Meddersheim

Coat of arms

Meddersheim

Location of Meddersheim within Bad Kreuznach district

Coordinates: 49°46′37″N 7°37′06″E / 49.77694°N 7.61833°ECoordinates: 49°46′37″N 7°37′06″E / 49.77694°N 7.61833°E

Country

Government

• Mayor

Renate Weingarth-Schenk

Area

• Total

13.15 km² (5.08 sq mi)

Elevation

160 m (520 ft)

Population (2015-12-31)

• Total

1,322

• Density

100/km² (260/sq mi)

CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)

55566

06751

Website

Meddersheim 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. Meddersheim is a winegrowing village.

Meddersheim lies in the Nahe valley between Idar-Oberstein and Bad Kreuznach. South of the village is the edge of the North Palatine Uplands. The village is surrounded by fertile vineyards, cropfields and wooded heights.

Clockwise from the north, Meddersheim’s neighbours are the municipality of Nußbaum, the town of Bad Sobernheim and the municipalities of Lauschied, Bärweiler, Kirschroth, Merxheim and Monzingen, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district.

Also belonging to Meddersheim are the outlying homesteads of Lohmühle, Schliffgesmühle, Am Meisenheimer Pfad and the “Felke-Kurhaus Menschel” (“Englischer Hof”).

The area that is now Meddersheim was settled as far back as Celtic and Roman times, and perhaps even earlier. Various archaeological finds of remnants of a Roman estate on Römerstraße (“Roman road”), extensive foundations and an ancient watermain bear witness to this. The current clump village arose in Frankish times (6th century) at a favourable, flat site as a crossroads outside the River Nahe’s floodplain. Until the 13th century, the village of Meddersheim belonged to the Archbishops of Mainz, then passing by way of pledge to the Waldgraves at the Kyrburg (castle). They held it until the French Revolutionary Wars in the late 18th century. It was administered by a Mainz Schultheiß who was responsible to the Burgrave at Disibodenberg, or beginning in 1240 in Sobernheim, and thereafter, beginning in 1279 at Castle Böckelheim. In 1239, there was a serious dispute between the Archbishop and the Counts in the Nahe region, who opposed the Prince-Archbishop-Elector’s political reach into the Nahe region. Moreover, there was the disagreement over the pledge of Meddersheim with Kirschroth, which was always bound with Meddersheim. Although the Archbishop redeemed both villages, the Waldgrave at the Kyrburg, as heir to the Counts of Saarbrücken, did not wish to give them up. The Archbishop prevailed, but later, one of his successors pledged the Schultheißerei once again, this time for good. The feudal and tithing rights were always shared out among several lordships. The oldest part of the church, the steeple, comes from the 12th century, while the nave, after several conversions and additions, comes from 1756. Particularly worthy of mention are the pulpit from the 18th century, the 1753 Stumm organ and the 16th-century baptismal font. In 1798, the French overran the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank and imposed their own administrative system on the land. Meddersheim became the seat of a mairie (“mayoralty”) in the Canton of Meisenheim, which also comprised Kirschroth and Staudernheim, and which lay in the Department of Sarre. No later than Napoleonic times, something akin to gavelkind – equal division of land among heirs – was introduced. This led to splintering of businesses and in many cases to impoverishment among smallhold farmers. After Napoleon had been driven out in 1814, Meddersheim was, after a short transitional time, assigned under the terms of the Congress of Vienna in 1816 to the Oberamt of Meisenheim, and it was then furthermore the seat of an Oberschultheißerei. Thus did Meddersheim become with the Oberamt of Meisenheim an exclave of the Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg. In 1866, it passed to the Grand Duchy of Hesse. Then, in 1869, the region passed to the Kingdom of Prussia, and Meddersheim now belonged to the Meisenheim district in the Regierungsbezirk of Koblenz in the Rhine Province. In 1919, after the First World War, the Bürgermeistereien (“Mayoralties”) of Meddersheim and Merxheim were merged. After the Meisenheim district was dissolved in 1932, the Amt (as it had been called since 1927) no longer existed. In 1935, Meddersheim had the same municipal administration – as it were, a “personal union” at the municipal level – but in 1940, the former Amt of Meddersheim was merged with the Amt of Sobernheim, from which arose the Verbandsgemeinde of Sobernheim in 1969. On Lehmkaut (a street), remnants of a brickworks could still be seen until the 1960s. Made here, right in the village, were field-fired bricks. In Andreas Gottfried’s former potter’s shop, pottery was made until 1968. The flax that was extensively grown here on the heaths, whose poorer soils were subjected to controlled burns, was retted in a great flax-retting tank, which is believed to have been communally organized. In the area of Brechkaut and Brechlöcher (laneways?) there were major brick kilns, and at their ends lay the hot-air shaft measuring about 2 × 3 m on which the flax was retted so that it could then be scutched and heckled. The former herdsmen’s houses of the herding association have been gone since the 1950s. Listed for a time within Meddersheim’s limits were five mills and one pig farm. At the Ilsberg was a quarry. The red shale sandstone were quarried until some time towards the end of the 18th century, whereafter yellow-grey quarried sandstone from surrounding villages was used. In the Reformation, the inhabitants of Meddersheim became Protestant under the then local lordship. During renovations at Saint Martin’s Evangelical church in 1964, the Baroque screen around the altar was removed. For generations, the church was shared. During Catholic Mass, the gate was closed. A few epitaphs, a ceiling-high sacramental shrine in the Gothic quire and a Stumm organ, together with a series of pictures on the gallery bear witness to the wealth of this winegrowing, farming and craft village. In 1960, Meddersheim had some 750 inhabitants. By 2010 it was nearly 1,400.

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Wikipedia