Schornsheim () is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Geography
Location The winegrowing centre lies in Rhenish Hesse and belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Wörrstadt, whose seat is in the like-named municipality.
Neighbouring municipalities Schornsheim's neighbours are Gabsheim, Udenheim, Undenheim and Wörrstadt.
History
Name’s origins The name Schornsheim (in 782 Scoronishaim, in 815 Scornesheim, about 836 Scoranesheim, about 1230 Schornesheym, about 1520 Schornsheim) is formed with the placename ending —heim (cognate with English home), as are most Rhenish-Hessian placenames. The other root in the name, however, is something of a peculiarity. It is not a traditional Germanic personal name, nor a word for a natural feature, but rather a title, and only became a personal name through transference. Scoran (cognate with English shorn, and with much the same meaning, referring to a tonsure) was a word used for priests and monks and was given boys as a name who were destined for the clergy, for whom the tonsure had long stood as a defining mark. It could well be that a clergyman of this time gave Schornsheim its name. It is assumed that one or more Frankish settlements had already arisen in the area of what later became Schornsheim, and the unknown priest or monk only later gave the village his name, after he himself had settled there and founded a church and perhaps also a monastery.
In one of Charlemagne’s documents from 28 July 782, the king named Schornsheim’s church and estate as his property. The “estate” at that time meant the whole of the kingly holdings or a part thereof. How the ruler acquired it is unknown. Whatever it was that happened, it is known that the successor to the estate was the Scoran who had once founded the church.
Saint Leoba
Charlemagne gave the church of the “estate” of Schornsheim with its appurtenances (along with real estate) first as a benefice – in effect, a fief, to be used free of charge – to Leoba of Tauberbischofsheim, who is still venerated today as Saint Leoba.
Leoba, whose Anglo-Saxon name was Leofgyth, was brought up in the convents at Minster in Kent and Wimborne Minster in Dorset. As a woman, she had, after Anglo-Saxon custom, training in languages and theology, which fully equalled a man's. She was related to Saint Boniface, who always had a particular fondness for her. Boniface was critical of the Frankish clergy's crudeness and unlearnedness, which he saw as holdovers from heathen superstition. He tried to remedy these shortcomings with better training at the monasteries. Leoba was best suited to such a programme. She built a convent on an estate in Tauberbischofsheim, which soon became a kind of college for nuns. Leoba did not live exclusively at the convent on the Tauber, though, but rather she regularly undertook visitational journeys to other convents under her authority. Only when she was elderly did she withdraw to the convent that she had chosen as a retirement home. She died there on 28 September 782.
Saint Leoba is still venerated today in Schornsheim. The Catholic church bears her name, and in the village square, a fountain has been built that has Saint Leoba standing in the middle.
History of the Schornsheim Ganerbschaft Before the turmoil in the late 18th century and the new territorial order in the early 19th, the countryside between the Rhine, the Nahe and the Donnersberg – what is today called Rhenish Hesse – was not in any way a political unit. The Palatinate, Mainz, Waldgrave, Rhinegrave, Nassau and knightly landholding rights all overlapped each other in this area.
If the Electorate of the Palatinate wanted to assert itself as the foremost power in this region, then it had about as much success at forging an exclusive territorial zone as Mainz. Very often local lords varied from one place to the next, and there were more than a few cases in which several lordships held ownership rights at the same time. The four jointly owned estates (Ganerbschaften) that were incorporated into the Knightly Canton of Oberrhein, namely Bechtolsheim, Mommenheim, Niedersaulheim and Schornsheim, formed in view of their geographical location the backbone of the Imperial-Knightly holdings in the buffer zone between the two rival territories of the Palatinate and Mainz.
Schornsheim and the tailors Schornsheim is a village that, in terms of its dwellers’ wealth and level of employment, is comparable to many other villages. This was not always so.
A hundred years ago, Schornsheim was known as a “tailoring village”. There were more than 130 tailors and whole families made their livelihood at tailoring, sewing for factories in Mainz, Worms and Darmstadt.
Each tailor worked at his or her speciality, with some producing only trousers, and still others making only jackets. Once a week, the finished garments were then delivered to the factory. The tailors mostly lived in little, single-story loam houses with two or three windows facing onto the street, or sometimes only one, for a window tax was levied in those days. The tailors’ livingroom became their workshop in which several sewing machines would be set up along with a great tailor's table.
Father, mother, daughters and sons worked on into the night so that they could earn enough to feed themselves, for these tailors earned very little money. A great many skirts, trousers and vests had to make their way out of the workshop before a Schornsheim home worker could enjoy the pleasures of owning his own house and property.
Many tailors also had a field plot, in which they planted potatoes and grain. At home, they had a pig in the stable that would be slaughtered when it got big enough, or a goat – the so-called “tailor’s cow” – for its milk. However, as factories streamlined their production, making themselves cheaper to run, less and less work came the tailors’ way, eventually forcing them to seek other work.
Many sought it in the industrial works in Mainz or in the Opel Works in Rüsselsheim, where they earned much more and came to know a kind of luxury, at least compared to what they had known before. Today there is not even one tailor in the municipality; the profession has died out.
However, when one walks through the streets, especially on Karl-Marx-Straße, one still finds the odd typical tailor's house.
18th century
Poor money From 1715 comes the story that accountant Lorenz Tautphäus was taking in “cloth money” (Tuchgeld). Certain fields in the municipal area had this so-called Tuchgeld imposed on them, which was used to buy the local poor some clothing.
Jews in Schornsheim Between 1713 and 1738, nine Jewish families lived in the village. Each family had to pay 3 guilders in “Jew protection money” (Judenschutzgeld), after which they were entitled to live in the village and go about their business unhindered. Some Jews were merchants and others were butchers.
Night watchman In earlier years, the night watchman's job was an important one. His service was laid out as follows in 1712: “They have to blow towards the Schultheiß’s house, at the Schmitt Bridge, at Nikolaus Kneip’s house, at Jakob’s board house, at the rectory, at the Pfaffenwald well. While doing this the night watchmen should at each post where they blow, whenever the hour rings, call out what hour has struck.”
Day watchman Such a man took up this work in 1725. Of this, it was written: “By the whole municipality it was deemed advisable that a day watchman, who would go about the village the whole day long bearing a spear, and whatever strange beggars come in, he should forthwith turn them out, such would happen in the surrounding places. The day watchman should receive from each man in the municipality a loaf of bread and from the municipality a pair of shoes as wages.”
Swineherd In 1713, Nikolaus Lademann was hired as the swineherd. He received as wages “7 Malter of corn and from each one who drives swine, a loaf of bread, and the said one should drive the swine if the weather is good.” In 1722, the new swineherd received for each pig “thus driven” one fourth of a loaf of bread. He had to watch the swine as long as people “drove” them to him.
“Firewalkers” In 1722, six men were hired as “firewalkers” (Feuerläufer), although this did not mean, as both the German and English words do nowadays, people who walk barefoot across hot coals. These were firefighters of a kind, but of course without modern equipment. One among them was the fire captain. Whenever a fire broke out anywhere, they had to walk for up to three hours to reach the fire to help put it out. However, they could not leave the scene until they had been given a certificate witnessing their efforts. Each also had to take along his leather pail on the job. When they came back, they were to get from the municipality two Maß of wine and each was to get white bread for one Albus.
In 1731, it was written: “They should go after the fire as far as the Rhine or four hours’ walk away and then bring back a certificate, then they should have from the municipality 1 quarter of wine and for an alb. white bread and Volpert Sandmann should be the fire captain.”
19th century In 1840 the Evangelical clergyman Pfeiffer declared that his parish had wished “for the longest time and most longingly” a separation of churches from the Catholic parish and for a new Evangelical church to be built. There was also more payment for the extermination of mice, hamsters and wasps.
In 1848, Ludwig H., born and living in Schornsheim, had himself registered as a local citizen and paid the “fire pail money”. Owing to his intended marriage, however, the council raised an objection, because the said man had no kind of estate, neither practising a business nor being “busy” in agriculture, and about the woman's assets, nothing was known. “One can assume that the said man cannot feed this female person with her two illegitimate children, much less should this family grow yet bigger.”
In 1850, to build the Evangelical church, the church did not want to use any stone from the Flonheim quarries because for these stones, a road improvement tax would have had to be paid. Instead, the church wanted to draw stone from the Oppenheim quarries, as those stones were free of this tax.
In 1856, chickens and geese were once again tended by Ludwig Höhler with his sister for a wage of 30 guilders. He further received, as was customary, one pound of bread from each owner of one of those geese. The vineyard marksmen now had to go to work every day. A day's wages for each was 24 Kreuzer.
In 1857, Philipp Geogi wanted to travel to his son in Zürich as there were better food and care there than in Schornsheim. The municipality was ready to give him money for clothing for the trip, but as security, they wanted to pay the fare only at the railway station from which he was to begin his trip. His son was a tinsmith in Zürich. The council decided that on 23 June, the meadows would be opened. The grass was to be mown and taken away forthwith. The council objected to local citizen Mathias Z.’s marriage to Maria Chatharina J. from Wörrstadt. “Z. enjoys evil repute and has with a person from the Duchy of Nassau undergone an immoral change and has had children with the same. He is a blasphemer and given to drink. His fiancée also possesses a frivolous character and is said already to have had two children out of wedlock with another person.”