Obrigheim, Rhineland-Palatinate

Obrigheim
Coat of arms
Obrigheim
Location of Obrigheim within Bad Dürkheim district
Coordinates: 49°32′39″N 08°12′16″E / 49.54417°N 8.20444°E / 49.54417; 8.20444Coordinates: 49°32′39″N 08°12′16″E / 49.54417°N 8.20444°E / 49.54417; 8.20444
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Bad Dürkheim
Municipal assoc.	Grünstadt-Land
Government
• Mayor	Stefan Muth (SPD)
Area
• Total	10.81 km2 (4.17 sq mi)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	2,605
• Density	240/km2 (620/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	67283
Dialling codes	06359
Vehicle registration	DÜW
Website	www.gruenstadt-land.de

Obrigheim (Pfalz) is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It lies in the northwest of the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration.

Obrigheim’s main centre and its small outlying centres lie in a row from southwest to northeast on the middle Eisbach, where the uplands gradually give way to the Upper Rhine Plain. Along a stretch of some 5 km of the brook, the centres follow one after the other, first Albsheim on the right bank and Mühlheim on the left, then Heidesheim und Colgenstein on the right bank and finally the main centre, also called Obrigheim, and the Neuoffstein factory location, both on the left bank.

Obrigheim belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Grünstadt-Land, whose seat is in Grünstadt, although that town is itself not in the Verbandsgemeinde.

In 1969, the smaller neighbouring municipalities of Albsheim, Colgenstein-Heidesheim and Mühlheim an der Eis were amalgamated with Obrigheim. In the same year came a change in district since the district of Frankenthal in which Obrigheim had been up to that time was abolished. In 1972, the municipality was assigned to the newly formed Verbandsgemeinde of Grünstadt-Land.

The main centre is known from 1250 onwards and could then well have been held by the Counts of Leiningen. The ending —heim points to a Frankish origin, but there is no written evidence for this. A local nobleman named Ulricus de Obernkeim was mentioned in 1352 in a decree from the council of the Imperial City of Speyer; he might have been from Obrigheim. The Weißenburg Monastery, in what is now Wissembourg in nearby Alsace, France, enfeoffed Count Friedrich VII of Leiningen-Dagsburg with holdings in Obrigheim. From 1467 to 1505, the village found itself in Electoral Palatinate’s ownership. In 1557 it was called Oberkum uff der wissen. This almost matches the village’s local dialectal name Owwerkumm. On a map from 1735 it is called Oberheim; in 1739, the name that is today customary first crops up.