Boppard
Boppard, formerly also spelled Boppart, is a town and municipality in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, lying in the Rhine Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The town is also a state-recognized tourism resort and is a winegrowing centre.
Geography
Location
Boppard lies on the upper Middle Rhine, often known as the Rhine Gorge. This characteristic narrow form of valley arose from downward erosion of the Rhine's riverbed. Since 2002, the Gorge has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A stretch of the Rhine forms the town’s eastern limit. Along this part of the river lie the outlying centres of Hirzenach and Bad Salzig, as well as the town’s main centre, also called Boppard.Directly north of Boppard, the Rhine takes its greatest bend. This bow is called the Bopparder Hamm, although this name is more commonly applied to the winegrowing area found along it. The best known lookout point over this bow in the Rhine is the Vierseenblick, or "Four-Lake View". This vista gets its name from the way in which the Rhine can be seen from here, or rather the way in which it cannot be seen: hills block out most of the view of the river itself so that visitors can only see four apparently separate patches of water, rather like four lakes. These are all actually parts of the Rhine; there are no lakes to be seen. The Vierseenblick can be reached by chairlift.
Boppard's town forest is the second biggest in Rhineland-Palatinate with an area of.
Since 1969, the town of Boppard has belonged to the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, and is the district's northernmost municipality. Boppard is a middle centre; the nearest upper centre is Koblenz, some away.
Constituent communities
Since 1976, Boppard has consisted of ten Ortsbezirke, a special kind of municipal internal division found in some cities and towns in Rhineland-Palatinate. Each Ortsbezirk has its own council, whose head bears the title Ortsvorsteher. Some of these Ortsbezirke even have their own Ortsteile, but these have no separate representation on any council. Boppard's Ortsbezirke are as follows:- Boppard with the Ortsteil of Buchenau
- Bad Salzig
- Buchholz with the Ortsteil of Ohlenfeld
- Herschwiesen with the Ortsteil of Windhausen
- Hirzenach
- Holzfeld
- Oppenhausen with the Ortsteil of Hübingen
- Rheinbay
- Udenhausen
- Weiler with the Ortsteil of Fleckertshöhe
History
Roman times
In the course of Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul and the ensuing Roman settlement of the lands on the Rhine's left bank, there also followed the founding of Vicus Baudobriga on the way into the Mühltal. The name is of Celtic origin, which implies that there had been Celtic settlement before the Romans came, or perhaps that there was one at the same time as the Romans were there. With the expansion of the limes, the Middle Rhine lost its strategic importance. On the other hand, the river was gaining more and more importance as a supply and trade avenue. In the mid 3rd century, the Rhine's right bank had to be evacuated and conceded to the Germani, thereby making the Rhine the Empire's border once more. In 355, Roman Emperor Julian stopped the Germanic invasion and began securing the Middle Rhine. His successor Valentinian I finished the work. It was also at this time that the Late Roman castrum, the Römerkastell Boppard on the Roman road through the Rhine valley, was built. Towards the end of 405, the last Roman troops were withdrawn to defend Italy. The town's next documentary mention did not come until the Early Middle Ages. According to this source from 643, Boppard was a Frankish royal estate and an administrative centre of the Bopparder Reich.Holy Roman Empire
Until 1309, Boppard was a free imperial city, and as such was often frequented by the German kings, who would then reside at the so-called Royal Estate. A bronze seal-die dating from 1228–36, now in the British Museum, proclaims the independence of Boppard under the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor. Its excellent state of preservation provides a tantalizing glimpse of the medieval town, complete with Romanesque cathedral and city walls. The Royal Estate lay at the end of the Mühltal on the Rhine. Governing the town and the surrounding Imperial Estate were Imperial ministeriales; the head official in town was the Schultheiß. A series of the ministeriales lived in the town, among whom were the Beyer von Boppard family, the family "among the Jews", the von Schönecks and the von Bickenbachs.In 1309 and 1312, Emperor Heinrich VII pledged Boppard along with its outlying lands to his brother, Archbishop Baldwin of Trier. The Boppard townsfolk, however, felt that this merger with the Electorate of Trier was unlawful. They tried to struggle against what they saw as a foreign ruler and in 1327, they set up their own council. After a short siege, Baldwin had the town stormed and quelled this challenge to his authority, thus absorbing the town of Boppard into the Electorate of Trier. Baldwin then had the toll castle – the Alte Burg – expanded, which was also meant to ensure his lordship over the town.
The Elector managed to win over the town nobility by taking them into his service and giving them jobs in administration, but the arrangement still did not sit well with the townsfolk. They had but one hope: to get rid of the pledge arrangement and reinstate the town's lost Imperial immediacy. Emperor Karl IV, though, dashed this hope. In 1368, he raised the sum of the pledge and promised that neither he nor his successor would allow the pledge to be redeemed. With high hopes, the townsfolk turned in 1496 to King of the Romans Maximilian I, who was supporting the town in its dispute with the Elector of Trier, Johann II of Baden. He freed Boppard from Electoral jurisdiction and tolls. However, Maximilian overstepped his authority in redeeming the pledge and had to revise his decision. This led in 1497 to the Boppard War. The Bopparders were not prepared to see their town once more annexed by the Electorate. So, the Elector of Trier advanced on the town with an army of 12,000 soldiers. The neighbouring places of Bad Salzig and Weiler surrendered without a fight. Boppard could not withstand the siege for long, and in the end had to acknowledge the Elector as their ruler.
In the Thirty Years' War, Boppard lost one third of its population. Swedish troops under Rhinegrave Otto Ludwig occupied the town on 18 January 1632. In the Nine Years' War, an attack by French troops was successfully repulsed. In the War of the Polish Succession, French troops under General de Court attacked Boppard. The new Electoral City Policy of 1789 was meant to strengthen the Elector's influence, but by 1794, French Revolutionary troops had occupied the town, which remained under French rule for the next 20 years.
Prussian times
Until Napoleon's downfall in 1813 and 1814, Boppard, along with all the lands on the Rhine's left bank, belonged to France. After Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher defeated the French troops, the victorious powers shared the administration of the territories under them. Thus, for a year and a half, Boppard was governed by the "Imperial and Royal" Austrian and Royal Bavarian joint Landesadministrationskommission.In 1815 the Congress of Vienna assigned the town along with the Rhine's left bank as far upstream as Bingerbrück to the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1816, new districts were established and Boppard was assigned to the Sankt Goar district, which was dissolved in 1969. At the time of the Vormärz, political tensions arose in Boppard, too. These flared up in particular around the long-time mayor, Matthias Jacobs, who as the representative of the long established, Catholic middle and lower classes was always trying to prevail against the town's wealthy, liberal upper class. Only in the Year of Revolution did his opponents manage to drive him out of office.
The physician Dr. Heusner and the local businessman Jacob Mallmann opened the Mühlbad at Remigiusplatz in 1841. Under Jacob's successor, Josef Syrée, who between 1848 and 1892 was Boppard's mayor, the town developed into a tourism centre and a spa. This new industry was furthered by the building of the Koblenz-Bingerbrück railway and the railway station in 1859. Steamship traffic on the Rhine, too, led to an upswing in the town's fortunes as a tourist centre. The Catholic middle and lower classes and the liberal, upper-class newcomers often found themselves at odds with each other, and this broke out into the open in 1872 with the Kulturkampf, which lasted several years. In particular, Mayor Syrée's and his liberal followers’ conversion to Old Catholicism brought yet another religious figure into the fray. As the representative of the Catholic middle and lower classes, the long-time dean Berger, who also enjoyed some fame as a poet, was the mayor's opponent.
During the 19th century, Boppard's population grew from some 3,000 at the beginning to some 5,000 by about 1875.
20th century
About 1903, work began on linking another railway line to the station, the Hunsrückbahn. Because the old Säuerlingsturm, a tower that had been part of the town's mediaeval fortifications, was standing in the way, it had to be dismantled in 1906–1908, and it was then reassembled – albeit with thinner walls – north of its old location. In 1908, the last section of this line was completed and in the same year, it was opened.Even after the First World War, the Rhine Province, and thereby Boppard too, belonged to Prussia. Between 1919 and 1923, there were efforts throughout the Rhineland to separate from Prussia, but they were unsuccessful. The National Socialists’ election to power in 1933 brought Boppard no changes at first, as the Centre Party had won 50% of the vote at the 1933 elections. However, on Kristallnacht, the Nazis destroyed the synagogue on Binger Gasse, which had been opened in 1867. Many Jews were seized, and some were sent to concentration camps. Roughly two thirds of the 100 or so Jews living in Boppard emigrated. Those that remained were deported in 1942. In 1940, the Marienberg Convent and its associated school were closed under pressure from the régime. Although Boppard was not the main target of any air strike, bombs were nevertheless dropped on the town. Beginning on 19 March 1945, the Rhine's left bank was controlled by United States forces, who built an emergency bridge across the Rhine at Boppard.
Since 1946, the town has been part of the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1952, the outlying centre of Boppard-Buchenau was founded. In the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate in the 1960s, the district of Sankt Goar was dissolved and Boppard was grouped into the new district of Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis. Municipal boundaries, too, underwent reform. For Boppard, this meant that as of 28 July 1970, the town found itself, along with Bad Salzig, Buchholz, Herschwiesen, Hirzenach, Holzfeld, Oppenhausen, Rheinbay, Udenhausen and Weiler in a new Verbandsgemeinde. This, however, did not last. Later that same year, the idea was floated to merge Boppard with these nine other municipalities to form a unified, greater Boppard. This was meant to simplify administration, and besides, it would bring the town a DM 12,000,000 bonus from the state. With the promise that this money would be spent mainly on the outlying centres, eight of the ten still self-administering municipalities – including Boppard itself – came round to seeing the merger as the right way to proceed. Bad Salzig, on the other hand, would only agree to amalgamation as long as the new, greater Boppard could be called Boppard-Bad Salzig. Oppenhausen, for its part, completely refused to even consider the idea. Nonetheless, since the municipalities that agreed to amalgamation were home to more than two thirds of the Verbandsgemeinde's population, and since the Verbandsgemeinde council itself also supported the proposal, the Minister of the Interior was able to effect the change by issuing a regulation. This was implemented on 31 December 1975. The newly founded municipality was given the name of Boppard. This led the now Ortsteil of Bad Salzig to appeal to the State Constitutional Court – on the same day – and file suit to have the Interior Ministry’s regulation overturned. The ruling came on 8 May 1977; the Court rejected Bad Salzig's bid.
Since the old town of Boppard was dissolved by the regulation, Boppard also no longer held town rights. Boppard’s legal quest was, however, more successful than Bad Salzig’s, and an appeal to the state government led to Boppard being granted town rights once more on 10 July 1976.