Langenthal, Rhineland-Palatinate

Langenthal
Coat of arms
Langenthal
Location of Langenthal within Bad Kreuznach district
Coordinates: 49°49′50″N 7°34′31″E / 49.83056°N 7.57528°E / 49.83056; 7.57528Coordinates: 49°49′50″N 7°34′31″E / 49.83056°N 7.57528°E / 49.83056; 7.57528
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Bad Kreuznach
Municipal assoc.	Bad Sobernheim
Government
• Mayor	Diethelm Stallmann
Area
• Total	2.71 km2 (1.05 sq mi)
Elevation	230 m (750 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	98
• Density	36/km2 (94/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	55569
Dialling codes	06754
Vehicle registration	KH

Langenthal 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 Bad Sobernheim, whose seat is in the like-named town.

Langenthal lies in the Hoxbach and Gaulsbach valley, a side valley of the Nahe.

Clockwise from the north, Langenthal’s neighbours are the town of Bad Sobernheim (although only its northern exclave containing Pferdsfeld, not the section containing the townsite), and the municipalities of Auen, Monzingen, Weiler bei Monzingen and Seesbach, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district.

Langenthal’s name cropped up for the first time in 1322 and it refers to a narrow dale that stretches along a watercourse. Langenthal was until the 18th century united with neighbouring Monzingen, to whose market business it had been attached. No later than the 13th century, it belonged to the Counts of Sponheim, who had granted some knightly families the court and the tithes (Emmerich von Nussbaum and after him Klaus von Ellenbach in the 14th century). In 1708, Langenthal passed along with some other places to Electoral Palatinate, and within that to the Amt of Böckelheim. In 1798, after French Revolutionary troops had overrun the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank, it was assigned to the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Monzingen. The court to which Langenthal was subject, called the Friedensgericht (“Peace Court”), had its seat in Sobernheim. This was converted into an Amtsgericht in 1879 (after Germany was unified). After the Napoleonic Wars had ended and Napoleon had been driven out and defeated, the Congress of Vienna assigned this administrative region to the Kingdom of Prussia. Monzingen remained the seat of a Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”) within the newly formed Kreuznach district, to which Langenthal also belonged. In the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate after the Second World War, Langenthal found itself grouped into the Verbandsgemeinde of Bad Sobernheim.