Bad Dürkheim, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany in the 1710s

Work

Vines, crafts, and salt

The town’s recovery policy sought new inhabitants, especially craftsmen², while the surrounding economy was exposed to grain and wine harvest losses⁵. Salt was also an old local trade: salt extraction and trade had operated from 1595^1,3.

Faith

A Lutheran town church

The main church was evangelical Lutheran after 1563⁴. Its worship took place in a building still shaped by war, because French troops burned it in 1689 and repairs took about ten years⁴.

Law & power

Leiningen rule from Hardenburg

Authority here belonged to the counts of Leiningen^2,3. In the 1710s they had not yet come down into town: the residence was still the Hardenburg^2,3.

In the air

Leave or rebuild

The argument of the decade was practical and bitter: stay in a ruined taxed country, or leave. Across the Palatinate, promises of free passage and land helped send about 13,000 people toward England in 1709⁵.

What people feared

War, frost, and want

People had recent memory of near-total destruction in the Palatine war^2,4. Then came the crisis of the winter of 1708–1709, when wine froze in barrels⁵, after hail had damaged grain and wine in 1707⁵.

Home & table

A town filling again

Dürckheim was small but recovering: 665 people were recorded in 1707², and the rulers encouraged new settlers, especially craftsmen². No opened source gives a street-by-street description of houses in the 1710s.

Money

Taxes without prices

The great pressure was not only harvest failure but war finance, since the Palatinate was burdened with contributions during the War of the Spanish Succession⁵. A local price list is missing here: no bread, wine, rent, or wage prices were found.

Roads & news

Roads before railways

The railway was far in the future, since Dürckheim was not connected by rail until 1865². In the 1710s, news and strangers came by road, messenger, cart, rider, or foot².

Year by year

1. 1707Hail caused heavy losses in grain and wine across parts of the Palatinate before the later winter crisis. nearby⁵
2. 1708The War of the Spanish Succession continued to burden Palatine communities with military contributions. nearby⁵
3. 1709The great winter froze wine in barrels and helped turn hardship into migration talk across the Palatinate. nearby⁵
4. 1709About 13,000 people from southwest Germany set out toward England in the Palatine migration. the country⁵
5. 1713The Treaty of Utrecht began ending the War of the Spanish Succession in western Europe. the world
6. 1714The War of the Spanish Succession ended for the Holy Roman Empire with the Treaty of Rastatt. the world

What the sources say

• The place was called Dürckheim in this period; the modern official name Bad Dürkheim came only in the twentieth century. from the sources²
• Dürckheim belonged to the counts of Leiningen, whose sole lordship over the town had been confirmed in the sixteenth century and lasted until the French occupation of the 1790s. from the sources^2,3
• Dürckheim was almost completely destroyed in the War of the Palatine Succession, and French troops burned the church in 1689. from the sources^2,4
• Dehio describes the old town core as irregular in shape and notes that by the sixteenth century it already had a western suburb in the area of today’s Kaiserslauterer Straße. from the sources³
• The counts of Leiningen began Dürckheim’s town fortification in 1359, but Elector Friedrich of the Palatinate conquered and defortified the town in 1471. from the sources^1,3
• Count Johann Friedrich of Leiningen had Dürckheim rebuilt after the late-seventeenth-century devastation and granted it town rights again in 1700. from the sources²
• In the 1710s the Leiningen residence was still the Hardenburg; the move down to Dürckheim happened in 1725, just after this decade. from the sources^2,3
• The town church of St. John became evangelical Lutheran with the Reformation in 1563 and was repaired about ten years after French troops burned it in 1689. inferred⁴
• The later name Schlosskirche belongs to the eighteenth-century residence period; in the 1710s the count’s new palace beside the church had not yet been built. from the sources^4,2
• Local salt springs were known from the fourteenth century, and Leiningen and the Electoral Palatinate operated salt extraction and trade from 1595. from the sources^1,3
• The first saline stood east of the town on the ground of the former Schönfeld monastery, but the first graduation works were not built until 1736. from the sources¹
• The town’s rulers deliberately encouraged new settlers after 1700, especially craftsmen, and the population rose from 665 in 1707 to 2,337 in 1772. from the sources²
• Across the Palatinate, the War of the Spanish Succession burdened inhabitants with contributions in the 1700s and 1710s. from the sources⁵
• Across the Palatinate, the winter of 1708–1709 was remembered for frozen wine in barrels and birds said to have fallen frozen from the air. from the sources⁵
• Across the Palatinate, 1707 hail had caused heavy losses in grain and wine before the great winter arrived. from the sources⁵
• In 1709 about 13,000 people from southwest Germany went toward England in the Palatine migration, many after reading promises of free passage and land. from the sources⁵
• Dürckheim was not connected by railway until 1865, so news and travelers in the 1710s arrived by road, messenger, cart, rider, or foot. from the sources²
• No online source opened here gives a surviving street-by-street description of Dürckheim houses in the 1710s. not known
• No local price list for bread, wine, salt, rent, or day wages in Dürckheim in the 1710s was found in the sources opened here. not known

Sources

1. Stadt Bad Dürkheim. Kreis Bad Dürkheim
2. Zur Geschichte der Kurstadt Bad Dürkheim. regionalgeschichte.net, 2013
3. BAD DÜRKHEIM. Dehio DE
4. Prot. Schlosskirche. Prot. Kirchengemeinde Bad Dürkheim
5. 1709: Massenauswanderung nach New York. regionalgeschichte.net / Auswanderung aus Rheinland-Pfalz

Nearby, about the same time