Desloch

Coat of arms

Desloch

Location of Desloch within Bad Kreuznach district

Coordinates: 49°43′07″N 7°37′45″E / 49.71861°N 7.62917°ECoordinates: 49°43′07″N 7°37′45″E / 49.71861°N 7.62917°E

Country

Government

• Mayor

Udo Reidenbach

Area

• Total

6.37 km² (2.46 sq mi)

Elevation

285 m (935 ft)

Population (2015-12-31)

• Total

363

• Density

57/km² (150/sq mi)

CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)

55592

06753

Desloch is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Meisenheim, whose seat is in the like-named town. Desloch is a farming and winegrowing village.

Desloch is a linear village (by some definitions, a “thorpe”) lying 3 km northwest of Meisenheim on the Glan at the north edge of the North Palatine Uplands. The municipal area measures 637 ha, of which 129 ha is wooded. Desloch lies on an old Roman road between the Nahe and the Glan.

Clockwise from the north, Desloch’s neighbours are the municipality of Lauschied, the municipality of Abtweiler (at a single point only), the municipality of Raumbach, the town of Meisenheim, the municipality of Breitenheim and the municipality of Jeckenbach.

Also belonging to Desloch is the outlying homestead of Neuwieser Hof.

The village’s name is of Celtic origin, meaning “pool at the mountain”. As long ago as 400 BC, Celts were living on the heights around what is now Desloch. Over the centuries that followed, these Celts were supplanted by Germanic peoples who thrust their way from the Rhine’s right bank into the lands on the left bank only sporadically. From 50 BC to AD 450 – fully 500 years – the Romans held sway in the region, for a time even under Emperor Augustus. With the onset of the Migration Period and Rome’s downfall, the Romans vanished from the land. For a short time, Germanic tribes dwelt in the region before having to give way to the Franks, who founded new villages and farms, worked very hard, and were the lords at all the estates. It was in Frankish times, the time of the widespread woodland clearing, that the name Desloch – earlier called Tageslach, and then Denslach – arose. In 1184, Desloch had its first documentary mention. It had its beginnings in a monastic complex that was a branch of Disibodenberg Abbey. Desloch was in the Early Middle Ages the seat of a high court of the Waldgraves and the Counts Palatine. Even today, the local speech refers to the place before the church as Auf der Linde (“At the Limetree”). This was where the court sat. An old stone still recalls this today. In the Thirty Years' War, Desloch was laid waste together with its church, which stood on the same spot as today’s church. The wooden chapel that had stood in the beginning was replaced with a sturdier church in 1570. This was the one that was destroyed, and a new one arose in its stead only in 1751. It still looms over the village today. In the 16th century, Desloch, which hitherto had belonged to the Waldgraves and Rhinegraves at Kyrburg since 1128, was acquired through marriage by the Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken, who then annexed it to Meisenheim. After the Thirty Years' War, the Count Palatine of Zweibrücken organized some immigration for the now depopulated region, bringing people from the Tyrol, Switzerland, Italy, France and Holland to settle the land. Under King Louis XIV, the region was French from 1684 to 1697, and later became French a second time in French Revolutionary times and the Napoleonic Era that followed, from 1795 to 1815. In Frederick the Great’s time (18th century), many peasants emigrated to Pomerania and Lithuania. In 1823, many people emigrated to Brazil, whereas from 1837 to 1860 the destination was North America. From 1782 to 1785, there was a mass emigration to Galicia and Bačka in the Kingdom of Hungary (although most of Bačka now lies within Serbia). After the German campaign in the Napoleonic Wars, Desloch, together with the rest of the region south of the Nahe, passed as the Oberamt of Meisenheim to the Landgraves of Hesse-Homburg, to whom the village and region belonged for 50 years before passing in 1866 first to the Grand Duchy of Hesse and then, later that same year, to the Kingdom of Prussia. Thereafter, the village lived through the glory of the German Empire’s rise in 1870 and 1871 and the ignominy of defeat in both the First World War (1914-1918) and the Second World War (1939-1945). Both world wars exacted their toll on Desloch: in all, 55 men fell. Since the Second World War, the villagers have been working hard to beautify their village, winning several distinctions in the contest Unser Dorf soll schöner werden (“Our village should become lovelier”): first place at the district level in 1962; the same in both 1963 and 1964 but in the special class; first place at the regional level in 1964, and also the silver badge at the state level.

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Wikipedia