Bad Bergzabern

Bad Bergzabern (German: [baːt ˈbɛʁktsaːbɐn] (listen)) is a municipality in the Südliche Weinstraße district, on the German Wine Route in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated near the border with France, on the south-eastern edge of the Palatinate forest, approximately 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) southwest of Landau.

Bad Bergzabern
Coat of arms
Location of Bad Bergzabern within Südliche Weinstraße district
Bad Bergzabern
Bad Bergzabern
Coordinates: 49°06′10″N 7°59′57″E
CountryGermany
StateRhineland-Palatinate
DistrictSüdliche Weinstraße
Municipal assoc.Bad Bergzabern
Government
 • MayorHermann Augspurger
Area
 • Total10.71 km2 (4.14 sq mi)
Elevation
170 m (560 ft)
Population
 (2019-12-31)[1]
 • Total8,285
 • Density770/km2 (2,000/sq mi)
Time zoneUTC+01:00 (CET)
 • Summer (DST)UTC+02:00 (CEST)
Postal codes
76887
Dialling codes06343
Vehicle registrationSÜW
Websitewww.bad-bergzabern.de

Bad Bergzabern is the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde ("collective municipality") Bad Bergzabern.

Bad Bergzabern has a tradition as a holiday destination and contains various half-timbered houses from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of particular note from an earlier century is the Gasthaus Zum Engel (1579), which has been described as the most beautiful renaissance building in the entire region.

Bad Bergzabern: Gasthaus Zum Engel (1579) )
Bad Bergzabern on a wintry morning, seen from the Zeppelinstraße

History

In the sixteenth century local scholars were keen to assert that the town had been founded under the Romans, and sources from this period refer to the medieval Latin name as Tabernae Montanus (trans. "mountain taverns"). Although the area was indeed under the control of the Roman empire two thousand years ago, evidence does not support the notion that Bad Bergzabern had its own origins so far back.

In 1676, during the Franco-Dutch War, the French under Louis XIV infamously laid waste the Palatinate region as part of a scheme to enlarge France. Much of Bad Bergzabern was destroyed in the process. One of the few buildings that did survive the French king's torching of the town was the local duke's administrative office, which later became the Gasthaus zum Engel.

Reconstruction began in the eighteenth century under Gustav, Duke of Zweibrücken. The work involved stone buildings in the newly fashionable baroque style and included a residential Schloss for the duke. The project was directed by the architect Jonas Erikson Sundahl (1678-1762) who shared the duke's own Swedish provenance.

Friedrich Julius Marx, wrote a short history of Bergzabern „Oratio de Tabernis Montanis“ (Zweibrücken 1730).

The overlordship of the dukes of Duke of Zweibrücken ended with the French Revolution. On 10 November 1792 the townsfolk applied for incorporation within the new French Republic. A generation later former French frontiers were restored after the fall of Napoleon, however, and under the terms of the Second Peace of Paris (10 November 1815) the whole region came under the control of the Wittelsbach kings of Bavaria.

Population development

1871-1987: Census results:

YearInhabitants
18152.745
18352.716
18712.419
19052.837
19395.018
19504.059
YearInhabitants
19615.446
19705.392
19876.405
19978.139
20057.936
20168,164

Sons and daughters of the town
Konrad Knoll appr. 1860

References
  1. "Bevölkerungsstand 2019, Kreise, Gemeinden, Verbandsgemeinden". Statistisches Landesamt Rheinland-Pfalz (in German). 2020.

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