Radevormwald (German: [ˌʁaːdəfɔʁmˈvalt] ⓘ) is a municipality in the Oberbergischer Kreis, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
Places submerged by the Wuppertal dam The river Wupper flows through part of the town lands.
Klaus Pampus writes in his book Urkundliche Erstnennungen oberbergischen Orte (Earliest Documentary References to Places in Oberberg) that Radevormwald came into the possession of the imperial abbey of Werden and at the time was called Rotha.
Radevormwald served the Counts von Berg as a border stronghold against Sauerland in the County of Mark.
Walls, towers and gates protected the settled trades of the smiths, wool weavers and garment makers.
During the Thirty Years' War (1618–48) it was used as the occasional headquarters and supply depot of the Spaniards and Austrians, under the command of Ottavio Piccolomini (one of Wallenstein's generals).
These military occupations were accompanied by murder, looting, arson and rape of the civil population, which was decimated.
After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Catholic Duke of Berg, Philipp Wilhelm von Pfalz-Neuburg (reigned 1652–1690) persecuted Anabaptists and Mennonites in his territory, so that many of them fled.
One such refugee was Adolf von der Leyen of Radevormwald, who in 1656 (or perhaps 1650) brought the new skill of silk weaving to Krefeld.
In 1833, a local mail coach service to the surrounding towns was established for the first time, and a post office opened.
Local businesses included lock-, file-, bicycle-, paper-, ice-skate- and building component factories, motor and textile industries, yarn-spinning and cloth mills.
At 8:15 on the morning of 26 May 1928 a Deutsche Luft Hansa Junkers F13 airplane crashed in Hahnenberg on the Schlegel meadow (Schlegelsche Wiese), killing three people.
Almost all of the dead schoolchildren were buried at the municipal cemetery in Radevormwald in a common enclosure with a stone monument inscribed: Come spirit of the four winds and breathe on these dead, that they may come alive (Komme Geist von den vier Winden herbei und hauche diese Toten an, damit sie lebendig werden).
In 1990 Radevormwald tried to live up to its reputation as a sports town with the inauguration of the stadium in the Kollenberg and the indoor swimming pool Aquafun.
The clearing, at an altitude of more than 400 metres, is thought to have been made to help defend against raiding Saxons in prehistoric times.
This leaves scope for the exploitation of resources for leisure and the enjoyment of nature, and gives the town a relatively high quality of life.