Founding
city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Bad Kreuznach (German pronunciation: [baːt ˈkʁɔʏtsnax] ⓘ) is a town in the Bad Kreuznach district of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is a spa town, known for its medieval bridge dating from around 1300, the Alte Nahebrücke, which is one of the few remaining bridges in the world with buildings on it.
The town is located in the Nahe River wine region, renowned both nationally and internationally for its wines, especially from the Riesling, Silvaner and Müller-Thurgau grape varieties.
Bad Kreuznach does not lie within any Verbandsgemeinde, even though it is the seat of the Bad Kreuznach (Verbandsgemeinde). The town is the seat of several courts, as well as federal and state authorities. Bad Kreuznach is also officially a große kreisangehörige Stadt ("large town belonging to a district"), meaning that it does not have the district-level powers that kreisfreie Städte ("district-free towns/cities") enjoy. It is, nonetheless, the district seat, and also the seat of the state chamber of commerce for Rhineland-Palatinate. It is classed as a middle centre with some functions of an upper centre, making it the administrative, cultural and economic hub of a region with more than 150,000 inhabitants.
Bad Kreuznach lies between the Hunsrück, Rhenish Hesse and the North Palatine Uplands, some 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) as the crow flies south-southwest of Bingen am Rhein. It lies at the mouth of the Ellerbach, where it empties into the lower Nahe.
Clockwise from the north, Bad Kreuznach's neighbours are the municipalities of Bretzenheim, Langenlonsheim, Gensingen, Welgesheim, Zotzenheim, Sprendlingen, Badenheim (these last five lying in the neighbouring Mainz-Bingen district), Biebelsheim, Pfaffen-Schwabenheim, Volxheim, Hackenheim, Frei-Laubersheim, Altenbamberg, Traisen, Hüffelsheim, Rüdesheim an der Nahe, Roxheim, Hargesheim and Guldental.
Bad Kreuznach's outlying Ortsbezirke or Stadtteile are Bosenheim, Ippesheim, Planig, Winzenheim and Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg.
The population of the municipality is distributed roughly as follows:
Yearly precipitation in Bad Kreuznach amounts to 517 mm, which is very low, falling into the lowest third of the precipitation chart for all of Germany. Only at 5% of the German Weather Service's weather stations are even lower figures recorded. The driest month is January. The most rainfall comes in June. In that month, precipitation is 1.8 times what it is in January. Precipitation varies only slightly. At only 7% of the weather stations are lower seasonal swings recorded.
As early as the 5th century BC, there is conclusive evidence that there was a Celtic settlement within what are now Bad Kreuznach's town limits. About 58 BC, the area became part of the Roman Empire and a Roman vicus came into being here, named, according to legend, after a Celt called Cruciniac, who transferred a part of his land to the Romans for them to build a supply station between Mainz (Mogontiacum) and Trier (Augusta Treverorum). Kreuznach lay on the Roman road that led from Metz (Divodurum), by way of the Saar crossing near Dillingen-Pachten (Contiomagus) and the Vicus Wareswald, near Tholey to Bingen am Rhein (Bingium). About AD 250, an enormous (measuring 81 × 71 m), luxurious palace, unique to the lands north of the Alps, was built, in the style of a peristyle villa. It contained 50 rooms on the ground floor alone. Spolia found near the Heidenmauer ("Heathen Wall") have led to the conclusion that there were a temple to either Mercury or both Mercury and Maia and a Gallo-Roman provincial theatre. According to an inscription and tile plates that were found in Bad Kreuznach, a vexillatio of the Legio XXII Primigenia was stationed there. In the course of measures to shore up the Imperial border against the Germanic Alemannic tribes who kept making incursions across the limes into the Empire, an auxiliary castrum was built in 370 under Emperor Valentinian I.
After Rome's downfall, Kreuznach became in the year 500 a royal estate and an imperial village in the newly growing Frankish Empire. Then, the town's first church was built within the old castrum's walls, which was at first consecrated to Saint Martin, but later to Saint Kilian, and in 1590, it was torn down. According to an 822 document from Louis the Pious, who was invoking an earlier document from Charlemagne, about 741, Saint Martin's Church in Kreuznach was supposedly donated to the Bishopric of Würzburg by his forebear Carloman. According to this indirect note, Kreuznach once again had a documentary mention in the Annales regni Francorum as Royal Pfalz (an imperial palace), where Louis the Pious stayed in 819 and 839. Kreuznach was mentioned in documents by Louis the Pious (in 823 as villa Cruciniacus and in 825 and 839, as Cruciniacum castrum or Cruciniacum palatium regium), Louis the German (in 845 as villa Cruzinacha and in 868 as villa Cruciniacum), Charles III, "the Fat" (in 882 as C[h]rucinachum, Crutcinacha, Crucenachum), Arnulf of Carinthia (in 889), Henry the Fowler (in 923), Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (in 962 as Cruciniacus) and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor (in 1179 as Cruczennach). On the other hand, the Crucinaha in Emperor Otto III's documents from 1000 (which granted the rights to hold a yearly market and to strike coins) is today thought to refer to Christnach, an outlying centre of Waldbillig, a town nowadays in Luxembourg. In mediaeval and early modern Latin sources, Kreuznach is named not only as Crucenacum, Crucin[i]acum (adjective Crucenacensis, Crucin[i]acensis) and the like, but also as Stauronesus, Stauronesum (adjective Staurone[n]s[i]us; from σταυρός "cross" and νῆσος "island") or Naviculacrucis (from navicula, a kind of small boat used on inland waterways, called a Nachen in German, and crux "cross"). Sometimes also encountered is the abbreviation Xnach (often with a Fraktur X, with a cross-stroke: ). About 1017, Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor enfeoffed his wife Cunigunde's grandnephew, Count Eberhard V of Nellenburg, with the noble estate of Kreuznach and the Villa Schwabenheim belonging thereto. After his death, King Henry IV supposedly donated the settlement of Kreuznach to the High Foundation of Speyer in 1065, who then transferred it shortly after 1105 – presumably as a fief – to the Counts of Sponheim. On Epiphany 1147, it is said that Bernard of Clairvaux performed a miraculous healing at Saint Kilian's Church. In 1183, half of the old Frankish village of Kreuznach at the former Roman castrum – the Osterburg – burnt down. Afterwards, of the 21 families there, 11 moved to what is now the Old Town (Altstadt). In the years 1206 to 1230, Counts Gottfried III of Sponheim (d. 1218) and Johann I of Sponheim (d. 1266) had the castle Kauzenburg built, even though King Philip of Swabia had forbidden them to do so. Along with the building of this castle came the rise of the New Town (Neustadt) on the Nahe's north bank. In the years 1235 and 1270, Kreuznach was granted town rights, market rights, taxation rights and tolling rights under the rule of the comital House of Sponheim, which were acknowledged once again in 1290 by King Rudolf I of Habsburg. In 1279, in the Battle of Sprendlingen, the legend of Michel Mort arose. He is a local legendary hero, a butcher from Kreuznach who fought on the Sponheim side in the battle against the troops of the Archbishop of Mainz. When Count Johann I of Sponheim found himself in difficulties, Michel Mort drew the enemy's lances upon himself, sparing the Count by bringing about his own death. Early knowledge of the town of Kreuznach is documented in one line of a song by the minstrel Tannhäuser from the 13th century, which is preserved in handwriting by Hans Sachs: "vur creűczenach rint aűch die na". In Modern German, this would be "Vor Kreuznach rinnt auch die Nahe" ("Before Kreuznach, the Nahe also runs"). Records witness Jewish settlement in Kreuznach beginning in the late 13th century, while for a short time in the early 14th century, North Italian traders ("Lombards") lived in town. In the 13th century, Kreuznach was a fortified town, and in 1320, it withstood a siege by Archbishop-Elector Baldwin of Trier (about 1270–1336). In 1361, Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor granted Count Walram I of Sponheim (about 1305–1380) a yearly market privilege for Kreuznach. In 1375, the townsfolk rose up against the town council. Count Walram's response was to have four of the uprising's leaders beheaded at the marketplace. Through its long time as Kreuznach's lordly family, the House of Sponheim had seven heads:
In 1417, however, the "Further" line of the House of Sponheim died out when Countess Elisabeth of Sponheim-Kreuznach (1365–1417) died. In her will, she divided the county between Electoral Palatinate and the County of Sponheim-Starkenburg, bequeathing to them one-fifth and four-fifths respectively. In 1418, King Sigismund of Luxembourg enfeoffed Count Johann V of Sponheim-Starkenburg (about 1359–1437) with the yearly market, the mint, the Jews at Kreuznach and the right of escort, as far as Gensingen on the Trier-Mainz highway. In 1437, the lordship over Kreuznach was divided up between the Counts of Veldenz, the Margraves of Baden and Palatinate-Simmern. In 1457, at a time when a children's crusade movement was on the rise, 120 children left Kreuznach on their way to Mont-Saint-Michel by way of Wissembourg. In 1475, the Electoral Palatinate issued a comprehensive police act for the Amt of Kreuznach, in which at this time, no Badish Amtmann resided. Elector Palatine Philip the Upright and John I, Count Palatine of Simmern granted the town leave to hold a second yearly market in 1490. In that same year, Elector Palatine Philip bestowed ownership of the saltz- und badbronnen ("salty and bathing springs") upon his cooks Conrad Brunn and Matthes von Nevendorf. The briny springs were likely discovered in 1478; nevertheless, a Sulzer Hof in what is today called the Salinental ("Saltworks Dale") had already been mentioned in the 13th or 14th century. On 24 August 1495, There was another uprising of the townsfolk, but this one was directed at Kreuznach's Palatine Amtmann, Albrecht V Göler von Ravensburg, who had refused to release a prisoner against the posting of a bond. Nobody was beheaded this time, but Elector Palatine Philip did have a few of the leaders maimed, and then put into force a new town order.
The town wall, first mentioned in 1247, had a footprint that formed roughly a square in the Old Town, and was set back a few metres from what are today the streets Wilhelmstraße, Salinenstraße and Schloßstraße, with the fourth side skirting the millpond. Serving as town gates were, in the north, the Kilianstor or the Mühlentor ("Saint Kilian's Gate" or "Mill Gate"; torn down in 1877), in the southeast the Hackenheimer Tor (later the Mannheimer Tor; torn down in 1860) and in the south the St.-Peter-Pförtchen, which lay at the end of Rossstraße, and which for security was often walled up. In the New Town, the town wall ran from the Butterfass ("Butterchurn"; later serving as the prison tower) on the Nahe riverbank up to the intersection of Wilhelmstraße and Brückes on Bundesstraße 48, where to the northwest the Löhrpforte (also called the Lehrtor or the Binger Tor; torn down about 1837) was found. It then ran in a bow between Hofgartenstraße and Hochstraße to the Rüdesheimer Tor in the southwest at the beginning of Gerbergasse, whose course it then followed down to the Ellerbach and along the Nahe as a riverbank wall. Along this section, the town wall contained the Fischerpforte or Ellerpforte as a watergate and in the south, the Große Pforte ("Great Gate") at the bridge across the Nahe. Belonging to the fortified complex of the Kauzenburg, across the Ellerbach from the New Town, were the Klappertor and a narrow, defensive ward (zwinger), from which the street known as "Zwingel" gets its name. On the bridge over to the ait (or the Wörth as it is called locally; the river island between the two parts of town) stood the Brückentor ("Bridge Gate"). To defend the town, there was, besides the castle's Burgmannen, also a kind of townsmen's defence force or shooting guild (somewhat like a town militia). Preserved as an incunable print from 1487, printed in Mainz by Peter Schöffer (about 1425–1503), is an invitation from the mayor and town council to any and all who considered themselves good marksmen with the crossbow to come to a shooting contest on 23 September.
On 31 March 1283 (2 Nisan 5043) in Kreuznach (קרויצנאך), Rabbi Ephraim bar Elieser ha-Levi – apparently as a result of a judicial sentence – was broken on the wheel. The execution was likely linked to the Mainz blood libel accusations, which in March and April 1283 also led to pogroms in Mellrichstadt, Mainz, Bacharach and Rockenhausen.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Bad Kreuznach”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.