Gutenberg, Germany
Gutenberg 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 Rüdesheim, whose seat is in the municipality of Rüdesheim an der Nahe. Gutenberg is a winegrowing village.
Geography
Location
Flowing through Gutenberg is the Gräfenbach. Gutenberg belongs to the Nahe wine region and lies at the foot of the Soonwald in the Hunsrück. Its elevation is roughly 145 m above sea level and it lies some 7 km from the district seat, Bad Kreuznach. Bad Sobernheim, Idar-Oberstein, Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg and Bingen am Rhein also lie relatively nearby. Gutenberg is distinguished by the consistency of its weather, low rainfall averaging only 480 mm yearly and many sunny days. This has led the municipality to adopt the slogan "Gutenberg – auf der Sonnenseite der Welt".Neighbouring municipalities
Clockwise from the north, Gutenberg's neighbours are the municipalities of Windesheim, Guldental, Hargesheim, Roxheim and Wallhausen, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district.Constituent communities
Also belonging to Gutenberg is the outlying homestead of Nackmühle.History
Antiquity
Not much can be brought to light about the Gutenberg area's earliest settlers, who were nomads – hunter-gatherers – of the Old Stone Age, and they did not leave much behind for archaeologists to find. In the 1960s, however, a man named Kurt Hochgesand from Waldalgesheim discovered articles from several epochs of the Stone Age in the fields near the Butterberg. Unearthed over the years were parts of a shoe-last celt, a round scraper, flint blades, a crudely worked hoe, half and whole stone hatchets and several siliceous blades. The finds were investigated and written up in Mainz journals. Thereafter they were kept under Hochgesand's private ownership.No finds from the Bronze Age were made within Gutenberg's limits are known. From the Iron Age, when the Celts migrated into the area, three archaeological finds are known: two arm rings and a neck ring from Hallstatt culture. A man named Josef Wink found these objects in a sandpit in the Weißenborn. In the 1st century BC Julius Caesar conquered Gaul and advanced all the way to the Rhine. Thenceforth the Gutenberg area belonged to the Roman province of Germania Superior. Right at the northern municipal limit ran the old Roman road that led from Bad Kreuznach towards Stromberg, where it linked to the Mainz-Bingen-Trier road, the so-called Via Ausonia. It seems likely that the first Roman archaeological find in what is now Gutenberg was made in the 1620s. In an engraving by Sebastian Furck, published in 1630 in Daniel Meisner and Eberhard Kieser's Thesaurus Philopoliticus, appears a stone coffin similar to those unearthed at the Roman graveyard in Bad Kreuznach near today's Bosenheimerstraße. An inscription on the engraving reads "Ist alda mit einem cörper und zwei gläsern darin ein unbekannts materia auch vier schüßlin ausgegraben worden". What became of this coffin is unknown.
The next major find was not made until 1921. Phillip Stieb IV discovered on his field "im Bauernstück", likely while he was doing clearing work, two stone chests. Found inside were urns, bottles, small clay lamps, coins and rings from the 1st century AD. The finds were taken to Mainz and put in the Romano-Germanic Central Museum. In 1925, Gustav Behrens, the museum's caretaker of Rhenish-Hessian archaeological monuments, wrote them up in his museum guidebook Römische Gläser aus Deutschland. Today, this glassware can be found at the local history museum in Bad Kreuznach.
In 1925 the well known local historian Karl Geib undertook an investigation in his field, for which he turned to people who were interested in the subject. In Gutenberg, that was the schoolteacher Meyer. With the help of his answers on the prepared questionnaire it came to light that many archaeological finds from prehistoric and Roman times had been destroyed through people's ignorance.
In 1967, Karl Hochgesand made an interesting discovery on the Butterberg near the Roman road: During clearing work, a plough had struck some stone chests and had destroyed them. They were set aside and seemingly never seen again, until Hochgesand found them and reported this find to the local history museum. Found in the chests were a few Roman enamel fibulae as well as glass and beaker shards. Some of this remained in private ownership and some went to the local history museum. It is noteworthy that all prehistoric and Roman archaeological finds have come to light outside what is now the village. This likely has to do with the ongoing building over time, with new buildings replacing old ones in the village itself. Indeed, most of these finds were made near the old Roman road. Since not only Roman artifacts have been dug up there, but also even older ones, it seems clear that this road had been important for some time, even before the Romans came, and that the Romans simply improved the road. Who actually lived in the village in Roman times may well never be known with certainty, but these archaeological finds leave no doubt that this place was indeed inhabited then.
Name
The first mention of the village is as Weihersheim. In 1158, a place named Weihersheim had its first documentary mention. On 22 May of that year, Archbishop of Mainz Arnold confirmed to the convent of Ruppertsberg near Bingen its land holdings as they were donated by individual persons. Mentioned among other things were four manors at Weithersheim. This convent had been founded in 1149 by Saint Hildegard, who herself had grown up at Disibodenberg. Once again, in 1184, a place called Wertdersheim was mentioned in a document. Pope Lucius III therein likewise confirmed the donations to that convent, and along with them papal protection. In 1187, Wertdersheim appeared for the third time in a document that likewise dealt with the Ruppertsberg convent. Archbishop Cunrad of Mainz, a papal legate, freed the convent from taxes and furnished it with specific rights.A clue to the location comes from yet another document, this one from the monastery at Bingen. It bears the title Registratio rerum et censum monasterii S. Rupperti ab anno 1147 usque 1270 and comprehensively lists all the convent's land holdings. For Weithersheim, 53 rural areas are named. Among others, it names "in hahnebach" and "in demo sewe". These cadastral names appear on modern maps within Gutenberg's limits, in modified or even the same forms as they had in the 13th century. The locality name "retro ecclesiam" also crops up, which is Latin. There was already a church at this time, Saint Margaret's, which stood somewhat more to the northeast than today's church. Weithersheim appears to be Gutenberg, and sometime its name was changed.
It was once assumed that Weithersheim had been a village on the Butterberg that was later abandoned for a newer village called Gutenberg in the valley. Hochgesand's discoveries at the Butterberg, however, seem to belie that assumption, for all his finds were either prehistoric or Roman, and never mediaeval. Furthermore, a temporal overlap in the use of the two names may be noted. Records from Eberbach Abbey and Ruppertsberg, both of which had land holdings at Gutenberg, kept referring to the village as Weithersheim long after those from the Counts of Sponheim had begun using the names Burg Gutenberg and Tal Gutenberg, thus putting the lie to any notion that Weithersheim was abandoned and Gutenberg then built to replace it.