Kirchardt
Encyclopedia
Geography
Kirchardt is in the north-west of HeilbronnHeilbronn
Heilbronn is a city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is completely surrounded by Heilbronn County and with approximately 123.000 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state....
and belongs to the outskirts of the Stuttgart Metropolitan Region
Stuttgart Metropolitan Region
The Stuttgart Metropolitan Region is a metropolitan region in Germany consisting of the cities of Stuttgart, Heilbronn, Tübingen/Reutlingen. These cities are arranged into three agglomeration areas...
. Starting in the north and proceeding in a clockwise direction, the neighbouring towns and cities of Kirchardt are Bad Rappenau
Bad Rappenau
Bad Rappenau is a town in the district of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. It is situated about 15 km northwest of Heilbronn.- Neighbouring municipalities :...
, Massenbachhausen
Massenbachhausen
Massenbachhausen is a town in the district of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg in Germany....
, Gemmingen
Gemmingen
Gemmingen is a town in the district of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany....
, Eppingen
Eppingen
Eppingen is a town in the district of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The town has the second-largest population in the district....
, Ittlingen
Ittlingen
Ittlingen is a town in the district of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg in Germany....
(all in the Heilbronn region) and Sinsheim
Sinsheim
Sinsheim is a town in southwestern Germany, in the Rhine Neckar Area of the state Baden-Württemberg about 22 kilometers southeast of Heidelberg and about 28 kilometers northwest of Heilbronn in the district Rhein-Neckar. It consists of a city center and 11 suburbs with a total population of 35,605...
(in the Rhein-Neckar region). Kirchardt is part of a unified community authority which also consists of Bad Rappenau and Siegelsbach
Siegelsbach
Siegelsbach is a town in the district of Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg in Germany....
. Kirchardt consists of the core community of Kirchardt proper, plus the peripheral communities of Berwangen and Bockschaft. Previously there was another community in the town, Lauterstein, but it was later absorbed into Kirchardt proper. The town of Kirchardt has approximately 5,500 inhabitants, of which 3,700 live in Kirchardt itself, with 1,400 in Berwangen and 400 people in Bockschaft.
Early settlement by Celts, Romans and Alemanni
The first signs of human activity in the area date from the Bronze AgeBronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
, but the earliest settlement to be detected so far was Celtic, from the sixth century B.C.E.. From 90 to 260 C.E.
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
, the occupying Romans
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
constructed streets and buildings in various parts of civitas alisinensis (the area which would later become Elsenzgau) to support the Neckar
Neckar
The Neckar is a long river, mainly flowing through the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, but also a short section through Hesse, in Germany. The Neckar is a major right tributary of the River Rhine...
-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...
limes
Limes
A limes was a border defense or delimiting system of Ancient Rome. It marked the boundaries of the Roman Empire.The Latin noun limes had a number of different meanings: a path or balk delimiting fields, a boundary line or marker, any road or path, any channel, such as a stream channel, or any...
. A 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...
from that era was uncovered in Kirchardt in 1832, as well as a farmstead with a deep well. An important Roman road
Roman road
The Roman roads were a vital part of the development of the Roman state, from about 500 BC through the expansion during the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Roman roads enabled the Romans to move armies and trade goods and to communicate. The Roman road system spanned more than 400,000 km...
ran through what is now Berwangen, where a Jupiter Column
Jupiter Column
A Jupiter Column is an archaeological monument belonging to a type widespread in Roman Germania. Such pillars express the religious beliefs of their time. They were erected in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, mostly near Roman settlements or villas in the Germanic provinces...
was also found. With the withdrawal of the Romans from the east of Rhine and the concurrent arrival of the Alemanni, the buildings crumbled completely.
First mention in the Codex Aureus of Lorsch, and the meaning of the town name
Kirchardt and its constituent communities, like many cities and towns in Northern WürttembergWürttemberg
Württemberg , formerly known as Wirtemberg or Wurtemberg, is an area and a former state in southwestern Germany, including parts of the regions Swabia and Franconia....
and North Baden
Baden
Baden is a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg of Germany....
, was first mentioned by name in the Codex Aureus of Lorsch
Codex Aureus of Lorsch
The Codex Aureus of Lorsch or Lorsch Gospels is an illuminated Gospel Book written between 778 and 820, roughly coinciding with the period of Charlemagne's rule over the Frankish Empire.It was first recorded in Lorsch Abbey , for which it was presumably written, and...
in 791. A nun by the name of Egilrat recorded the transfer of a farm with associated land in villa Kyrih-Hart to the ownership of 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 name is a unique one for an uninhabited area, and means perhaps "church in the wood" or "forest belonging to a church", but more likely indicates "the forest where the red kite
Red Kite
The Red Kite is a medium-large bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes many other diurnal raptors such as eagles, buzzards, and harriers. The species is currently endemic to the Western Palearctic region in Europe and northwest Africa, though formerly also occurred just...
s live". The first mentions of the other two communities in modern-day Kirchardt also occur in the codex, both in connection with donations to the abbey, Berwangen being recorded in 793, and Bockschaft in 829. The appellation villa denoted that Kirchardt was then a small community not long settled. As the earliest settled areas in Kirchardt lie on the old northern boundary with the district of Berwangen as well as the source of the Birkenbach stream, it is likely that Kirchardt was settled from the older and formerly more significant Berwangen.
In the early 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...
there was a road (then called the "High Road") connecting Heilbronn
Heilbronn
Heilbronn is a city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is completely surrounded by Heilbronn County and with approximately 123.000 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state....
and Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
which ran approximately on the line of the current Bundesstraße 39 between Heilbronn and Sinsheim
Sinsheim
Sinsheim is a town in southwestern Germany, in the Rhine Neckar Area of the state Baden-Württemberg about 22 kilometers southeast of Heidelberg and about 28 kilometers northwest of Heilbronn in the district Rhein-Neckar. It consists of a city center and 11 suburbs with a total population of 35,605...
. Kirchardt lay somewhat away from this historic highway, on the edge of the Krachigau-Hügel region, and was surrounded by fields, meadows, and oak forests. For centuries the population was made up exclusively of farmers, who tilled the fields and raised pigs. Acorn
Acorn
The acorn, or oak nut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives . It usually contains a single seed , enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne in a cup-shaped cupule. Acorns vary from 1–6 cm long and 0.8–4 cm broad...
s were an important source of fodder for the pigs, leading to the inclusion on the town crest of a single acorn from 1769 onwards. The name of the town from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century was Kirchart (with differing spellings), then Kirhart in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, before settling back on Kirchardt in the nineteenth century.