Gau-Bickelheim
Gau-Bickelheim 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
Gau-Bickelheim lies south of the Wißberg in the Rheinhessisches Hügelland.Politics
Municipal council
The council is made up of 16 council members, who were elected 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:
Mayor
Gau-Bickelheim's mayor is Jürgen Vollmer.Coat of arms
The municipality's arms might be described thus: Per fess abased argent three pickaxes palewise in fess, the middle one abased, gules, and gules a wheel spoked of six of the first.The pickaxes are a canting charge: “Pickaxe” is Pickel in German, which sounds rather like the second and third syllables of the municipality's name, Gau-Bickelheim. The escutcheon's base contains the Wheel of Mainz, an historical symbol of Electoral Mainz.
Town partnerships
Culture and sightseeing
Buildings
- Pfarrkirche St. Martin
- ''Kreuzkapelle''
Economy and infrastructure
Transport
Running through the municipality is Bundesstraße 420. Running nearby from northwest to southeast is the Autobahn A 61. The Gau-Bickelheim interchange is not right on Bundesstraße 420, but rather, it can be reached over Bundesstraße 50. The interchange itself is rather a sprawling one and looks somewhat like a half cloverleaf. This came about because the original plan called for there to be an interchange between the A 60 and the A 61 here. In the mid 1990s, an off-highway service centre was built nearby.Gau-Bickelheim has at its disposal a railway station on the Rheinhessenbahn.
Public institutions
- Gau-Bickelheim highway police station
Notable people
- The writer Arno Schmidt lived for a short while in Gau-Bickelheim after the Second World War as an Umsiedler. The municipality is mentioned in passing at the beginning of the narrative Schwarze Spiegel. The narrative Die Umsiedler gives this time a literary treatment.