Bad Dürkheim () is a spa town in the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration. It is the seat of the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, and the site of the discovery of the element caesium, in 1860.
Geography
Location
Bad Dürkheim lies at the edge of Palatinate Forest on the German Wine Route some 30 km east of Kaiserslautern and just under 20 km west of Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. Roughly 15 km to the south lies Neustadt an der Weinstraße. In Bad Dürkheim, Bundesstraßen 37 and 271 cross each other. From west to east through the town flows the river Isenach.
Constituent communities
Bad Dürkheim's Ortsteile are Grethen, Hardenburg, Hausen, Leistadt, Seebach and Ungstein including Pfeffingen.
Climate
Yearly precipitation in Bad Dürkheim is 574 mm, which is low, falling into the lowest quarter of the precipitation chart for all Germany. Lower figures recorded at only 16% of the German Weather Service's weather stations. The driest month is February. The most rainfall comes in May. In that month, precipitation is 1.6 times what it is in February. Precipitation varies little. Only 1% of the weather stations record lower seasonal swings.
History
Between 1200 and 500 BC, the area around the eastern end of the Isenach valley was settled by Celts, who also built the Heidenmauer ("Heathen Wall"), a Celtic ring wall.
The earliest documented appearance of the name of the town is in the Lorsch codex of 1 June 778, as Turnesheim. A letter of enfeoffment from the Bishop of Speyer in 946 mentions Thuringeheim. About 1025, building work on Limburg Abbey, today preserved only as ruins, was begun.
Town rights were granted on 1 January 1360, but were withdrawn again in 1471 after Elector Friedrich the Victorious of the Palatinate conquered the town and wrought considerable destruction. After the slow reconstruction, Dürkheim passed to the Counts of Leiningen in 1554.
In 1689, the town was almost completely destroyed when French troops in the Nine Years' War (the Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, or War of the Palatine Succession) carried out a scorched earth campaign in the Electorate of the Palatinate. This time, though, reconstruction was swifter, and Count Johann Friedrich of Leiningen granted Dürkheim town rights again as early as 1700.
In the late 18th century, as the French Revolution was beginning to spread into southwest Germany, Dürkheim, as the Canton of Durkheim (without the umlaut), became part of the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German). After the Napoleonic Wars, it ended up along with the rest of the Electorate of the Palatinate's territory on the Rhine's left bank in the Kingdom of Bavaria.
In 1860, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff discovered the metallic element caesium in the mineral water from the Durkheim springs.
For its seven mineral springs, Dürkheim was given the epithet Solbad ("brine bath"), and in 1904 it was given leave to change its name to Bad Dürkheim (Bad is German for "bath", and a place may only bear this epithet on state recognition of its status as a spa town). In 1913, the Rhein-Haardtbahn (a narrow-gauge tramway) was opened, linking Bad Dürkheim with Ludwigshafen and Mannheim.
In 1935, Grethen, Hausen and Seebach were amalgamated.
After 1933 the number of Jews in Bad Dürkheim reduced drastically, due to the economic boycott, constantly increasing repression and dehumanization (1933: 184, 1937: 98, 1938: 40). During the Night of Broken Glass in 1938, the synagogue was plundered. The 19 Jews still surviving here in 1940 were deported to the Gurs concentration camp in October of that year.
On 18 March 1945, Bad Dürkheim was badly hit by an Allied air raid in which more than 300 people died.
In Rhineland-Palatinate's administrative reform, Hardenburg and Leistadt were amalgamated with Bad Dürkheim on 7 June 1969, as was Ungstein along with its outlying hamlet of Pfeffingen on 22 April 1972. Moreover, the town, having belonged to the old district of Neustadt an der Weinstraße, became the district seat of the newly formed district of Bad Dürkheim and also lay in the likewise newly formed Regierungsbezirk of Rheinhessen-Pfalz, which was later abolished in 2000.
In September 2023, 73.7 percent voted against renaming street names whose namesakes had a close connection and ideological proximity to National Socialism.
Demographics
Religion
In 2007, 52.8% of the inhabitants were Evangelical, 32.3% Catholic, and 14.8% stated no religion. The rest belonged to other faiths.