Bockenheim an der Weinstraße
Encyclopedia
Bockenheim an der Weinstraße (or Bockenheim an der Weinstrasse) 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 Bad Dürkheim
Bad Dürkheim (district)
Bad Dürkheim is a district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Kaiserslautern, Donnersbergkreis and Alzey-Worms, the city of Worms, the Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis, the city of Neustadt/Weinstraße, the districts of Südliche Weinstraße, the city of Landau , 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...

.

Location

The municipality lies in the Palatinate and the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Grünstadt-Land
Grünstadt-Land
Grünstadt-Land is a Verbandsgemeinde in the district of Bad Dürkheim, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the north-eastern edge of the Palatinate forest...

, whose seat is in Grünstadt
Grünstadt
Grünstadt is a town in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with roughly 13,200 inhabitants. It does not belong to any Verbandsgemeinde – a kind of collective municipality – but is nonetheless the administrative seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Grünstadt-Land.- Location :The...

, although that town is itself not in the Verbandsgemeinde. Bockenheim lies at the north end of the 85 km-long German Wine Route, and has even adopted an epithet referring to its location there: an der Weinstraße means “on the Wine Route” 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 Route runs concurrently here with Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße , abbreviated B, is the denotation for German and Austrian national highways.-Germany:...

271.

History

Bockenheim is made up of two smaller centres called Großbockenheim and Kleinbockenheim (groß means “great” and klein “little”), which were merged in 1956. The two places arose from small settlements that themselves had grown out of 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...

 estates after the Franks took the land about 500. In 770, Bockenheim had its first documentary mention in 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...

.

In April 1525, in the Palatine Peasants’ War – part of the German Peasants' War
German Peasants' War
The German Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe, 1524–1526. At its height in the spring and summer of 1525, the conflict involved an estimated 300,000 peasants: contemporary estimates put the dead at 100,000...

 – the Bockenheimer Haufen (“Bockenheim Cohort”) was formed, a rabble of peasants who joined the uprising.

Until 1969, Bockenheim belonged to the now abolished district of Frankenthal (Landkreis Frankenthal). Since then it has been in what was then the newly formed district of Bad Dürkheim
Bad Dürkheim (district)
Bad Dürkheim is a district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the districts of Kaiserslautern, Donnersbergkreis and Alzey-Worms, the city of Worms, the Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis, the city of Neustadt/Weinstraße, the districts of Südliche Weinstraße, the city of Landau , the district...

 (Landkreis Bad Dürkheim). In 1972, it was grouped into the likewise newly formed Verbandsgemeinde of Grünstadt-Land
Grünstadt-Land
Grünstadt-Land is a Verbandsgemeinde in the district of Bad Dürkheim, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the north-eastern edge of the Palatinate forest...

.

Municipal council

The council is made up of 16 council members, who were elected at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.

The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:
SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

 
CDU  FWG
Free Voters
Free Voters is a German concept in which an association of persons participates in an election without having the status of a registered political party. Usually it is a locally organized group of voters in the form of a registered association . In most cases, Free Voters are active only at the...

 
Total
2009 8 4 4 16 seats
2004 8 4 4 16 seats

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: Per fess azure Saint Martin of Tours nimbed Or and vested argent cutting his mantle gules with a sword of the third, and riding a horse passant of the third, and argent on a mount vert a goat clymant sable attired of the second.

Martin of Tours
Martin of Tours
Martin of Tours was a Bishop of Tours whose shrine became a famous stopping-point for pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela. Around his name much legendary material accrued, and he has become one of the most familiar and recognizable Christian saints...

 is the local church’s patron saint, also bearing his name (Martinskirche, or Saint Martin’s Church). The billygoat (Ziegenbock 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....

) is a canting
Canting arms
Canting arms are heraldic bearings that represent the bearer's name in a visual pun or rebus. The term cant came into the English language from Anglo-Norman cant, meaning song or singing, from Latin cantāre, and English cognates include canticle, chant, accent, incantation and recant.Canting arms –...

 charge
Charge (heraldry)
In heraldry, a charge is any emblem or device occupying the field of an escutcheon . This may be a geometric design or a symbolic representation of a person, animal, plant, object or other device...

 for the municipality’s name. Bockenheim’s arms are based on the two constituent communities’ coat of arms. The Saint Martin charge came from Kleinbockenheim’s old arms, and the goat from Großbockenheim’s.

The arms have been borne since 1959.

Buildings

The village’s appearance is characterized by many old homesteads, of which ever more are being restored.

From the 11th century comes the tower at the Romanesque
Romanesque architecture
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...

 Saint Martin’s Church (Martinskirche), which once stood next to the Emichsburg, a castle belonging to the Counts of Leiningen, after which today’s community centre is named. The castle, after being destroyed many times, was eventually converted into a residential castle, which itself was also destroyed. Its remnants have been incorporated into a winery, which bears the name Schlossgut (“Castle Estate”) in memory of the now mostly vanished complex.

In 1995, to offer a counterpart to the “German Wine Gate” (Deutsches Weintor) at the other end of the German Wine Route in Schweigen
Schweigen-Rechtenbach
Schweigen-Rechtenbach is a municipality in Südliche Weinstraße district, in Rhineland-Palatinate, western Germany....

, which since 1936 had been marking the route’s far (from Bockenheim’s point of view) end, the Haus der Deutschen Weinstraße (“House of the German Wine Route”) was built between Großbockenheim and Kleinbockenheim. Built in the style 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....

 castrum
Castra
The Latin word castra, with its singular castrum, was used by the ancient Romans to mean buildings or plots of land reserved to or constructed for use as a military defensive position. The word appears in both Oscan and Umbrian as well as in Latin. It may have descended from Indo-European to Italic...

, the House spans the road like a bridge and affords room not only for a 120-place restaurant with a lakeside terrace, but also for various event venues. In the Turmzimmer (“Tower Room”) with its view of the surrounding vineyards, the Upper Rhine Plain
Upper Rhine Plain
The Upper Rhine Plain, Rhine Rift Valley or Upper Rhine Graben is a major rift, straddling the border between France and Germany. It forms part of the European Cenozoic Rift System, which extends across central Europe...

 and even the Odenwald
Odenwald
The Odenwald is a low mountain range in Hesse, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg in Germany.- Location :The Odenwald lies between the Upper Rhine Rift Valley with the Bergstraße and the Hessisches Ried in the west, the Main and the Bauland in the east, the Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin – a subbasin of...

, those wishing to be wed may have a Weinstraßenhochzeit (“Wine Route Wedding”).

Local speech

Since 1953, the Palatine Dialectal Poetry Contest (Pfälzischer Mundartdichterwettstreit) has been being held each October, at which participants who speak and write in the Palatine Dialect
Palatinate German
Palatine German is a West Franconian dialect of German which is spoken in the Rhine Valley roughly in an area between the cities of Zweibrücken, Kaiserslautern, Alzey, Worms, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Speyer, Landau, Wörth am Rhein and the border to the Alsace region in France...

 meet. The jury chooses the best ten poems from among their entries.

At the Bockenheimer Mundarttagen (“Bockenheim Dialect Days”), held each year on a weekend in May, dialectologists give lectures in public about dialects and discuss them, too – traditionally in dialect – at the podium.

Economy and infrastructure

Bockenheim is an old winegrowing centre in which the craft has been practised for more than 1,200 years. Even today, it is still the village’s most important industry. Bockenheim’s vineyards stretch for more than 400 ha. Nevertheless, tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...

 is also growing in importance.

Transport

Along Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße
Bundesstraße , abbreviated B, is the denotation for German and Austrian national highways.-Germany:...

271, which still runs as a narrow and winding road through the middle of the village, is an interchange
Interchange (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...

 on the Autobahn A 6
Bundesautobahn 6
, also known as Via Carolina is a 477 km long German autobahn. It starts at the French border near Saarbrücken in the west and end at the Czech border near Waidhaus in the east....

 (Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....

Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....

) that runs by 6 km to the south. For years, there have been efforts to have a village bypass built.

The Pfälzische Nordbahn between Monsheim
Monsheim
Monsheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.- Location :...

 and Grünstadt
Grünstadt
Grünstadt is a town in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with roughly 13,200 inhabitants. It does not belong to any Verbandsgemeinde – a kind of collective municipality – but is nonetheless the administrative seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Grünstadt-Land.- Location :The...

 runs by at the village’s eastern edge. The halt Bockenheim-Kindenheim is served by Regionalbahn
RegionalBahn
The Regionalbahn is a type of local passenger train in Germany.-Service:Regionalbahn trains usually call at all stations on a given line, with the exception of RB trains within S-Bahn networks, these may only call at selected stations...

 trains running on “Rhineland-Palatinate timing”. The public transport is integrated into the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar
Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar
Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar is a public transport network covering parts of the German states of Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse in south-west Germany...

(VRN), whose fares therefore apply.

Sons and daughters of the town

  • Jakob Kautz (ca. 1500–1532), theologian and reformer
  • Anton Straub (1852–1931), Catholic priest, Jesuit, theologian and book author
  • Heinrich Janson (1869–1940), politician (DVP)
  • Karl-Heinz Spieß (b. 1948), historian
  • Bodo Mattern (b. 1958), footballer

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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