Langen is headquarters to Deutsche Flugsicherung (German air traffic control), and is also home to the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, a Federal institute for the evaluation and supervision of sera and vaccines in Germany.

Langen had its first documentary mention in 834 in a donation document from King Ludwig II to the Lorsch Abbey under the name Langungon.

In 835, he had the extent of the Mark Langen (a communal area shared by a number of villages) delineated with Drieichlahha, today's Dreieich, as a neighbouring community to the north.

In 1414, the village burnt down in the midst of a dispute between the city of Frankfurt and the then owners of Langen, the Archbishop of Trier, Werner von Falkenstein.

When the Lords of Falkenstein, too, saw their male line come to an end in 1418, the County of Isenburg inherited the lordship over Langen.

After the First World War, Langen was – as part of the Mainz bridgehead – occupied by French troops until 1930 (→ Occupation of the Rhineland).

Matyschok had only barely edged out the independent candidate Dr. Jan Werner (then also a CDU member) in the first round of voting.

This makes Gebhardt, after Johannes Steitz (1946-1948), Wilhelm Umbach (1948-1966), Hans Kreiling (1966-1990) and Dieter Pitthan (1990-2008) Langen's fifth elected SPD mayor since the Second World War.

Free Voters Well known outside the town is above all the Langen Ebbelwoi-Fest, to which tens of thousands of visitors come each year on the last weekend in June.

Moreover, the Langener Waldsee, a favourite outing destination among dwellers of the nearby Main agglomeration, is within town limits.

However, it opens only for special exhibitions, such as the one between May 2008 and March 2009 for the show Blick(e) zurück ("Looking Back") for the 125-year jubilee of town rights.

An outlying location of the Federal Office for Civil Aviation of Germany (Luftfahrtbundesamt) is connected to the headquarters of German Air Traffic Control.

Also housed in the Air Traffic Control Academy's building is the Wetterdienstschule ("Weather Service School"), which was formerly in Neustadt an der Weinstraße.