Hadamar () is a small town in Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany.
Hadamar is known for its Clinic for Forensic Psychiatry/Centre for Social Psychiatry, lying at the edge of town, in whose outlying buildings is also found the Hadamar Memorial. This remembers the murders of people with handicaps and mental illnesses under the Nazi regime at the NS-Tötungsanstalt Hadamar.
Geography
Location
Hadamar lies 7 km north of Limburg between Cologne and Frankfurt am Main on the southern edge of the Westerwald at elevations from 120 to 390 m above sea level.
Neighbouring communities
Hadamar borders in the north on the communities of Dornburg, Elbtal and Waldbrunn, in the east on the community of Beselich, in the south on the town of Limburg and the community of Elz (all in Limburg-Weilburg) and in the west on the community of Hundsangen (in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate).
Constituent communities
The town consists of eight formerly autonomous communities.
Hadamar (main town) Niederhadamar Niederzeuzheim Oberzeuzheim Steinbach Oberweyer Niederweyer Faulbach
History
One of the oldest witnesses to the Hadamar region's settlement is the cist (see also Megaliths) stemming from the Wartberg culture, and therefore some 5,000 years old, in Hadamar-Niederzeuzheim. A further grave was found in Oberzeuzheim, but it was taken apart and reassembled in the castle garden at Hachenburg (Westerwaldkreis).
Out of all today's constituent communities, Oberweyer and Niederweyer were the first to be mentioned in documents, in 772. The town's name itself did not have its first documentary mention until 832 in a Carolingian exchange document. On the spot where now stands the Renaissance palace on the banks of the Elbbach, Cistercian monks from Eberbach Abbey in the Rheingau worked a model farm in the 13th century which Count Emich von Nassau-Hadamar bought in 1320 and converted into a moated castle. In 1324, Emperor Ludwig IV granted him Frankfurt town rights for his residence. A yearly fair is known to have existed in 1430.
After a devastating fire in the 16th century, there were great changes to the town's appearance in the 17th century. The town had Count, later Prince, Johann Ludwig von Nassau-Hadamar (1590–1653) to thank for the new building work. He had the old moated castle expanded as his residence into a Renaissance palace, and he laid out the Baroque new town's streets in a grid pattern with broad marketplaces and public fountains. The Prince called the Franciscans to town, supported the building of the monastery with endowments and saw to the establishment of the Society of Jesus in Hadamar in 1630.
Johann Ludwig von Nassau-Hadamar managed to bring his lordly domain some importance when the Emperor named him Commissioner-General of the negotiations surrounding the Peace of Westphalia, which eventually put an end to the Thirty Years' War. He was the first to sign the document for the peace treaty. In 1650, he was made Prince, whereby Hadamar became a residence town. After several conversions, Johann Ludwig became Catholic again in 1629 and arranged for Jesuits to live in Hadamar who instituted a Gymnasium in 1652. Prince Johann Ludwig is the namesake of the comprehensive school that has grown out of this Jesuit Gymnasium, and which still exists today in Hadamar.
"Hadamar Baroque" earned importance in the field of altar building art. The terms "Hadamar Baroque" and "Hadamar school" (Hadamarer Barock and Hadamarer Schule in German) are indeed quite commonly used in the area of the former Principality of Nassau-Hadamar, though how it arose and spread, along with its meaning and connections to art history are largely unknown. Archival finds about 70 to 80 years ago yielded isolated clues. New findings are to a significant extent especially Ludwig Baron Döry's work through his publications since the 1970s. The four sculptors who were among the best of the "Hadamar school" were Martin Volk, Johann Valentin Neudecker the Elder, Johann Neudecker the Younger and Johann Theodor Thüringer. Not long ago, streets in the main town were named after them.