Erbes-Büdesheim
Erbes-Büdesheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Geography Location West of Alzey, in Rhenish Hesse, at an elevation of 250 m lies Erbes-Büdesheim, a place marked by distinctive geological features, botanical singularities and a great number of surprising historical facts. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Alzey-Land, whose seat is in Alzey. Geology In terms of Earth's history, the village lies on what the geologists call the Vorholz Peninsula, which some 40 to 30 million years ago almost always rose up out of the sea. History As long ago as the New Stone Age (4500–1800 BC), this place was settled, and likewise in the early (700–450 BC) and late Iron Age (450 - 15 BC), as shown by many finds. There was also settlement in Roman times, and unearthed in 1909 was a whole Frankish burial ground. The place where Erbes-Büdesheim now lies was therefore settled through a great length of time – albeit likely with interruptions. On 2 to 4 January 767, the village had its first documentary mention, and likewise the then-standing village church, Saint Michael's (Michaels-Kirche) between 767 and 768. The first inhabitant whose name is known was one Egilolf, who on the date mentioned sold Lorsch Abbey, which stood on the river Rhine across from Worms, ten Joch (about 3.5 ha) of cropland, for which he received one horse. To this faithful, precise noting of this sale by the monks, Erbes-Büdesheim owes its first documentary mention, and likewise, almost all Rhenish Hesse's villages had their first documentary mention in such a way. 12th to 13th century Fully 37 monasteries and noble families had landholdings in the village in the centuries that followed, and were therefore the landlords. The history of the local lords is quite complicated. Erbes-Büdesheim originally wholly belonged as a village about 1275 to the County of Leiningen, beginning in 1350 to the “Further” and “Hinder” County of Sponheim, whose main holdings lay in the Hunsrück, and after the House of Sponheim died out in 1437, to their heirs: the County of Palatinate-Simmern, the Margraviate of Baden and Electoral Palatinate. From 1559 to 1598 and from 1611 to 1673, it belonged to the Duchy of Palatinate-Simmern, a small Electoral Palatinate sideline whose seat was in Simmern, and beginning in 1673, wholly to Electoral Palatinate. Among the village's peculiarities are the ancient stone crosses on Offenheimer Straße and Nacker Straße (streets), the former lake in the municipal area's east to which field names still refer, the Eicherwald (forest) in the northwest and its very ancient lot division, the quicksilver mine in the far northwest below the Eicherwald and the gallows in the east at the municipal limit with Heimersheim (an outlying centre of Alzey). 14th to 15th century The village itself was safeguarded against attack by the Late Middle Ages, girded as it was by its village wall, which also had before it a water-filled dyke and an