Rüdesheim an der Nahe, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

🇩🇪 Rüdesheim an der Nahe, or simply Rüdesheim, 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, and is also its seat. Rüdesheim customarily takes the tag “an der Nahe” to distinguish itself from nearby Rüdesheim am Rhein. Rüdesheim is laid out in state planning as a lower centre. Rüdesheim is a winegrowing village.

Location Rüdesheim lies in the transitional zone between Rhenish Hesse and the Hunsrück at the mouth of the Katzenbach, where it empties into the Ellerbach, itself a tributary to the Nahe. Although that river lies a short way outside Rüdesheim, the municipality still styles itself “an der Nahe” (“on the Nahe”) and claims that it lies im Herzen des wunderschönen Nahetals (“in the heart of the wonderfully lovely Nahe valley”). The village is found some 4 km west of the district seat of Bad Kreuznach, with which it has all but grown together into one built-up area. The village sits at an elevation of 135 m above sea level. The municipal area measures 3.47 km².

Neighbouring municipalities Clockwise from the north, Rüdesheim an der Nahe’s neighbours are the municipality of Roxheim, the town of Bad Kreuznach and the municipalities of Hüffelsheim, Weinsheim and Mandel, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district.

Constituent communities Also belonging to Rüdesheim are the outlying homesteads of Lohrer Mühle, Rüdesheimer Hof and Zum Hargesheimer Pfad.

History In 747, the village now known as Rüdesheim an der Nahe was a Frankish settlement named Lefrietesheim. There is disagreement over where the village’s current name comes from, with suggestions such as Rudersheim or Rodersheim (the former an apparent reference to rowing, and the latter to land clearing). Also in contention as the namesake is a knight of the House of Rüdesheim. Whoever is right, the name does come from Frankish times, like all placenames that end in —heim, —hausen, —weiler and so on. The wine was brought here by the Roman legionaries, who could call this place home even before the Franks came. For the epithet “wine village”, Rüdesheim still has the Romans to thank, even now, in the third millennium. In the years 1125 and 1126, the villagers found themselves in a fight against famine and the Plague. In 1334, Rüdesheim, along with Bockenau, Weinsheim and Sponheim, was burnt to the ground in the feud between Archbishop of Trier Baldwin of Luxembourg and the Counts of Sponheim. During the Thirty Years' War, the village had to deal with military requisitions, plundering and deliberately set blazes. In the wake of all this, the village’s population sank to roughly half what it had been by the time the war ended. The first sewerage was laid in Rüdesheim at the early date of 1661. The French Revolution, too, left its mark on Rüdesheim. In 1794, the village was occupied by French Revolutionary troops. On 1 October 1795, the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank were annexed to the French First Republic, French became the official language and the operative constitution was the French one. Schinderhannes (or Johannes Bückler, to use his true name) supposedly amused himself at the inn “Zum Krönchen” during this time. After Napoleon’s defeat and the delivery of the terms of the Congress of Vienna, Rüdesheim passed in 1814 or 1815 to joint Austrian-Bavarian rule. In 1853, the seat of the Amtsbürgermeisterei (“Amt mayoralty”) was established. The Amtsbürgermeistereien of Rüdesheim, Wallhausen, Winterburg and Waldböckelheim all took part in 1893 in the planning for the narrow-gauge railway. Besides passengers, this railway also transported wood from the Soonwald, ore, brownstone and material from the Bockenau quarries. The narrow-gauge railway ran through Rüdesheim along the Ellerbach. The right-of-way is now a street called “Im Wiesengrunde”. The railway station stood at “Am Kesselberg 8” (at the corner of “Im Wiesengrunde”). At the beginning of the First World War, this report came from Rüdesheim:

It was a sweltering August day in the year 1914. In the evening, the whole village gathered in the street. A celebratory calm prevailed. The chairmen of the clubs spoke and all enthusiastically agreed to the Kaiserhoch (a cheer). There was a parting celebration taking place for the men who were going off to the war. The next morning, one could see at the narrow-gauge railway station parting scenes.

In the years that followed, 254 Russian prisoners of war were assigned to agricultural work in the Rüdesheim Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”) region. The time that followed generally brought social and economic hardship, currency devaluation, sometimes famine and coal shortages, and bartering flourished. In the Second World War, many evacuees came from the Saar to Rüdesheim. Other things that locals had to deal with throughout the war were aerial defence measures, collecting drives, receiving ration cards, standing in queues for groceries and other everyday needs, air-raid alerts, searching for potato beetles, collecting scrap, news from the war, funeral services for the fallen and so on. The swimming pool was opened in 1939. During the approach to an air raid on Bad Kreuznach, bombs were accidentally dropped on Rüdesheim. When American tanks rolled through Rüdesheim on 16 March 1945, the village found itself under American occupation. The “Economic Miracle” that set in after the war also made itself felt in Rüdesheim: In 1963, sewerage was laid throughout the village. Also that year, a new school building was dedicated on Schulstraße. A kindergarten, too, was opened. New building zones were laid out as well. On 7 June 1969, in the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate, Rüdesheim was amalgamated with the town of Bad Kreuznach. The town wanted to expand its industrial park, but Rüdesheimers were mostly against this proposal. Rüdesheim therefore took the state of Rhineland-Palatinate to court. The Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof) found in Rüdesheim’s favour on 17 December 1969, and the amalgamation was overturned, splitting the village away from the town once again. In 1970, the old Amtsbürgermeisterei became the Verbandsgemeinde of Rüdesheim. In 1994, the Bundesstraße 41 bypass was dedicated.