Gummersbach

Gummersbach lies in the wooded Bergisches Land east of Cologne. Its church was mentioned in 1109, when Archbishop Frederick I reduced a tax owed to the bishop. The settlement belonged to the County of Gimborn until the Napoleonic period. In 1806 it became part of the Grand Duchy of Berg, where a new local administration was established on the French model; the area passed to Prussia in 1814.