Bad Dürkheim

Bad Dürkheim is a spa town in the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration in the Palatinate. Bad Dürkheim lies at the edge of Palatinate Forest on the German Wine Route.

Understand
Its population in 2018 was about 18,000 people. From west to east through the town flows the river Isenach.

Bad Dürkheim's main industry is winegrowing. With 855 ha (3.3 square miles) of vineyards under cultivation, the town is the Palatinate’s third biggest winegrowing centre.

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 778, as Turnesheim. About 1025, building work on Limburg Abbey, today preserved only as ruins, was begun.

In 1689, the town was almost completely destroyed when French troops in the Nine Years' War (or War of the Palatine Succession) carried out a scorched earth campaign in the Electorate of the Palatinate. 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.

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).

After 1933 the number of Jews in Bad Dürkheim fell drastically, from 184 to only 40 in 1938, due to the economic boycott, constantly increasing repression and dehumanization. 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 lost their lives.

Get in
Bad Dürkheim is about 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.

The A650 runs from Ludwigshafen and the A61 to the edge of the town. Alternatively take the Deutsche Weinstrasse.

The Rhein-Haardtbahn (a narrow-gauge tramway), which now runs as “Line 4”, runs through Maxdorf and links Bad Dürkheim with Ludwigshafen and Mannheim.

Go next

 * Neustadt an der Weinstraße
 * Worms
 * Speyer