Laubenheim (Nahe)

Laubenheim 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 Langenlonsheim-Stromberg, whose seat is in Langenlonsheim. Laubenheim is a winegrowing village. Laubenheim, a village of some 900 inhabitants, lies between Bingen am Rhein to the north and Bad Kreuznach to the south, right on the Nahe just up from the place where it empties into the Rhine. Laubenheim lies alee of the Hunsrück and has a mild climate, which is favourable to the vineyards that are kept above the village. Clockwise from the north, Laubenheim's neighbours are the municipality of Münster-Sarmsheim, the town of Bingen am Rhein and the municipalities of Grolsheim (all three of which lie in the neighbouring Mainz-Bingen district), Langenlonsheim and Dorsheim (both of which likewise lie in the Bad Kreuznach district). Also belonging to Laubenheim is the outlying homestead of Laubenheimermühle. There is little doubt but that Laubenheim's beginnings go back to Celtic times. Roman watermains in the “Sandgrube” and many coin, pot, grave and sarcophagus finds from Roman times in the northern half of Laubenheim's municipal area also bear witness to people in the area at that time. It was also the Romans who brought grapevines to the Nahe valley in the 1st century AD. They were surely drawn to the valley's south-facing slopes as a good place to plant vineyards. As far back as the 9th century, a donation document from Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious (814-843) reports of Laubenheim (829). In the State Archive at Koblenz, and furthermore in the Land Archive at Schloß Gracht (a moated château) near Liblar, a place called Luibenheim crops up often in documents as a winegrowing village, as it does too at the Count of Spree’s archive at Schloß Heltorf near Düsseldorf-Angermund, the so-called Reypoltzkirchensche Archiv. According to these records, the village was an appurtenance of the lordship of Reichenstein, held by the Lords of Hohenfels, lords at Reypoltzkirchen (Reipoltskirchen).