1978
The year 1978 turned out to be a year of growth, although there was not enough time for everything to grow. Meanwhile, the municipality of Rodgau was not spared from excesses. This includes the community centre project in Dudenhofen, which turned into a scandal, as well as the outgrowth of neo-Nazism in Nieder-Roden. Swastika graffiti on the town hall and house walls, smashed windows, provocations at a memorial service - these brought Rodgau into the national spotlight, as did the community centre debacle, the development of which is illustrated in the sequence of pictures on the right.
All the citizens of Rodgau in all districts will have to bear the costs, which have certainly risen to over 8 million marks, while the benefits are not even convincing. The parliamentary investigation by a special committee, which met more than a dozen times, did not absolve either the former Dudenhofen municipal council or the architect of guilt. However, the public prosecutor's office dropped the investigation against the architect because there was no evidence of intent to defraud. However, at the end of the parliamentary debate on the community centre and after two sometimes turbulent meetings, the SPD municipal representatives Günther Hindel - former mayor of Dudenhofen - and the former chairman of the main and finance committee in Dudenhofen, Wilhelm Hochstein, resigned.
The Rodgau SPD and the Dudenhofen SPD clashed over the town centre debate and its consequences. When Günther Hindel refused to resign as a municipal representative before the summer holidays, the entire board of the Rodgau SPD did so in protest at Hindel's persistence in parliament.
However, Dudenhofen not only made negative headlines on TV and in the press due to the community centre, on whose further construction no decision had been made by the end of the year, but also positive ones due to its almost fantastically successful centenary celebrations to mark the town's 700th anniversary.
Dudenhofen, Rodgau and the surrounding area celebrated a whole week of glittering festivities at the beginning of July with a record crowd and a parade as the highlight, which was unique and which was proposed to the Offenbach district council for an award due to its historical value. But Rodgau is not just Dudenhofen, even if this district is a constant talking point due to its long-running noise barrier, which was due to be completed at the end of the year, and its forest leisure centre, which is in operation for the second season but still without planning permission.
The municipality also received public recognition for the club life it actively promotes. At the opening of the first office of the Offenbach sports district at the beginning of November in the municipal kindergarten in Weiskirchen, the chairman of the sports district, Karl May, described the municipality of Rodgau, with over 25 sports clubs and more than 10,000 members, as the most sport-loving municipality in the Offenbach district. Sporting laurels also went to the Weiskirchen Sports Association, whose footballers won the championship in the Offenbach A-Class, as well as further recognition for this club, which inaugurated its new gymnastics and artistic gymnastics hall in November with a line-up of top German gymnasts. With this hall, the club is unique in Germany.
In the political arena, the result of the state election campaign in Rodgau was of particular interest. Like never before, national and state political celebrities met in Rodgau for an election campaign rendezvous. The SPD federal chairman Willy Brandt and Minister President Holger Börner in Dudenhofen, the CDU federal chairman Helmut Kohl at the end of the election campaign in the Nieder-Roden community centre, the Bundestag president Professor Carstens in the Weiskirchen community centre, Schleswig-Holstein's state parliament president Lemke and Lower Saxony's finance minister Leisler Kiep for a political chat with farmer Ludwig Fengel in Dudenhofen, plus members of the federal and state parliaments - it seemed that everyone was flocking to Rodgau.
The election results in Rodgau revealed only winners. The CDU won in Rodgau and in the two constituencies affecting Rodgau with its members of state parliament Ludwig Schwab (constituency 45) and Leonhard Brockmann (constituency 52 in Nieder-Roden), while the SPD and FDP maintained their position state-wide and thus their coalition with Minister President Börner at the helm. The CDU received 50.6 per cent in Rodgau, the SPD 40.9 per cent and the FDP 6 per cent. For the CDU, this meant stabilisation and a standstill after the upward swing in the 1977 local elections and the 1974 state elections, and for the SPD a slight upward movement after the debacle in the 1977 local elections - even if the two elections cannot be directly compared with each other. The Rodgau CDU, with its majority on the municipal council and in parliament as well as in the local councils, made quite intensive efforts to push through its plan to change the land use plan, to plan two new sports halls in Jügesheim and Hainhausen and, last but not least, the secondary school in Dudenhofen opposite the railway, which the SPD opposition would have preferred to see in the western part of Jügesheim.