1932: Foundation stone laid for Tempelsee
An anniversary was celebrated in 2007 in the Tempelsee district in Offenbach's far south. 75 years had passed since the city council gave the go-ahead for the construction of 90 housing estates. The area of the district that was henceforth known as "the settlement" was created to distinguish it from a small, older development. Tempelsee resembles a tree whose age can be determined by its annual rings.
At the very beginning, there were the workers' apartments of the Portland cement factory on Waldstrasse, built after the First World War, near the forest far from the city gates. They can perhaps be regarded as the nucleus.
More was to come after members of an allotment garden association founded the Odenwaldring housing cooperative in 1919. It was born out of the need of the time, not unlike Tempelsee. Under the direction of the cooperative, twelve settlers began building detached houses on Waldstrasse and Gerhart-Hauptmann-Strasse in 1922. This was followed by semi-detached houses and a row of buildings on Brunnenweg.
This was the situation in 1932, when a nationwide subsidy program provided the impetus for further expansion for the unemployed. In the meantime, the cement factory had ceased operations. Since 1927, the residents had been organized in an association called "Gemaa Tempelsee". Gemaa meant that they saw themselves as an independent community, a self-contained community within urban society: as a rule, they were unemployed people who began to build their houses, kitchen gardens and small animal stables on plots of land measuring 600 square meters each. They worked together. The properties were only allocated by lot once the roughest part had been completed. No one could know whether they were working for their own house or that of a neighbor. The sense of community that can still be felt among the Gemaa citizens may be rooted in this.
242 houses were built in this way between 1932 and 1935. The next boost for Tempelsee came in the years after the Second World War. First with the repair of bomb damage, then with new buildings, modernization, conversions and extensions, and new residents. Hardly any of the houses on the estate are still in the same condition as when they were first occupied.
Not all of the new residents may know where this district with its own character got its name from. The Hainbach was still called "Hahnebach" when its waters first drove a mill wheel around 1714. At some point, when the wheel stopped turning, this Tempelsee mill became a pub, a popular restaurant with a large hall, in the countryside far from the town.
When it was demolished in 1957, a petrol station was built on its site. The accident-prone sharp bend in the forest road at Tempelseemuhle was straightened. The town expanded to the south and Tempelsee was no longer remote. Nothing reminds us of the old pictures. Only older Offenbach residents will occasionally recall the old Tempelsee mill in their childhood memories.
By Lothar Braun
Published in the OFFENBACH POST
