GLADBACH, the name of two towns in Germany distin guished as Bergisch-Gladbach and Miinchen-Gladbach.
I. BERGISCH-GLADBACH is in Rhenish Prussia, 8 m. N.E. of Cologne by rail. Pop. It possesses four large paper-mills and among its other industries are percussion caps, nets, machinery, iron founding, and fire-clay. Ironstone, peat and lime are found in the vicinity. Near Gladbach is Altenberg, with a remarkably fine church, built for the Cistercian abbey at this place.
2. MUNCHEN-GLADBACH, also in Rhenish Prussia, m. W.S.W. of Dusseldorf on the main line of railway to Aix-la-Chapelle. Pop. (1885) 126,589. Its industries are the spinning and weaving of cotton, the manufacture of silks, velvet, ribbon and damasks, and dyeing and bleaching. There are also tanneries, machine works and foundries. The beautiful minster has a Gothic choir (1250), a nave (early 13th cent.) and a crypt of the 8th century. The town is the headquarters of important insurance societies. A Benedictine monastery was founded near Gladbach in 793, and so it was called Miinchen-Gladbach (Monks' Gladbach). The monastery was suppressed in 1802. It became a town in 1336; weaving was introduced here towards the end of the 18th century, and, having belonged for a long time to the duchy of Julich, it came into the possession of Prussia in 1815.