Ludwigshöhe
Encyclopedia
Ludwigshöhe is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality
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 belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Guntersblum
Guntersblum (Verbandsgemeinde)
Guntersblum is a Verbandsgemeinde in the district Mainz-Bingen in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The seat of the Verbandsgemeinde is in Guntersblum.- Municipalities :...

, whose seat is in the like-named municipality
Guntersblum
Guntersblum is an Ortsgemeinde– a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.- Location :...

.

Location

The small municipality of Ludwigshöhe lies in Rhenish Hesse, in the Rhine rift a short way west of the Rhine on the old 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...

-Worms
Worms, Germany
Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River. At the end of 2004, it had 85,829 inhabitants.Established by the Celts, who called it Borbetomagus, Worms today remains embattled with the cities Trier and Cologne over the title of "Oldest City in Germany." Worms is the only...

 trade road, nowadays known as Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße , abbreviated B, is the denotation for German and Austrian national highways.-Germany:...

9, almost exactly halfway between the Rhineland-Palatinate state
States 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 of Mainz and the Nibelungstadt
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....

of Worms.

History

Ludwigshöhe is a comparatively new place, but it goes back to the Merovingian
Merovingian dynasty
The Merovingians were a Salian Frankish dynasty that came to rule the Franks in a region largely corresponding to ancient Gaul from the middle of the 5th century. Their politics involved frequent civil warfare among branches of the family...

 community of Rudelsheim. A dykeburst in 1819 brought about a shift in that place’s population to higher ground on a nearby hill.

Rudelsheim had its first documentary mention in 766 in a donation document from 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...

. It is believed to have been founded in the 5th or 6th century by the Franks
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...

. After the Romans
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....

 had already brought winegrowing to the region, this form of agriculture was taken over by the Franks. Above all, it was the monasteries that led grape cultivation and perfected it.

In 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...

, Rudelsheim lay near or right at the yet unchannelled Rhine, whose course could change with each flood, thereby bringing the village considerable misery and damage.

A devastating dykeburst in December 1819 led to the village being relocated on a hill farther to the west. The foundation stone was laid on 25 August 1822, Saint Louis’s Day
Louis IX of France
Louis IX , commonly Saint Louis, was King of France from 1226 until his death. He was also styled Louis II, Count of Artois from 1226 to 1237. Born at Poissy, near Paris, he was an eighth-generation descendant of Hugh Capet, and thus a member of the House of Capet, and the son of Louis VIII and...

, in honour of Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse
Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse
Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse was Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt and later the first Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine....

, and also in his honour was the new village’s name, Ludwigshöhe (“Ludwig” is the 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....

 form of “Louis”; Höhe is German for “heights”). Abandonment and moving from the old Rudelsheim was ongoing up until 1830. The church, the only preserved building, fell victim to a fire in 1837.

Municipal council

The council is made up of 8 council members who were elected by majority vote
Plurality voting system
The plurality voting system is a single-winner voting system often used to elect executive officers or to elect members of a legislative assembly which is based on single-member constituencies...

 on 13 June 2004.

Coat of arms

The municipality’s arms
Coat 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: Azure a lion rampant barry of nine gules and argent armed and langued gules and crowned Or, in his gambe dexter a sword of the fourth held in bend sinister, in base argent a pot of the first with the inscription ST. VITUS, issuant from beneath which flames of fire of the second.

See also

Schloss Villa Ludwigshöhe
Villa Ludwigshöhe
Villa Ludwigshöhe is a former summer residence of Ludwig I of Bavaria overlooking Edenkoben and Rhodt unter Rietburg in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany....

 near Edenkoben
Edenkoben
Edenkoben is a municipality in the Südliche Weinstraße district, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It lies approximately halfway between Landau and Neustadt an der Weinstraße. Edenkoben is one of the towns situated along the German Wine Route...

 in the Palatinate.

Sons and daughters of the town

  • Johann Becker (1869–1951) German politician (DVP
    German People's Party
    The German People's Party was a national liberal party in Weimar Germany and a successor to the National Liberal Party of the German Empire.-Ideology:...

    ), Member of the Reichstag, Imperial Minister of Economics

External links

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