Heidesheim am Rhein
Encyclopedia
Heidesheim am Rhein is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality
belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde
, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen
district in Rhineland-Palatinate
, Germany
. It is the administrative seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Heidesheim am Rhein
, which also includes the Ortsgemeinde of Wackernheim
. Heidesheim is one of the biggest municipalities in Rhenish Hesse.
capital, Mainz
. The municipal area reaches in the north up to the middle of the Rhine’s navigational lane, which here reaches one of its greatest breadths, comprising even the Königsklinger Aue (an island, although its name identifies it as a floodplain). At the bank behind the floodwall, at an elevation of some 82 m, it abuts a sandy plain which is used especially for growing asparagus and which is also covered in fruit trees. Just behind the floodwall is the outlying centre of Heidenfahrt. From here, before the channelling work on the Mariannenaue (floodplain) was broadened towards the east, there was once a ferry link to Erbach
. The community core of Heidesheim itself lies some 2 km from the Rhine’s banks, in a location safe from floodwaters at the foot of the Rhenish Hesse hill country. The municipal area stretches on from there up the north slope of these hills, reaching 2 km east of the municipality’s centre an elevation of 207 m above sea level
. Wherever gaps in the fruit trees allow it, there is a broad view over the Rhine into the Rheingau
, all the way to the western part of the Taunus
’s main ridge, the Rheingau Range (Rheingaugebirge) with the Kalte Herberge and the Hallgarter Zange (mountains) as its highest elevations in the centre. In the east, near Uhlerborn, on the boundary with Budenheim
, Heidesheim has a share of one of Rhenish Hesse’s few wooded areas.
As of late 2006 Heidesheim has a population of 7,195, and covers and area of 17.56 km².
(on the Rhine’s right, or north, bank), Budenheim
, Mainz
’s outlying centres of Gonsenheim and Finthen, the Verbandsgemeinde of Nieder-Olm
, the Verbandsgemeinde of Gau-Algesheim
and the town of Ingelheim
times, north of today’s community core, stood an extensive villa rustica
, which was forsaken after the Germanic invasions in the early 5th century. Within its walls was built Saint George’s Chapel (Sankt Georgskapelle), around which, after the mid 7th century, Frankish
settlers came to live. The municipality’s name is said to go back to an estate owned by a Frankish nobleman called Heisino.
The place had its first documentary mention as Heisinisheim or Hasinisheim in donations to the Lorsch Abbey
, the earliest of which purports to date from 762, although in actuality it can only be traced back to some time between September in one of the years between 765 to 768. The earliest confirmed date is 5 July 768. All together, the Lorsch codex
catalogues ten endowments for the Lorsch Abbey in Heidesheim between 765 or 768 and 794, of which however none crops up in later documents. This circumstance leads to the inference that Lorsch had already traded or sold its holdings in Heidesheim by the time the Codex was transferred to parchment between 1183 and 1195.
A wider array of documents referring to Heidesheim only comes to light about 1150. The Altmünster Abbey at Mainz then had at its disposal extensive landholdings and half the tithes. Whether these stemmed from the Rhine Counts (Rheingrafen), as one always reads, has yet to be confirmed. Besides this, in 1145, the first holding in Walsheim (a vanished village near Heidenfahrt) passed to Eberbach Abbey
, laying the groundwork for the Sandhof (see Culture and sightseeing: Buildings below). Eventually, in 1158, the Lords of Winternheim were mentioned, who later named themselves after the castle, Burg Windeck, as the Lords of Winterau. Besides these three parties, who dominate the historical records, other Mainz monastic foundations and resident families held lands and rights here.
While the Lords of Winternheim began work on Burg Windeck in the earlier half of the 12th century, the actual settlement around Saint George’s Chapel apparently remained unfortified, or at least not amply so: when Archbishop Conrad of Wittelsbach
was getting himself ready in 1200 to build Mainz’s city wall up again after it had been razed on Emperor Friedrich I’s
orders in 1163, he obliged many villages in the outlying countryside to build their own respective sections. The Heidesheim dwellers had to contribute, arm and maintain five merlons, for which they enjoyed protection, defence, market rights and free buying and selling in the city.
Besides landholdings and income, Altmünster had the Heidesheim Vogt
ei and thereby sovereign rights over the village. Over the course of the centuries, the Vogtei passed through many holders’ hands: That it was held after 1250 by the Lords of Biegen, who gave it back to Altmünster on 13 February 1285 is clearly not so. The relevant document refers not to Heidesheim, but rather to Hattenheim
in the Rheingau
. Against this is that the Abbey appointed Werner von Winterau and his male heirs village Vögte
on 31 January 1326. The lordly house of Winterau died out before 12 April 1372, on which day a Wilhelm von Scharpenstein was avouched as Vogt. From him the Vogtei passed on 14 July 1385 in inheritance along the male line to Dietrich Huth von Sonnenberg.
On 17 January 1414, the Archbishop of Mainz John II of Nassau documented that the abbess and convent of Altmünster at Mainz had transferred one third of the court at Heidesheim to the Archbishopric. Outside this arrangement were the Vogtei with all its appurtenances, the income and the landholdings that were part of the convent’s estate. This was confirmed in writing to the convent for all time by the Archbishop with the cathedral deacon’s and the cathedral capitular’s consent. Moreover, Altmünster was henceforth to be freed of all contributions and levies imposed by the Archbishop or the cathedral capitular. Both pledged henceforth to protect and defend the convent with all its holdings and rights – particularly the remaining two thirds of the court at Heidesheim Der Mainzer und Magdeburger Erzbischof Kardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg bestätigte die Verfügung seines Vorgängers am 22. Oktober 1522.
Such deals, under which Mainz ecclesiastical and monastic foundations yielded sovereign rights, which they could hardly assert through their own power, to the Archbishop against assurance and protection of their ownership rights were often struck in the time that followed. In Heidesheim’s case, this transfer led to the Archbishop’s Amtmann appearing alongside the Altmünster convent’s Vogt. Men known to have served as Archiepiscopal Amtmänner after 1414 on are, in 1481 Johann Langwerth von Simmern, and from 1565 to 1584 Mainz cathedral cantor Heinrich von Stockheim. Known Vögte from that same time are, from 1468 to 1489 Philipp von Stockheim, and from 1489 to 1524 Count Emmerich of Nassau and his male heirs, from 1524 to 1537 Ritter (“Knight”, or perhaps “Sir”) Rabe von Liebenstein, from 1537 to 1553 Hans Sifrid vom Oberstein, and from 1553, first Konrad, and then Hans Georg von Bicken. That the Amtmann and Vogt often annoyed each other can be seen in two trials fought by Heinrich von Stockheim and Hans Georg von Bicken before the Imperial Chamber Court.
When Hans Georg von Bicken found out that he would keep being denied inheritance along the male line, he asked Archbishop of Mainz Wolfgang von Dalberg on 10 November 1598 to change the Heidesheim Vogtei, which had been transferred to him and his cousins as a non-heritable fief, into a heritable fief. His request was never answered. Thus, when he died about 1608, the Vogtei passed back to Altenmünster. The convent seized the day: On advice that in these hard times they could no longer fulfil the demands that the remaining two thirds of the sovereign rights in Heidesheim required of them, the abbess and convent offered the Elector this two-thirds share. In return, the Archbishop – as had been done in 1414 and 1522 – was to protect holdings, rights and income in the village. The Archbishop accepted the transfer with the specified conditions on the very same day, which suggests that the matter had been being discussed for quite some time.
The year 1609 was a watershed in the municipality’s history. Altenmünster now only held patronage rights at Saint Philip’s and Saint James’s Parish Church; the convent could still suggest priests and bellringers, who had to be confirmed by the Archbishop. Furthermore, in spiritual matters, the archiepiscopal vicariate general was responsible, while in worldly matters Heidesheim was under an Electoral deputy. The offices of monasterial Vogt and Electoral Amtmann were forgone. Eventually, the Electoral Chamber gave out Windeck Castle – until then the Amtmann’s seat – as a heritable asset.
(as at municipal election held on 13 June 2004)
might be described thus: Gules a cross argent surmounting a wheel of the same.
, Côte-d'Or
, France
since 1964 Egstedt
, Thuringia
since 1990 Waltersleben
, Thuringia since 1990
The Sankt Georgskapelle (Saint George’s Chapel) – in Heidesheim’s north between the railway line and the Autobahn from Mainz to Koblenz – is “built in the fully preserved space of a Roman
villa rustica
…of which today still…two walls going up under the roof, in parts with original painting on the jointing outside and wall plaster inside, are preserved.”
The chapel’s roughly 1,500-year building history has led to its beginnings being uncovered only bit by bit: Long were those sought – not least of all because of Bishop Sidonius’s patronage – in Frankish
times. According to more recent investigations, one may presume that there was “in it a late-Antiquity country church” of the Bishop of Mainz, that not least of all because of that can be acknowledged “as an especially vital centre of Roman-Christian tradition”. “The chapel can be said to be…Rhenish Hesse’s oldest established religious structure”.
After 650, Frankish settlers came to live around Saint George’s Chapel. Their descendants expanded the chapel in the late 10th and early 11th century with an apse; at this time the triumphal arch imposts were built in. Further expansions came about 1200 – from this time may stem the consecrational inscription on the lintel of the walled-up door on the south façade: “GEWEIHT AM 23. APRIL”, Saint George’s Day (the first two words mean “consecrated on the”). At this time, Saint George’s was the parish church.
Saint George’s and its parish priest held title to a fourth of all incoming tithes in Heidesheim. From the Middle Ages
two documents are known in which Saint George’s Chapel is mentioned. Both stem from documents that have come down from the Eberbach Monastery, and both deal with whether the Sandhof owed the priest the aforesaid tithe. While Provost Otto von Mariengreden could claim his entitlement between April and June from 1185 to 1196 as Heidesheim’s priest, an arbitrary ruling from 23 December 1278 under reference to Pope Alexander III
(who had died in 1181) lays down in writing that Eberbach owed Erkenbold – “Priest of Saint George’s Church in Heisensheim” – no tithes from the Sandhof.
Once the village had been moved from the Rhine Plain onto the slope of the Dinkberg and Saint Philip’s and Saint James’s Parish Church had been built, Saint George’s Chapel lost its status as parish church, although it was not thereby forsaken. Rather, at roughly the same time, the apse was replaced with an enclosed quire. In the 15th century came further extensive conversions. That pilgrimages had begun as early as the Middle Ages
is made plain by later accounts.
After the Thirty Years' War
, Saint George’s Chapel was held by Imperial
Baron Philipp Erwein von Schönborn (d. 1668), who moved his family’s landholdings from the Taunus
to the Middle Rhine and the Main. He acquired it because of the Altmünster Convent’s fourth of the tithes that were tied to it, of which sometime earlier – the exact circumstances are still unclear – Heidesheim’s parish priest had been stripped by the Convent, which was furthermore towards the end of, or just after, the Thirty Years' War – as almost always – in need of money. The priest’s livelihood was later disputed by the Convent, making his financial position anything but better.
In a description of the municipality put together by a Heidesheim priest between 1667 and 1677 and found in Johann Sebastian Severus’s (d. 1797) Dioecesis Moguntina, it says of Saint George’s Chapel:
The Heidesheim dwellers kept true to Saint George’s Chapel through the centuries: when it was being rebuilt in 1665 they transported the lumber from the Rhine to the chapel and set it up there. And when the chapel burnt down again in 1776, Father Michael Priester pressed for the archiepiscopal vicariate general to work towards getting the Count of Schönborn to build it anew. Witnessing the church’s Baroque
décor is a statue of Saint George, which today is kept in the Heidesheim Catholic parish hall.
When France
annexed the Rhine’s left bank in 1797, Saint George’s Chapel passed to the state. The tithes were abolished, and the pilgrimages suspended. When it was announced that the job of tearing the chapel down was to be auctioned to the highest bidder, the Heidesheim dwellers sprang to the chapel’s defence: The president of the church board, the mayor and the parish priest asked the prefect of the department of Donnersberg
, Jeanbon St. André, to relinquish Saint George’s Chapel to the Church. The motion was granted.
Thereafter it became still around Saint George’s Chapel. In the legendary handbook by Georg Dehio
, the reader seeks it in vain. And in 1934, Ernst Krebs wrote:
Even in the new edition of Dehio’s handbook supplied by Ernst Gall, Saint George’s Chapel is missing. Only in the third edition published in 1972 does one find an appraisal:
The public esteem for the oldest and most important building in Heidesheim that has been steadily growing since then is something for which the Heidesheim Saint George’s Chapel Promotional Association (Förderverein St. Georgskapelle Heidesheim e.V. ), above all, is to be thanked. Since 1984 it has tirelessly set itself to restoring the building. Today the chapel looks to be in a worthy state both inside and outside, although there is yet much work to be done. It is once again being used for church services. In the coming years, the Association will be undertaking digs in the area around the chapel and thereby promoting the scientific opening of the Roman villa rustica and the Frankish settlement bound up with it.
Windeck Castle (Burg Windeck) lies in the municipality’s north, south of the railway station. For centuries it stood on the village’s northern edge – whence its name Wintereck or Windeck (Ecke means “corner” or “edge” – and is cognate with the latter – in German
). The widely held notion that the castle was built in or about the year 1209 is something that needs to be set right. Herdegen I of Winternheim might have built the four-sided defensive tower in the middle before 1150. The arbitrary ruling from 1209, on the other hand, mentions “lands and buildings” that his like-named son, Herdegen II, “has taken away from the Brothers of Eberbach in Heidesheim and upon which he has built his house’s wall and moat”. In 1209, then, it was a castle zone expansion that was being discussed; the castle itself was already standing.
A notice from the years 1211 to 1234 shows that there was a further castle zone expansion. At that time, Herdegen – most likely a son of Herdegen II, and thereby the third who went by this name – and a man named Embricho – possibly this Herdegen’s brother – from Eberbach Monastery “the part of a vineyard on which they built their castle’s moat”. Windeck might have looked much as Karl Bronner has reconstructed it no later than that: in the centre the four-sided tower with entrance and wooden parapet eight metres high, girded by an inner wall with a moat and an outer wall, through which flowed either the Sülzbach or the flood channel. Between the walls stood living and working buildings. The core may only have served as a refuge, as suggested by the tower’s limited land area and its difficult access.
Whether the Lords of Winternheim came from Groß-Winternheim
or Klein-Winternheim
cannot be answered without further investigation. In 1235 they were named for the first time as the Lords of Winterau and thereby by the name that they bore in the time that followed. Father Hermann Bär has carefully uttered the assumption hitherto held up as certainty that the Lords’ estate before the middle of the 13th century passed by way of a daughter of the house temporarily to the Lords of Leien. In so doing he refers to a document by which the brothers Philipp, Friedrich and Heinrich of Leien ceded for themselves and their heirs all rights at the Sandhof to Eberbach Monastery, which for its part forwent all levies that it had imposed on them and their father.
Hermann Bär and those who follow him, though, have something working against them: First, it is unclear whether in the document in question it actually says milites in Leien, as it might rather be a question of an abbreviation mark over one of the I’s, which would yield milites in Leheim instead. Thus it is with a later remark on the back of the document. Therefore, it has not been determined what rights the document was dealing with at all. Whatever the truth, the Lords of Winterau had already ceded the Vogt
ei rights that they had held over nine and a half Hufen of the Sandhof to the monks of Eberbach in 1209. Above all, though, Herdegen III of Winterauis named as a witness in documents issued in 1242 and 1255.
The Lords of Winterau owned and lived at Windeck Castle from their beginnings before 1150 up until the family died out in the latter half of the 14th century. In 1326 the Convent of Altmünster at Mainz enfeoffed them with its Vogtei in Heidesheim. In a judgment from 12 April 1372, Wilhelm von Scharpenstein is named as Vogt of the court of Heidesheim and a hern Wernher selgen von Wynthirauwe is named as his neighbour. The word selgen there means “late” – the House of Winterau was no more.
To whom Windeck Castle passed once the Lords of Winterau were gone is shrouded in darkness. Perhaps it ended up with the Altmünster Convent, which might then have passed it on in 1414, together with a third of the Heidesheim court, to Archbishop of Mainz John II of Nassau. In 1481, the archiepiscopal Amtmann of Heidesheim, Johann Langwert von Simmern, lived at the castle. His successor, Heinrich von Stockheim, had his own seat built after 1577 in the form of the Schlossmühle (“Castle Mill”). Whether his successor moved back into the castle is uncertain. Whatever happened, Windeck was still owned by the Court Chamber (Hofkammer), which then granted Samuel Becker, the cellarmaster (winemaker) at the Martinsburg (a now vanished castle) at Mainz the castle, the estate and the eighth of the Heidesheim tithes that came along with those in 1629, as a heritable holding.
In the description of the Parish of Heidesheim drawn up sometime between 1667 and 1677 in Johann Sebastian Severus’s Dioecesis Moguntina, it says:
, the notorious cavalry general Johann von Werth
is said to have lived at the castle. After 1650, it ended up with the Barons of Bockenheim, who thereafter held it for roughly 150 years on a heritable lease. The family had entitlement to pewage and burial in the parish church.
When the French
occupied Electoral Mainz
on 21 October 1793, Windeck Castle, as an ecclesiastical and noble holding, was seized. The von Bockenheim family emigrated to Austria
. Only Katharina Elisabeth von Bockenheim stayed in Heidesheim, where in 1844 she died at the great age of 95. The Windeck was auctioned off sometime in 1802 or 1803 as state property. The new owner was a Wackernheim
townsman named Radicke. His widow handed the property on to the Mainz businessmen Reinach and Popp, who in the second fourth of the 19th century kept a tannery there. In the 1860s, the family Krebs acquired the Windeck. Otto Krebs ran a winery in it with an inn. After 1908, beginning with Christmas, the Evangelical
parish held its church services in the hall on the ground floor. In 1984, the castle was, as once before, a private home.
At the time of the Lords of Winterau, the castle’s outer girding wall enclosed an extensive area, as still witnessed today by the cadastral names Hinter den Ziunen or Hinter den Zäunen (“Behind the Fences”) and In der Zingel or In der Ringmauer (“In the Girding Wall”). After the Thirty Years' War, the citizens of Heidesheim began to use this wall as a quarry, tearing it down in the process. Andreas Trauttner’s 1754 map shows the Windeck already in the shape seen today. The originally open area between the tower and the inner wall is covered by a gabled roof and thus used as a stately home stretching across the north, east and southeast around the tower. In the southwest and west, the wall has been levelled, through which the tower on the building’s western edge rises. It is likely that Samuel Beck gave it this shape after 1626. The ogival-arch portal and the large-scale crossbar windows (windows divided by cross-shaped spars into groups of four windows) in Gothic Revival
style stem from the time after 1860, as does the room layout inside. The outbuildings shown in the cadastral plans from 1812 and from 1841 to 1843 have disappeared.
When the municipality of Heidesheim acquired Windeck Castle in 1993, it was in a state of ruin. Since then, the municipality has undertaken great pains to bring the building into a respectable state: First, the elaborate roof framework and the roof, and then the entrance doors and windows were renovated. The building was newly plastered, given a coat of Mainz red from the Late Middle Ages, and the tower was decorated in natural colours. Finally, a staircase was built into the tower, which leads up to the former roof level with its impressive view. In its efforts to raise the Windeck from its ruins, the municipality is tirelessly and enthusiastically supported by the club Heimatmuseum Burg Windeck e.V.. Volunteer helpers take care of this still considerable property.
The Castle Mill (Schlossmühle) lies at Heidesheim’s southwest edge at the foot of the cadastral area of Sommerau. There Sir Werner of Winterau owned land that he bequeathed to his sons in his will of 16 August 1317. Ernst Krebs has presumed that on the Castle Mill’s lands was a farm whose land was already being worked by Sir Werner’s forebear Herdegen II. That he moved from there to the castle in 1209 does not make sense – on 27 October 1577, Hans Georg von Bicken (d. 1608) sold Heinrich von Stockheim (d. 1588) the Castle Mill area. Hans Georg von Bicken, from the family Bicken, was the Electoral Mainz
vicegerent
(Vitztum) in the Rheingau and Vogt of the Mainz Convent of Altmünster in Heidesheim; Heinrich von Stockheim was cathedral cantor at Mainz, povost of Saint Alban’s Abbey
there and Electoral Amtmann in Heidesheim.
In the years that followed, Heinrich von Stockheim had the still-preserved Renaissance
building and the adjoining chapel tower built on the site of a simple mill building. They served him as an official seat and a dwelling. At the same time the main building housed a mill that with surrounding barns and stables formed an economic hub of extensive lands and of rich revenues, which Heinrich von Stockheim acquired in Heidesheim beginning in 1565.
In the description of the Parish of Heidesheim drawn up sometime between 1667 and 1677 in Johann Sebastian Severus’s Dioecesis Moguntina, it says of the Castle Mill:
The Castle Mill remained in Heinrich von Stockheim’s heirs’ ownership until Kurt von Lützow and his son Ernst Christoph sold the Stockheimische Wohnhaus on 28 September 1677 along with appurtenances, holdings and revenue in Heidesheim, Framersheim, Gau-Bickelheim and Selzen (near Alzey) to Elector of Mainz Damian Hartard von der Leyen (d. 1678) and his heirs. Thereafter the property found itself owned by the Lords – beginning in 1711 Counts – of the Leyen, who administered their scattered holdings on the Moselle and the Rhine first from Koblenz
and beginning in 1773 from Blieskastel
(Saarpfalz
) and gave out the Castle Mill on a heritable lease. Information about the time from 1677 to 1793 is promised by the contents of the archives of the (beginning in 1806) Princes of the Leyen, which in 1995 ended up in the Rhineland-Palatinate Main State Archive in Koblenz, but hitherto not much of this information has been forthcoming.
From the end of the 18th on into the latter half of the 19th century, the Castle Mill’s ownership history raises more questions than it answers: on 21 October 1793, French Revolution
ary troops occupied Electoral Mainz
; on 4 November 1797, France
annexed the Rhine’s left bank; on 9 February 1801 the German Empire ceded the area to France in the Treaty of Lunéville
. Noble and ecclesiastical holdings were seized for the French State and publicly auctioned. Whether or not the Castle Mill met with this fate, it was restored on 25 June 1804 by Napoleon to Count Philipp Franz von der Leyen (d. 1829), and he later sold it – no later than 1820 – when the prince was getting rid of his last holdings on the Middle Rhine, only to acquire Schloss Waal (a castle in Ostallgäu
) a few years later.
The archives of the Princes of the Leyen are yielding as little about the upheavals of the French Revolution
and the Napoleonic Wars
as about the time before this, and as for the decades that followed, no information is forthcoming about the Castle Mill. Although the cadastral plans from 1812 and 1841 to 1843 offer a scale drawing of the property, they say nothing about the castle’s owners. The municipality’s cadastral register lays down in writing on 26 July 1865 that the estate owners were August Krebs (d. 1905?) and his wife Elisabeth, née Schmahl, who had acquired the Castle Mill by way of trade – from whom it is unknown.
Karl Sturm reports that Klara Fauerbach owned a notarielle Beurkundung (“notarized certification”) about 1970 according to which her grandfather August Krebs “bought the Castle Mill property on 4 February 1870 for 22,000 Gulden from Franz Hembes, mayor and estate owner in Ober-Olm
, who had earlier acquired it from the miller Michael Hembes for 20,000 Gulden. According to information from Mrs. Fauerbach, her grandparents were then in possession of the property until 1905…”. Since the buying and selling dates and the circumstances of the transaction are at odds with the official data in the cadastral register, the whole business must be approached with caution.
August Krebs ran on the lands, besides agricultural operations, three mills: one sawmill, which was most likely housed in the southwest in the area bordering the Praumenmühle (not one of his mills), a gristmill, which without doubt was housed in the main building, and an oil mill, which might have been found in the little quarrystone building in the north leaning against the property’s west perimeter wall and dating from before 1841. As the J. Schmitt steam mill in Mainz
-Mombach
expanded in the early years of the 20th century, the traditional watermills in the area became ever less profitable, and August Krebs’s mills shut down as surely as the rest. It is likely that they stopped running with his death.
On 17 June 1918 August Krebs’s heirs sold the Castle Mill for 48,000 paper marks
or 38,400 gold marks
to the Wiesbaden
engineer Michael Schön and his wife Maria Susanna, née Zahn. They sold it again only a year later, on 25 June 1919 for 62,500 paper marks or 19,437 gold marks – and 50 Pfennigs – to the Wiesbaden master painter Karl Schmidt and his wife Luise, née Krüger, who provided the rather shabby building with a coat of paint, but less than a year later they sold it again, on 7 May 1920 for 180,000 paper marks or 15,822 gold marks, to the Wiesbaden court apothecary Max Holländer.
The prices that Michael Schön and Karl Schmidt paid for the Castle Mill and for which they sold it bespeak their use of the property at the end of the First World War in the run on tangible assets or for speculation. Neither took any measures to move his household to Heidesheim, and instead let the building. Not so Max Holländer; for health reasons he was obliged to flee the Wiesbaden climate and move with his wife into the Castle Mill. Wealth was obviously something that he did not lack.
In the years after 1920, Max and Johanna Holländer shaped the ruined Castle Mill into a true jewel. In 1934, Nikolaus Haupt reported in the municipality’s newssheet about the renovation:
In 1938, when Max Holländer had to accept that as a Jew he could no longer remain in Germany, he announced:
It was not enough that Max and Johanna Holländer supplied work to Heidesheim craftsmen in economically hard times; they had to further prove themselves worthy, and this they did lavishly: Max Holländer – if not wholly selflessly – had the Grabenstraße (road) paved at his own expense, on which his chauffeur drove him to Wiesbaden each morning and back in the evening. And at Christmastime, Johanna Holländer went with a basket on her arm down the Grabenstraße, to give gifts out to the children. Older fellow citizens remember today: “a good-hearted woman!” The impositions against the couple as Jews that had been happening since 1933 grew even worse:
After the Second World War, Johanna Holländer reported that already in May 1933, the Bingen Gestapo
were extorting money from her husband and her. One month later the mayor of Heidesheim arrested Max Holländer, whom his driver had denounced, and transferred him to Osthofen Concentration Camp. After a few weeks, he was moved to the prison there, where his wife was also being held. After almost ten weeks, both were allowed to betake themselves, under police supervision, to a sanatorium in Bad Nauheim
. In late September 1933, the Mainz regional court acquitted the couple.
Beginning on 1 April 1934, Max and Johanna Holländer lived once again at the Castle Mill. The municipal administration’s chicanery, though, steadily grew. In 1938 the couple wanted to sell the property publicly (see above) – too late. On 10 November 1938 – the day after Kristallnacht
– Max and Johanna Holländer were sitting on packed cases when the Gestapo and municipal officials violently forced their way into the Castle Mill, arrested Max Holländer and took him to the Town Hall. There, the mayor, a councillor and a notary forced him under duress to donate his whole estate to the municipality.
At the same time the couple had to give notice in Heidesheim of their departure and go to Wiesbaden on the next train. There, Max Holländer was arrested at the railway station and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp
. Released after 14 days, the couple managed to emigrate in late May 1939. Their way led through the Philippines
to New York
, where on 10 December 1941, Max Holländer died.
As early as 11 November 1938, the day after Max and Johanna Holländer’s arrest, there appeared an article in the Gau-Algesheim, Heidesheim and Wackernheim community newssheet under the headline “An Old Historical Building in Ownership of Municipality of Heidesheim”; it could hardly have been full of more hypocrisy and spite:
On the Sunday after Max and Johanna Holländer had been driven out – 20 November 1938 – the municipality opened the Castle Mill with admission at ten Pfennigs so that the citizens could themselves get an idea of the opulence in which the Jews “splurged”, while ethnic Germans were starving. More than 1,000 people gathered. So big was the throng that the spectacle was repeated the next Sunday “by popular demand”.
Thereafter it became oddly quiet about the Castle Mill. Obviously the municipality knew that it had started nothing right with its long yearned-for property, the more so as the Bingen district office brought the donation into doubt, since it was against Nazi principles – if such things could be said to exist – to accept gifts from Jews. Only in 1940 were the ownership relationships clarified, when the Municipality of Heidesheim paid 3,930 Reichsmark into “emigrant” Max Holländer’s frozen account, thus changing the apparent donation into a sale. The municipality, though, had long before let out the Castle Mill to the military authorities in Mainz for dwelling purposes. There followed bombed-out families and refugees from Mainz – all in all up to eight parties.
After the end of the Second World War, Johanna Holländer filed suit – obviously from New York – on 20 May 1949 for compensation. In the case of the Castle Mill she sought to get it back and to be paid damages in the amount of DM100,000. Once she had come back to Wiesbaden, the embittered woman pursued the case doggedly and forcefully. When on 22 July 1954 the Fifth Civil Chamber of the Mainz Regional Court awarded her the Castle Mill and damages amounting to DM49,400 together with 4% interest since 20 May 1949, she launched an appeal.
The case was long and drawn out and ended in an settlement, which after a series of expert opinions and various crime scene visits was drawn up on 19 November 1956 after being suggested by the Chief Magistrate presiding at the Third Civil Senate of the Koblenz Chief State Court. Johanna Holländer got the Castle Mill back together with the originally sought damages of DM100,000 and 4% interest since 20 May 1949. Together with the cost of the legal battle, the Municipality of Heidesheim had roughly DM150,000 to bear in costs.
On 26 April 1957, Mayor Joseph Dillmann made a declaration of bankruptcy in the municipality’s newssheet:
And then came the late confession:
The rest of the story can be told quickly: Whether Johanna Holländer ever saw the Castle Mill again is questionable. She had whatever still seemed usable fetched from the property. It was rather little, for the wood panelling had been used in the years of need after the war as firewood, and the velvet coverings on the walls had been made into children’s clothing. Besides that she settled for the income from the ongoing rental that the utterly ruined property was still bringing in.
Johanna Holländer died sometime before 29 January 1969. On this day the Castle Mill was entered in the Heidesheim register as belonging to her heirs: half went to each of the State League of Jewish Communities in Hesse (Landesverband der Jüdischen Gemeinde in Hessen) and Irgim Olèg Merkaz Europa in Tel Aviv
. They could do little with the property and were glad when on 11 March 1970 it was sold off to Heidesheim building entrepreneur Theodor Kiese. Only a fortnight later, he passed it on to the Ingelheim pharmaceutical firm C. H. Boehringer Sohn.
C. H. Boehringer Sohn had the thoroughly run-down property renovated from the ground up as a representative residence for a member of the company’s board. When work had already proceeded to a great extent, the main and side buildings burnt down to the foundations and outer walls on 1 September 1971. The question of guilt was never settled. Under the monument authority’s strict conditions, C. H. Boehringer Sohn built the Castle Mill anew. From 1976 to 2000, the main building was used for presentations and seminars. Since 2000 it has housed the office of the business association’s and shareholders’ foundations: Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, foundation for basic medical research; Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung; and Geschwister Boehringer Ingelheim, foundation for the humanities.
known as "Vereine". They are a major part of civic life and cover many aspects of people’s leisure time:
1. Sports association with many divisions, e.g. soccer, hockey, athletics, tennis
2. Choirs: men’s, ladies’ and children’s choirs, church choirs and mixed choirs
3. Marching bands offer regular concerts, perform at local and regional festivities and provide extensive training for young people aspiring to master musical instruments.
4. Church youth and adult groups cover all ages and both sexes. Examples are KJG and KFD
5. Special interest clubs exist for dog owners, poultry, chess, the preservation of historical monuments (especially Saint George’s Chapel), photography, and so on.
s 16 (west) and 17 (east).
Through the two railway stations Uhlerborn and Heidesheim (Rheinhessen), there are two connections to local rail transport on the West Rhine Railway (KBS 470). The two nearest long-distance railway stations are Bingen and Mainz Hauptbahnhof
.
Heidesheim is also linked to the Ingelheim/Mainz bus system (route 620), which runs to Ingelheim in the west and to Budenheim, Mainz Mombach and Mainz Hauptbahnhof in the east, therefore fundamentally following the same route as the train. Thus far there is still no direct bus link to the neighbouring Mainz constituent communities of Gonsenheim and Finthen. There are initiatives, though.
Municipalities of Germany
Municipalities are the lowest level of territorial division in Germany. This may be the fourth level of territorial division in Germany, apart from those states which include Regierungsbezirke , where municipalities then become the fifth level.-Overview:With more than 3,400,000 inhabitants, the...
belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde
Verbandsgemeinde
A Verbandsgemeinde is an administrative unit in the German Bundesländer of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt.-Rhineland-Palatinate:...
, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen
Mainz-Bingen
Mainz-Bingen is a district in the east of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Neighboring districts are Rheingau-Taunus, the district-free cities Wiesbaden and Mainz, the districts Groß-Gerau, Alzey-Worms, Bad Kreuznach, Rhein-Hunsrück.-History:During the French occupation under Napoleon the district...
district in Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate is one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of and about four million inhabitants. The capital is Mainz. English speakers also commonly refer to the state by its German name, Rheinland-Pfalz ....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. It is the administrative seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Heidesheim am Rhein
Heidesheim am Rhein (Verbandsgemeinde)
Heidesheim am Rhein is a Verbandsgemeinde in the district Mainz-Bingen in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The seat of the Verbandsgemeinde is in Heidesheim am Rhein....
, which also includes the Ortsgemeinde of Wackernheim
Wackernheim
Wackernheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.It is home to the United States Army's McCulley Barracks.- Location :...
. Heidesheim is one of the biggest municipalities in Rhenish Hesse.
Location
Heidesheim lies in northern Rhenish Hesse, on the so-called Rhine Knee, west of the stateStates of Germany
Germany is made up of sixteen which are partly sovereign constituent states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Land literally translates as "country", and constitutionally speaking, they are constituent countries...
capital, Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
. The municipal area reaches in the north up to the middle of the Rhine’s navigational lane, which here reaches one of its greatest breadths, comprising even the Königsklinger Aue (an island, although its name identifies it as a floodplain). At the bank behind the floodwall, at an elevation of some 82 m, it abuts a sandy plain which is used especially for growing asparagus and which is also covered in fruit trees. Just behind the floodwall is the outlying centre of Heidenfahrt. From here, before the channelling work on the Mariannenaue (floodplain) was broadened towards the east, there was once a ferry link to Erbach
Eltville
Eltville am Rhein is a town in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. It is located on the German Half-Timbered House Road ....
. The community core of Heidesheim itself lies some 2 km from the Rhine’s banks, in a location safe from floodwaters at the foot of the Rhenish Hesse hill country. The municipal area stretches on from there up the north slope of these hills, reaching 2 km east of the municipality’s centre an elevation of 207 m above sea level
Sea level
Mean sea level is a measure of the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation...
. Wherever gaps in the fruit trees allow it, there is a broad view over the Rhine into the Rheingau
Rheingau
The Rheingau is the hill country on the north side of the Rhine River between Wiesbaden and Lorch near Frankfurt, reaching from the western Taunus to the Rhine. It lies in the state of Hesse and is part of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis administrative district...
, all the way to the western part of the Taunus
Taunus
The Taunus is a low mountain range in Hesse, Germany that composes part of the Rhenish Slate Mountains. It is bounded by the river valleys of Rhine, Main and Lahn. On the opposite side of the Rhine, the mountains are continued by the Hunsrück...
’s main ridge, the Rheingau Range (Rheingaugebirge) with the Kalte Herberge and the Hallgarter Zange (mountains) as its highest elevations in the centre. In the east, near Uhlerborn, on the boundary with Budenheim
Budenheim
Budenheim is a municipality in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Unlike other municipalities in Mainz-Bingen, it does not belong to any Verbandsgemeinde.- Location :...
, Heidesheim has a share of one of Rhenish Hesse’s few wooded areas.
As of late 2006 Heidesheim has a population of 7,195, and covers and area of 17.56 km².
Constituent communities
Heidesheim’s Ortsteile are Heidesheim, Heidenfahrt and Uhlerborn.Neighbouring municipalities
Clockwise from the north, these are Eltville am RheinEltville
Eltville am Rhein is a town in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis in the Regierungsbezirk of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. It is located on the German Half-Timbered House Road ....
(on the Rhine’s right, or north, bank), Budenheim
Budenheim
Budenheim is a municipality in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Unlike other municipalities in Mainz-Bingen, it does not belong to any Verbandsgemeinde.- Location :...
, Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
’s outlying centres of Gonsenheim and Finthen, the Verbandsgemeinde of Nieder-Olm
Nieder-Olm (Verbandsgemeinde)
Verbandsgemeinde Nieder-Olm is a collective municipality in the district Mainz-Bingen in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The administrative center of the Verbandsgemeinde Nieder-Olm is located in the town of Nieder-Olm...
, the Verbandsgemeinde of Gau-Algesheim
Gau-Algesheim (Verbandsgemeinde)
Gau-Algesheim is a Verbandsgemeinde in the district Mainz-Bingen in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The seat of the Verbandsgemeinde is in Gau-Algesheim....
and the town of Ingelheim
Ingelheim am Rhein
Ingelheim am Rhein is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany on the Rhine’s west bank. The town calls itself the Rotweinstadt and since 1996 it has been Mainz-Bingen’s district seat....
History
Many finds from prehistory and early historical times confirm that Heidesheim am Rhein’s municipal area was settled as early as the New Stone Age (5500 to 2200 BC). Most have been chance finds. In RomanAncient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
times, north of today’s community core, stood an extensive villa rustica
Villa rustica
Villa rustica was the term used by the ancient Romans to denote a villa set in the open countryside, often as the hub of a large agricultural estate . The adjective rusticum was used to distinguish it from an urban or resort villa...
, which was forsaken after the Germanic invasions in the early 5th century. Within its walls was built Saint George’s Chapel (Sankt Georgskapelle), around which, after the mid 7th century, Frankish
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
settlers came to live. The municipality’s name is said to go back to an estate owned by a Frankish nobleman called Heisino.
The place had its first documentary mention as Heisinisheim or Hasinisheim in donations to the Lorsch Abbey
Lorsch Abbey
The Abbey of Lorsch is a former Imperial Abbey in Lorsch, Germany, about 10 km east of Worms, one of the most renowned monasteries of the Carolingian Empire. Even in its ruined state, its remains are among the most important pre-Romanesque–Carolingian style buildings in Germany...
, the earliest of which purports to date from 762, although in actuality it can only be traced back to some time between September in one of the years between 765 to 768. The earliest confirmed date is 5 July 768. All together, the Lorsch codex
Lorsch codex
The Lorsch Codex is an important historical document created between about 1175 to 1195 AD in the Monastery of Saint Nazarius in Lorsch, Germany. It consists of 460 pages in large format containing more than 3800 entries...
catalogues ten endowments for the Lorsch Abbey in Heidesheim between 765 or 768 and 794, of which however none crops up in later documents. This circumstance leads to the inference that Lorsch had already traded or sold its holdings in Heidesheim by the time the Codex was transferred to parchment between 1183 and 1195.
A wider array of documents referring to Heidesheim only comes to light about 1150. The Altmünster Abbey at Mainz then had at its disposal extensive landholdings and half the tithes. Whether these stemmed from the Rhine Counts (Rheingrafen), as one always reads, has yet to be confirmed. Besides this, in 1145, the first holding in Walsheim (a vanished village near Heidenfahrt) passed to Eberbach Abbey
Eberbach Abbey
Eberbach Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery near Eltville am Rhein in the Rheingau, Germany. On account of its impressive Romanesque and early Gothic buildings it is considered one of the most significant architectural heritage sites in Hesse, Germany...
, laying the groundwork for the Sandhof (see Culture and sightseeing: Buildings below). Eventually, in 1158, the Lords of Winternheim were mentioned, who later named themselves after the castle, Burg Windeck, as the Lords of Winterau. Besides these three parties, who dominate the historical records, other Mainz monastic foundations and resident families held lands and rights here.
While the Lords of Winternheim began work on Burg Windeck in the earlier half of the 12th century, the actual settlement around Saint George’s Chapel apparently remained unfortified, or at least not amply so: when Archbishop Conrad of Wittelsbach
Conrad of Wittelsbach
Conrad of Wittelsbach was the Archbishop of Mainz and Archchancellor of Germany from 20 June 1161 to 1165 and again from 1183 to his death. He was also a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church....
was getting himself ready in 1200 to build Mainz’s city wall up again after it had been razed on Emperor Friedrich I’s
Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick I Barbarossa was a German Holy Roman Emperor. He was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March, crowned King of Italy in Pavia in 1155, and finally crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV, on 18 June 1155, and two years later in 1157 the term...
orders in 1163, he obliged many villages in the outlying countryside to build their own respective sections. The Heidesheim dwellers had to contribute, arm and maintain five merlons, for which they enjoyed protection, defence, market rights and free buying and selling in the city.
Besides landholdings and income, Altmünster had the Heidesheim Vogt
Vogt
A Vogt ; plural Vögte; Dutch voogd; Danish foged; ; ultimately from Latin [ad]vocatus) in the Holy Roman Empire was the German title of a reeve or advocate, an overlord exerting guardianship or military protection as well as secular justice...
ei and thereby sovereign rights over the village. Over the course of the centuries, the Vogtei passed through many holders’ hands: That it was held after 1250 by the Lords of Biegen, who gave it back to Altmünster on 13 February 1285 is clearly not so. The relevant document refers not to Heidesheim, but rather to Hattenheim
Hattenheim
Hattenheim is a Stadtteil in Eltville am Rhein, Hesse, Germany. It lies within the Rheingau wine region.- Points of interest :* Burg Hattenheim* Eberbach Abbey * Schloss Reichartshausen* Steinberg, Kloster Eberbach...
in the Rheingau
Rheingau
The Rheingau is the hill country on the north side of the Rhine River between Wiesbaden and Lorch near Frankfurt, reaching from the western Taunus to the Rhine. It lies in the state of Hesse and is part of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis administrative district...
. Against this is that the Abbey appointed Werner von Winterau and his male heirs village Vögte
Vogt
A Vogt ; plural Vögte; Dutch voogd; Danish foged; ; ultimately from Latin [ad]vocatus) in the Holy Roman Empire was the German title of a reeve or advocate, an overlord exerting guardianship or military protection as well as secular justice...
on 31 January 1326. The lordly house of Winterau died out before 12 April 1372, on which day a Wilhelm von Scharpenstein was avouched as Vogt. From him the Vogtei passed on 14 July 1385 in inheritance along the male line to Dietrich Huth von Sonnenberg.
On 17 January 1414, the Archbishop of Mainz John II of Nassau documented that the abbess and convent of Altmünster at Mainz had transferred one third of the court at Heidesheim to the Archbishopric. Outside this arrangement were the Vogtei with all its appurtenances, the income and the landholdings that were part of the convent’s estate. This was confirmed in writing to the convent for all time by the Archbishop with the cathedral deacon’s and the cathedral capitular’s consent. Moreover, Altmünster was henceforth to be freed of all contributions and levies imposed by the Archbishop or the cathedral capitular. Both pledged henceforth to protect and defend the convent with all its holdings and rights – particularly the remaining two thirds of the court at Heidesheim Der Mainzer und Magdeburger Erzbischof Kardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg bestätigte die Verfügung seines Vorgängers am 22. Oktober 1522.
Such deals, under which Mainz ecclesiastical and monastic foundations yielded sovereign rights, which they could hardly assert through their own power, to the Archbishop against assurance and protection of their ownership rights were often struck in the time that followed. In Heidesheim’s case, this transfer led to the Archbishop’s Amtmann appearing alongside the Altmünster convent’s Vogt. Men known to have served as Archiepiscopal Amtmänner after 1414 on are, in 1481 Johann Langwerth von Simmern, and from 1565 to 1584 Mainz cathedral cantor Heinrich von Stockheim. Known Vögte from that same time are, from 1468 to 1489 Philipp von Stockheim, and from 1489 to 1524 Count Emmerich of Nassau and his male heirs, from 1524 to 1537 Ritter (“Knight”, or perhaps “Sir”) Rabe von Liebenstein, from 1537 to 1553 Hans Sifrid vom Oberstein, and from 1553, first Konrad, and then Hans Georg von Bicken. That the Amtmann and Vogt often annoyed each other can be seen in two trials fought by Heinrich von Stockheim and Hans Georg von Bicken before the Imperial Chamber Court.
When Hans Georg von Bicken found out that he would keep being denied inheritance along the male line, he asked Archbishop of Mainz Wolfgang von Dalberg on 10 November 1598 to change the Heidesheim Vogtei, which had been transferred to him and his cousins as a non-heritable fief, into a heritable fief. His request was never answered. Thus, when he died about 1608, the Vogtei passed back to Altenmünster. The convent seized the day: On advice that in these hard times they could no longer fulfil the demands that the remaining two thirds of the sovereign rights in Heidesheim required of them, the abbess and convent offered the Elector this two-thirds share. In return, the Archbishop – as had been done in 1414 and 1522 – was to protect holdings, rights and income in the village. The Archbishop accepted the transfer with the specified conditions on the very same day, which suggests that the matter had been being discussed for quite some time.
The year 1609 was a watershed in the municipality’s history. Altenmünster now only held patronage rights at Saint Philip’s and Saint James’s Parish Church; the convent could still suggest priests and bellringers, who had to be confirmed by the Archbishop. Furthermore, in spiritual matters, the archiepiscopal vicariate general was responsible, while in worldly matters Heidesheim was under an Electoral deputy. The offices of monasterial Vogt and Electoral Amtmann were forgone. Eventually, the Electoral Chamber gave out Windeck Castle – until then the Amtmann’s seat – as a heritable asset.
Municipal council
The council is made up of 22 council members, counting the parttime mayor, with seats apportioned thus:| CDU | SPD Social Democratic Party of Germany The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany... |
Bürgerliste | FDP Free Democratic Party (Germany) The Free Democratic Party , abbreviated to FDP, is a centre-right classical liberal political party in Germany. It is led by Philipp Rösler and currently serves as the junior coalition partner to the Union in the German federal government... |
FW | Total | |
| 2004 | 9 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 22 seats |
(as at municipal election held on 13 June 2004)
Coat of arms
The municipality’s armsCoat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...
might be described thus: Gules a cross argent surmounting a wheel of the same.
Town partnerships
AuxonneAuxonne
Auxonne is a commune in the Côte-d'Or department in Bourgogne in eastern France.Auxonne is one of the sites of the defensive structures of Vauban, clearly seen from the train bridge as it enters the Auxonne SNCF train station on the Dijon - Besançon train line. It also was home to the Artillery...
, Côte-d'Or
Côte-d'Or
Côte-d'Or is a department in the eastern part of France.- History :Côte-d'Or is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was formed from part of the former province of Burgundy.- Geography :...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
since 1964 Egstedt
Erfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
, Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
since 1990 Waltersleben
Erfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
, Thuringia since 1990
Antiquity and Middle Ages
The Sankt Georgskapelle (Saint George’s Chapel) – in Heidesheim’s north between the railway line and the Autobahn from Mainz to Koblenz – is “built in the fully preserved space of a Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
villa rustica
Villa rustica
Villa rustica was the term used by the ancient Romans to denote a villa set in the open countryside, often as the hub of a large agricultural estate . The adjective rusticum was used to distinguish it from an urban or resort villa...
…of which today still…two walls going up under the roof, in parts with original painting on the jointing outside and wall plaster inside, are preserved.”
The chapel’s roughly 1,500-year building history has led to its beginnings being uncovered only bit by bit: Long were those sought – not least of all because of Bishop Sidonius’s patronage – in Frankish
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
times. According to more recent investigations, one may presume that there was “in it a late-Antiquity country church” of the Bishop of Mainz, that not least of all because of that can be acknowledged “as an especially vital centre of Roman-Christian tradition”. “The chapel can be said to be…Rhenish Hesse’s oldest established religious structure”.
After 650, Frankish settlers came to live around Saint George’s Chapel. Their descendants expanded the chapel in the late 10th and early 11th century with an apse; at this time the triumphal arch imposts were built in. Further expansions came about 1200 – from this time may stem the consecrational inscription on the lintel of the walled-up door on the south façade: “GEWEIHT AM 23. APRIL”, Saint George’s Day (the first two words mean “consecrated on the”). At this time, Saint George’s was the parish church.
Saint George’s and its parish priest held title to a fourth of all incoming tithes in Heidesheim. From the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
two documents are known in which Saint George’s Chapel is mentioned. Both stem from documents that have come down from the Eberbach Monastery, and both deal with whether the Sandhof owed the priest the aforesaid tithe. While Provost Otto von Mariengreden could claim his entitlement between April and June from 1185 to 1196 as Heidesheim’s priest, an arbitrary ruling from 23 December 1278 under reference to Pope Alexander III
Pope Alexander III
Pope Alexander III , born Rolando of Siena, was Pope from 1159 to 1181. He is noted in history for laying the foundation stone for the Notre Dame de Paris.-Church career:...
(who had died in 1181) lays down in writing that Eberbach owed Erkenbold – “Priest of Saint George’s Church in Heisensheim” – no tithes from the Sandhof.
Once the village had been moved from the Rhine Plain onto the slope of the Dinkberg and Saint Philip’s and Saint James’s Parish Church had been built, Saint George’s Chapel lost its status as parish church, although it was not thereby forsaken. Rather, at roughly the same time, the apse was replaced with an enclosed quire. In the 15th century came further extensive conversions. That pilgrimages had begun as early as the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
is made plain by later accounts.
Modern times
After the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
, Saint George’s Chapel was held by Imperial
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
Baron Philipp Erwein von Schönborn (d. 1668), who moved his family’s landholdings from the Taunus
Taunus
The Taunus is a low mountain range in Hesse, Germany that composes part of the Rhenish Slate Mountains. It is bounded by the river valleys of Rhine, Main and Lahn. On the opposite side of the Rhine, the mountains are continued by the Hunsrück...
to the Middle Rhine and the Main. He acquired it because of the Altmünster Convent’s fourth of the tithes that were tied to it, of which sometime earlier – the exact circumstances are still unclear – Heidesheim’s parish priest had been stripped by the Convent, which was furthermore towards the end of, or just after, the Thirty Years' War – as almost always – in need of money. The priest’s livelihood was later disputed by the Convent, making his financial position anything but better.
In a description of the municipality put together by a Heidesheim priest between 1667 and 1677 and found in Johann Sebastian Severus’s (d. 1797) Dioecesis Moguntina, it says of Saint George’s Chapel:
“Also standing on the field of Heidesheim is a chapel of Saint George, built in the beginning as a building with mean stonework, later expanded because of the crowd of pilgrims streaming there and manifestly hallowed. … After Saint George’s feast here in the village is, as ever, festively celebrated, the local community proceeds there in a festive Rogation procession and attend festive Mass and sermon. In the same way dwellers of Budenheim and Finthen come here on the Rogation days (the three days before Assumption, also used for the whole week).
“As an endowment this chapel enjoys the fourth part of all tithes. And in the year 1665, it was built anew by Baron Philipp Erwein von Schönborn, who is bound as its owner to pay the priest of Heidesheim each year at Saint George’s feast for Mass and sermon two Gulden, but the choristers three Gulden. From these alms the first vespers in the chapel are also to be defrayed.”
The Heidesheim dwellers kept true to Saint George’s Chapel through the centuries: when it was being rebuilt in 1665 they transported the lumber from the Rhine to the chapel and set it up there. And when the chapel burnt down again in 1776, Father Michael Priester pressed for the archiepiscopal vicariate general to work towards getting the Count of Schönborn to build it anew. Witnessing the church’s Baroque
Baroque architecture
Baroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...
décor is a statue of Saint George, which today is kept in the Heidesheim Catholic parish hall.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
annexed the Rhine’s left bank in 1797, Saint George’s Chapel passed to the state. The tithes were abolished, and the pilgrimages suspended. When it was announced that the job of tearing the chapel down was to be auctioned to the highest bidder, the Heidesheim dwellers sprang to the chapel’s defence: The president of the church board, the mayor and the parish priest asked the prefect of the department of Donnersberg
Mont-Tonnerre
Mont-Tonnerre is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Germany. It is named after the highest point in the Rhenish Palatinate, the Donnersberg. It was the southernmost of four départements formed in 1798, when the west bank of the Rhine was annexed by France...
, Jeanbon St. André, to relinquish Saint George’s Chapel to the Church. The motion was granted.
Thereafter it became still around Saint George’s Chapel. In the legendary handbook by Georg Dehio
Georg Dehio
Georg Gottfried Julius Dehio , was a Baltic German art historian ....
, the reader seeks it in vain. And in 1934, Ernst Krebs wrote:
“Thus now still stands Saint George’s sanctuary so lonely and forlorn there below as it did hundreds of years ago, and if one enters the church’s humble interior, one feels in this room as if sent back to a vanished time and only a train abruptly roaring by destroys the illusion and recalls the gap that divides the beginnings of the old place of worship from the present.
Even in the new edition of Dehio’s handbook supplied by Ernst Gall, Saint George’s Chapel is missing. Only in the third edition published in 1972 does one find an appraisal:
“Alone in the field northern Heidesheim, near the former Mainz-Bingen Roman road: hall structure with plain enclosed quire and profiled triumphal arch pillars, probably 10th century (cf. the imposts of the hall church in Nieder-Ingelheim). In the south wall walled-up portal with consecrational inscription on the lintel. West portal and window changed in the 15th century. Remnants of Baroque décor.”.
The public esteem for the oldest and most important building in Heidesheim that has been steadily growing since then is something for which the Heidesheim Saint George’s Chapel Promotional Association (Förderverein St. Georgskapelle Heidesheim e.V. ), above all, is to be thanked. Since 1984 it has tirelessly set itself to restoring the building. Today the chapel looks to be in a worthy state both inside and outside, although there is yet much work to be done. It is once again being used for church services. In the coming years, the Association will be undertaking digs in the area around the chapel and thereby promoting the scientific opening of the Roman villa rustica and the Frankish settlement bound up with it.
The Lords of Winternheim and Lords of Winterau
Windeck Castle (Burg Windeck) lies in the municipality’s north, south of the railway station. For centuries it stood on the village’s northern edge – whence its name Wintereck or Windeck (Ecke means “corner” or “edge” – and is cognate with the latter – in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
). The widely held notion that the castle was built in or about the year 1209 is something that needs to be set right. Herdegen I of Winternheim might have built the four-sided defensive tower in the middle before 1150. The arbitrary ruling from 1209, on the other hand, mentions “lands and buildings” that his like-named son, Herdegen II, “has taken away from the Brothers of Eberbach in Heidesheim and upon which he has built his house’s wall and moat”. In 1209, then, it was a castle zone expansion that was being discussed; the castle itself was already standing.
A notice from the years 1211 to 1234 shows that there was a further castle zone expansion. At that time, Herdegen – most likely a son of Herdegen II, and thereby the third who went by this name – and a man named Embricho – possibly this Herdegen’s brother – from Eberbach Monastery “the part of a vineyard on which they built their castle’s moat”. Windeck might have looked much as Karl Bronner has reconstructed it no later than that: in the centre the four-sided tower with entrance and wooden parapet eight metres high, girded by an inner wall with a moat and an outer wall, through which flowed either the Sülzbach or the flood channel. Between the walls stood living and working buildings. The core may only have served as a refuge, as suggested by the tower’s limited land area and its difficult access.
Whether the Lords of Winternheim came from Groß-Winternheim
Ingelheim am Rhein
Ingelheim am Rhein is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany on the Rhine’s west bank. The town calls itself the Rotweinstadt and since 1996 it has been Mainz-Bingen’s district seat....
or Klein-Winternheim
Klein-Winternheim
Klein-Winternheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.-Location:...
cannot be answered without further investigation. In 1235 they were named for the first time as the Lords of Winterau and thereby by the name that they bore in the time that followed. Father Hermann Bär has carefully uttered the assumption hitherto held up as certainty that the Lords’ estate before the middle of the 13th century passed by way of a daughter of the house temporarily to the Lords of Leien. In so doing he refers to a document by which the brothers Philipp, Friedrich and Heinrich of Leien ceded for themselves and their heirs all rights at the Sandhof to Eberbach Monastery, which for its part forwent all levies that it had imposed on them and their father.
Hermann Bär and those who follow him, though, have something working against them: First, it is unclear whether in the document in question it actually says milites in Leien, as it might rather be a question of an abbreviation mark over one of the I’s, which would yield milites in Leheim instead. Thus it is with a later remark on the back of the document. Therefore, it has not been determined what rights the document was dealing with at all. Whatever the truth, the Lords of Winterau had already ceded the Vogt
Vogt
A Vogt ; plural Vögte; Dutch voogd; Danish foged; ; ultimately from Latin [ad]vocatus) in the Holy Roman Empire was the German title of a reeve or advocate, an overlord exerting guardianship or military protection as well as secular justice...
ei rights that they had held over nine and a half Hufen of the Sandhof to the monks of Eberbach in 1209. Above all, though, Herdegen III of Winterauis named as a witness in documents issued in 1242 and 1255.
The Lords of Winterau owned and lived at Windeck Castle from their beginnings before 1150 up until the family died out in the latter half of the 14th century. In 1326 the Convent of Altmünster at Mainz enfeoffed them with its Vogtei in Heidesheim. In a judgment from 12 April 1372, Wilhelm von Scharpenstein is named as Vogt of the court of Heidesheim and a hern Wernher selgen von Wynthirauwe is named as his neighbour. The word selgen there means “late” – the House of Winterau was no more.
15th to 20th century
To whom Windeck Castle passed once the Lords of Winterau were gone is shrouded in darkness. Perhaps it ended up with the Altmünster Convent, which might then have passed it on in 1414, together with a third of the Heidesheim court, to Archbishop of Mainz John II of Nassau. In 1481, the archiepiscopal Amtmann of Heidesheim, Johann Langwert von Simmern, lived at the castle. His successor, Heinrich von Stockheim, had his own seat built after 1577 in the form of the Schlossmühle (“Castle Mill”). Whether his successor moved back into the castle is uncertain. Whatever happened, Windeck was still owned by the Court Chamber (Hofkammer), which then granted Samuel Becker, the cellarmaster (winemaker) at the Martinsburg (a now vanished castle) at Mainz the castle, the estate and the eighth of the Heidesheim tithes that came along with those in 1629, as a heritable holding.
In the description of the Parish of Heidesheim drawn up sometime between 1667 and 1677 in Johann Sebastian Severus’s Dioecesis Moguntina, it says:
“On the edge of the village towards the Rhine one beholds farther away the castle house at the Wintereck which in the year 1626 Samuel Beck, chief cellarmaster at Mainz, acquired for himself and his family along with the forest, meadows, fields and cereal tributes for 800 Gulden and today has outfitted with an appealing building and fruit trees.Towards the end of the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
, the notorious cavalry general Johann von Werth
Johann von Werth
Count Johann von Werth , also Jan von Werth or in French Jean de Werth, was a German general of cavalry in the Thirty Years' War.-Biography:...
is said to have lived at the castle. After 1650, it ended up with the Barons of Bockenheim, who thereafter held it for roughly 150 years on a heritable lease. The family had entitlement to pewage and burial in the parish church.
When the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
occupied Electoral Mainz
Archbishopric of Mainz
The Archbishopric of Mainz or Electorate of Mainz was an influential ecclesiastic and secular prince-bishopric in the Holy Roman Empire between 780–82 and 1802. In the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Archbishop of Mainz was the primas Germaniae, the substitute of the Pope north of the Alps...
on 21 October 1793, Windeck Castle, as an ecclesiastical and noble holding, was seized. The von Bockenheim family emigrated to Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. Only Katharina Elisabeth von Bockenheim stayed in Heidesheim, where in 1844 she died at the great age of 95. The Windeck was auctioned off sometime in 1802 or 1803 as state property. The new owner was a Wackernheim
Wackernheim
Wackernheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.It is home to the United States Army's McCulley Barracks.- Location :...
townsman named Radicke. His widow handed the property on to the Mainz businessmen Reinach and Popp, who in the second fourth of the 19th century kept a tannery there. In the 1860s, the family Krebs acquired the Windeck. Otto Krebs ran a winery in it with an inn. After 1908, beginning with Christmas, the Evangelical
Evangelical Church in Germany
The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany. The EKD is not a church in a theological understanding because of the denominational differences. However, the member churches share full pulpit and altar...
parish held its church services in the hall on the ground floor. In 1984, the castle was, as once before, a private home.
At the time of the Lords of Winterau, the castle’s outer girding wall enclosed an extensive area, as still witnessed today by the cadastral names Hinter den Ziunen or Hinter den Zäunen (“Behind the Fences”) and In der Zingel or In der Ringmauer (“In the Girding Wall”). After the Thirty Years' War, the citizens of Heidesheim began to use this wall as a quarry, tearing it down in the process. Andreas Trauttner’s 1754 map shows the Windeck already in the shape seen today. The originally open area between the tower and the inner wall is covered by a gabled roof and thus used as a stately home stretching across the north, east and southeast around the tower. In the southwest and west, the wall has been levelled, through which the tower on the building’s western edge rises. It is likely that Samuel Beck gave it this shape after 1626. The ogival-arch portal and the large-scale crossbar windows (windows divided by cross-shaped spars into groups of four windows) in Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
style stem from the time after 1860, as does the room layout inside. The outbuildings shown in the cadastral plans from 1812 and from 1841 to 1843 have disappeared.
When the municipality of Heidesheim acquired Windeck Castle in 1993, it was in a state of ruin. Since then, the municipality has undertaken great pains to bring the building into a respectable state: First, the elaborate roof framework and the roof, and then the entrance doors and windows were renovated. The building was newly plastered, given a coat of Mainz red from the Late Middle Ages, and the tower was decorated in natural colours. Finally, a staircase was built into the tower, which leads up to the former roof level with its impressive view. In its efforts to raise the Windeck from its ruins, the municipality is tirelessly and enthusiastically supported by the club Heimatmuseum Burg Windeck e.V.. Volunteer helpers take care of this still considerable property.
The Lords of Winterau, of Stockheim and of the Leyen (1317-1793)
The Castle Mill (Schlossmühle) lies at Heidesheim’s southwest edge at the foot of the cadastral area of Sommerau. There Sir Werner of Winterau owned land that he bequeathed to his sons in his will of 16 August 1317. Ernst Krebs has presumed that on the Castle Mill’s lands was a farm whose land was already being worked by Sir Werner’s forebear Herdegen II. That he moved from there to the castle in 1209 does not make sense – on 27 October 1577, Hans Georg von Bicken (d. 1608) sold Heinrich von Stockheim (d. 1588) the Castle Mill area. Hans Georg von Bicken, from the family Bicken, was the Electoral Mainz
Archbishopric of Mainz
The Archbishopric of Mainz or Electorate of Mainz was an influential ecclesiastic and secular prince-bishopric in the Holy Roman Empire between 780–82 and 1802. In the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Archbishop of Mainz was the primas Germaniae, the substitute of the Pope north of the Alps...
vicegerent
Vicegerent
Vicegerent is the official administrative deputy of a ruler or head of state: vice + gerere .-Related usage:*The Byzantine Emperors held as a title "God's Vicegerent on Earth"....
(Vitztum) in the Rheingau and Vogt of the Mainz Convent of Altmünster in Heidesheim; Heinrich von Stockheim was cathedral cantor at Mainz, povost of Saint Alban’s Abbey
St. Alban's Abbey, Mainz
St. Alban's Abbey, Mainz originated as a Benedictine abbey, founded in 787 or 796 by Archbishop Richulf in honour of Saint Alban of Mainz, located to the south of Mainz on the hill later called the Albansberg. It was turned into a collegiate foundation in 1442...
there and Electoral Amtmann in Heidesheim.
In the years that followed, Heinrich von Stockheim had the still-preserved Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
building and the adjoining chapel tower built on the site of a simple mill building. They served him as an official seat and a dwelling. At the same time the main building housed a mill that with surrounding barns and stables formed an economic hub of extensive lands and of rich revenues, which Heinrich von Stockheim acquired in Heidesheim beginning in 1565.
In the description of the Parish of Heidesheim drawn up sometime between 1667 and 1677 in Johann Sebastian Severus’s Dioecesis Moguntina, it says of the Castle Mill:
“Incidentally, an important mill is vaunted – with a great house, barns and stalls, garden and other appurtenances. It was built in 1577 by a member of the family Stockheim, who was cathedral cantor in Mainz and village Amtmann.”
The Castle Mill remained in Heinrich von Stockheim’s heirs’ ownership until Kurt von Lützow and his son Ernst Christoph sold the Stockheimische Wohnhaus on 28 September 1677 along with appurtenances, holdings and revenue in Heidesheim, Framersheim, Gau-Bickelheim and Selzen (near Alzey) to Elector of Mainz Damian Hartard von der Leyen (d. 1678) and his heirs. Thereafter the property found itself owned by the Lords – beginning in 1711 Counts – of the Leyen, who administered their scattered holdings on the Moselle and the Rhine first from Koblenz
Koblenz
Koblenz is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated.As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the...
and beginning in 1773 from Blieskastel
Blieskastel
Blieskastel is a municipality in the Saarpfalz district, in Saarland, Germany. It is situated on the river Blies, approximately 8 km west of Zweibrücken, and 20 km east of Saarbrücken.-International relations:...
(Saarpfalz
Saarpfalz
Saarpfalz is a Kreis in the south-east of the Saarland, Germany. Neighboring districts are Saarbrücken, Neunkirchen, Kusel, Kaiserslautern, Südwestpfalz, district-free Zweibrücken, and the French département Moselle.-History:After the Treaty of Versailles, the Saar basin was placed under the...
) and gave out the Castle Mill on a heritable lease. Information about the time from 1677 to 1793 is promised by the contents of the archives of the (beginning in 1806) Princes of the Leyen, which in 1995 ended up in the Rhineland-Palatinate Main State Archive in Koblenz, but hitherto not much of this information has been forthcoming.
The dark 19th century, Krebs, Schön, Schmidt (1793-1920)
From the end of the 18th on into the latter half of the 19th century, the Castle Mill’s ownership history raises more questions than it answers: on 21 October 1793, French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
ary troops occupied Electoral Mainz
Archbishopric of Mainz
The Archbishopric of Mainz or Electorate of Mainz was an influential ecclesiastic and secular prince-bishopric in the Holy Roman Empire between 780–82 and 1802. In the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the Archbishop of Mainz was the primas Germaniae, the substitute of the Pope north of the Alps...
; on 4 November 1797, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
annexed the Rhine’s left bank; on 9 February 1801 the German Empire ceded the area to France in the Treaty of Lunéville
Treaty of Lunéville
The Treaty of Lunéville was signed on 9 February 1801 between the French Republic and the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, negotiating both on behalf of his own domains and of the Holy Roman Empire...
. Noble and ecclesiastical holdings were seized for the French State and publicly auctioned. Whether or not the Castle Mill met with this fate, it was restored on 25 June 1804 by Napoleon to Count Philipp Franz von der Leyen (d. 1829), and he later sold it – no later than 1820 – when the prince was getting rid of his last holdings on the Middle Rhine, only to acquire Schloss Waal (a castle in Ostallgäu
Ostallgäu
Ostallgäu is a district in Bavaria, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Oberallgäu, Unterallgäu, Augsburg, Landsberg, Weilheim-Schongau and Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and by the Austrian state of Tyrol...
) a few years later.
The archives of the Princes of the Leyen are yielding as little about the upheavals of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
as about the time before this, and as for the decades that followed, no information is forthcoming about the Castle Mill. Although the cadastral plans from 1812 and 1841 to 1843 offer a scale drawing of the property, they say nothing about the castle’s owners. The municipality’s cadastral register lays down in writing on 26 July 1865 that the estate owners were August Krebs (d. 1905?) and his wife Elisabeth, née Schmahl, who had acquired the Castle Mill by way of trade – from whom it is unknown.
Karl Sturm reports that Klara Fauerbach owned a notarielle Beurkundung (“notarized certification”) about 1970 according to which her grandfather August Krebs “bought the Castle Mill property on 4 February 1870 for 22,000 Gulden from Franz Hembes, mayor and estate owner in Ober-Olm
Ober-Olm
Ober-Olm is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.- Neighbouring municipalities :...
, who had earlier acquired it from the miller Michael Hembes for 20,000 Gulden. According to information from Mrs. Fauerbach, her grandparents were then in possession of the property until 1905…”. Since the buying and selling dates and the circumstances of the transaction are at odds with the official data in the cadastral register, the whole business must be approached with caution.
August Krebs ran on the lands, besides agricultural operations, three mills: one sawmill, which was most likely housed in the southwest in the area bordering the Praumenmühle (not one of his mills), a gristmill, which without doubt was housed in the main building, and an oil mill, which might have been found in the little quarrystone building in the north leaning against the property’s west perimeter wall and dating from before 1841. As the J. Schmitt steam mill in Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
-Mombach
Mombach
Mombach, with about 13,000 inhabitants, is a borough in the northwest corner of Mainz, Germany. Mombach can be reached via Mainz-innenstadt or Bundesautobahn 643.- Location :...
expanded in the early years of the 20th century, the traditional watermills in the area became ever less profitable, and August Krebs’s mills shut down as surely as the rest. It is likely that they stopped running with his death.
On 17 June 1918 August Krebs’s heirs sold the Castle Mill for 48,000 paper marks
German papiermark
The name Papiermark is applied to the German currency from the 4th August 1914 when the link between the Mark and gold was abandoned, due to the outbreak of World War I...
or 38,400 gold marks
German gold mark
The Goldmark was the currency used in the German Empire from 1873 to 1914.-History:Before unification, the different German states issued a variety of different currencies, though most were linked to the Vereinsthaler, a silver coin containing 16⅔ grams of pure silver...
to the Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
engineer Michael Schön and his wife Maria Susanna, née Zahn. They sold it again only a year later, on 25 June 1919 for 62,500 paper marks or 19,437 gold marks – and 50 Pfennigs – to the Wiesbaden master painter Karl Schmidt and his wife Luise, née Krüger, who provided the rather shabby building with a coat of paint, but less than a year later they sold it again, on 7 May 1920 for 180,000 paper marks or 15,822 gold marks, to the Wiesbaden court apothecary Max Holländer.
The prices that Michael Schön and Karl Schmidt paid for the Castle Mill and for which they sold it bespeak their use of the property at the end of the First World War in the run on tangible assets or for speculation. Neither took any measures to move his household to Heidesheim, and instead let the building. Not so Max Holländer; for health reasons he was obliged to flee the Wiesbaden climate and move with his wife into the Castle Mill. Wealth was obviously something that he did not lack.
Max and Johanna Holländer (1920-1938)
In the years after 1920, Max and Johanna Holländer shaped the ruined Castle Mill into a true jewel. In 1934, Nikolaus Haupt reported in the municipality’s newssheet about the renovation:
“It was carried out from the mighty cellar vaults with the foundation, which here and there is more than two metres thick, up to the loft and it was worked in a radical way. From the three-floor loft, the lower floor was also expanded into dwelling rooms. The important works were performed almost wholly by Heidesheim tradesmen. In the main it is a matter of artistic wall and ceiling coverings, which are made to match the building’s character and which have already enjoyed much attention and approval from professionals. The works are an honorific attestation for former applied arts student and now master joiner Peter Schlitz’s mastery and achievement here.
“In the left wing beside the main building’s entrance is found the former Castle Chapel, a rectangular room with two dainty cross vaults resting in the middle on a column. Even this the owner has in mind to have converted to its former purpose. The property thus represents as a whole through the renovation and careful handling an important jewel within the municipality of Heidesheim.”
In 1938, when Max Holländer had to accept that as a Jew he could no longer remain in Germany, he announced:
“Castle property on the Rhine for sale immediately, Near Mainz! Renaissance building under conservation! Enthusiast’s item! Rarity value! The property, some 5 minutes away from the railway station – Basel-Holland, Frankfurt-Paris lines – forms a complete whole in one plan, utterly enclosed, and comprises over 11 000 m² estate area, built-up area, orchard and vegetable garden (choice fruit, almond trees, choice chestnuts), 2 work buildings supplied by heat from the house. The property has its own spring flowing through it, so that the garden is watered with its own water. The spring can also be used to generate electric power.
“The castle, a Renaissance building from the time about 1160, in finished quarrystones with quoins at the corners, steep slate roof and high Renaissance gables, contains the following: In the cellar: vaulted stock cellar, wine cellar, heating cellar with coke cellar (water heating); on the ground floor: entrance hall, reception room, 4 spacious rooms, 2 maids’ rooms, adjoining bath for household servants, WC; on the first floor: 4 spacious livingrooms, 2 kitchen rooms, 1 ironing room, WC; on the second floor: 5 spacious livingrooms/bedrooms, bath, WC; in the loft: floor space (woodwork made of heavy oak); 1 side building contains: washkitchen, gardener’s dwelling, storage space; 1 stable building contains: stable (for horses and cattle, swine), garage, hay floor; 1 further side building contains: chicken coop, equipment room – electric lighting, gas, sewerage, bath, in the rooms running warm and cold water, heating, telephone, radio at hand.
“Of high artistic and historical worth is the tasteful interior décor, which also matches the castle’s building style, of individual rooms with wall and ceiling coverings made of wood, in parts velvet covering on the room walls, as well as the genuine-style furnishings, which also fit the house’s character, of individual rooms. With much artistic taste and finest style sensitivity the owner has decorated the property. Wonderful master paintings, much genuine carpets and much more complete the whole image of this property, whose uniqueness and cultural-historical worth is marked by the fact that the castle has been placed under conservation…”
It was not enough that Max and Johanna Holländer supplied work to Heidesheim craftsmen in economically hard times; they had to further prove themselves worthy, and this they did lavishly: Max Holländer – if not wholly selflessly – had the Grabenstraße (road) paved at his own expense, on which his chauffeur drove him to Wiesbaden each morning and back in the evening. And at Christmastime, Johanna Holländer went with a basket on her arm down the Grabenstraße, to give gifts out to the children. Older fellow citizens remember today: “a good-hearted woman!” The impositions against the couple as Jews that had been happening since 1933 grew even worse:
After the Second World War, Johanna Holländer reported that already in May 1933, the Bingen Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
were extorting money from her husband and her. One month later the mayor of Heidesheim arrested Max Holländer, whom his driver had denounced, and transferred him to Osthofen Concentration Camp. After a few weeks, he was moved to the prison there, where his wife was also being held. After almost ten weeks, both were allowed to betake themselves, under police supervision, to a sanatorium in Bad Nauheim
Bad Nauheim
Bad Nauheim is a town in the Wetteraukreis district of Hesse state of Germany. , Bad Nauheim has a population of 30,365. The town is located approximately 35 kilometers north of Frankfurt am Main, on the east edge of the Taunus mountain range. It is a world-famous resort, noted for its salt...
. In late September 1933, the Mainz regional court acquitted the couple.
Beginning on 1 April 1934, Max and Johanna Holländer lived once again at the Castle Mill. The municipal administration’s chicanery, though, steadily grew. In 1938 the couple wanted to sell the property publicly (see above) – too late. On 10 November 1938 – the day after Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
– Max and Johanna Holländer were sitting on packed cases when the Gestapo and municipal officials violently forced their way into the Castle Mill, arrested Max Holländer and took him to the Town Hall. There, the mayor, a councillor and a notary forced him under duress to donate his whole estate to the municipality.
At the same time the couple had to give notice in Heidesheim of their departure and go to Wiesbaden on the next train. There, Max Holländer was arrested at the railway station and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
. Released after 14 days, the couple managed to emigrate in late May 1939. Their way led through the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
to New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where on 10 December 1941, Max Holländer died.
Municipality of Heidesheim (1938-1956)
As early as 11 November 1938, the day after Max and Johanna Holländer’s arrest, there appeared an article in the Gau-Algesheim, Heidesheim and Wackernheim community newssheet under the headline “An Old Historical Building in Ownership of Municipality of Heidesheim”; it could hardly have been full of more hypocrisy and spite:
“The Castle Mill – the oldest building of the Municipality of Heidesheim – passed on 10 November as a donation into the ownership of the Municipality of Heidesheim. Yesterday, 12:45, the owner up to now, Max Holländer, made the building over to the municipality’s ownership through a provisional agreement – of his own free will and influenced by no party. And thus has the long-fostered wish for the property one day to pass to the municipality become reality. Holländer for a long time had the thought of putting the building at the disposal of the Municipality of Heidesheim.”
On the Sunday after Max and Johanna Holländer had been driven out – 20 November 1938 – the municipality opened the Castle Mill with admission at ten Pfennigs so that the citizens could themselves get an idea of the opulence in which the Jews “splurged”, while ethnic Germans were starving. More than 1,000 people gathered. So big was the throng that the spectacle was repeated the next Sunday “by popular demand”.
Thereafter it became oddly quiet about the Castle Mill. Obviously the municipality knew that it had started nothing right with its long yearned-for property, the more so as the Bingen district office brought the donation into doubt, since it was against Nazi principles – if such things could be said to exist – to accept gifts from Jews. Only in 1940 were the ownership relationships clarified, when the Municipality of Heidesheim paid 3,930 Reichsmark into “emigrant” Max Holländer’s frozen account, thus changing the apparent donation into a sale. The municipality, though, had long before let out the Castle Mill to the military authorities in Mainz for dwelling purposes. There followed bombed-out families and refugees from Mainz – all in all up to eight parties.
After the end of the Second World War, Johanna Holländer filed suit – obviously from New York – on 20 May 1949 for compensation. In the case of the Castle Mill she sought to get it back and to be paid damages in the amount of DM100,000. Once she had come back to Wiesbaden, the embittered woman pursued the case doggedly and forcefully. When on 22 July 1954 the Fifth Civil Chamber of the Mainz Regional Court awarded her the Castle Mill and damages amounting to DM49,400 together with 4% interest since 20 May 1949, she launched an appeal.
The case was long and drawn out and ended in an settlement, which after a series of expert opinions and various crime scene visits was drawn up on 19 November 1956 after being suggested by the Chief Magistrate presiding at the Third Civil Senate of the Koblenz Chief State Court. Johanna Holländer got the Castle Mill back together with the originally sought damages of DM100,000 and 4% interest since 20 May 1949. Together with the cost of the legal battle, the Municipality of Heidesheim had roughly DM150,000 to bear in costs.
Johanna Holländer and C. H. Boehringer Sohn (1956-present)
On 26 April 1957, Mayor Joseph Dillmann made a declaration of bankruptcy in the municipality’s newssheet:
“After the speech by the municipality’s legal representative before municipal council, it has after due consideration and with a heavy heart accepted the settlement. Given the municipality’s weak legal position, however, the legal dispute, which went on for 7 years, can no longer be further pursued. The damage sum is only a substitute for the damages that the municipality must answer for; the Castle Mill remains the plaintiff’s property. The damage award comprises the compensation of the damage in buildings, gardening facilities and lost use.
“Through this financial burden the municipality’s budgetary economy is being put before some burdensome challenges. Nevertheless, the challenges necessary for the municipality’s further development must be continued. The damage sum can only be covered through the assumption of a short-term municipal credit. Amortization and interest payment must be dealt with out of the regular budget. An increase in property and business tax to 200 or 300 percent of the average state rates therefore cannot be avoided.”
And then came the late confession:
“Perhaps those who are also responsible will recognize the injustice in which they – perhaps unwittingly – have been complicit, and that they have brought the municipality untold harm. It is needless to want to gloss over anything. It was a crime and the whole municipality must bear the consequences. Unfortunately, the main culprit cannot be held liable for compensation, since he owns nothing.”
The rest of the story can be told quickly: Whether Johanna Holländer ever saw the Castle Mill again is questionable. She had whatever still seemed usable fetched from the property. It was rather little, for the wood panelling had been used in the years of need after the war as firewood, and the velvet coverings on the walls had been made into children’s clothing. Besides that she settled for the income from the ongoing rental that the utterly ruined property was still bringing in.
Johanna Holländer died sometime before 29 January 1969. On this day the Castle Mill was entered in the Heidesheim register as belonging to her heirs: half went to each of the State League of Jewish Communities in Hesse (Landesverband der Jüdischen Gemeinde in Hessen) and Irgim Olèg Merkaz Europa in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
. They could do little with the property and were glad when on 11 March 1970 it was sold off to Heidesheim building entrepreneur Theodor Kiese. Only a fortnight later, he passed it on to the Ingelheim pharmaceutical firm C. H. Boehringer Sohn.
C. H. Boehringer Sohn had the thoroughly run-down property renovated from the ground up as a representative residence for a member of the company’s board. When work had already proceeded to a great extent, the main and side buildings burnt down to the foundations and outer walls on 1 September 1971. The question of guilt was never settled. Under the monument authority’s strict conditions, C. H. Boehringer Sohn built the Castle Mill anew. From 1976 to 2000, the main building was used for presentations and seminars. Since 2000 it has housed the office of the business association’s and shareholders’ foundations: Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, foundation for basic medical research; Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung; and Geschwister Boehringer Ingelheim, foundation for the humanities.
Jewish graveyard
See: Dieter Krienke, ed., Kreis Mainz-Bingen. Städte Bingen und Ingelheim, Gemeinde Budenheim, Verbandsgemeinden Gau-Algesheim, Heidesheim, Rhein-Nahe und Sprendlingen-Gensingen, Worms 2007 (=Denkmaltopographie Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Kulturdenkmäler Rheinland-Pfalz, Bd. 18.1) S. 322.Regular events
On the first Sunday in May, the kermis (church consecration festival, locally known as the Kerb) is held. The first Sunday in October is the time for the Harvest Festival (Erntedankfest) with a major parade, an exhibition of fruits and agricultural products and visits from partner towns in France and Germany.Clubs
Like many German villages and small towns, Heidesheim is home to many associations, clubs and groups, in GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
known as "Vereine". They are a major part of civic life and cover many aspects of people’s leisure time:
1. Sports association with many divisions, e.g. soccer, hockey, athletics, tennis
2. Choirs: men’s, ladies’ and children’s choirs, church choirs and mixed choirs
3. Marching bands offer regular concerts, perform at local and regional festivities and provide extensive training for young people aspiring to master musical instruments.
4. Church youth and adult groups cover all ages and both sexes. Examples are KJG and KFD
5. Special interest clubs exist for dog owners, poultry, chess, the preservation of historical monuments (especially Saint George’s Chapel), photography, and so on.
Transport
Heidesheim lies on the Autobahn A 60, which can be reached through interchangeInterchange (road)
In the field of road transport, an interchange is a road junction that typically uses grade separation, and one or more ramps, to permit traffic on at least one highway to pass through the junction without directly crossing any other traffic stream. It differs from a standard intersection, at which...
s 16 (west) and 17 (east).
Through the two railway stations Uhlerborn and Heidesheim (Rheinhessen), there are two connections to local rail transport on the West Rhine Railway (KBS 470). The two nearest long-distance railway stations are Bingen and Mainz Hauptbahnhof
Mainz Hauptbahnhof
is the Hauptbahnhof for the city of Mainz in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. It is used by about 80,000 travellers and visitors each day and is therefore one of the busiest 21 stations in Germany...
.
Heidesheim is also linked to the Ingelheim/Mainz bus system (route 620), which runs to Ingelheim in the west and to Budenheim, Mainz Mombach and Mainz Hauptbahnhof in the east, therefore fundamentally following the same route as the train. Thus far there is still no direct bus link to the neighbouring Mainz constituent communities of Gonsenheim and Finthen. There are initiatives, though.
Established businesses
In the Uhlerborn commercial area are found a gardening centre (Dehner), two supermarkets (Aldi, Edeka) and two bakeries. Moreover there are a printshop, a carpentry shop, a building firm and a few smaller businesses.Sons and daughters of the town
- Joseph KehreinJoseph Kehrein-Biography:He was born at Heidesheim am Rhein, near Mainz on 20 October 1808. In 1823 he entered the gymnasium in connection with the diocesan seminary at Mainz, and after its suppression in 1829 he continued his classical studies at the state gymnasium of the same place, where he graduated in...
, teacher, philologist and historian - Gerhard Schreeb, youth politician and college lecturer
External links
Documents
- Picture of Heidesheim from J.F. Dielmann, A. Fay, J. Becker (draughtsman): F.C. Vogel’s panorama of the Rhine, Pictures of both banks of the Rhine, Lithographische Anstalt F.C. Vogel, Frankfurt 1833
- Picture of Heidenfarth, ditto
- Picture of the Langenwärther Aue, ditto
- Picture 2 of the Langenwärther Aue, ditto
- Picture 3 of the Langenwärther Aue, ditto