belonging to the Maingau, gave the town its name. The original communities, though, have existed for hundreds of years. Today (as at 31 December 2007), Rodgau has 45,236 inhabitants (including 2,035 whose main residence is elsewhere), of whom 22,120 are male and 23,116 female. Foreigners from 52 different nations account for 4,471 inhabitants (9.9%). Those who have lived in Rodgau longer than ten years account for 64.6% of the population. Weiskirchen Around Saint Peter's Church (Peterskirche) arose the settlement of Wichenkirchen (or Wizzinkirchin) in Frankish times as a thorpe (one-street village). It had its first documentary mention in 1287 in the Seligenstadt Monastery's accord with the Auheimer Mark. Weiskirchen was at this time Mother Church to the villages of Jügesheim, Hainhausen and Rembrücken. The first landlords, the Lords of Hagenhausen – later of Eppstein – sold the Amt of Steinheim in 1425 along with Weiskirchen, a village belonging to it, to the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz, to whom the village belonged until 1803. With this, Weiskirchen formed an ecclesiastical and economic hub in the Rodgau. When the Auheimer Mark (a communally held parcel of land to which belonged several villages) was divided up in 1786, Weiskirchen received a share of the forest. After Secularization in 1803, the Amt of Steinheim along with Weiskirchen passed to Hesse. In 1896 the Rodgaubahn (railway) with a railway station in Weiskirchen opened. In the course of the 19th century, Weiskirchen shifted from a farming village to a worker's community. Of the once well known village with its timber-frame houses very little is left. During National Socialist times, the small Jewish community was driven out. In March 2005, the small, restored former synagogue was ceremoniously reopened as a memorial. Since 1967, the Weiskirchen transmitter, a medium-wave transmitter owned by Hessischer Rundfunk, has been in operation on Weiskirchen's northwestern outskirts on a frequency of 594 kHz although this has now been dismantled. Population development In 1576, Weiskirchen had 37 households. In 1681, 111 inhabitants lived in 26 households. In 1834, 655 people lived in the village. A century later, in 1939, that figure had risen to 1,740. By 1970, the population had risen to 4,840 inhabitants. In late 2007, the constituent community had 6,115 inhabitants. Hainhausen As early as 1108, Rodgau's smallest constituent community (with a population today of roughly 3,800) had a documentary mention as the location of a moated castle belonging to the