Bad Kreuznach

Bad Kreuznach () is a town in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is a spa town, most well known for its medieval bridge dating from around 1300, the Alte Nahebrücke, which is one of the few remaining bridges in the world with buildings on it.
The town is located in the Nahe River wine region, renowned both nationally and internationally for its wines, especially from the Riesling, Silvaner and Müller-Thurgau grape varieties.
Bad Kreuznach does not lie within any "Verbandsgemeinde", even though it is the seat of the Bad Kreuznach (Verbandsgemeinde). The town is the seat of several courts, as well as federal and state authorities. Bad Kreuznach is also officially a "große kreisangehörige Stadt" ("large town belonging to a district"), meaning that it does not have the district-level powers that "kreisfreie Städte" ("district-free towns/cities") enjoy. It is, nonetheless, the district seat, and also the seat of the state chamber of commerce for Rhineland-Palatinate. It is classed as a middle centre with some functions of an upper centre, making it the administrative, cultural and economic hub of a region with more than 150,000 inhabitants.
Geography.
Location.
Bad Kreuznach lies between the Hunsrück, Rhenish Hesse and the North Palatine Uplands, some 14 km (as the crow flies) south-southwest of Bingen am Rhein. It lies at the mouth of the Ellerbach, where it empties into the lower Nahe.
Neighbouring municipalities.
Clockwise from the north, Bad Kreuznach's neighbours are the municipalities of Bretzenheim, Langenlonsheim, Gensingen, Welgesheim, Zotzenheim, Sprendlingen, Badenheim (these last five lying in the neighbouring Mainz-Bingen district), Biebelsheim, Pfaffen-Schwabenheim, Volxheim, Hackenheim, Frei-Laubersheim, Altenbamberg, Traisen, Hüffelsheim, Rüdesheim an der Nahe, Roxheim, Hargesheim and Guldental.
Constituent communities.
Bad Kreuznach's outlying "Ortsbezirke" or "Stadtteile" are Bosenheim, Ippesheim, Planig, Winzenheim and Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg.
Climate.
Yearly precipitation in Bad Kreuznach amounts to 517 mm, which is very low, falling into the lowest third of the precipitation chart for all Germany. Only at 5% of the German Weather Service's weather stations are even lower figures recorded. The driest month is January. The most rainfall comes in June. In that month, precipitation is 1.8 times what it is in January. Precipitation varies only slightly. At only 7% of the weather stations are lower seasonal swings recorded.
History.
Antiquity.
As early as the 5th century BC, there is conclusive evidence that there was a Celtic settlement within what are now Bad Kreuznach's town limits. About 58 BC, the area became part of the Roman Empire and a Roman vicus came into being here, named, according to legend, after a Celt called Cruciniac, who transferred a part of his land to the Romans for them to build a supply station between Mainz (Mogontiacum) and Trier (Augusta Treverorum). Kreuznach lay on the Roman road that led from Metz (Divodurum), by way of the Saar crossing near Dillingen-Pachten (Contiomagus) and the Vicus Wareswald, near Tholey to Bingen am Rhein (Bingium). About AD 250, an enormous (measuring 81 × 71 m), luxurious palace, unique to the lands north of the Alps, was built, in the style of a peristyle villa. It contained 50 rooms on the ground floor alone. Spolia found near the "Heidenmauer" ("Heathen Wall") have led to the conclusion that there were a temple to either Mercury or both Mercury and Maia and a Gallo-Roman provincial theatre. According to an inscription and tile plates that were found in Bad Kreuznach, a vexillatio of the Legio XXII Primigenia was stationed there. In the course of measures to shore up the Imperial border against the Germanic Alemannic tribes who kept making incursions across the limes into the Empire, an auxiliary castrum was built in 370 under Emperor Valentinian I.
Middle Ages.
After Rome's downfall, Kreuznach became in the year 500 a royal estate and an imperial village in the newly growing Frankish Empire. Then, the town's first church was built within the old castrum's walls, which was at first consecrated to Saint Martin, but later to Saint Kilian, and in 1590, it was torn down. According to an 822 document from Louis the Pious, who was invoking an earlier document from Charlemagne, about 741, Saint Martin's Church in Kreuznach was supposedly donated to the Bishopric of Würzburg by his forebear Carloman. According to this indirect note, Kreuznach once again had a documentary mention in the "Annales regni Francorum" as Royal "Pfalz" (an imperial palace), where Louis the Pious stayed in 819 and 839. Kreuznach was mentioned in documents by Louis the Pious (in 823 as "villa Cruciniacus" and in 825 and 839, as "Cruciniacum castrum" or "Cruciniacum palatium regium"), Louis the German (in 845 as "villa Cruzinacha" and in 868 as "villa Cruciniacum"), Charles III, "the Fat" (in 882 as "C[h]rucinachum", "Crutcinacha", "Crucenachum"), Arnulf of Carinthia (in 889), Henry the Fowler (in 923), Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (in 962 as "Cruciniacus") and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor (in 1179 as "Cruczennach"). On the other hand, the "Crucinaha" in Emperor Otto III's documents from 1000 (which granted the rights to hold a yearly market and to strike coins) is today thought to refer to Christnach, an outlying centre of Waldbillig, a town nowadays in Luxembourg. In mediaeval and early modern Latin sources, Kreuznach is named not only as "Crucenacum", "Crucin[i]acum" (adjective "Crucenacensis", "Crucin[i]acensis") and the like, but also as "Stauronesus, Stauronesum" (adjective "Staurone[n]s[i]us"; from σταυρός "cross" and νῆσος "island") or "Naviculacrucis" (from "navicula", a kind of small boat used on inland waterways, called a "Nachen" in German, and "crux" "cross"). Sometimes also encountered is the abbreviation "Xnach" (often with a Fraktur X, with a cross-stroke: formula_1). About 1017, Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor enfeoffed his wife Cunigunde's grandnephew, Count Eberhard V of Nellenburg, with the noble estate of Kreuznach and the Villa Schwabenheim belonging thereto. After his death, King Henry IV supposedly donated the settlement of Kreuznach to the High Foundation of Speyer in 1065, who then transferred it shortly after 1105 – presumably as a fief – to the Counts of Sponheim. On Epiphany 1147, it is said that Bernard of Clairvaux performed a miraculous healing at Saint Kilian's Church. In 1183, half of the old Frankish village of Kreuznach at the former Roman castrum – the "Osterburg" – burnt down. Afterwards, of the 21 families there, 11 moved to what is now the Old Town ("Altstadt"). In the years 1206 to 1230, Counts Gottfried III of Sponheim (d. 1218) and Johann I of Sponheim (d. 1266) had the castle Kauzenburg built, even though King Philip of Swabia had forbidden them to do so. Along with the building of this castle came the rise of the New Town ("Neustadt") on the Nahe's north bank. In the years 1235 and 1270, Kreuznach was granted town rights, market rights, taxation rights and tolling rights under the rule of the comital House of Sponheim, which were acknowledged once again in 1290 by King Rudolf I of Habsburg. In 1279, in the Battle of Sprendlingen, the legend of Michel Mort arose. He is a local legendary hero, a butcher from Kreuznach who fought on the Sponheim side in the battle against the troops of the Archbishop of Mainz. When Count Johann I of Sponheim found himself in difficulties, Michel Mort drew the enemy's lances upon himself, sparing the Count by bringing about his own death. Early knowledge of the town of Kreuznach is documented in one line of a song by the minstrel Tannhäuser from the 13th century, which is preserved in handwriting by Hans Sachs: "vur creűczenach rint aűch die na". In Modern German, this would be "Vor Kreuznach rinnt auch die Nahe" ("Before Kreuznach, the Nahe also runs"). Records witness Jewish settlement in Kreuznach beginning in the late 13th century, while for a short time in the early 14th century, North Italian traders ("Lombards") lived in town. In the 13th century, Kreuznach was a fortified town and in 1320, it withstood a siege by Archbishop-Elector Baldwin of Trier (about 1270–1336). In 1361, Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor granted Count Walram I of Sponheim (about 1305–1380) a yearly market privilege for Kreuznach. In 1375, the townsfolk rose up against the town council. Count Walram's response was to have four of the uprising's leaders beheaded at the marketplace. Through its long time as Kreuznach's lordly family, the House of Sponheim had seven heads:
In 1417, however, the "Further" line of the House of Sponheim died out when Countess Elisabeth of Sponheim-Kreuznach (1365–1417) died. In her will, she divided the county between Electoral Palatinate and the County of Sponheim-Starkenburg, bequeathing to them one fifth and four-fifths respectively. In 1418, King Sigismund of Luxembourg enfeoffed Count Johann V of Sponheim-Starkenburg (about 1359–1437) with the yearly market, the mint, the Jews at Kreuznach and the right of escort, as far as Gensingen on the Trier-Mainz highway. In 1437, the lordship over Kreuznach was divided up between the Counts of Veldenz, the Margraves of Baden and Palatinate-Simmern. In 1457, at a time when a children's crusade movement was on the rise, 120 children left Kreuznach on their way to Mont-Saint-Michel by way of Wissembourg. In 1475, Electoral Palatinate issued a comprehensive police act for the "Amt" of Kreuznach, in which at this time, no Badish "Amtmann" resided. Elector Palatine Philip the Upright and John I, Count Palatine of Simmern granted the town leave to hold a second yearly market in 1490. In that same year, Elector Palatine Philip bestowed ownership of the "saltz- und badbronnen" ("salty and bathing springs") upon his cooks Conrad Brunn and Matthes von Nevendorf. The briny springs were likely discovered in 1478; nevertheless, a "Sulzer Hof" in what is today called the Salinental ("Saltworks Dale") had already been mentioned in the 13th or 14th century. On 24 August 1495, there was another uprising of the townsfolk, but this one was directed at Kreuznach's Palatine "Amtmann", Albrecht V Göler von Ravensburg, who had refused to release a prisoner against the posting of a bond. Nobody was beheaded this time, but Elector Palatine Philip did have a few of the leaders maimed, and then put into force a new town order.
Town fortifications.
The town wall, first mentioned in 1247, had a footprint that formed roughly a square in the Old Town, and was set back a few metres from what are today the streets Wilhelmstraße, Salinenstraße and Schloßstraße, with the fourth side skirting the millpond. Serving as town gates were, in the north, the "Kilianstor" or the "Mühlentor" ("Saint Kilian's Gate" or "Mill Gate"; torn down in 1877), in the southeast the "Hackenheimer Tor" (later the "Mannheimer Tor"; torn down in 1860) and in the south the "St.-Peter-Pförtchen", which lay at the end of Rossstraße, and which for security was often walled up. In the New Town, the town wall ran from the "Butterfass" ("Butterchurn"; later serving as the prison tower) on the Nahe riverbank up to the intersection of Wilhelmstraße and Brückes on "Bundesstraße" 48, where to the northwest the "Löhrpforte" (also called the "Lehrtor" or the "Binger Tor"; torn down about 1837) was found. It then ran in a bow between Hofgartenstraße and Hochstraße to the "Rüdesheimer Tor" in the southwest at the beginning of Gerbergasse, whose course it then followed down to the Ellerbach and along the Nahe as a riverbank wall. Along this section, the town wall contained the "Fischerpforte" or "Ellerpforte" as a watergate and in the south, the "Große Pforte" ("Great Gate") at the bridge across the Nahe. Belonging to the fortified complex of the Kauzenburg, across the Ellerbach from the New Town, were the "Klappertor" and a narrow, defensive ward ("zwinger"), from which the street known as "Zwingel" gets its name. On the bridge over to the ait (or the "Wörth" as it is called locally; the river island between the two parts of town) stood the "Brückentor" ("Bridge Gate"). To defend the town there was, besides the castle's Burgmannen, also a kind of townsmen's defence force or shooting guild (somewhat like a town militia). Preserved as an incunable print from 1487, printed in Mainz by Peter Schöffer (about 1425–1503), is an invitation from the mayor and town council to any and all who considered themselves good marksmen with the crossbow to come to a shooting contest on 23 September.
Jewish population.
On 31 March 1283 (2 Nisan 5043) in Kreuznach (קרויצנאך), Rabbi Ephraim bar Elieser ha-Levi – apparently as a result of a judicial sentence – was broken on the wheel. The execution was likely linked to the Mainz blood libel accusations, which in March and April 1283 also led to pogroms in Mellrichstadt, Mainz, Bacharach and Rockenhausen.
In 1311, Aaron Judeus de Crucenaco (the last three words mean "the Jew from Kreuznach") was mentioned, as was a Jewish toll gatherer from Bingen am Rhein named Abraham von Kreuznach in 1328, 1342 and 1343. In 1336, Emperor Louis the Bavarian allowed Count Johann II of Sponheim-Kreuznach to permanently keep 60 house-owning freed Jews at Kreuznach or elsewhere on his lands ("… daß er zu Creützenach oder anderstwoh in seinen landen 60 haußgesäsß gefreyter juden ewiglich halten möge …"). After further persecution in the time of the Plague in 1348/1349, there is no further evidence of Jews in Kreuznach until 1375. By 1382 at the latest, the Jew Gottschalk (who died sometime between 1409 and 1421) from Katzenelnbogen was living in Kreuznach and owned the house at the corner of Lämmergasse and Mannheimerstraße 12 (later: Löwensteiner Hof) near the "Eiermarkt" ("Egg Market"). On a false charge of usury, Count Simon III of Sponheim (after 1330–1414) had him thrown in prison and only released him after payment of a hefty ransom. He was afterwards taken into protection by Ruprecht III of the Palatinate against a yearly payment of 10 Rhenish guilders. At Gottschalk's suggestion, Archbishop Johann of Nassau-Wiesbaden-Idstein lifted the "dice toll" for Jews crossing the border into the Archbishopric of Mainz. The special taxes for Jews ordered in 1418 and 1434 by King Sigismund of Luxembourg were also imposed in Kreuznach.
In the Middle Ages, the eastern part of today's Poststraße in the New Town was the "Judengasse" ("Jews' Lane"). The "Kleine Judengasse" ran from the "Judengasse" to what is today called Magister-Faust-Gasse. In 1482, a "Jewish school" was mentioned, which might already have stood at Fährgasse 2 (lane formerly known as "Kleine Eselsgass" – "Little Ass's Lane"), where the Old Synagogue of Bad Kreuznach later stood (first mentioned here in 1715; new Baroque building in 1737; renovated in 1844; destroyed in 1938; torn down in 1953/1954; last wall remnant removed in 1975). In 1525, Louis V, Elector Palatine allowed Meïr Levi to settle for, at first, twelve years in Kreuznach, to organise the money market there, to receive visits, to lay out his own burial plot and to deal in medicines. In the earlier half of the 16th century, his son, the physician Isaak Levi, whose collection of medical works became well known as "Des Juden buch von kreuczenach" ("The Jew's Book of/from Kreuznach"), lived in Kreuznach. The work is preserved in a manuscript transcribed personally by Louis V, Elector Palatine. The oldest Jewish graveyard in Kreuznach lay in the area of today's "Rittergut Bangert" (knightly estate), having been mentioned in 1525 and 1636. The Jewish graveyard on Stromberger Straße was bought in 1661 (one preserved gravestone, however, dates from 1630) and expanded in 1919. It is said to be one of the best preserved in Rhineland-Palatinate. The Jewish family Creizenach, originally from Kreuznach, is known from records to have been in Mainz and Frankfurt am Main from 1733, and to have produced a number of important academics (Michael Creizenach, Theodor Creizenach, and Wilhelm Creizenach). The Yiddish name for Kreuznach was צלם־מקום (abbreviated צ״מ), variously rendered in Latin script as "Zelem-Mochum" or "Celemochum" (with the initial Z or C intended to transliterate the letter "צ", as they would be pronounced /ts/ in German), which literally meant "Image Place", for pious Jews wished to avoid the term "Kreuz" ("cross"). In 1828, 425 of the 7,896 inhabitants of the "Bürgermeisterei" ("Mayoralty") of Kreuznach (5.4%) adhered to the Jewish faith, as did 611 of the town's 18,143 inhabitants (3.4%) in 1890.
Monasteries.
Before the Thirty Years' War, Kreuznach had some 8,000 inhabitants and seven monasteries. In the Middle Ages and early modern times, the following monasteries were mentioned:
Plague and leprosy.
The Plague threatened Kreuznach several times throughout its history. Great epidemics are recorded as having broken out in 1348/1349 (Johannes Trithemius spoke of 1,600 victims), 1364, 1501/1502, 1608, 1635 (beginning in September) and 1666 (reportedly 1,300 victims). During the 1501 epidemic, the humanist and Palatine prince-raiser Adam Werner von Themar, one of Abbot Trithemius's friends, wrote a poem in Kreuznach about the plague saint, Sebastian. Outside the town, a sickhouse for lepers, the so-called "Gutleuthof", was founded on the Gräfenbach down from the village of Hargesheim and had its first documentary mention in 1487.
Modern times.
In the War of the Succession of Landshut against Elector Palatine Philip of the Rhine, both the town and the castle were unsuccessfully besieged for six days by Alexander, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken and William I, Landgrave of Lower Hesse, who then laid the surrounding countryside waste. The Sponheim abbot Johannes Trithemius had brought the monasterial belongings, the library and the archive to safety in Kreuznach. The besieged town was relieved by Electoral Palatinate Captain Hans III, "Landschad" of Steinach. In 1507, Master Faust assumed the rector's post at the Kreuznach Latin school, which had been secured for him by Franz von Sickingen. On the grounds of allegations of fornication, he fled the town only a short time afterwards, as witnessed by a letter from Johannes Trithemius to Johannes Virdung, in which Virdung was warned about Faust. Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, who spent Whitsun 1508 in Boppard, stayed in Kreuznach in June 1508 and wrote from there to his daughter Duchess Margaret of Savoy. In 1557, the Reformation was introduced into Kreuznach. According to the 1601 "Verzeichnis aller Herrlich- und Gerechtigkeiten der Stätt und Dörffer der vorderen Grafschaft Sponheim im Ampt Creutznach" ("Directory of All Lordships and Justices of the Towns and Villages of the Further County of Sponheim in the "Amt" of Kreuznach"), compiled by Electoral Palatinate "Oberamtmann" Johann von Eltz-Blieskastel-Wecklingen, the town had 807 estates and was the seat of a "Hofgericht" (lordly court) to which the "free villages" of Waldböckelheim, Wöllstein, Volxheim, Braunweiler, Mandel and Roxheim, which were thus freed from the toll at Kreuznach, had to send "Schöffen" (roughly "lay jurists").
Thirty Years' War.
During the Thirty Years' War, Kreuznach was overrun and captured many times by various factions fighting in that war:
The town was thus heavily drawn into hardship and woe, and the population dwindled from some 8,000 at the war's outbreak to roughly 3,500. The expression "Er ist zu Kreuznach geboren" ("He was born at Kreuznach") became a byword in German for somebody who had to struggle with a great deal of hardship. On 19 August 1663, the town was stricken by an extraordinarily high flood on the river Nahe.
Nine Years' War.
In the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the "Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg", or War of the Palatine Succession), the Kauzenburg (castle) was conquered on 5 October 1688 by Marshal Louis François, duc de Boufflers. The town fortifications and the castle were torn down and the town of Kreuznach largely destroyed in May 1689 by French troops under Brigadier Ezéchiel du Mas, Comte de Mélac (about 1630–1704) or Lieutenant General Marquis Nicolas du Blé d’Uxelles. On 18 October 1689, Kreuznach's churches were burnt down.
18th century.
As of 1708, Kreuznach wholly belonged to Electoral Palatinate. Under Elector Palatine Karl III Philipp, the Karlshalle Saltworks were built in 1729. Built in 1743 by Prince-Elector, Count Palatine and Duke Karl Theodor were the Theodorshalle Saltworks. On 13 May 1725, after a cloudburst and hailstorm, Kreuznach was stricken by an extreme flood in which 31 people lost their lives, some 300 or 400 head of cattle drowned, two houses were utterly destroyed and many damaged and remaining parts of the town wall fell in. Taking part at the founding of the Masonic Lodge "Zum wiedererbauten Tempel der Bruderliebe" ("To the Rebuilt Temple of Brotherly Love") in Worms in 1781 were also Freemasons from Kreuznach. As early as 1775, the Grand Lodge of the Rhenish Masonic Lodges (8th Provincial Grand Lodge) of Strict Observance had already been given the name "Kreuznach". In the extreme winter of 1783/1784, the town was heavily damaged on 27–28 February 1784 by an icerun and flooding. A pharmacist named Daniel Riem was killed in his house "Zum weißen Schwan" ("At the White Swan") when it collapsed into the floodwaters.
French Revolutionary and Napoleonic times.
In the course of the Napoleonic Wars (1792–1814), French emigrants came to Kreuznach, among them Prince Louis Joseph of Condé. In October 1792, French Revolutionary troops under General Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine occupied the land around Kreuznach, remaining there until 28 March 1793. The town itself was briefly occupied by French troops under General François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers on 4 January and then again on 16 October 1794. From 30 October until 1 December 1795, the town was held by Imperial troops under Rhinegrave Karl August von Salm-Grumbach, but they were at first driven out in bloody battles by Marshals Jean-Baptiste Jourdan and Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. In this time, the town suffered greatly under sackings and involuntary contributions. After the French withdrew on 12 December, it was occupied by an Austrian battalion under Captain Alois Graf Gavasini, which withdrew again on 30 May 1796. On 9 June 1796, Kreuznach was once again occupied by the French. In 1797, Kreuznach, along with all lands on the Rhine's left bank, was annexed by the French First Republic, a deed confirmed under international law by the 1801 Treaty of Lunéville. The parts of town that lay north of the Nahe were assigned to the Arrondissement of Simmern in the Department of Rhin-et-Moselle, whereas those that lay to the south were assigned to the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German). The subprefect in Simmern in 1800 was Andreas van Recum and in 1806 it was Ludwig von Closen. The "maire" of Kreuznach as of 1800 was Franz Joseph Potthoff (b. 1756; d. after 1806) and beginning in 1806 it was Karl Joseph Burret. On 20 September and 5 October 1804, the French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte visited Kreuznach. On the occasion of Napoleon's victory in the Battle of Austerlitz a celebratory Te Deum was held at the Catholic churches in January 1806 on Bishop of Aachen Marc-Antoine Berdolet's orders (Kreuznach was part of his diocese from 1801 to 1821). In 1808, Napoleon made a gift of Kreuznach's two saltworks to his favourite sister, Pauline. In 1809, the Kreuznach Masonic Lodge "Les amis réunis de la Nahe et du Rhin" was founded by van Reccum, which at first lasted only until 1814. It was, however, refounded in 1858. In Napoleon's honour, the timing of the Kreuznach yearly market was set by Mayor Burret on the Sunday after his birthday (15 August). Men from Kreuznach also took part in Napoleon's 1812 Russian Campaign on the French side, to whom a monument established at the Mannheimer Straße graveyard in 1842 still stands. The subsequent German campaign (called the "Befreiungskriege", or Wars of Liberation, in Germany) put an end to French rule.
Congress of Vienna to First World War.
Until a permanent new order could be imposed under the terms of the Congress of Vienna, the region lay under joint Bavarian-Austrian administration, whose seat was in Kreuznach. When these terms eventually came about, Kreuznach passed to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1815 and from 1816 it belonged to the "Regierungsbezirk" of Koblenz in the province of the Grand Duchy of the Lower Rhine (as of 1822 the Rhine Province) and was a border town with two neighbouring states, the Grand Duchy of Hesse to the east and the Bavarian exclave of the Palatinate to the south. The two saltworks, which had now apparently been taken away from Napoleon's sister, were from 1816 to 1897 Grand-Ducal-Hessian state property on Prussian territory. In 1817, Johann Erhard Prieger opened the first bathing parlour with briny water and thereby laid the groundwork for the fast-growing spa business. In 1843, Karl Marx married Jenny von Westphalen in Kreuznach, presumably at the "Wilhelmskirche" (William's Church), which had been built between 1698 and 1700 and was later, in 1968, all but torn down, leaving only the churchtower. In Kreuznach, Marx set down considerable portions of his manuscript "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" ("Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie") in 1843. Clara Schumann, who was attending the spa in Kreuznach, and her half-sister Marie Wieck gave a concert at the spa house in 1860. With the building of the Nahe Valley Railway from Bingerbrück to Saarbrücken in 1858/1860, the groundwork was laid for the town's industrialisation. This, along with the ever-growing income from the spa, led after years of stagnation to an economic boost for the town's development. Nevertheless, the railway was not built for industry and spa-goers alone, but also as a logistical supply line for a war that was expected to break out with France. Before this, though, right at Kreuznach's town limits, Prussia and Bavaria once again stood at odds with each other in 1866. Thinking that was not influenced by this led to another railway line being built even before the First World War, the "strategic railway" from Bad Münster by way of Staudernheim, Meisenheim, Lauterecken and Kusel towards the west, making Kreuznach into an important contributor to transport towards the west. Only about 1950 were parts of this line torn up and abandoned. Today, between Staudernheim and Kusel, it serves as a tourist attraction for those who wish to ride draisines.
In 1891, three members of the Franciscan Brothers of the Holy Cross came to live in Kreuznach. In 1893, they took over the hospital "Kiskys-Wörth", which as of 1905 bore the name "St. Marienwörth". Since 1948, they have run it together with the Sisters of the Congregation of Papal Law of the Maids of Mary of the Immaculate Conception, and today run it as a hospital bearing the classification "II. Regelversorgung" under Germany's "" hospital planning system. In 1901, the Second Rhenish "Diakonissen-Mutterhaus" ("Deaconess's Mother-House"), founded in 1889 in Sobernheim, moved under its abbot, the Reverend Hugo Reich, to Kreuznach. It is now a foundation known as the "kreuznacher diakonie" (always written with lowercase initials). In 1904, the pharmacist Karl Aschoff discovered the Kreuznach brine's radon content, and thereafter introduced "radon balneology", a therapy that had already been practised in the Austro-Hungarian town of Sankt Joachimsthal in the Bohemian Ore Mountains (now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic). Even though the Bad Kreuznach's radon content was much slighter than that found in the waters from Brambach or Bad Gastein, the town was quickly billed as a "radium healing spa" – the technical error in that billing notwithstanding. In 1912, a radon inhalatorium was brought into service, into which was piped the air from an old mining gallery at the Kauzenberg, which had a higher radon content than the springwater. The inhalatorium was destroyed in 1945. In 1974, however, the old mining gallery itself was converted into a therapy room. To this day, radon inhalation serves as a natural pain reliever for those suffering from rheumatism. In the First World War, both the Kreuznach spa house and other hotels and villas became as of 2 January 1917 the seat of the Great Headquarters of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Kaiser actually lived in the spa house. Used as the General staff building was the Oranienhof. At the spa house on 19 December 1917, General Mustafa Kemal Pasha – better known as Atatürk ("Father of the Turks") and later president of a strictly secular Turkey – the Kaiser, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff all met for talks. Only an extreme wintertime flood on the Nahe in January 1918 led to the Oberste Heeresleitung being moved to Spa in Belgium.
Weimar Republic and Third Reich.
After the First World War, French troops occupied the Rhineland and along with it, Kreuznach, whose great hotels were thereafter mostly abandoned. In 1924, Kreuznach was granted the designation "Bad", literally "Bath", which is conferred on places that can be regarded as health resorts. Since this time, the town has been known as Bad Kreuznach. After Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seized power in 1933, some, among them the trade unionist Hugo Salzmann, organised resistance to National Socialism. Despite imprisonment, Salzmann survived the Third Reich, and after 1945 sat on town council for the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The Jews who were still left in the district after the Second World War broke out were on the district leadership's orders taken in 1942 to the former "Kolpinghaus", whence, on 27 July, they were deported to Theresienstadt. Bad Kreuznach, whose spa facilities and remaining hotels once again, from 1939 to 1940, became the seat of the Army High Command, was time and again targeted by Allied air raids because of the Wehrmacht barracks on Bosenheimer Straße, Alzeyer Straße and Franziska-Puricelli-Straße as well as the strategically important Berlin-Paris railway line, which then led through the town. The last "Stadtkommandant" (town commander), Lieutenant Colonel Johann Kaup (d. 1945), kept Bad Kreuznach from even greater destruction when he offered advancing American troops no resistance, and yielded the town to them on 16 March 1945 with barely any fighting. Shortly before this, German troops had blown up yet another part of the old bridge across the Nahe, thus also destroying residential buildings near the bridge ends.
After 1945.
Bad Kreuznach was occupied by US troops in March 1945 and thus stood under American military authority. This even extended to one of the "Rheinwiesenlager" for disarmed German forces, which lay near Bad Kreuznach on the road to Bretzenheim, and whose former location is now marked by a memorial. It was commonly known as the "Field of Misery". Found in the Lohrer Wald (forest) is a graveyard of honour for wartime and camp victims. Under the Potsdam Protocols on the fixing of occupation zone boundaries, Bad Kreuznach found itself for a while in French zone of occupation, but in an exchange in the early 1950s, United States Armed Forces came back into the districts of Kreuznach, Birkenfeld and Kusel. Until the middle of 2001, the Americans maintained four barracks, a Redstone missile unit, a firing range, a small airfield and a drill ground in Bad Kreuznach. The last US forces in Bad Kreuznach were parts of the 1st Armored Division ("Old Ironsides"). In 1958, President of France Charles de Gaulle and Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer agreed in Bad Kreuznach to an institutionalisation of the special relations between the two countries, which in 1963 resulted in the Élysée Treaty. A monumental stone before the old spa house recalls this historic event. On 1 April 1960, the town of Bad Kreuznach was declared, after application to the state government, a "große kreisangehörige Stadt" ("large town belonging to a district"). In 2010 Bad Kreuznach launched a competition to replace the 1950s addition to the "Alte Nahebrücke" ("Old Nahe Bridge"). The bridge, designed by competition winner Dissing+Weitling architecture of Copenhagen, is scheduled for completion by 2012.
Amalgamations.
In the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate, the hitherto self-administering municipalities of Bosenheim, Planig, Ippesheim (all three of which had belonged until then to the Bingen district) and Winzenheim were amalgamated on 7 June 1969 with Bad Kreuznach. Furthermore, Rüdesheim an der Nahe was also amalgamated, but fought the amalgamation in court, winning, and thereby regaining its autonomy a few months later. As part of the 2009 German federal election, a plebiscite was included on the ballot on the question of whether the towns of Bad Kreuznach and Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg should be merged, and 68.3% of the Bad Kreuznach voters favoured negotiations between the two towns. On 25 May 2009, the town received another special designation, this time from the Cabinet: "Ort der Vielfalt" – "Place of Diversity".
Religion.
As at 31 August 2013, there are 44,851 full-time residents in Bad Kreuznach, and of those, 15,431 are Evangelical (34.405%), 13,355 are Catholic (29.776%), 4 belong to the Old Catholic Church (0.009%), 77 belong to the Greek Orthodox Church (0.172%), 68 belong to the Russian Orthodox Church (0.152%), 1 is United Methodist (0.002%), 16 belong to the Free Evangelical Church (0.036%), 41 are Lutheran (0.091%), 2 belong to the Palatinate State Free Religious Community (0.004%), 1 belongs to the Mainz Free Religious Community (0.002%), 4 are Reformed (0.009%), 9 belong to the Alzey Free Religious Community (0.02%), 2 form part of a membership group in a Jewish community (0.004%) (162 other Jews belong to the Bad Kreuznach-Koblenz worship community [0.361%] while a further one belongs to the State League of Jewish worship communities in Bavaria [0.002%]), 9 are Jehovah's Witnesses (0.02%), 1 belongs to yet another free religious community (0.002%), 5,088 (11.344%) belong to other religious groups and 10,579 (23.587%) either have no religion or will not reveal their religious affiliation.
Politics.
Town council.
The council is made up of 44 council members, who were elected by proportional representation at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the chief mayor as chairwoman. Since this election, the town has been run by a Jamaica coalition of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, the Free Democratic Party and the Greens.
The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:
Mayors.
Listed here are Bad Kreuznach's mayors since Napoleonic times:
Mayor.
Bad Kreuznach's chief mayor ("Oberbürgermeisterin") is Dr. Heike Kaster-Meurer, her deputy mayor ("Bürgermeisterin") is Martina Hassel and her council deputies ("Beigeordnete") are Wolfgang Heinrich, Udo Bausch and Andrea Manz.
Coat of arms.
The town's arms might be described thus: On an escutcheon argent ensigned with a town wall with three towers all embattled Or, a fess countercompony Or and azure between three crosses pattée sable.
Bad Kreuznach's right to bear arms comes from municipal law for the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The three crosses pattée (that is, with the ends somewhat broader than the rest of the crosses' arms) are a canting charge, referring to the town's name, the German word for "cross" being "Kreuz". The crosses are sometimes wrongly taken to be Christian crosses. In fact, the name Kreuznach developed out of the Celtic-Latin word "Cruciniacum", which meant "Crucinius's Home", thus a man's name with the suffix "—acum" added, meaning "flowing water". The coat of arms first appeared with this composition on the keystone at Saint Nicholas's Church in the late 13th century. The mural crown on top of the escutcheon began appearing only about 1800 under French rule. The stylised stretch of town wall was originally rendered reddish-brown, but it usually appears gold nowadays.
Twin towns – sister cities.
Bad Kreuznach is twinned with:
Culture and sightseeing.
Buildings.
The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate's Directory of Cultural Monuments:
Tourist attractions.
The town of Bad Kreuznach is home to the following tourist attractions:
Town of Bad Kreuznach Cultural Prize.
The is a promotional prize awarded by the town of Bad Kreuznach each year in the categories of music, visual arts and literature on a rotational basis. A full list of prizewinners since the award's introduction can be seen at the link. In 2013, the prize was not awarded owing to cost-cutting measures.
Sport and leisure.
Sport clubs.
In Bad Kreuznach there are many clubs that can boast of successes at the national level. In trampolining and whitewater slalom, the town is a national stronghold, while it has also shown strength at the state level in shooting sports and bocce. The biggest club is "VfL 1848 Bad Kreuznach", within which the first basketball department in any sport club in Germany was founded in 1935. After the Second World War, too, the club produced many important personalities, among them several players at the national level. Moreover, the club's field hockey department is also of importance, having for a while been represented in the "Damen-Bundesliga" ("Ladies' National League"). The first field hockey department in a Bad Kreuznach sport club, however, was the "Kreuznacher HC", which made it to the semi-finals at the German Championship in 1960, and which to this day stages the Easter Hockey Tournament. In football, the town's most successful club is Eintracht Bad Kreuznach. The team played in, among other leagues, the Oberliga, when that was Germany's highest level in football, as well as, later, the Second "Bundesliga". The club that has won the most titles is MTV Bad Kreuznach, which in trampolining is among Germany's most successful clubs. Canoeing, in particular whitewater slalom, is practised by RKV Bad Kreuznach. Creuznacher RV has a long tradition in rowing. Also important are the shooting sport clubs SG Bad Kreuznach 1847 and BSC Bad Kreuznach. In disabled sports, the Sportfreunde Diakonie especially has been successful, particularly in bocce.
Town of Bad Kreuznach Sport Badge.
The "Sportplakette der Stadt Bad Kreuznach" is an honour awarded by the town once each year to individual sportsmen or sportswomen, whole teams, worthy promoters of sports and worthy people whose jobs are linked to sports. With this award, the town also hopes to underscore its image as a sporting town in Rhineland-Palatinate. The Sport Badge is conferred upon sportsmen or sportswomen at three levels:
A promoter or person working in a sport-related field must be active in an unpaid capacity for at least 25 years to receive this award.
Economy and infrastructure.
Winegrowing.
Bad Kreuznach is characterised to a considerable extent by winegrowing, and with 777 ha of vineyard planted – 77% white wine varieties and 23% red – it is the biggest winegrowing centre in the Nahe wine region and the seventh biggest in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Industry and trade.
Bad Kreuznach has roughly 1,600 businesses with at least one employee, thereby offering 28,000 jobs, of which half are filled by commuters who come into town from surrounding areas. The economic structure is thus characterised mainly by small and medium enterprises, but also some big businesses like the tire manufacturer Michelin, the machine builder KHS, the Meffert Farbwerke (dyes, lacquers, plasters, protective coatings) and the Jos. Schneider Optische Werke GmbH may be mentioned. In 2002, the tradition-rich Seitz-Filter-Werke was taken over by the US-based Pall Corporation. Thus producing businesses are of great importance, and are especially well represented by the chemical industry (tires, lacquers, dyes) and the optical industry as well as machine builders and automotive suppliers. Retail and wholesale dealers, as well as restaurants hold particular weight in the inner town, although in the last few years, the service sector, too, has been gaining in importance. The express road links to the Autobahn bring Bad Kreuznach closer to Frankfurt Airport. The town can also attract new investment with its economic conversion areas.
Spa and tourism.
The spa operations and the wellness tourism also hold a special place for the town as the world's oldest radon-brine spa and the Rhineland-Palatinate centre for rheumatic care. Available in town are 2,498* beds for guests, which out of 449,756* overnight stays have seen 270,306* stays by guests in rehabilitation clinics. All together, the town was visited by 92,700 overnight guests (*as of 31 December 2010). Also available to the spa operations are six spa clinics, spa sanatoria, the thermal brine movement bath "Crucenia Thermen" with a salt grotto, a radon gallery, graduation towers in the Salinental (dale), the brine-fogger in the "Kurpark" (spa park) set up as open-air inhalatoria and the "Crucenia Gesundheitszentrum" ("Crucenia Health Centre") for ambulatory spa treatment. The indications for these treatments are for rheumatic complaints, changes in joints due to gout, degenerative diseases of the spinal column and joints, women's complaints, illnesses of the respiratory system, paediatric illnesses, vascular illnesses, non-infectious skin diseases, endocrinological dysfunctions, psychosomatic illnesses and eye complaints. After the noticeable decline in the spa business in the mid 1990s, there was a remodelling of the healing spa. At the "Saunalandschaft" bathhouse rose a "wellness temple" with 12 great saunas on an area of 4 000 m2, which receives roughly 80,000 visitors every year.
Hospitals and specialised clinics.
In the hospital run by "kreuznacher diakonie" (397 beds) and the St. Marienwörth hospital (Franciscan brothers), Bad Kreuznach has at its disposal two general hospitals that have available the most modern specialised departments for heart and intestinal disorders, and also strokes. In the spa zone, there is also the "Sana" Rhineland-Palatinate Rheumatic Centre, made up of a rheumatic hospital and a rehabilitation clinic, the "Karl-Aschoff-Klinik". Another rehabilitation clinic under private sponsorship is the "Klinik Nahetal". Also, there are the psychosomatic specialised clinic "St.-Franziska-Stift" and the rehabilitation and preventive clinic for children and youth, "Viktoriastift".
Transport.
Given Bad Kreuznach's location in the narrow Nahe valley, all transport corridors run upstream parallel to the river. Moreover, the town is an important crossing point for all modes of transport.
Rail.
From 1896 to 1936, there were the "Kreuznacher Kleinbahnen" ("Kreuznach Narrow-Gauge Railways"), a rural narrow-gauge railway network. An original steam locomotive and its shed, which were moved from Winterburg, can be found today in nearby Bockenau. The "Kreuznacher Straßen- und Vorortbahnen" ("Kreuznach Tramways and Suburban Railways") ran not only a service within the town but also lines out into the surrounding area, to Bad Münster am Stein, Langenlonsheim and Sankt Johann. In 1953, the whole operation was shut down. Since the introduction of "Rhineland-Palatinate Timetabling" ("Rheinland-Pfalz-Takt") in the mid 1990s, the train services other than the ICE/EC/IC services have once again earned some importance. Besides the introduction of hourly timetabling, there has also been a marked expansion into the nighttime hours, with trains leaving for Mainz three hours later each day. Bad Kreuznach station is one of Rhineland-Palatinate's few V-shaped stations (called a "Keilbahnhof", or "wedge station", in the German terminology). Branching off the Nahe Valley Railway (Bingen–Saarbrücken) here is the railway line to Gau Algesheim. From Bingen am Rhein, Regionalbahn trains run by way of the Alsenz Valley Railway, which branches off the Nahe Valley Railway in Bad Münster am Stein, to Kaiserslautern, reaching it in roughly 65 minutes. Running on the line to Saarbrücken and by way of Gau Algesheim and the West Rhine Railway to Mainz are Regional-Express and Regionalbahn trains. The travel time to Mainz lies between 25 and 40 minutes, and to Saarbrücken between 1 hour and 40 minutes and 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Road.
Bad Kreuznach can be reached by car through the like-named interchange on the Autobahn A 61 as well as on "Bundesstraßen" 41, 48 and 428. Except for "Bundesstraße" 48, all these roads skirt the inner town, while the Autobahn is roughly 12 km from the town centre. Local public transport is provided by a town bus network with services running at 15- or 30-minute intervals. There are seven bus routes run by "Verkehrsgesellschaft Bad Kreuznach" (VGK), which is owned by the company Rhenus Veniro. Furthermore, there is a great number of regional bus routes serving the nearby area, run by VGK and "Omnibusverkehr Rhein-Nahe GmbH" (ORN). The routes run by the various carriers are all part of the "Rhein-Nahe-Nahverkehrsverbund" ("Rhine-Nahe Local Transport Association").
Education and research.
Found in Bad Kreuznach are not only several primary schools, some of which offer "full-time school", but also secondary schools of all three types as well as vocational preparatory schools or combined vocational-academic schools such as "Berufsfachschulen", "Berufsoberfachschulen" and "Technikerschulen", which are housed at the vocational schools. The following schools are found in Bad Kreuznach:
Special schools.
In 1950, the Max Planck Institute for Agricultural and Agricultural Engineering was moved from Imbshausen to Bad Kreuznach, where it used spaces of the Bangert knightly estate. From 1956 until its closure in 1976, it bore the name "Max-Planck-Institut für Landarbeit und Landtechnik". From 1971 to 1987, the discipline of cultivation of the "Fachhochschule Rheinland-Pfalz", Bingen, was located in Bad Kreuznach. Since it moved away to Bingen, Bad Kreuznach has been offering collegelike training for aspirant winemakers and agricultural technologists with the "DLR" ("Dienstleistungszentrum Ländlicher Raum"). This two-year "Technikerschule für Weinbau und Oenologie sowie Landbau" is a path within the agricultural economics college. It continues the tradition of the former, well known "Höheren Weinbauschule" ("Higher Winegrowing School") and the "Ingenieurschule für Landbau" ("Engineering School for Cultivation") and fills a gap in the training between Fachhochschule and one-year "Fachschule". The "Agentur für Qualitätssicherung, Evaluation und Selbstständigkeit von Schulen" ("Agency for Quality Assurance, Evaluation and Independence of Schools") and the "Pädagogisches Zentrum Rheinland-Pfalz" ("Rhineland-Palatinate Paedagogical Centre"), the latter of which the state's schools support with their further paedagogical and didactic development, likewise have their seats in the town, as does the "Staatliche Studienseminar Bad Kreuznach" (a higher teachers' college). The Evangelical Church in the Rhineland maintained from 1960 to 2003 a seminary in Bad Kreuznach to train vicars.
Notable people.
Honorary citizens.
Thus far, 15 persons have been named honorary citizens of the town of Bad Kreuznach. Three of those have been stripped of the honour: Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Frick and Richard Walther Darré. The twelve remaining honorary citizens are listed here with the date of the honour in parentheses:
Further reading.
All these works are in German: