Hüffelsheim

Coat of arms

Hüffelsheim

Location of Hüffelsheim within Bad Kreuznach district

Coordinates: 49°49′21″N 7°47′55″E / 49.82250°N 7.79861°ECoordinates: 49°49′21″N 7°47′55″E / 49.82250°N 7.79861°E

Country

Government

• Mayor

Jochen Fiscus (SPD)

Area

• Total

6.55 km² (2.53 sq mi)

Elevation

200 m (700 ft)

Population (2015-12-31)

• Total

1,327

• Density

200/km² (520/sq mi)

CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)

55595

0671

Website

www.og-hueffelsheim.de

Hüffelsheim 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 Rüdesheim, whose seat is in the municipality of Rüdesheim an der Nahe.

Hüffelsheim lies on a high plateau at an elevation of roughly 220 m above sea level above the River Nahe at the Naturpark Soonwald-Nahe. Bad Kreuznach, the district seat, lies only a few kilometres away to the eastnortheast. The municipal area measures 657 ha, of which 30 ha is wooded and 20 ha is planted with vineyards.

Clockwise from the north, Hüffelsheim’s neighbours are the municipality of Rüdesheim an der Nahe, the town of Bad Kreuznach and the municipalities of Traisen, Norheim, Niederhausen, Schloßböckelheim and Weinsheim, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district.

Also belonging to Hüffelsheim are the outlying homesteads of Antoniushof, Marienhof and Wiesenhof.

Hüffelsheim is believed to have grown out of a Roman country estate, which after the Frankish conquest under King Clovis about AD 500 would have been taken into ownership by the Frankish nobleman Hufileib (or Hufflilin) and, over time, expanded. About 766, the village had its first documentary mention. As long ago as 800, the first Christian church arose on noble property, which was consecrated to Saint Lambert of Maastricht. The counts of the Nahegau exercised sovereignty over the village. In the 10th century, it was the Archbishopric of Magdeburg that held both the land and the tithes, and later on it was Mainz. About 1200, the village belonged as an Imperial fief to the Rhinegrave of Stein, although he in turn enfeoffed various knightly families with his own landhold. Among these families were the Hundesrucke, the Lords of Sien and the Family von Sickingen-Ebernburg. The Hüffelsheim village lordship was also further granted in fief by the Waldgraves of Kyrburg and Dhaun to other fiefholders, such as Hermann von der Porten and the knights Boos von Waldeck (about 1359). According to legend, a knight Boos supposedly acquired the village of Hüffelsheim by drinking from a boot. Hüffelsheim’s current coat of arms acknowledges this legend in one of its charges. On into the 18th century, the Families Boos von Waldeck and Sickingen exercised their rights in Hüffelsheim that had come down to them from the Middle Ages. The village church was converted and enlarged in Gothic times. About 1542, the Hüffelsheim town hall came into being, later acquiring a bakehouse addition in 1575. Next to this lay the lordly estate with the tithe barn. Arising here later was a Boos von Waldeck Amt winery. During the Thirty Years' War, the village was empty of people for some years. Begun thereafter was an ongoing development of community life that has persisted down to the present day. After the Peace of Augsburg, the Reformation was also introduced into Hüffelsheim (about 1557). A village school was established about 1660. The years after the Thirty Years' War, however, also brought hardship with French troops who showed up in the course of King Louis XIV’s wars of conquest. The old village church was given a makeover about 1706-1708 as a Baroque hall church and for more than 180 years thereafter, it was shared with the then recently arrived Catholic inhabitants, until the Catholics built their own church in 1886. In the mid 18th century, the Sickingen landholds were sold to the Princes of Bretzenheim. When the French Revolutionary troops came about 1796, however, the time of nobles and lords, even the Barons Boos von Waldeck, came to an end. For two decades, Hüffelsheim, along with the rest of the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank, belonged to France (first the French First Republic, and then eventually Napoleonic France. After Napoleon’s defeat in the German campaign, the last and decisive phase of the War of the Sixth Coalition and indeed of the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna grouped Hüffelsheim into the Kingdom of Prussia in 1815. The village remained in Prussia until the end of the Second World War. On 13 August 1913, the King of Prussia – who was also the Emperor of Germany – Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Hüffelsheim. Since 1949, the village has belonged to the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

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Wikipedia