Ober-Olm
municipality in Germany
Ober-Olm (German pronunciation: [ˈoːbɐ ʔɔlm], lit. 'Upper Olm', in contrast to "Lower Olm") is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Geography
Neighbouring municipalities
Ober-Olm's neighbours are Mainz-Layenhof, Mainz-Finthen, Mainz-Drais, Mainz-Lerchenberg, Mainz-Bretzenheim, Mainz-Marienborn, Klein-Winternheim, Mainz-Ebersheim, Nieder-Olm, and Essenheim.
History
Finds in the municipal area have yielded the first clues to settlers here in the 4th century BC. In AD 97, the former consul Vejento had a temple built for the forest goddess Nemetona near his Klein-Winternheim landholding, a richly furnished Roman settlement in the Ober-Olm cadastral area of Villenkeller. Ober-Olm itself arose in the 6th century as a Frankish establishment and had its first documentary mention in 994. The name “Ulmena Superior” from 1190 was formerly associated with elm trees, Ulme being the Modern High German word for this tree; however, this word was not borrowed into German from Latin (ulmus) until the 12th century. The formation of the placename Ulm and an ending —ena is typical for a brook's name, and these were often also used as placenames. It can be assumed that Ulmena was the name that the Germanic settlers between Ober-Olm and Nieder-Olm gave the Selz. The few Roman people left still used the name Salusia for the brook, which was the name that eventually stuck to it. Ulmena, however, remained as well, and clove to both the centres now bearing Olm as part of their names.
In 1582, 1603 and 1857, Ober-Olm was destroyed by devastating fires.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q22988. VIAF identifies the subject as 246260731. Authority coordinates are 49.937, 8.189. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1190, 1582, 1603 and 1857.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ober-Olm” 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.