Odernheim am Glan 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. Odernheim is a winegrowing village.
Geography
Location Odernheim lies at the edge of the North Palatine Uplands at the mouth of the River Glan, where it empties into the River Nahe. This village, lying at the foot of the Disibodenberg, an important monastic centre in the Middle Ages, is surrounded by vineyards, forests and meadows in the southeastern part of the Verbandsgemeinde of Bad Sobernheim, and in the middle of the Nahe wine region. Among nearby towns, the Verbandsgemeinde seat of Bad Sobernheim lies 4 km to the northwest, the district seat of Bad Kreuznach 16 km to the northeast, Kirn 20 km to the west and Meisenheim 7 km to the south. Farther afield, Bingen am Rhein lies roughly 27 km to the north-northeast, while to the northeast lie Mainz (48 km), Wiesbaden just beyond and Frankfurt (80 km)
Neighbouring municipalities Clockwise from the north, Odernheim's neighbours are the municipalities of Staudernheim, Duchroth, Lettweiler, Rehborn and Abtweiler, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district.
Constituent communities Also belonging to Odernheim am Glan are the outlying homesteads of Am Kapellenberg, Birkenhof, Charlottenhof, Elsenpfuhl, Heddarterhof, Niedermühle, Sonnenberghof, Disibodenberg and Disibodenbergerhof.Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz – Amtliches Verzeichnis der Gemeinden und Gemeindeteile , Seite 17 (PDF; 2,3 MB)
Palaeontology Some 290,000,000 years ago, in Rotliegend times during the Early Permian, a freshwater lake stretched out near what is now Odernheim am Glan, living in which were predatory ancient amphibians, now known to palaeontologists as Sclerocephalus haeuseri, that reached up to two metres in length. Known worldwide are the little Branchiosauridae (gilled lizards) Apateon pedestris and Micromelerpeton credneri from Odernheim. Also yielded by the investigations have been fossils of mayflies. Some fossils from Odernheim are on show at the Palaeontological Museum in Nierstein.
History Odernheim am Glan is an early Frankish settlement that had its first documentary mention in 976 by Archbishop Willigis of Mainz. It is believed that the Franks founded Odernheim in the 5th or 6th century. By this time, the land already belonged to the Archbishopric of Mainz. In 1108, a Benedictine monastery was founded on the hill near Odernheim at the forks of the Nahe and the Glan, known as the Disibodenberg, and in 1112, Jutta von Sponheim (~1092–1136), Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) and a girl whose name is unknown entered a women's cell at the Benedictine monastery that had been specially built for them. Her epithet “of Bingen” notwithstanding, it was at the Disibodenberg near Odernheim that Hildegard lived the longest time in one place. In 1147, Hildegard had a vision that moved her to have a convent built down at the mouth of the Nahe, where it empties into the Rhine at Bingen, on the Rupertsberg. The number of nuns in Hildegard's sisterhood had been growing steadily, and in 1150, she and 18 other nuns moved from Disibodenberg Abbey to the new convent on Bingen's Rupertsberg. In the 12th century, the Archbishopric enfeoffed the Counts of Veldenz with the land on which Odernheim stood, and they later came to own it themselves. In 1349, Odernheim was granted town rights by Emperor Karl IV, allowing the village to fortify itself with walls and towers, hold a market and set up a town court with a Schultheiß. The last of the Counts of Veldenz, namely Friedrich III, died in 1444. His daughter Anna married King Ruprecht's son Count Palatine Stephan of the House of Wittelsbach. By uniting his own Palatine holdings with the now otherwise heirless County of Veldenz – his wife had inherited the county upon her father's death, but not his comital title – and by redeeming the hitherto pledged County of Zweibrücken, Stephan founded a new County Palatine, as whose comital residence he chose the town of Zweibrücken: the County Palatine of Zweibrücken, later a duchy. Beginning then, the village belonged to this state. During the War of the Succession of Landshut, Odernheim was besieged in 1504, and after the townsmen's fierce defence, overrun and subsequently almost utterly destroyed. Bits of the old town wall can still be seen today. Standing as witness to the later reconstruction is the town hall, built in 1541, in whose tower a bell from Disibodenberg Abbey still hangs. Indeed, Odernheim's history was from yore tightly bound to the now ruined abbey, which for 40 years was where Saint Hildegard of Bingen lived and worked. In 1567, Duke Wolfgang of Zweibrücken had the Zweibrücker Schlösschen (“little palatial residence”) built near the Upper Gate (Obertor) for his daughter Countess Palatine Christine. This still stands today and is an important point of interest. The Thirty Years' War brought Odernheim much hardship, but worse still, its end did not bring the peace that everybody had been hoping for. In the course of French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest – specifically, during the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, or War of the Palatine Succession) – French troops set Odernheim on fire in 1689. In 1786, Odernheim passed under the terms of the Selz-Hagenbach Exchange Treaty from the Duchy of Palatinate-Zweibrücken to Electoral Palatinate. This arrangement did not last long, for by 1797, French Revolutionary troops had overrun the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank and they had been annexed to the French state. It was then that Odernheim lost its town rights, and it has since never regained them. It became a mairie (“mayoralty”), finding itself in the Canton of Obermoschel, the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German). In 1814, the now Napoleonic French were driven out of the region by the Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Under the terms laid out by the Congress of Vienna, Odernheim passed in 1816 to the Kingdom of Bavaria. The border between this state and neighbouring Prussia ran between Staudernheim and Odernheim. Odernheim remained Bavarian through the rest of the 19th century, Imperial times, Weimar times and the Third Reich, only becoming part of the present Rhineland-Palatinate after the Second World War. Already after the First World War (1914-1918), all monarchs had been forced to abdicate. Odernheim then belonged to the Regierungsbezirk of Pfalz (“Palatinate”) and the Rockenhausen district. In the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate after the Second World War, however, Odernheim was grouped on 7 June 1969 into the Bad Kreuznach district and the Regierungsbezirk of Koblenz. The latter has since been dissolved along with all Rhineland-Palatinate's Regierungsbezirke. On 7 November 1970, the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Odernheim am Glan was dissolved and the Ortsgemeinde of Odernheim was assigned to the Verbandsgemeinde of Sobernheim. From an ecclesiastical standpoint, Odernheim still belongs to the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate (Evangelical) and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Speyer.History
Population development Odernheim am Glan'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:Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz – Regionaldaten Year Inhabitants 1815 845 1835 1,192 1871 1,333 1905 1,604 1939 1,664 Year Inhabitants 1950 1,809 1961 1,983 1970 1,991 1987 1,800 2005 1,774
Religion As at 30 November 2013, there are 1,718 full-time residents in Odernheim, and of those, 1,113 are Evangelical (64.785%), 303 are Catholic (17.637%), 19 (1.106%) belong to other religious groups and 283 (16.473%) either have no religion or will not reveal their religious affiliation.Religion
Politics
Municipal council The council is made up of 16 council members, who were elected by proportional representation at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman. The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:Kommunalwahl Rheinland-Pfalz 2009, Gemeinderat Year SPD CDU WGR WGR Total 2009 6 8 1 1 16 seats 2004 9 5 2 – 16 seats
Mayor Odernheim's mayor is Achim Schick (CDU), and his deputies are Rainer Hildenbrand (CDU), Hans Jörg Lenhoff (SPD) and Claudia Schatto (CDU).Odernheim’s council
Coat of arms The German blazon reads: In Silber auf grünem Dreiberg rechts ein goldenes Hochkreuz, auf das ein links danebenstehender blauer, goldbewehrter und rotbezungter Löwe die Pranke legt.Blazon
The municipality's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Argent in base a trimount vert upon which dexter a cross Latin Or and sinister a lion rampant azure armed of the third and langued gules with his gambe on the cross.
Town partnerships Odernheim fosters partnerships with the following places:Müggelheimer Heimatverein and partnership between the communities Müggelheim, Berlin-Treptow-Köpenick since 1997 Müggelheim was founded in 1747 by people from Odernheim am Glan. The partnership was founded on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Müggelheim’s founding.
Culture and sightseeing
Buildings The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:Directory of Cultural Monuments in Bad Kreuznach district
Village core (monumental zone) – oval of the village centre enclosed from about 1349 by the former town fortifications (Upper Gate [Obertor], town wall remnants near Bahnhofstraße, former moat in the west) with many buildings, especially from the 16th and 17th centuries, but also the 18th and 19th, among them timber-frame buildings Protestant parish church, Hintergasse 9 – Baroque hewn-stone building, marked 1738 Bahnhofstraße – warriors’ memorial 1870-1871, obelisk, last fourth of the 19th century Bahnhofstraße 6 – Late Gründerzeit estate complex, marked 1901 Bahnhofstraße 11 – former railway station; two-and-a-half-floor Historicist sandstone-block building, marked 1895, goods shed, signal box 1891 Gigertsgasse 1 – former Schloss of the Dukes of Palatinate-Zweibrücken; Renaissance quarrystone building with staircase tower, 1567; spire light with loggia possibly from the 1920s Gigertsgasse 7 – Renaissance building, about 1600, altered in the 19th century Hauptstraße 6 – Renaissance building, about 1600 Hauptstraße 17 – town hall; Late Gothic building with half-hip roof, quarrystone, 1540/1541, destroyed in 1689, reconstructed in 1768, 1774, 1776; ridge turret with bell, 1370
At Hauptstraße 28 – hearth heating plate, Baroque, 18th century At Hauptstraße 30 – building inscription, marked 1801 Hauptstraße 34 – Renaissance quarrystone building, partly timber-frame, marked 1564
Hauptstraße 42/43 – Obertor (“Upper Gate”), building with hip roof, quarrystone and timber-frame, after 1349, today's appearance Late Baroque, marked 1763, 1924 and 1977/84; Wappenstein Hauptstraße 44 – timber-frame house, partly solid, marked 1821, essentially older (timber framing 18th century, Renaissance windows about 1600) At Hauptstraße 51 – front-door keystone, marked 1754 Hintergasse (no number) – former school; Late Classicist building with half-hip roof, possibly from about 1830, extra floor built in later 19th century Hintergasse 11/12 – former teacher's dwelling; small-block building, third fourth of the 19th century, barn Hintergasse 29 – Baroque timber-frame house, marked 1710 Hinterruthen 1 – Late Historicist villa with hip roof, marked 1904 Lettweiler Straße, graveyard – A. Schmidt tomb, Late Classicist grave column, about 1877; F. Welsch tomb, Gothic Revival stele, Gründerzeit gravestones, about 1885