Laubenheim

Laubenheim
Coat of arms
Laubenheim
Location of Laubenheim within Bad Kreuznach district
Coordinates: 49°55′13″N 7°53′54″E / 49.92028°N 7.89833°E / 49.92028; 7.89833Coordinates: 49°55′13″N 7°53′54″E / 49.92028°N 7.89833°E / 49.92028; 7.89833
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Bad Kreuznach
Municipal assoc.	Langenlonsheim
Government
• Mayor	Johannes Häußling
Area
• Total	3.34 km2 (1.29 sq mi)
Elevation	110 m (360 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	787
• Density	240/km2 (610/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	55452
Dialling codes	06704
Vehicle registration	KH

Laubenheim 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 Langenlonsheim, whose seat is in the like-named municipality. Laubenheim is a winegrowing village.

Laubenheim, a village of some 900 inhabitants, lies between Bingen am Rhein to the north and Bad Kreuznach to the south, right on the Nahe just up from the place where it empties into the Rhine. Laubenheim lies alee of the Hunsrück and has a mild climate, which is favourable to the vineyards that are kept above the village.

Clockwise from the north, Laubenheim’s neighbours are the municipality of Münster-Sarmsheim, the town of Bingen am Rhein and the municipalities of Grolsheim (all three of which lie in the neighbouring Mainz-Bingen district), Langenlonsheim and Dorsheim (both of which likewise lie in the Bad Kreuznach district).

Also belonging to Laubenheim is the outlying homestead of Laubenheimermühle.

There is little doubt but that Laubenheim’s beginnings go back to Celtic times. Roman watermains in the “Sandgrube” and many coin, pot, grave and sarcophagus finds from Roman times in the northern half of Laubenheim’s municipal area also bear witness to people in the area at that time. It was also the Romans who brought grapevines to the Nahe valley in the 1st century AD. They were surely drawn to the valley’s south-facing slopes as a good place to plant vineyards. As far back as the 9th century, a donation document from Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious (814-843) reports of Laubenheim (829). In the State Archive at Koblenz, and furthermore in the Land Archive at Schloß Gracht (a moated château) near Liblar, a place called Luibenheim crops up often in documents as a winegrowing village, as it does too at the Count of Spree’s archive at Schloß Heltorf near Düsseldorf-Angermund, the so-called Reypoltzkirchensche Archiv. According to these records, the village was an appurtenance of the lordship of Reichenstein, held by the Lords of Hohenfels, lords at Reypoltzkirchen (Reipoltskirchen). In 1410, Duke Stephan of Palatinate-Simmern signed the village of Laubenheim over to his wife as a “proper morning gift”. According to a cadastral map from the time, this did not include a Carthusian monastery that was here then. From this comital-palatine time also comes the municipal coat of arms used today. It began as a court seal that bore the same composition today seen in the arms, and also a circumscription that read “Siegel von Laubenheim an der Nahe 1602” (“Seal of Laubenheim on the Nahe 1602”). The vine hung with three bunches of grapes show that winegrowing was already important to the village even then. In the Thirty Years' War, Laubenheim was often set ablaze by Spanish or Swedish troops. In the 17th century, it suffered greatly under French marauders’ atrocities during the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, or War of the Palatine Succession). Laubenheim was almost utterly destroyed. Under French Revolutionary – and shortly thereafter Napoleonic – rule, Laubenheim was grouped in 1800 into the Mairie (“Mayoralty”) of Langenlonsheim. This body remained in force even after Napoleon’s defeat and the assignment of the lands north of the River Nahe by the Congress of Vienna to the Kingdom of Prussia, although the German word Bürgermeisterei was now used.