Deidesheim

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Coordinates: 49°24′N, 08°11′E

Deidesheim
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Bad Dürkheim
Population	3,739 (June 30, 2006)
Area	26.53 km²
Population density	141 /km²
Elevation	117 m
Coordinates	49°24′ N 08°11′ E
Postal code	67146
Area code	06326
Licence plate code	DÜW
Mayor	Manfred Dörr (CDU)
Website	www.deidesheim.de

Deidesheim is a small town (population approx 4000) and municipality in the district of Bad Dürkheim, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, located on the eastern edge of the Pfälzer Wald. Many Deidesheimers work in viticulture: others are engaged in tourism related businesses or use the recently improved road links to commute to work in one or other of the larger towns and cities nearby.

Contents 1 Geography 1.1 Location 1.2 Neighbouring Villages 1.3 Climate and Agriculture 1.4 Geology 2 History 2.1 Origins 2.2 Medieval Deidesheim 2.3 The Napoleonic Occupation and its aftermath 2.4 The Twentieth Century 3 Religion 3.1 The Roman Catholic Communion 3.2 The Protestant Congregation 3.3 The Jewish Community 4 Economy and Infrastructure 4.1 Viticulture 4.2 Tourism 4.3 Public Administration 4.4 Transport Infrastrucure 5 Official International Partnerships 5.1 National Government Level: Consular Representative 5.2 Local Government Level: Towns twinned with Deidesheim 6 Visiting Deidesheim 7 The Kohl connection 8 References 9 Web Links

[edit] Geography

[edit] Location

Deidesheim is situated in the district of Bad Dürkheim, approximately 8 km north of Neustadt an der Weinstraße and 20 km to the south-west of Ludwigshafen.

The area surrounding Deidesheim extends over the three landscape types of (1) the Pfälzer Wald, (2) the Haardt Mountains and (3) the alluvial flat land alongside the River Rhine. The town itself is sheltered in the lee of high ground, approximately 1 kilometer to the east of the wooded lower slopes of the Haardt Mountains: the woods can be reached from the west of the town by means of a ten minute walk between the vineyards.

Deidesheim is in the heart of the Palatinate wine region and is itself crossed by the Deutsche Weinstraße (German Wine Route).

[edit] Neighbouring Villages

(distances approximate)

• Forst 2 km to the north
• Niederkirchen 2 km to the east
• Meckenheim 5 km to the east
• Ruppertsberg 2 km to the southeast
• Mußbach 5 km to the south
• Königsbach 4 km to the southwest

Mußbach and Königsbach are now administratively part of Neustadt. The other four villages listed have, since 1973, been incorporated into the Deidesheim combined municipality.

The mountains and their forests are the neighbours to the west.

[edit] Climate and Agriculture

Deidesheim enjoys an exceptionally favourable microclimate on account of the local topography. To the west, the hills of the Pfälzer Wald force the prevailing moisture-bearing winds from the west and south-west to rise rapidly, thereby cooling the air and condensing into rain clouds much of the moisture contained in it. The result is seen in consistently high levels of precipitation over the Pfälzer Wald and certain high towns well to west of Deidesheim such as Pirmasens. This process leaves the air that arrives to the east of the Pfälzer Wald , in the lee of the high ground, correspondingly dried and warmed. Another benefit of the air having been dried out over the Pfalzerwald is the relatively high quota of sunshine enjoyed by the towns and villages of the Weinstraße region. Annual rainfall levels in the region of 500 mm/m² (20 inches) are comfortably below the German 'dry region standard' of 600 mm/m² (24 inches). Although the warming and drying impact of the prevailing winds from the west is the most striking feature of Deidesheim’s climate, the influence of the River Rhine, 20 kilometers across flat ground on the other side of the town is also noteworthy. The river moderates the effect of the chilling winter winds from the east: as a result, when the snows do come to Deidesheim they tend to melt away much more rapidly than in towns of similar latitude a couple of hundred kilometers to the east, in Lower Bavaria.

The quasi-Mediterranean climate, discovered afresh by each generation of newcomers and visitors, is a source of much comment locally, and is highlighted by the way in which cultivated figs, almonds and bitter oranges can be ripened here. Local garden shops even offer for sale small lemon trees. But on a commercial scale it is above all the wine industry that benefits from the benign microclimate. Further to the south along the Weinstraße, the acreage devoted to vineyards increased significantly through the third and fourth quarters of the twentieth century at the expense of mixed arable agriculture, encouraged by growth in wine drinking but also by the preferential subsidies available to viticulture. By contrast the farm land immediately surrounding Deidesheim has been dominated by vineyards for longer than anyone can remember. The long and relatively predictable growing season enables the grapes to ripen fully and permits the consistent production of well regarded wines. Serious frost damage is rare.

[edit] Geology

The defining event in forming the landscape in the district, as in the entire Vorderpfalz region, came during the early tertiary period, when some 65 million years ago the River Rhine broke its way through the Haardt Massif at the point marked today by Bingen and Rüdesheim. To the east of the mountains a flatter area stretched out, traversed by streams originating in the Pfälzer Wald. Subsequent ice ages saw most of Europe covered by a succession of huge ice sheets which slowly crushed and carved their way downhill, leaving the wind to polish away at sections exposed when the ice retreated during interglacial phases. The process has transformed thesurface topography to the east of the mountains into today’s alluvial plain interspersed with moraines - areas of partially flattened higher ground formed from debris deposited where an ice sheet melted at its edge over a prolonged period, and thereafter smoothed over when the ice sheet returned to cover them. The warmer interglacial phases have here been characterized by the distribution across the landscape of layers of loess, enriched by the rapid spread of organic matter, through wind and water action.

To the west and northwest of Deidesheim are wurtzite sandstone from the Triassic period, which is a feature of the central portion of the Pfälzer Wald: this is the oldest of the three stratigraphic layers exposed around Deidesheim. To the south-west are Pleistocene deposits, established perhaps one and a half million years ago, and representing the youngest of the three strata found locally. To the north Deidesheim is fringed by a stratum of Pliocene rock, formed approximately three million years ago. Holocene deposits comprising the relatively flat lands between Deidesheim and the Rhine are naturally of very much more recent provenance.

[edit] History

[edit] Origins

The first identified reference to Deidesheim occurs in 699, in the records of the monastery at Wissembourg. Subsequent mentions are found in the records of the monasteries at Fulda in 770/771 and Lorsch in 791: in the latter it is apparent that Deidesheim was already known for viticulture. However, it is now thought that these early references concern not the present site of the town, but an earlier settlement two kilometres to the east, and today the location of the village of Niederkirchen .

Just when Deidesheim was established, as a subsidiary settlement to Niederkirchen, remains unclear. By the late thirteenth century there is evidence for a clear distinction between Niederdeidesheim (modern day Niederkirchen) and Oberdeidesheim (today’s Deidesheim). In 1292 we have the first reference to the Castle at Deidesheim, (das fürstbischöfliche Deidesheimer Schloss) which is the kernel around which the town has grown up.

[edit] Medieval Deidesheim

In 1100, Johann Count of Kraichgau, a nephew to Henry IV and from 1090 – 1104 Prince Bishop of Speyer, donated his lands in this area (which included Deidesheim) to the Prince-Bishopric of Speyer. It is clear from the Speyer monastic records that Deidesheim now grew rapidly in economic importance, well supported financially by an active Jewish community which until 1349, and the pogroms that accompanied the Black Death, had its own synagogue in Deidesheim.

During the traumatic decade that followed the arrival of the plague, its flourishing economy rendered Deidesheim increasingly vulnerable to attack: in 1360 the citizens received from the Bishop of Speyer, Gerhard von Ehrenberg, the right to fortify the town (Befestigungsrechte). Eventually, on St Valentine’s Day 1395, the Holy Roman Emperor,King Wenceslas of Bohemia, granted Town Privileges to Deidesheim. Following the custom of that time, Town Privileges were conferred not on the town itself but on the Prince Bishop of Speyer, in his capacity as lord of the town.

In wartime the town walls proved of only limited effectiveness. Deidesheim was conquered in 1396, 1460, 1525, 1552, repeatedly during the Thirty Years’ War and again, during the predations in the Palatinate of Louis XIV’s armies, in 1689 and 1693 . Through the late Medieval and Early Modern periods parts of Deidesheim thereby suffered from bouts of plunder and of fire damage. The castle was destroyed by French troops in 1689 and probably had still not been fully restored in 1794 when the French army destroyed it again.

[edit] The Napoleonic Occupation and its aftermath

With the invasion of the Revolutionary Army, Deidesheim fell to the French in 1794. Recaptured by Imperial forces in 1795, it reverted to France in 1797 and remained within Napoléon’s empire until 1814. The redrawing of maps that took place in 1816 at the Congress of Vienna saw the entire ‘region' passing to the kingdom of Bavaria, as the core of the Rheinkreis (Bavarian Rhine District), known after 1838 as the ‘Palatinate’. Confusion has persisted ever since, both for English and German speakers, since on the eastern side of Bavaria is to be found another region also known as the Palatinate/Pfalz (or sometimes, only slightly less confusingly, Upper Palatinate/OberPflaz), with its capital at Regensburg.

In 1819 neighbouring Niederkirchen became administratively independent of Deidesheim.

The Napoleonic period was a permanently secularising experience, and one which imposed on Germany many of the aspects of the 'modern state' in terms of the relationship between the citizen and the individual. The French occupation also provided persusive evidence that some sort of a unified nation state would be a much more robust entity than the fragmented patchwork of semi-autonomous territories that had comprised eighteenth century Germany: the decades that led to German unification witnessed a growth in political awareness and the development of various strands of liberal nationalism in this part of the Bavarian kingdom. In 1871 Bavaria was finally subsumed into the newly unified German empire, dominated by Prussia, following the Franco-Prussian war, though the Prussian triumph was arguably as much the outcome of Bismarck's diplomatic skill and consistency, as of his vaunted 'blood and iron' strategy. After 1871 Germany’s political epicentre moved away, far to the east of the Rhineland.

In 1865 a station was built at Deidesheim along the railway line linking Neustadt to Bad Dürkheim, and as the end of the century approached the town was connected to other networks that would transform life during the twentieth century. A gas company appeared in 1894: 1896 saw he introduction to Deidesheim of electric lighting, with a local electricity power network established the following year. The town was connected to a mains water supply in 1898, and by the end of the century all the principal businesses had telephone connections.

[edit] The Twentieth Century

French troops returned to the Rheinland in 1918, following the end of the First World War, and some were quartered in Deidesheim. This time they stayed till July 1930. Meanwhile, in August 1921, about 300 hectares of the woodland on the western edge of the town were destroyed in a forest fire. Memorably, all male inhabitants aged 18 or above were recruited to fight the fire: extinguishing it took three days and three nights.

At the town hall, the Nazi seizure of power occurred during the evening of 15th March 1933, when more than a hundred demonstrators turned up outside the home of Deidesheim's long standing Burgermeister (town major), Arnold Siben. The crowd threatened to storm Siben's house unless he agreed to resign his office. Siben reluctantly acceded to the crowd's demands, and mayoral office passed to his deputy, Friedrich Schreck. Shreck had twice been arrested in connection with resistance to the NSDAP (Nazi Party), however: his appointment was totally unacceptable to the new political establishment. The Neustadt based regional authorities therefore appointed a local landowner Friedrich Eckel-Sellmayr as Burgermeister. Eckel-Sellmayr who had held a seat on the town council since 1924, would retain his mayoral office till 1945. For most of the Second World War, Deidesheim remained free from direct damage, but on 9 March 1945 a bomb hit the local hospital, leading to nine deaths. Just over a week later an American military unit was installed, on 17 March 1945, which concluded the war for Deidesheim.

With the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, Deidesheim found itself within Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate) in 1947, but cultural echoes of Bavaria endure. Local butchers and many of the eating establishments will still serve you Munich style Weißwurst or Leberknödel (Liver Dumplings). In 1968 Deidesheim was officially granted the status of a “Luftkurort” (climatic health resort). 1972 saw a local government reorganisation whereby Deidesheim, Forst, Ruppertsberg, Niederkirchen and Meckenheim were grouped together into the Deidesheim combined municipality.

[edit] Religion

[edit] The Roman Catholic Communion

Before the establishment of the current parish, Deidesheim was a sub-parish of Niederkirchen (formerly Niederdeidesheim). The present parish church of St Ulrich was built on the site of an earlier chapel in the late Gothic style during the fifteenth century, and control over the parish seems to have passed to Deidesheim during the middle years of the sixteenth century. Niederkirchen and Forst then operated as sub-parishes of Deidesheim until, respectively, 1750 and 1820 when they became independent parishes.

After 1802, following the French annexation of the left bank of the Rhine, Deidesheim fell within the diocese of Mainz, but reverted to Speyer in 1817. Under the 1980 reorganization the town found itself within the deaconate of Bad Durkheim. In recent decades Germany's Upper Rhine region has not been immune from the growing shortage of priests in Western Europe, and in response to this challenge the three parishes of St Ulrich’s in Deidesheim, St Martin’s in Ruppertsberg and St Margaret’s in Forst have, since 2006, comprised together a group ministry centered, on Deidesheim

[edit] The Protestant Congregation

The lands of the Prince Bishop of Speyer proved to be stony ground for the Protestant Reformation at the time of Luther. Nevertheless, by 1788 the number of Protestants in Deidesheim had increased to 4, rising further, to 38, by 1863. In 1825 the Protestant cause had received a boost in Bavaria with the accession to the throne of Ludwig I whose queen, Therese of Sachsen-Hildburghausen was a protestant. Ludwig abdicated following the turmoil of 1848 to be succeeded by his son, Maximillian II. Maximillian also had married, in 1842, a protestant princess from the north, and even though once widowed she ultimately would convert to Catholicism, the middle years of the nineteenth century were marked by the building of protestant churches in many of the small towns in the 'Bavarian west'. In Deidesheim the protestant church building was completed in 1875, through the conversion of a former barn. The tower was added in 1891.

The arrival of surviving refugees, primarily, from those parts of Germany that passed to Czechoslovakia and the other Soviet dominated states under the Potsdam Agreement, gave a further boost to Protestant numbers after 1945. In 1957 Deidesheim's Protestants, joined with those of Forst an der Weinstraße , Niederkirchen and Ruppersberg to form a single Protestant congregation, affliliated to Wachenheim. The Deidesheim church which is a part of the Palatinate Protestant Church Community (Evangelische Kirche der Pfalz) has had its own minister since 1984.

[edit] The Jewish Community

The presence of a synagogue in the Middle Ages testifies to the existence of a Jewish community, but the Jews were killed in a pogrom that occurred following the appearance of the Black Death in 1349, and the synagogue was transferred to the church. A new Jewish community appeared in Deidesheim in the sixteenth century.

After the existing Jewish prayer room had fallen into serious disrepair, the present synagogue was established in 1854 opposite the southern moat of the old castle. Here it remains. However, even during the earliest years of the Nazi government, the Jewish community in Deidesheim shrank, as discrimination and impoverishment forced many to emigrate: in 1935 the now dilapidated synagogue was sold, which probably preserved it from subsequent destruction. In October 1940 seven remaining Jews who had been born or were long term resident in Deidesheim were deported as part of the Bürckel-Wagner programme. According to a survivor of the concentration camp at Gurs, these perished, victims of the Holocaust.

The former synagogue was transferred to the ownership of the town in 1992 and has since 1995 been undergoing a progressive restoration process. Today it is used for concerts and other cultural events.

[edit] Economy and Infrastructure

[edit] Viticulture

Viticulture has a long history in Deidesheim. Claims exist of fossilised remnants from a vine type plant more than four million years old having been found at Ungstein, some ten kilometres to the north. From the Roman period a barrel shaped glass container has been found near Deidesheim along with other containers suitable for wine: wine was certainly known in central Europe during Roman times, and so it is entirely possible that locally produced wine was traded and drunk, but no conclusive documentary or other evidence has been found as to whether wine was produced in the Upper Rhine region two thousand years ago.

The first surviving reference to Deidesheim as a wine producing district occurs in 770 in a record from the monastery at Fulda, but the vineyards of that time would probably have been on the flatter land surrounding modern day Niederkirchen  : the rising land that today contains many of Diedesheim’s best vineyards was probably only deforested after the end of the first millennium. The name of the nearby village of Forst recalls the vegetation that formerly dominated the land now occupied by vineyards. By 1360 the Prince Bishop of Speyer was able to authorize a wine tax (described memorably at the time as an ‘Ungeld’/’Unmoney’) to fund the building and maintenance of the new walls: this indicates that wine had by now become incontestably a principal source and badge of wealth for the town. In 1504 we find the earliest reference to a specific vine type being grown in Deidesheim: the Gänsfüßer is a well known if no longer widely grown vine being the basis for a fruity slightly astringent wine: it was once popular in Styria and the South Tyrol / Alto Adige as well as in the Upper Rhine region.

The start of the nineteenth century witnessed a transformation in the Pfaelzish wine business: Deidesheim landowner Andreas Jordan (1775 – 1848) set the trend locally for switching to the production of Qualitätswein (‘quality wine’, these days officially certified as such). The benefits of waiting till the grapes are almost ‘over-ripe’ before harvesting them in order to create ‘Spätlese’ wine was already exploited in nearby Schloss Johannisberg (today part of Geisenheim): Jordan introduced the approach to his own wine production. Then, starting in 1802 he applied the moniker ‘Deidesheimer Geheu’ as a ‘brand’ for his wine. Soon afterwards other Deidesheim wine producers adopted the same moniker: in consequence Deidesheim wine was achieving a good level of brand recognition a hundred years before brand recognition had been popularly defined. Jordan’s own business flourished and grew. On his death, in 1848, the business he had built up was split three ways, and the three businesses have since developed separately: today they remain the three largest wine businesses in Deidesheim.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century agriculturally based industries in Europe found themselves in a growing costs:prices squeeze, all too familiar from the perspective of early twenty-first century Europe. Developments in transport massively reduced the unit costs of shipment: this in turn meant that agriculturally derived imports from countries with relatively low production costs were available in unprecedented quantities. At the same time, while rapid industrialisation would massively increase the potential market for Deidesheim’s wine as the twentieth century progressed, its most obvious shorter term result was that competition for labour became intense. In the late nineteenth century, Deidesheim vintners found themselves competing for labour with rapidly industrialising Ludwigshafen twenty kilometres to the east, and the resulting surge in wage levels represented a substantial challenge for local wine production. One response to these economic pressures was the creation in 1898, at the initiative of the teacher Johannes Mungenast, of the Deidesheimer Winzerverein. (A Winzerverein is a wine producers’ cooperative association, although for English speakers the adjective "cooperative" carries an echo of nineteenth century socialist radicalism which probably misrepresents the politically conservative spirit of twentieth and twenty-first century Deidesheim.) Deidesheim’s was the first Winzerverein in the Palatinate. The Winzerverein members committed to share cellar facilities and to pool their marketing activities. The Winzergenossenschaft, a rival collective established in 1913 by some of Deidesheim’s smaller wine producers, merged with the Deidesheimer Winzerverein in 1966.

In our own century, a beneficial synergy endures between viticulture and the other pillar of the local economy, tourism: along the length of the Weinstraße, the exceptionally favourable climate is the trump card for both activities. Deidesheim boasts numerous wineries and two Sekt Cellars as well as the Winzerverein. There are currently 85 wine businesses with workable acreages: in total the town has 485 hectares / 1200 acres of vineyard. White wine still predominates, but the proportion of land devoted to red wine types has increased from 2% to 16% since the early 1980s. The vineyards are dominated by Riesling grapes: Rivaner, Silvaner, Spätburgunder, Blauer Portugieser and Gewürztraminer based wines are also produced here.

[edit] Tourism

The other principal economic activities locally are those involving tourism. The surrounding countryside has a natural year-round beauty: at the start of the summer the blossom on the fruit trees is considered a particularly attractive feature of the district, and one which appears to have been enhanced in recent decades through the planting of additional fruit trees near to the roadside along the Weinstraße (Wine Street - a designated Tourist Route) running northwards towards Bad Dürkheim. The recent opening of a relief road to the east of the little town has reduced pressure from through traffic on the Weinstraße, which here follows the main north-south street through the town. Deidesheim has since 1865 been linked by railway to Neustadt an der Weinstraße, and the line continues northwards to Bad Dürkheim and Grünstadt. To the west, once you pass through the belt of vineyards, the Pfälzer Wald offers excellent walks.

The most obvious manifestations of tourism, especially during summer evenings and at weekends, involve short term visitors from the nearby cities such as Ludwigshafen, Mannheim, Karlsruhe and Frankfurt. Deidesheim boasts a wider range of restaurants than is normal for this size of town, supplemented by a range of refreshment booths during the annual Weinfest each August and the "Deidesheimer Advent" (pre-Christmas Market) each December. The best known of Deidesheim’s restaurants is The Schwarzer Hahn (Black Rooster), located in the Deidesheimerhof Hotel and regularly featured on television news reports during the chancellorship of Dr Helmut Kohl (see below).

The approach road along the Weinstraße from Neustadt has since the end of the twentieth century been dominated by a large low lying international style hotel, with its own ‘Tiefgarage’ parking, but for carless visitors (and for those content to fight it out for a parking slot in the narrow streets) the center of Deidesheim features several smaller traditional hotels.

[edit] Public Administration

The combined municipality of Deidesheim was inaugurated in 1973. This incorporates public administration functions for the five sub-municipalities of Deidesheim, Forst, Meckenheim, Niederkirchen and Ruppertsberg. Long before that date, its location and transport links made Deidesheim a natural administrative and cultural center for surrounding villages. A feature of the twentieth century was a steady growth in public administration activity throughout Europe: employment opportunities in Deidesheim benefitted significantly from this.

[edit] Transport Infrastrucure

Throughout western Europe, other than in some of the more densely inhabited city centers, the dominant form of transport has been the motor vehicle for many decades. This is supported by a network of roads which in was massively upgraded during the first half of the twentieth century and since the middle of the twentieth century, supplemented by a slowly evolving system of dedicated motor highways (Autobahnen) reserved for motorised vehicles travelling relatively rapidly over longer distances. Deidesheim is well served by local and national road networks.

Till the end of the twentieth century, Deidesheim's north-south axis was followed by the Bundesstraße 271 which here coincided with Germany's first Weinstraße between Bad Dürkheim, and Neustadt. Since 2000, following the construction of a relief road through the vineyards a few hundred meters to the east of the town, traffic flow through the main street has diminished and access to the national road system has improved. The A65 Autobahn is a few minute's drive away: parts of the more recently completed sections of this Autobahn pass through relatively rural districts and remain free from permanent speed restrictions, though frequent congestion supported by speed limits and cameras surrounding Karlsruhe, at the southern end of the A65, compensate for any time gained along the more open sections. The A65, links into the national Autobahn network whereby Ludwigshafen and Mannheim can normally be reached within approximately half an hour. East of the Rhine the road system frequently becomes congested and journey times are harder to predict. Nevertheless, given favourable traffic conditions it is usually possible to reach Frankfurt, Stuttgart or Strasbourg in little over an hour. Speyer is probably best accessed using a cross country route, there being no very direct Autobahn connection. Road connections to the west are inhibited by the presence of substantial mountains, but work continues, slowly, to improve the main routes via Kaiserslautern to the north west and via Landau and Pirmasens to the south-west.

Deidesheim received its first rail connection in 1865: freight collections and deliveries increasingly came to depend on road transport as the twentieth century progressed, but passenger rail services remain a core element in the transport infrastructure of the region. Through most of the day, half hourly train services provide connections to Bad Dürkheim and Neustadt, both of which are approximately fifteen minutes away. From Neustadt, both Karlsruhe and Mannheim can be reached in approximately thirty minutes using the excellent RheinNeckar S-Bahn system which is currently benefiting from significant upgrade investment. Mannheim station, one of the busiest in southern Germany, is well served by the national ICE (high speed train) network.

The best place in Deidesheim to find a local bus is outside the Railway Station, local bus services being integrated with the rail system in terms of time tabling and ticketing. There is a bus route shadowing the rail line connecting with Bad Dürkheim and Neustadt (albeit with more frequent halts), and another bus service connecting Deidesheim to Ludwigshafen.

In some flatter areas of Germany, especially those near the frontiers with the Netherlands and with Denmark, bicycle use would probably merit inclusion in a section on transport infrastructure. From Deidesheim, however, many local journeys involve challenging gradients, and the popular destinations are well served by public transport. The most enthusiast pedal cyclists in this region would be more likely to view their activity in recreational or sporting terms.

[edit] Official International Partnerships

[edit] National Government Level: Consular Representative

• Honorary Consul of the Togolese Republic

[edit] Local Government Level: Towns twinned with Deidesheim

• Bad Klosterlausnitz (Germany)

• Buochs (Switzerland)

• Saint-Jean-de-Boiseau (France)

• Tihany (Hungary)

[edit] Visiting Deidesheim

Deidesheim contains several interesting monuments including the intriguing 'Geißbock' (billy goat) fountain which may splash the unwary. Between the 'Geißbock' fountain and the low key war memorial is to be found the nineteenth century synagogue, recently restored. The former Rathaus (Town Hall) next to St Ulrich's church, now houses a small museum. On the east side of the town, opposite the railway station, the lavish municipal offices constructed at the end of the twentieth century testify to the prosperity that came to Deidesheim in the 1990s.

[edit] The Kohl connection

During the Chancellorship of Dr Helmut Kohl, who was born in Friesenheim and lived for a long time in Oggersheim (both suburbs of nearby Ludwigshafen), Deidesheim received periodic visits from the Chancellor and accompanying international statesmen who were entertained to lavish dinners incorporating Saumagen, one of the chancellor's favourite local dishes, washed down with the excellent local wine. Saumagen comprises a pig's stomach, stuffed with pork, root vegetables, herbs and seasoning. The precise balance of ingredients is variable. Saumagen is normally cut into slices approximately 1cm thick and fried in an open pan. Delicious, but high in fat and salt, Saumagen is not recommended for slimmers.

From Helmut Kohl's affection for Deidesheim, it will perhaps be apparent that, politically, Deidesheim strongly favours the CDU (The Christian Democratic Union, Dr Kohl's political party, normally described by informed commentators in the Anglosphere as Germany's party of the centre-right). The CDU has appointed every mayor of Deidesheim since 1946 when the party won 62% of the votes cast in the local government election: in the 2004 election they won 59%.

[edit] References

• This article is based on the excellent German Wikipedia article on Deidesheim.

[edit] Web Links

• Deidesheim Official Website (in German)