Lorch (Württemberg)
municipality in Ostalbkreis, Germany
Lorch (German pronunciation: [lɔʁç] ; Swabian: Lorich) is a small town in the Ostalbkreis district, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, by the river Rems, 8 kilometers west of Schwäbisch Gmünd. It is a part of the Ostwürttemberg region.
Geography
Lorch lies in a valley of the river Rems, a tributary of the river Neckar, with Schwäbisch Gmünd to its east, Schorndorf to its west, the Swabian-Franconian Forest to its north and the Swabian Alps to its south. Lorch is part of the Swabian-Franconian Forest Nature Park and is located at the Limes hiking route (HW 6) of the Swabian Alp Association.
In addition to Schwäbisch Gmünd, the town also borders the municipality of Alfdorf to the north, the municipalities of Wäschenbeuren and Börtlingen to the south as well as the municipality of Plüderhausen to the west.
Lorch, with the formerly independent municipality of Waldhausen, encompasses 35 hamlets, villages and farms in addition to Lorch itself. In accordance with the borders drawn at 31 December 1971, Lorch, the Weiler Bruck, Klotzenhof, Metzelhof, Oberkirneck, Schnellhöfle, Stauben and Unterkirneck, the farmlands of Hetzenhof, Maierhof im Remstal, Reichenhof, Sägreinhof, Schafhaus, Schwefelhütte, Trudelhöfle and Ziegelhütte as well as the Brucker Sägmühle, Edenhof, Götzenmühle, Hohenlinde, Hollenhof, Kloster Lorch, Muckensee, Seemühle, Wachthaus and the Walkersbacher Tal make up the territory of the Town Lorch.
As of 2012, Lorch has been divided into 5 boroughs: Kirneck (396 inhabitants), Lorch (6492 inhabitants), Rattenharz (251 inhabitants), Waldhausen (2698 inhabitants) and Weitmars (1030 inhabitants).
History
During the Roman Era, it served as a vital link in the Limes Germanicus. The monastery at Lorch was founded by Frederick I of Swabia in 1102.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lorch (Württemberg)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.