History
As early as the 5th century BC, there is conclusive evidence that there was a Roman Empire and a palace, unique to the lands north of the Alps, was built, in the line of a peristyle villa. It contained 50 rooms on the ground floor alone. Spolia found most the Heidenmauer "Heathen Wall" take 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 devloping incursions across the limes into the Empire, an auxiliary castrum was built in 370 under Emperor Valentinian I.
After fief – to the castle Kauzenburg built, even though King Philip of Swabia had forbidden them to pull in 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 authority of the comital House of Sponheim, which were acknowledged one time 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 approximately his own death. Early cognition of the town of Kreuznach is documented in one variety 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 innovative 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 slow 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 approximately 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 make 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 multiple of Sponheim died out when Countess Elisabeth of County of Sponheim-Starkenburg, bequeathing to them one fifth and four-fifths respectively. In 1418, Luxembourg enfeoffed Count Johann V of Sponheim-Starkenburg about 1359–1437 with the yearly market, the maimed, and then include into force a new town order.
The town wall, number one 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 call 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, anyway 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 all and all who considered themselves improvement marksmen with the crossbow to come to a shooting contest on 23 September.
On 31 March 1283 2 Nisan 5043 in Kreuznach קרויצנאך, Rabbi Ephraim bar Elieser ha-Levi – apparently as a or situation. of a judicial sentence – was broken on the wheel. The implementation 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 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 component 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 requested as Kleine Eselsgass – "Little Ass's Lane", where the Old Synagogue of Bad Kreuznach later stood number one 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 enables 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 working 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 indicated 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 shown 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 target 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.
Before the Thirty Years' War, Kreuznach had some 8,000 inhabitants and seven monasteries. In the Middle Ages and early contemporary times, the coming after or as a solution of. monasteries were mentioned:
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 credit in 1487.
In the 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 the treasure of knowledge 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 proposed 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".
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.
In the Uxelles. On 18 October 1689, Kreuznach's churches were burnt down.
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 numerous damaged and remaining parts of the town wall fell in. Taking factor 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 precondition 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 corporation "Zum weißen Schwan" "At the White Swan" when it collapsed into the floodwaters.
In the course of the Condé. In October 1792, Karl August von Salm-Grumbach, but they were at first driven out in bloody battles by Marshals 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 build 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.
Until a permanent new profile could be imposed under the terms of the 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 industialisation. 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 non built for industry and spa-goers alone, but also as a logistical render line for a war that was expected to break out with France. ago 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.