Boofzheim
Encyclopedia
Boofzheim is a commune
Communes of France
The commune is the lowest level of administrative division in the French Republic. French communes are roughly equivalent to incorporated municipalities or villages in the United States or Gemeinden in Germany...

 in the Bas-Rhin
Bas-Rhin
Bas-Rhin is a department of France. The name means "Lower Rhine". It is the more populous and densely populated of the two departments of the Alsace region, with 1,079,013 inhabitants in 2006.- History :...

 department in Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...

 in north-eastern France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Its name is probably derived from the French "boeuf" (bull or ox). Variants of the name include Boofi - Boffesheim - Bofftsheim - Boffsheim - Bototzheim - Booftzheim - Booffzheim.

History

It is said that, from the fifteenth century the village belonged to the Mieg family. In 1545 they introduced the Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

into the village and the village church of St Etienne was turned into a Protestant chapel.

According to another source, Sebastian Mieg (Mueg), from a Strasbourg merchant family, bought half of Boofzheim in 1567 from the Abbess of St Etienne and built a castle on the land. This castle was burnt down by the Swedes in 1636 and was rebuilt in 1642. It was to the east of the Catholic Church, but no trace remains today.
From 1687 to 1854 the Church was shared by Protestants and Catholics, after which the Protestants built their own church and St Etienne's was given back to the Catholics.

In 1852 there were 953 Protestants and 200 Catholics in the village.
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