Den one foot in the Nidda, the other in the Main. No other district in Frankfurt has such a long portion of the two rivers as Nied, located between Höchst and Griesheim. Nevertheless, this Mesopotamia is one of the great unknowns in the consciousness of the metropolis. If one speaks of the Main, the focus is more on the inner-city section. And in descriptions of the Nidda as a whole, the mouth of its 90-kilometer course is located “near Höchst”. Ironically, the very last few meters belong to the neighboring district.
Unlike Bonames, Nied has not particularly stood out in the context of the attention paid to the renaturation of the Nidda, which has been going on for more than two decades, although it has the most oxbow lakes in the city area and two of the weirs that are the epitome of the struggle to shape the river body of water. Only these bear foreign names. The Höchst Weir, which was demolished ten years ago in favor of a so-called weir including a fish ladder and islet, is opposed to the equally long dispute over the Sossenheim weir. The question of whether laying down would endanger flood protection is still being debated.
There is no doubt that the straightening since the 1920s averted the risk of flooding, which made it possible to build near the shore in the first place. Without the trough, no settlement for the employees of the “Royal Prussian Locomotive Main Workshop” set up in 1918 would have been possible on the river side. Still the largest employer in Nied in the 1950s, the steam literally ran out with the dawn of the electricity age in 1967. Instead of the factory, residential and commercial buildings were built, but the settlement remained untouched. Even it is probably one of the lesser known sides of Frankfurt, although there is hardly anything comparable. Not only is it a listed building, it also shines as brightly as a rainbow. Each street has its own color tone. Rather muted brownish in front, behind the gatehouse green, red or yellow streets vie for the prettiest facades.
The real privilege of the “railway workers”, as even later newcomers are called, is the proximity to Nidda, which can be walked on both sides, and its oxbow lakes, embedded in extensive meadows and forests. As if the color white had been deliberately left out in the settlement in order to accentuate this natural wonder even more, an endless sea of blossoms of wood anemones and wild garlic covers the forests that are no longer cultivated. When the wind is light, the white waves appear like gentle surf washing around the trees.
Directions
From the S-Bahn station in Nied – in front of a parking lot – it is only a few minutes’ walk to the meadows of the Nidda and the railway workers’ settlement pushed in between. You can reach it via the Oeserstraße after crossing the Fernbahntrasse 300 meters further. Where you enter the quarter makes no difference. The main entrance and the wide gatehouse are on the Neumarkt.
There you can take the Oeserstraße directly to the “Bärlauchwald”, as long as you don’t walk around to the nearby oxbow lake of the Nidda. Then through the settlement and open corridor to the shore and to the right for views of the still waters. Here, too, you can shorten the path and continue straight to the next (Grill’schen) backwater. Otherwise we turn right towards the indicated Wörthspitze in the flower-colored forest. At the first fork turn right, and shortly thereafter the beeches and oaks recede around the Selzer fountain.
Its smell of rotten eggs is even more intense than the garlic aroma that spreads from the carpet of wild garlic on the other side of Oeserstraße; pass the playground from the fountain and just under the trees to the road crossing. The path points slightly to the left into the forest. Despite the jungle-like beginnings, enough light penetrates to allow wild garlic to spread over a large area. Wood anemones dominate in the area of a railway embankment, which the path follows at a little distance after the left turn.
The next turn to the left is 400 meters further at the corner of the house to the waterworks from the early 20th century, 300 meters away. It hasn’t pumped drinking water for a long time, but thanks to the yellow brick it sets an attractive counterpoint to the wild garlic, which is extremely dense here.