-1824), manor owner, chamberlain, secret council and superintendent of the Dresden art collections and library
Robert Schaab (1817-1887), organist and musicologist
Michael Fritzen (b 1938), musician
Stefan Fritzen (b 1940), trombonist and orchestra conductor
Personalities who have worked in the town
Friedrich Freiherr von Friesen (1796-1871), conservative politician, President of the Landtag, Privy Councilor and manor owner.
Comment: There is a village named Rotha (without umlaut) from Mansfeld-Südharz district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. |
