Niederhausen (Nahe)

Niederhausen is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Kreuznach district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Rüdesheim, whose seat is in the like-named town. Niederhausen is a state-recognized tourism community (Fremdenverkehrsort) and a winegrowing village. At an elevation of 150 m above sea level, Niederhausen lies on the Nahe where it marks the division between the outlying edge of the Hunsrück and the North Palatine Uplands. The village lies on a south-facing slope on a reach of the river that is dammed up and consequently 120 m wide. Clockwise from the north, Niederhausen's neighbours are the municipalities of Hüffelsheim and Norheim, the town of Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg and the municipalities of Feilbingert, Oberhausen an der Nahe and Schloßböckelheim, all of which likewise lie within the Bad Kreuznach district. Also belonging to Niederhausen are the outlying homesteads of Hermannshöhle and Ehemalige Weinbaudomäne (“Former Winegrowing Domain”). In 1238, Niederhausen had its first documentary mention. It is, however, certain that this place was already settled by Roman times (about AD 200), bearing witness to which are various archaeological finds. Niederhausen belonged as an Electoral Mainz fief to the Counts of Veldenz, and the first documentary mention renders its name Unters Husen. The last of the Counts of Veldenz, namely Friedrich III, died in 1444. His daughter Anna married King Ruprecht's son Count Palatine Stephan. By uniting his own Palatine holdings with the now otherwise heirless County of Veldenz – his wife had inherited the county upon her father's death in 1444, but not his comital title – and by redeeming the hitherto pledged County of Zweibrücken, Stephan founded a new County Palatine, as whose comital residence he chose the town of Zweibrücken: the County Palatine of Zweibrücken, later Duchy Palatinate-Zweibrücken. Beginning then, the village belonged to this state, and in 1768 it passed by partition to Electoral Palatinate.