The Vortaunus municipality of Friedrichsdorf is one of the numerous municipalities brought together by the local government reform 50 years ago.

Unlike most of the structures, which adopted a neutral artificial name based on historical or regional characteristics, the existing Friedrichsdorf was chosen for the five locations.

Why this one in particular, long-established Seulbergers still ask today?

After all, your Morgengabe, with the municipality first mentioned in 767, is not only one of the oldest in Hesse, it is also the largest district with around 8000 inhabitants.

As a consolation, the last mayor of Seulberg, Wilfried Fey, was allowed to become the first of the new town between Köppern, Burgholzhausen and Dillingen.

As life-size cardboard comrades, he and his former colleagues are the eye-catchers of a small special exhibition in the local history museum in Seulberg on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary.

The restaurant is embedded in a lovingly designed department for the zeitgeist of the 1970s between revolt and brightly colored everyday culture.

Another anniversary is also remembered, the four hundredth anniversary of the Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg.

Even then, Seulberg was the "largest" and, thanks to the flourishing pottery trade, the economically strongest of the mini-lordships, which only comprised a handful of villages.

Kirdorf was not one of them.

Although in close proximity, they were worlds apart.

Here the Protestant Landgraviate, there the Catholic Kurmainz.

Even after the transfer to Homburg in 1803, Kirdorf stuck to the old beliefs.

As if in triumph, the 1,500-strong town created St. Johannes in 1862, a monumental, 50-meter-long church with more than 500 seats, soon to be called the "Taunus Cathedral".

Planned by the Mainz cathedral master builder Ignaz Opfermann, it is considered to be the last work in the so-called late classicist-Byzantine round arch style.

However, the pictorial program running all around was only created in the mid-1920s.

In a masterful mixture of the Beuron school and Art Nouveau, it shows the unusual subject of the seven sacraments using the example of events in the history of salvation, for example the depiction of Boniface on the right front, how he leads the Germans to Christianity as a symbol of the sacrament of baptism.

The Offenburg artist Augustin Kolb and his sons allowed themselves a few liberties that were hardly ever in the order book: Several faces resembled priests and parishioners, but also that of Kolb and his family.

Directions

Seulberg is conveniently located at an S-Bahn station, from which you can walk to the historic center and the surrounding area in just a few minutes.

From the side facing the town - and the parking lot there - you can reach the Römerstraße via a high footbridge;

with her on the right.

After the nearby crossing, you will turn left into Landwehrstrasse.

It turns out to be a dead end, as it ends at the large sports facility.

It continues seamlessly in the open Seulbach valley, with the yellow F appearing after a good 500 meters.

This circular route, which encompasses all Friedrichsdorf districts, takes the lead for a while: At the front it crosses the country road, turns right towards Friedrichsdorf and, before the first houses, turns left into the accompanying path of the floodplain-like Seulbach.