Roth () 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 Langenlonsheim-Stromberg, whose seat is in Langenlonsheim.
Geography
Location Roth lies southwest of the Rhine in the Hunsrück. It sits at an elevation of some 350 m above sea level on a small mountain ridge. The municipal area measures 84 ha.
Neighbouring municipalities Clockwise from the north, Roth's neighbours are the municipalities of Warmsroth, Waldalgesheim and Waldlaubersheim and the town of Stromberg, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district but for Waldalgesheim, which lies in the neighbouring Mainz-Bingen district.
History
Middle Ages In 1987, Roth celebrated its 800th anniversary, the grounds for doing so being the oldest known document that contains the village's name, one from Rupertsberg Abbey near Bingen from the year 1187. According to this parchment, now kept at the Koblenz State Archive, Archbishop of Mainz Conrad I freed the monastery and its holdings from episcopal taxation and put them under his protection. It seems certain that the "Roth" to which the document refers is indeed the subject of this article ("Roth" is otherwise a very common placename). Even if the document was not sealed, that is to say, never gained the force of law, the presence of that name in its text is still proof that the village existed that long ago. The name also says something about the village's beginnings. It literally means a clearing. What is unusual, though, is that the name does not have a prefix identifying its founder, owner, or leader as most others do, as seen, for instance, in Duchroth, Eckenroth, Gebroth, Kirschroth and Warmsroth, to name only the examples in this district (the last one, for instance, likely indicates a clearing owned by the city of Worms). According to the Germanist Adolf Bach (1890-1972), placenames ending in —rod (a more commonly occurring form) arose in the time from the 10th century to the 14th, and especially in the 12th and 13th, as clearings in woodland areas with more than 150 frost days each year, making their locations rather less favourable than places that had arisen in the treeless areas of the original landscape. It can thus be concluded that Roth likely arose not too long before this 1187 first documentary mention. Roth was originally laid out in the "original municipal area" of Waldlaubersheim. The Viergemeindewald ("Four-Municipality Forest") on which lie not only Roth but also Waldlaubersheim, Genheim (now a constituent community of Waldalgesheim), Warmsroth and Wald-Erbach, bears witness to the village's membership in this greater municipal area after 1589. In his Urkundliche Geschichte ("Documentary History"), Father Wagner cites from Rupertsberg Abbey's general directory of holdings (1200-1270) that Roth had to pay the abbey 11 Unzen and 6 Denare in rent on Martinmas (11 November), a contribution that may well hint at the holding's small significance. The jurisdiction by Schöffen (roughly "lay jurists") in Roth in those days was exercised by Hermanus von Genheim for Rodenkirchen (or Rothenkirchen) Abbey near Kirchheimbolanden. For the income that was bound with this, he and his wife Adelheid had to pay 20 Denare in interest. As a document filled out in Mainz has it, the knight Sir Heinrich of Glymendail and his wife Christina – who seemingly held a great many landholds in Roth – donated "produce benefits at Rod (Roth)" to Rupertsberg Abbey in 1283 to keep their memory alive with yearly Masses on the anniversaries of their deaths, and also donated further holdings near the village of Rod against a yearly annuity of 20 Malter of corn (likely either wheat or rye). Besides Rupertsberg Abbey, a lord from Brandenburg (now in Luxembourg) must also have owned an estate in Roth until 1417. In 1589, ten households were counted in Roth. The tithes were split between the Junker of Schönburg (Oberwesel), who got a two-thirds share, and the chaplain at Stromberg, who got the remaining third. Before the Reformation, the chaplain's third belonged to Rodenkirchen Abbey, and Roth itself belonged to the parish of Waldlaubersheim. Administratively, Roth, along with Genheim, which through its amalgamation with Waldalgesheim was removed from this historical tie, and Eckenroth belonged quite early on to the Stromburg (the castle above the town of Stromberg), which itself was under royal or Imperial ownership until 1156. In that year, Roth, along with the Stromburg, passed into the Counts Palatine's hands. It is thus understandable that even by 1410, the town of Bingen was offering the Roth villagers shelter within its walls in times when they were under attack. For this service, they had to contribute towards maintaining the fortifications and for the town's actual defence. While the number of households in Roth in 1589 had been, as mentioned above, ten, by 1789 – the year when the French Revolution broke out – it had only grown to 14.Middle Ages
Modern times Local chronicler Martin Sinß, who published a village chronicle in 1965 on the occasion of the men's singing club's 70th anniversary, mentions in his work a document that reports the existence of a chapel in Roth consecrated to Saint Bartholomew. The village chronicle from 1877 says that it had been "provided" by Eibingen Abbey (whose site is now occupied by Saint Hildegard's Church in Rüdesheim an der Nahe-Eibingen). As far back as the early 16th century, this chapel had supposedly fallen into disrepair. After the Reformation, unconfirmed stories have it that it was shared by Protestants and Catholics. Given the small population – 11 Catholic families and 6 Protestant – the chapel's rehabilitation was not workable. Documents in the State Archive supposedly hint at efforts by the municipality in the late 18th century to reconstruct the chapel; however, ecclesiastical documents contain no mention of such a project. Both denominations had by that time been parochially united with Stromberg. The chapel is believed to have stood on the old churchyard, and for many years after it became a ruin, it is said that the Catholics still celebrated the anniversary of its consecration each year on the first Sunday in September, the Sunday after Saint Giles's Day (1 September). Directories from Rupertsberg Abbey show that in 1726, the monastery owned 79 Morgen, 1 Viertel and 22 Ruten in cropfields, 37 Morgen and 30 Ruten in meadows, and all together including gardens 121 Morgen, 2 Viertel and 17 Ruten of land. In 1785, the following Roth villagers are known to have paid levies to the abbey: Johann Scholler, Paul Feyer, Jacob Hartmann, Johann Jung, Blautzens, W. (W. Blautz?), Jacob Diehl, Peter Weber, Johann Blautz and Valentin Feyer. The following men also had to pay Obstgeld ("fruit money"): the Schultheiß Valentin Feyer, Joan Kraus, Johann Scholler and Johann Backes. Until 1770, it must still have been customary to yield up half the fruit harvest instead of paying rent. Moreover, Schultheiß Feyer, Jacob Diehl and Paul Feyer had to pay something called Wein-Zapfgeld ("winetap money"). Given what there is of documents from Rupertsberg Abbey, there would not seem to be much that is more specific about Roth. The Thirty Years' War and French King Louis XIV's wars of conquest must have destroyed many documents along with much else in the Palatinate. In the dale between Roth and the Schmittscher Hof (estate), which was built in 1929 by a rich aunt – known locally as die Dollartante, or "the dollar aunt" – who had made her fortune in the United States for her nephew, were likely once farms. It is said, although it is not actually known, that clearing work in the "Hufstadt" brought to light wall remnants. In 1816, after Napoleonic times had ended, Roth had 106 inhabitants. By 1876 this had grown to 193 inhabitants living in 27 households. The Amt of Stromberg was dissolved in 1798 and replaced with a French canton. After French rule had ended and the Congress of Vienna had delivered its terms in 1815, Roth passed to the Kingdom of Prussia and Stromberg once again became a Bürgermeisterei ("mayoralty"). In the 1930s, a local man named Peter Steyer II, who was quite old by this time, was still proudly boasting of his days in the Prussian Guard, and still had nothing but utter contempt for the "blind" Hessians. Roth was always one of the mayoralty's smaller municipalities. The chronicle even went so far as to say that it was nothing more than a hamlet belonging to the stronghold at Stromberg. The small municipal area defined the village's size and population in bygone times. The censuses of 1885, 1890 and 1895 yielded population figures of 176, 181 and 194 inhabitants respectively. Today's Ortsgemeinde of Roth has belonged since administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate in 1969 to the Verbandsgemeinde of Stromberg, as it once belonged to the Amt of Stromberg. With the amalgamation of Genheim with Waldalgesheim and the formation of the Mainz-Bingen district, Roth then lay with its 84 ha municipal area at the boundary between the Regierungsbezirke of Koblenz and Rheinhessen-Pfalz. With the dissolution of Rhineland-Palatinate's Regierungsbezirke in 2000, this is only a district boundary. Roth's other boundaries are formed by Landesstraße 214 and, roughly, by the Autobahn A 61 (Koblenz–Ludwigshafen).Modern times
19th century