Nieder-Wiesen

Nieder-Wiesen
Coat of arms
Nieder-Wiesen
Location of Nieder-Wiesen within Alzey-Worms district
Coordinates: 49°44′N 7°59′E / 49.733°N 7.983°E / 49.733; 7.983Coordinates: 49°44′N 7°59′E / 49.733°N 7.983°E / 49.733; 7.983
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Alzey-Worms
Municipal assoc.	Alzey-Land
Government
• Mayor	Hans Wilhelm Kern
Area
• Total	4.89 km2 (1.89 sq mi)
Elevation	225 m (738 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	624
• Density	130/km2 (330/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	55234
Dialling codes	06736
Vehicle registration	AZ
Website	www.alzey-land.de

Nieder-Wiesen is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

The municipality lies in Rhenish Hesse and belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Alzey-Land, whose seat is in Alzey. It has roughly 650 inhabitants.

In Nieder-Wiesen, the Rheinhessisches Hügelland (Rhenish-Hessian Upland) gives way to the foothills of the North Palatine Highland, thus explaining the former presence of the old border running along the Wiesbach 500 m south of the village which once marked the place where the Grand Duchy of Hesse (“GH”) met the Palatine exclave ruled by the Kingdom of Bavaria (“KB”). Even today along the old border, border stones can be found with the aforesaid initials on them. Even today’s district boundary between Alzey-Worms and the Donnersbergkreis follows this alignment, as does the jurisdictional boundary between the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau and the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate.

The particularly lovely rural location on the Wiesbach – nowadays known as the Rhenish-Hessian Switzerland (Rheinhessische Schweiz) – must have appealed to the Celts, who built a place of worship or perhaps even a castle on the Schlossberg (mountain).

Nieder-Wiesen is a mostly Protestant village. There is an Evangelical church. Only in neighbouring villages can a Catholic church be found. Before the persecution and outright murder wrought by the National Socialists, Nieder-Wiesen was home to a remarkably large Jewish community that formed about a third of the population. Their synagogue was set on fire and destroyed as part of Kristallnacht (9 November 1938). Witness thereto is a memorial plaque at the Evangelical church. Also bearing witness to the former Jewish community is the Jewish graveyard lying roughly 400 m south of the village.