Monzingen
Monzingen 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 Nahe-Glan, whose seat is in the like-named town. Monzingen is a more than 1,200-year-old winegrowing village and a state-recognized recreational resort.
Geography
Location
Monzingen lies in a side valley of the Middle Nahe, flowing through which is the Gaulsbach. To the north, east and west, the village is framed by mountains that reach 250 to 300 m above sea level, whereas to the south, the valley opens out towards the River Nahe. The village's centre is formed by the 200 m-high Kirchberg on which stands the 13th-century Martinskirche. The houses stretch along a mountain slope that gently falls off from west to east. The newest buildings stand mainly on an easterly hill towards Nußbaum, looming above the old village core with its historical buildings. To the south in the Nahe valley, across Bundesstraße 41 and the Nahe Valley Railway, lie the commercial park, sport facilities and one of the Nahe valley's biggest campgrounds. The surrounding mountain slopes are covered with mixed forest or, on the south slopes, are mainly used for winegrowing. A few vineyards that were long ago given up are now covered with bush. On the steep slopes of the well known Monzingen vineyards Frühlingsplätzchen and Halenberg, however, there is still intensive winegrowing.Neighbouring municipalities
Clockwise from the north, Monzingen's neighbours are the municipality of Auen, the town of Bad Sobernheim and the municipalities of Nußbaum, Meddersheim, Merxheim, Weiler bei Monzingen and Langenthal, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district.Constituent communities
Also belonging to Monzingen is the outlying homestead of Nahemühle.History
Monzingen is among the oldest settlements in the Nahe valley. Without a doubt there was already a settlement of farmers and hunters around the mountain spur more than 2,000 years ago. From Celtic and Roman times and later, to the Frankish taking of the land, a wealth of archaeological finds has come to light. The oldest preserved record of Monzingen comes from a directory of holdings kept by Lorsch Abbey, from AD 778. The oldest known forms of the village's name are Monzecha and Munzaher. It is also known from the Lorsch document that there was already winegrowing in Monzingen then. The settlement lay in a favourable spot up a sheltered side valley, around a crag halfway up a slope that also bore a holy sanctuary, as in now does a church, away from any floodwaters that might come up from the Nahe of the Gaulsbach. It can be assumed that during the Middle Ages, a kind of village castle arose around the Kirchberg to afford the villagers greater security. Beginning in 1281, the Archbishop of Mainz held considerable rights and estates in Monzingen. In 1355, Monzingen was granted town rights, thereby also acquiring the right to hold a market, run its own court and, particularly, to fortify itself to protect the villagers and their belongings. In 1430, Monzingen was burnt down in a war between two claimants to the seat of Bishop and Archbishop of Mainz. In 1466, it was pledged along with Böckelheim by Mainz to the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken. In 1471 it was conquered by Electoral Palatinate troops. The church is, at least in its northwestern parts, a building from the 12th century. Towards 1300, it was thoroughly converted. The Gothic quire comes from 1488. In the 17th and 18th centuries, further building was undertaken, and again in 1860, 1923 and even very recently. In this last round of work, wall paintings from the 15th century were uncovered. The Electoral Palatinate leadership lastingly introduced the Reformation in the years 1550-1560. As in the whole Rhenish region, the Thirty Years' War wrought great damage and loss in Monzingen. In 1636, there were only 25 townsfolk living here; 50 had died. Beginning in 1792, French Revolutionary troops conquered the Nahe country. Thus ended the people's hereditary duty of allegiance to the various princes and landlords. After the end of Napoleonic times in the wars of 1813-1815, this administrative zone of Monzingen was assigned in 1816 to the Kingdom of Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. Monzingen remained the seat of a Bürgermeisterei within the then newly formed Kreuznach district. With the building of the Nahe-Saar Railway in the years 1856-1860 and a few better roads, gradually some new development began. In the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate, the Amtsbürgermeisterei of Monzingen became a Verbandsgemeinde in 1969 but then the following year it was dissolved altogether. Monzingen was then grouped into the Verbandsgemeinde of Sobernheim.Jewish history
Monzingen had a small Jewish community until the early 20th century. Its beginnings might have gone back at least to the 18th century. Beginning in the 1770s, the widower Isaak bar Veis, or Isaak Sohn des Veis – a German translation of his name – was being named. He was from Monzingen and married Sophie Moses David in Becherbach. The couple had three sons, Peter, Simon and Michael. In the 19th century, the number of Jewish inhabitants developed as follows: in 1858, there were 64 ; in 1895, 23. From the 1870s onwards, the numbers of Jewish inhabitants shrank sharply: between 1872 and 1890, seven Jewish families left Monzingen. Particularly common surnames among Monzingen's Jewish families were Fried, Mayer and Ullmann; these names can be read on the Jewish gravestones from Monzingen preserved in Bad Sobernheim. In the way of institutions, there were a prayer room, a mikveh and a graveyard. The building that contained the Jewish prayer room was no longer used and in the time that followed it fell into disrepair. Until about 1950, there was still a heap of rubble at that spot. About 1960-1964, remnants of the former mikveh could still be made out. Today, the site is in a thoroughly run-down state. In the time of the Third Reich, the Jewish graveyard was eliminated and the gravestones were removed to Bad Sobernheim. According to the Gedenkbuch – Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933-1945 and Yad Vashem, of all Jews who either were born in Monzingen or lived there for a long time, 3 died in the time of the Third Reich :- Else Ermann
- Rosalie Jakob
- Penas Paul Wolff
Municipality’s name
| Year | Spelling | Remarks |
| 1061 | Munzecha | |
| 1074 | villa Munzichum | |
| 1197 | Munziche | |
| 1283 | Monzecho | |
| 1297 | Moncichen | |
| 1355 | Muntziche | in deed conferring town rights |
| 1380 | Montzingen | |
| 1421 | Muntzingen | |
| 1494 | Montzingen |
Population development
Monzingen's population development since Napoleonic times is shown in the table below. The figures for the years from 1871 to 1987 are drawn from census data:ReligionAs at 30 November 2013, there are 1,607 full-time residents in Monzingen, and of those, 1,072 are Evangelical, 206 are Catholic, 4 are Lutheran, 2 belong to the Palatinate State Free Religious Community, 1 is Russian Orthodox, 44 belong to other religious groups and 278 either have no religion or will not reveal their religious affiliation.PoliticsMunicipal councilThe council is made up of 16 council members, who were elected by personalized proportional representation at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman. However, owing to a formal defect that was detected in the electoral oversight, this election was in fact invalidated and then held again on 25 October 2009. That vote yielded the following results:
Mayors
MayorMonzingen's mayor is Norbert Alt, and his deputies are Karl-Heinz Steinbrecher, Hans-Jürgen Eckert and Christel Hoseus.Coat of armsThe German blazon reads: In von Schwarz und Rot geteiltem Schild oben ein schreitender rotbezungter doppelschwänziger goldener Löwe, unten ein silbernes sechsspeichiges Rad.The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Per fess sable a lion passant Or tail forked langued gules, and gules a wheel spoked of six argent. Monzingen's arms originally had only a single, undivided field with one charge, the wheel still seen now; the field was gules. This wheel was the heraldic device borne by the Archbishopric of Mainz, the Wheel of Mainz. The arms, however, eventually became party per fess, and the former composition was assigned to the lower field, while the new upper field bore its own charge, a lion. This is the Palatine Lion. The two charges refer to Monzingen's former overlords, the Electorate of Mainz and Electoral Palatinate. Town partnershipsMonzingen fosters partnerships with the following places:
BuildingsThe following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:
Jewish graveyardThe Jewish graveyard in Monzingen lay outside the old town wall. It is unknown when it was first laid out. In Flurbuch XIV, the oldest map of the municipality of Monzingen, from 1830, the graveyard is marked. The gravestones formerly standing here but now preserved at the graveyard in Bad Sobernheim come from the years 1853 to 1913. In 1938, by which time Adolf Hitler had come to power in Germany, the graveyard had to be dissolved and levelled on the National Socialists’ orders. In early autumn of that year, the gravestones were removed and taken to the Bad Sobernheim graveyard and set up there. In connection with this deed, there is a story about Monzingen's last Jewish inhabitant, Jettchen Ullmann:The last Jewish woman in Monzingen, Mrs. Jettchen Ullmann, had admonished a high party functionary about building a Hitler Youth clubhouse on the Jewish graveyard’s lands. The very elderly woman felt compelled to go on and on until she had made sure that the graveyard would not be passing into the party’s hands, but rather would be bought by a resident as building land for a head saw works. The stones were driven by workers from the firm Marum, then still owned by Alfred Marum, the last leader of the Sobernheim Jewish community, to Sobernheim, where for the most part they were stood in a row. At the same time, there were also some reburials, among them Ferdinand Ullmann, who had already died in 1907, Jettchen Ullmann’s husband.Older inhabitants in Monzingen remember that the graveyard was found in the village's southwest, right outside the town wall. Even by the late 1940s, parts of the wall from around the entrance were still to be seen there, even though the land was now being used as a sawmill. The sawmill's storage yard, which had been laid out on the graveyard's former grounds, has for some years no longer existed. Three garages have since been built there. WinegrowingMonzingen's first documentary mention in AD 778 is bound with winegrowing. The document in question bears witness to a donation of vineyards to Lorsch Abbey, thus showing that the village has a long and successful winegrowing tradition. Even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe drank and praised Monzingen wine. At Saint Roch’s Festival at Bingen in 1815, he wrote:Nahe Society is now vaunting a wine that grows in the area, called Monzinger. It should be lightly and enjoyably drunk up, though before one knows it, it can go to one’s head.In Monzingen it is mainly the classic grape varieties that are grown, such as Riesling, Silvaner, Müller-Thurgau, Pinot blanc, Pinot gris, Bacchus and Dornfelder. Monzingen has the following Weingüter :
TransportRunning through Monzingen's south end is Bundesstraße 41, while Kreisstraße 19 and Landesstraße 229 pass through the village centre on their way to meet it. A short road, Kreisstraße 97, runs from that same interchange across the railway and the River Nahe to link the village with Landesstraße 232. Right near this main road junction is a railway station on the Nahe Valley Railway. |