Deidesheim
Deidesheim is a town in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with some 3,700 inhabitants.
The town lies in the northwest of the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration and since 1973 it has been the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Deidesheim. The most important industries are tourism and winegrowing. Deidesheim's two biggest folk festivals revolve around wine: the Geißbockversteigerung and the Deidesheimer Weinkerwe.
Geography
Location
Deidesheim lies in the Palatinate in the Weinstraße region. Deidesheim's municipal area stretches for, covering parts of three morphological and ecological units, namely the Palatinate Forest, the Weinstraße region's uplands and the Upper Rhine Plain: 23.9% of this area is used for agriculture, mainly grape-growing for wine, 67.9% of it is wooded, 0.6% is water, 7.4% is residential or transport-related and 0.1% of the land fits under none of these headings. The town itself lies some 1 000 m east of the Haardt. Deidesheim is found in the northwest of the Rhine-Neckar urban region in the middle of the Palatinate wine region. Running through the town is the German Wine Route.Neighbouring municipalities
Clockwise from the north, these are Forst an der Weinstraße, Friedelsheim, Rödersheim-Gronau, Niederkirchen bei Deidesheim, Meckenheim, Ruppertsberg, Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Lindenberg, Lambrecht, Frankeneck, Neidenfels and Wachenheim an der Weinstraße.Climate
Macroclimatically, Deidesheim is characterized by the surrounding relief: The Palatinate Forest to the west forces the main, rain-bearing winds from the west and southwest upwards, whereupon they cool and their water condenses, raining down on the Palatinate Forest. The now drier air then falls at the forest's east side warming back up, making for a drier, less cloudy climate with warmer temperatures to the forest's lee. The number of summery days far exceeds the countrywide average by 40 or 50 each year, and the yearly precipitation level of just over is below the threshold, set at, for German regions that are considered dry.From a local climatic point of view, Deidesheim is part of the climatically favoured foothill zone of the Weinstraße region. With a mean elevation of 235 m above sea level at the forest's edge, the lands of the Deidesheim area reach down to some 130 m above sea level at the lower mid-slope area in the foothill zone. The outliers of the Madental and the Sensental, as well as those of the Einsteltal northwest of Deidesheim, form outflow pathways for the cold winds coming from the Haardt. Also affecting the local climate are small hollows and dells in which cold air can gather.
Climatic conditions in Deidesheim have almost Mediterranean traits as witnessed by ripening figs, almonds and bitter oranges in the area. Profiting especially from the favourable climate are warmth-loving crops such as grapes. This favours the growing of Qualitätsweine, which is done here on a grand scale. With its long growing season, the wine can age fully. Thoroughly fermented wines have a high quality, and frost damage is rare.
Geology
The most important event in the Deidesheim area's, and indeed the whole eastern Palatinate's, geological development was the rifting and downfaulting relative to the Haardt of the Upper Rhine Plain, whose onset was some 65,000,000 years ago in the Lower Tertiary and which has lasted until today. The area before the Haardt range was over time scored by brooks that rise in the Palatinate Forest. During the ice ages, there were gradual solifluction on the slopes and also wind abrasion. These processes led to a transformation of the original surface relief in whose wake an alluvial fan with embanked or eroded terraces formed. In colder, drier phases of the Würm glaciation, loess beds came into being through the influence of the wind, whereby the loess gathered mostly at faults and alee of small hollows.West and northwest of Deidesheim, the Voltziensandstein that predominates in the middle of the Palatinate Forest from the Triassic represents the oldest stratigraphic unit within Deidesheim's limits, the so-called “Rehberg Layer”. In Deidesheim's southwest, Pleistocene deposits can be found; these came into being some 1,500,000 years ago. In the north, Deidesheim is girded by a band of Pliocene deposits that formed some 3,000,000 years ago. In Deidesheim's east are found the newest stratigraphic units in the Holocene deposits. With foreign material such as basalt, bricks and dung, man has altered the natural soil composition. The most important soil types in the Deidesheim area are various rigosols, rendzina, parabraunerde and limestone-bearing terra fusca.
History
Founding and Early Middle Ages
The name Deidesheim had its first documentary mention in 699, although the town now standing in its current location only arose, it is believed, in the 13th century around the former Deidesheim Castle. From 770 onwards, there is proof of winegrowing here. In the early 19th century, Deidesheim was the first place in the Palatinate whose wineries were growing Qualitätsweine. Today, Deidesheim is one of the Palatinate wine region's biggest winegrowing centres.The first time when the placename was mentioned in 699 was in a document in which the Lotharingian nobleman Erimbert bequeathed estates under his ownership to Weißenburg Monastery in Alsace. Further mentions came in documents from Fulda Abbey and Lorsch Abbey, in the latter of which Deidesheim is already named as being a winegrowing centre. Documentary mentions from the Early and High Middle Ages, however, deal with various settled places that lay not in the town's current place, but rather elsewhere within a greater municipal area around Deidesheim. Frankish burial grounds in and around the neighbouring municipality Niederkirchen bei Deidesheim lead to the conclusion that there were individual settlements at least as long ago as the 6th century, some of which were forsaken. The first documentary mention is believed to refer to neighbouring Niederkirchen. When today's Deidesheim arose as a settlement next to Niederkirchen is not known with any certainty; the two centres only became separate from each other when the Prince-Bishop's castle, Schloss Deidesheim, was built, and for this the first evidence dates from 1292. The first confirmed distinction between Niederdeidesheim – today's Niederkirchen – and Oberdeidesheim – today's Deidesheim – only came in the 13th century.
In the Early Middle Ages, Deidesheim was mainly under the aforesaid Erimbert's and his descendants’ ownership. Among them were a few Counts of Metz, Upper Lotharingian dukes and Salians, and they had holdings in Deidesheim for almost 400 years, until Henry IV and Margravine Matilda of Tuscany gave up their Deidesheim holdings and donated them to the Cathedral Chapter or Saint Guy's Monastery in Speyer. Not long thereafter, Deidesheim passed into the Speyer Prince-Bishops’ hands and thenceforth belonged to the Prince-Bishopric of Speyer. Other, but less important, holdings in Deidesheim in the Early Middle Ages were owned by Lorsch Abbey and the Bishopric of Worms.
Further development
As the Speyer Bishopric's records confirm, Deidesheim quickly grew into an economically important centre to which contributed financially strong Jews, who had their own community with a synagogue in Deidesheim until the pogroms during the time of the plague about 1349.Along with this development arose the townsmen's wish to offer the flourishing community greater protection against attacks, which was granted at last by Bishop of Speyer Gerhard von Ehrenberg in 1360 when he granted Deidesheim fortification rights. On Saint Valentine's Day 1395, the Bohemian King Wenceslaus granted Deidesheim town rights. These were given – as was then customary – not to the town itself, but to the Bishop of Speyer, since he was the town's lord.
The fortification could only afford the town limited protection in wartime. The town was conquered in 1396, 1460, 1525, 1552, several times in the Thirty Years' War, and in 1689 and 1693, sometimes getting plundered and set on fire in the process.
Early modern times
With the invasion by French militiamen, Deidesheim passed to France in 1794. Although it was reconquered by Imperial troops in 1795, it soon fell again to France, and remained under French administration until Napoleon's overlordship collapsed in 1814. Under the new territorial order prescribed by the Congress of Vienna, Deidesheim belonged, beginning in 1816, to the Kingdom of Bavaria as part of the Rheinkreis, which from 1838 bore the name Pfalz. In 1819, the outlying centre of Niederkirchen, long considered to be a constituent community of Deidesheim, was demerged from the town, and has been an autonomous municipality ever since.In 1865, Deidesheim acquired a connection on the new Bad Dürkheim - Neustadt an der Weinstraße railway line. Around the start of the 20th century, there were other industrial achievements. In 1894, Deidesheim got a gasworks, in 1896 electric lighting, in 1897 a local electrical network, and in 1898, the town was connected to a public watermain. Furthermore, in the late 19th century, all important estates had a telephone connection.
20th century onwards
After the First World War in 1918, French troops moved into town. Troop units were billeted here. This persisted until France withdrew from the Rhineland in July 1930. In August 1921 there was a great forest fire near Deidesheim in which some 300 ha of woodland burnt, of which 130 ha was in the Deidesheim town forest. To fight the fire, all Deidesheim's men aged 17 and over were recruited. Quenching the fire took three long days and nights.During the Second World War, Deidesheim was mostly spared any great war damage at first, but then, on 9 March 1945, not long before the war ended, the local infirmary was struck by a bomb, which killed nine people. On 21 March 1945, American troops moved into town, ending the war, at least in Deidesheim.
With the formation of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1946, Deidesheim found itself within it, and no longer part of Bavaria. In 1968, Deidesheim was given the designation Luftkurort. Along with Forst an der Weinstraße, Ruppertsberg, Niederkirchen and Meckenheim, Deidesheim has since 1972 formed the Verbandsgemeinde of Deidesheim.
Great media coverage came Deidesheim's way with all the visits by high-ranking foreign state visitors invited to Deidesheim by then Chancellor Helmut Kohl between 1989 and 1997. Often, state guests were served the dish . The state guests who came with Kohl were British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, US Vice President Dan Quayle, Czech President Václav Havel, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, British Prime Minister John Major and the Spanish King and Queen Juan Carlos I and Sofía.
Since early 2009, Deidesheim has been the first town in Rhineland-Palatinate to be a member of the Cittàslow movement, among whose goals are improving the quality of life and enhancing cultural diversity in towns.