Erdbach, a constituent community, lies in an interesting place with regards to Earth's history, in the eastern part of the Westerwald, near that range's highest peak, Fuchskauten (657 m).
Geology
In the Erdbach area are noteworthy limestone deposits from various geological time periods. "Erdbach limestone" from Lower Carboniferous times gave an era the name "Erdbachium". The Erdbach – the village's namesake brook – disappears into a karst system, and does not appear again for 1.5 km where it can be seen in a quarry.
Not far from there, the "Homberg" fossil reserve was instituted, which serves some university institutes from Jena to the Rhine as a research area. The older limestone formation near Breitscheid (main centre) stems from a subtropicalcoral reef from the Devonian period (mid-Palaeozoic, 400,000,000 years ago).
In the "stone chambers" of the Rolsbach valley, some gravesites from Hallstatt times (about 550 BC) were unearthed in 1884. In archaeology, there is a special burial ornament called an "Erdbach coil torc" (Erdbacher Wendelhalsring). It is also believed that Neanderthal people once lived nearby, but this belief awaits further discovery.
Aside from the main centre, which bears the same name as the whole, there are outlying centres called Erdbach, Gusternhain, Medenbach and Rabenscheid. The community came into being on 1 January 1977 as part of Hesse's municipal reforms. The constituent communities were formerly independent municipalities.
Politics
Municipal council
This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(July 2021)
The municipal elections on 26 March 2006 yielded the following results:
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