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: \mathfrak{X} ). 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: • Simon I (1223–1264) • John I (1265–1290) • John II (1290–1340) and Simon II (1290–1336) • Walram (1336–1380) • Simon III (1380–1414) • Elisabeth (1414–1417) 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, the 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 the Archbishopric 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: •
Saint Mary's Monastery (St. Marien-Kloster; monastery's nature legendary) or Saint Mary's Church (
St. Marien-Kirche) on the ait, supposedly endowed by King
Dagobert I (d. 639) on the site where
Paul's Protestant Church (
Pauluskirche) now stands; •
Saint Kilian's Monastery (
Kloster St. Kilian; old parish church; monastery's nature unclear), in the
Osterburg (old
Roman castrum,
Charlemagne's palace) on the
Heidenmauer ("Heathen Wall") built on the site of the
Constantinian Saint Martin's Church (
St. Martins-Kirche), first mentioned about 741 and destroyed by the
Normans about 891, tied with a hospital in 1310; in the 14th century there was a
Beguine cell with prayer house; the monastery was torn down about 1590. The patrocinia of Saint Martin and Saint Kilian were then added to Saint Mary's Church on the ait; •
Augustinian convent of
Saint Peter, endowed by Rhinegrave Wolfram I (III) of Stein (d. about 1179) about 1140, incorporated into the
Schwabenheim Augustinian monastery in 1437, moved to the so-called
Bubenkapelle ("Lads' Chapel") in 1491, reoccupied in 1495, dissolved in 1566/1568; the 15 nuns who were driven out went to
Eibingen Abbey. In 1624, an attempt to reoccupy the complex by Augustinian monks failed;
Jesuits settled there in 1636 and in 1648, they were granted it by agreement, today
Oranienhof. The
Pietà from Saint Peter, for whose reverence a forty-day
indulgence was secured from
Pope Alexander VI in 1502, was kept until its destruction in 1942 at
St. Quintin's Church, Mainz; •
Carmelite Monastery to
Saint Nicholas, so-called
Schwarz-Kloster ("Black Monastery"), endowed in 1281 by the comital
House of Sponheim, confirmed in 1290 by Archbishop Gerhard II of Eppstein of Mainz (about 1230–1305), dissolved in 1802; •
Saint Anthony's and
Saint Catherine's Chapel (
St. Antonius-und-St.-Katharinen-Kapelle; also called the
Bubenkapelle) on the way into Mühlengasse ("Mill Lane"), which belonged to the Schwabenheim Augustinian monastery; it was here, right inside the town, that Count Walram of Sponheim (about 1305–1380) moved the
Beguine cell from Saint Kilian's, given up in 1437; reoccupied by Augustinian nuns from 1491 to 1495, then moved to Saint Peter's; •
Saint Wolfgang's Franciscan Monastery (
Franziskanerkloster St. Wolfgang), endowed in 1472 by
Frederick I, Elector Palatine and Count Palatine
Frederick I of
Simmern, confirmed by
Pope Sixtus IV, dissolved in 1802, now the
Gymnasium an der Stadtmauer ("
Gymnasium on the Town Wall"); • Saint Vincent's Monastery, location unclear, existed in the
Thirty Years' War and later; •
Jesuit occupation about 1623, 1625 to 1632 and 1636 to 1652 in the quire of the Ait Church (
Wörthkirche), later called the Bridge Church (
Brückenkirche) and now Paul's Church (
Pauluskirche), received in 1631 from
Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor Saint Peter's and took ownership in 1636. In Kreuznach, the study prefect Johann Engelbert Oliverius worked and died.
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
Electorate Palatine of the Rhine, both the town and the
castle were unsuccessfully be
sieged 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: • – In the
Siege of Bad Kreuznach the town was taken by the
Imperial-Spanish troops of General
Marquis Ambrogio Spinola under Wilhelm Ferdinand von Effern. In 1621,
Countess Catharina Belgica of Nassau travelled to Kreuznach to see Spinola to ask him to spare the
County of Hanau-Münzenberg. The Governors General of the Lower Palatinate, based in Kreuznach, were Don Guillermo de Verdugo di Fauleria, Baron von Böhmisch-Mascha und Tuppau, Don Felipe de Sylva (d. 1644) and Louis de la Tour; • – Kreuznach was taken by
Swedish,
Saxe-Weimar and English troops under
King Gustav II Adolf; the
castle capitulated on ).
William Craven and Sir
Francis Fane of Fulbeck (about 1611–1681?) were both seriously wounded at the conquest of the castle. Serving as commanders were the
Scots Colonel Alexander Ramsay (d. 1634) and Lieutenant Colonel (later General and Field Marshal)
Robert Douglas. Julius Wilhelm Zincgref was installed in 1632 as the Kreuznach state scrivener by the allied
Ludwig Philipp of Palatinate-Simmern; • 14 July 1635 –
Imperial troops briefly thrust their way into Kreuznach, but were repulsed by the occupation at the castle; • – Saxe-Weimar and French troops under Duke
Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and
Louis de Nogaret Cardinal de La Valette, together with the Swedes, passed through Kreuznach, later passing through once again on as they retreated. Kreuznach's last "Swedish" commander was Colonel Johann Georg Stauff from
Dirmstein; • 20 December 1635 – Kreuznach was taken by Imperial-Spanish and Imperial-Croatian troops under General
Matthias Gallas. The castle was still held by the Swedes until May 1636 under an
armistice upon which both Colonel Stauff and Badish Lieutenant Colonel Bernhard Studnitzky von Beneschau (Studnický z Benešova) agreed on . Stationed in the town were regiments headed by
William, Margrave of Baden-Baden. As neutral ground, Kreuznach was placed under joint Badish and Palatinate-Simmern rule; • – Kreuznach was taken by French and Saxe-Weimar troops under Duke of Longueville
Henri II d'Orléans, after town commander Braun von Schmidtburg zu Schweich had
gone over to them; • – Bad Kreuznach was captured by Imperial-
Bavarian and Imperial-Spanish troops under the
Schillerhaas,
Generalfeldwachtmeister Gilles de Haes began. An earlier attack in March 1641 had been defeated. The town capitulated on , while the fortress held out until ; • – Kreuznach was taken by French troops under
Marshal of France Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (the castle was held by the Bavarians until ) and transferred by
Maréchal de camp Guy de Bar to Palatinate-Simmern. 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 in 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 ice run 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. At 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 church tower. 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
Versorgungsstufe 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 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 the 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 the
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, was 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 ==