Hungen () is a town in the
district of Gießen, in
Hesse
Hesse or Hessen ( ), officially the State of Hesse (), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country's principal financial centre. Two other major hist ...
,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
. It is situated 20 km southeast of
Gießen
Giessen, spelled in German (), is a town in the German state () of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 university students.
Th ...
, and 18 km northeast of
Friedberg. Surrounding towns are
Laubach
Laubach () is a town of approximately 10,000 people in the Gießen (region), Gießen region of Hesse, Germany. Laubach is known as a ', a climatic health resort. It is situated east of Gießen. Surrounding Laubach are the towns of Hungen, Grünbe ...
to the north,
Nidda to the east,
Wölfersheim to the south, and
Münzenberg
Münzenberg is a town in the Wetteraukreis district in Hesse, Germany. It is located 13 km north of Friedberg, Hesse, Friedberg, and 16 km southeast of Gießen. Münzenberg Castle is located outside the town.
Population development
B ...
and
Lich
In fantasy fiction, a lich () is a type of undead creature with magical powers.
Various works of fantasy fiction, such as Clark Ashton Smith's " The Empire of the Necromancers" (1932), had used ''lich'' as a general term for any corpse, animat ...
to the west.
The history of Hungen dates back to 782. In 1806 it came under the sovereignty of the
Grand Duchy of Hesse
The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine () was a grand duchy in western Germany that existed from 1806 to 1918. The grand duchy originally formed from the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1806 as the Grand Duchy of Hesse (). It assumed the name ...
.
Buildings of interest include the Hungen Castle, the Evangelical Church, parts of the medieval city wall and
Hungen station
Hungen station is a station on the Gießen–Gelnhausen railway (also known as the Lahn-Kinzig Railway) in the town of Hungen in the German state of Hesse. From 1 June 1890 to 4 April 2003, the Friedberg–Mücke railway (also known as the Horlo ...
.
Looted books depository
At the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
American forces discovered almost 1.2 million looted books and prints at Hungen, among them the contents of the Rothschild Library at Frankfurt, which had been removed by the Nazis from Frankfurt because of Allied bombing raids.
Hungen in the media
Literature
Shmuel Spector, Geoffrey Wigoder,
The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust'',
New York University Press, 2001.
Film
My Opposition: the Diaries of Friedrich Kellner
:The railroad station of Hungen can be seen in this 2007 Canadian documentary, which recounts the story of Robert Scott Kellner and his grandfather,
Friedrich Kellner
August Friedrich Kellner (1 February 1885 – 4 November 1970) was a German mid-level official and diarist who worked as a justice inspector in Laubach from 1933 to 1945.
Kellner was an infantryman in a Hessian regiment during the First Wor ...
, chief justice inspector of Laubach who wrote the anti-Nazi diary, "
My Opposition
''My Opposition'' () is a diary secretly written by the German social democrat Friedrich Kellner (1885–1970) during World War II to describe life under Nazi Germany and to expose the propaganda and the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship. Comprisi ...
."
See also
*
Hungen (meteorite), for the Hungen meteorite (fallen in 1877).
References
Giessen (district)
{{Hesse-geo-stub