Wintersheim
Encyclopedia
Wintersheim 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...

.

Location

The municipality lies in Rhenish Hesse about 9 km west of the Rhine, between 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...

 and 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...

. 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 :...

.

8th century

In 766, Wintersheim 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...

. On 17 June 766, a man named Hairdin made the first gift 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...

 of a vineyard that yielded 4 Ohm – about 160 L – of wine. Following over the next 40 years were 17 further donations of vineyards. Winegrowing, therefore, must have played an important rôle in the Wintersheim municipal area in the 8th century.

15th to 18th century

In 1467, Landgrave Hesso von Leiningen-Dagsburg died. His holdings fell to his sister Margarethe von Leiningen-Westerburg. Her brothers, who were styled von Leiningen-Hartenburg, raised fierce opposition to this, and Margarethe had to call on Elector Palatine Friedrich I
Frederick I, Elector Palatine
Frederick I, the Victorious was a Count Palatine of the Rhine and Elector Palatine from the House of Wittelsbach in 1451 - 1476....

 for help. She promised the Elector in a partition agreement in 1471 half of the disputed 19 villages for his successful support. After Margarethe’s death, her son Reinhard I of Leiningen sold Elector Palatine Philip “the Upright”
Philip, Elector Palatine
Philip the Upright, Elector Palatine of the Rhine was an Elector Palatine of the Rhine from the house of Wittelsbach from 1476 to 1508....

 a share of the villages in question. Among the sold villages was Wintersheim, which thereby became Palatine. Wintersheim received in 1589 a court and village charter. It can be found in the Hessian State Archive, Darmstadt (Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt) in the “Weistümer” collection under the number 118. In the framework of 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...

, there came the first invasion by 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. The end of Electoral Palatinate rule came after 1796. Wintersheim was assigned to the canton of Oppenheim.

19th century

Wintersheim, Eimsheim and Dolgesheim were united in 1801 at the lowest level of 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...

 administration and were given a common mayoralty. With the adoption of the Act of German Confederation, Wintersheim passed with the third province, later known as the Province of Rhenish Hesse (Provinz Rheinhessen), to the Grand Duchy of Hesse
Grand Duchy of Hesse
The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine , or, between 1806 and 1816, Grand Duchy of Hesse —as it was also known after 1816—was a member state of the German Confederation from 1806, when the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt was elevated to a Grand Duchy, until 1918, when all the German...

. Samuel Dettweiler became Wintersheim’s first mayor in 1836. The founding of the Dorn-Dürkheim-Wintersheim savings and load association followed in 1872, and of the consumer association in 1873. In 1875 came the founding of the singing club Einigkeit (“Unity”)

20th century

  • 1906 Building of the water supply network and the Wintersheim watertower
  • 1913 Connection to the electricity grid
  • 1926 Gymnastic club’s founding
  • 1954-1958 Flurbereinigung
    Flurbereinigung
    Flurbereinigung is the German word used to describe land reforms in various countries, especially Germany and Austria. The term can best be translated as land consolidation. Another European country where those land reforms have been carried out is France...

  • 1972 Assignment 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 :...

  • 1976 Wintersheim gets its own Dorfgemeinschaftshaus (“village community house”)
  • 1988 Canal and road building
  • 1989 Renovation of the Town Hall (built 1829)

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 windmill’s windshaft and four sails attached thereto in saltire argent.

Buildings

A former late mediaeval
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...

 tower house
Tower house
A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation.-History:Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountain or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strategic points with reduced forces...

 made of quarrystones comes from the 15th century. In the 18th century it was converted and given a Mansard roof
Mansard roof
A mansard or mansard roof is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterized by two slopes on each of its sides with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper that is punctured by dormer windows. The roof creates an additional floor of habitable space, such as a garret...

. The tower’s cellar dates from 1754. The complex stands at the Dätwyl winery and is still used today as the estate’s public house.

The former palatial estate of the Barons of Frayss is a complex whose yard is fully enclosed by buildings, a building form called a Vierseithof (“four-side-yard”) 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 manor house with its hip
Hip roof
A hip roof, or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus it is a house with no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid. Hip roofs on the houses could have two triangular side...

 Mansard roof comes partly from 1618 (the portal). In the first half of the 18th century it was given a 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...

 makeover. Adjoining the complex is a walled garden.

An estate complex that includes a small house with “shield gables” (that is, gables that form part of the façade) from about 1600 together with outbuildings stands at Seilenbachgasse 2. The Town Hall is found in a former school from 1829. It is built with Late Classicist
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...

 plasterwork with flèches. Rheinhessische Weingewölbe (“Rhenish-Hessian Wine Vaulting”), that is, a cowshed with vaulting resting on columns, from the mid 19th century can be found at Eimsheimer Straße 11.

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...

 church was built in 1896 and 1897 by August Ermel, Worms. It is a Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...

 “room” church built of hewn stone with a three-sided apse and a hipped roof with a flèche
Flèche
A flèche is used in French architecture to refer to a spire and in English to refer to a lead-covered timber spire, or spirelet. These are placed on the ridges of church or cathedral roofs and are usually relatively small...

.

Regular events

The Wintersheimer Weinwandertag (“Wintersheim Wine Hiking Day”) is now a firm part of the kermis (church consecration festival, locally known as the Kerwe) in September. The winegrowers offer tours guided by the experts. Wine and Sekt
Sparkling wine
Sparkling wine is a wine with significant levels of carbon dioxide in it making it fizzy. The carbon dioxide may result from natural fermentation, either in a bottle, as with the méthode champenoise, in a large tank designed to withstand the pressures involved , or as a result of carbon dioxide...

 sampling takes place right in the vineyards. Easy hiking routes (2½ to 3 hours) and wonderfully lovely views make this “Wine Hiking Day” into an adventure. The tours are run wholly on paved pathways, so that hiking can be done even after rainy weather. Likewise, tours through the wineries are offered.

Sons and daughters of the town

  • Christian Dettweiler
    Christian Dettweiler
    Christian Dettweiler was an innovator in the field of graphology.Dettweiler was the author of over 40 articles and books. He was a student of Pharmacy and in 1942 received a PhD in Botany and was a Scientific Assistant at the Universities of Rostock and Stuttgart...

     (b. 17 August 1831), agriculturalist and father of German goat-raising
  • Peter Dettweiler (1837–1904), German lung specialist and sanatorium leader
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