NEUNKIRCHEN  , or OBER-NEUNKIRCHEN, a

town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the Blies, 12 M . N.W. of Saarbrucken by rail . Pop . (1905) 32,358, consisting almost equally of Protestants and Roman Catholics . It contains two Gothic Evangelical and a Romanesque Roman Catholic church, several schools, and a monument to Freiherr von Stumm (d.1901), a former owner of the iron-works here . The principal industrial establishment is a huge iron-foundry, employing upwards of 4800 hands, and producing about 320,000 tons of pig-iron per annum; and there are also boiler-works, saw-mills, soap manufactories and a brewery . Around the town are important coal mines from which about 21 million tons of coal are raised annually . The castle built in 1570 was destroyed in 1797, and is now a ruin . The town is first mentioned in 1280, and became important industrially during the 18th century .