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Worms, Germany
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Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River. At the end of 2004, it had 85,829 inhabitants.
Established by the Celts who called it Borbetomagus, Worms today remains embattled with the cities Trier and Cologne over title of "Oldest City in Germany".
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Encyclopedia
Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River. At the end of 2004, it had 85,829 inhabitants.
Established by the Celts who called it Borbetomagus, Worms today remains embattled with the cities Trier and Cologne over title of "Oldest City in Germany". Worms is the only German member in the organization Most Ancient European Towns Network.
Today the city is an industrial centre and is famed for the original "Liebfrauenstift-Kirchenstück" epotoponym for the Liebfraumilch wine. Other industries include chemicals and metal goods.
Worms is one of the major sites where the events of the ancient German Nibelungenlied took place. A multimedia Nibelungenmuseum was opened in 2001, and a yearly festival right in front of the Dom, the Cathedral of Worms, attempts to recapture the atmosphere of the pre-Christian period.
Etymology
Worms' name is of Celtic origin: Borbetomagus meant "settlement in a watery area". This was eventually transformed into the Latin name Vormatia that had been in use since the 6th century. Many fanciful variant names for Worms exist only upon the title pages of books printed when Worms was an early centre of printing: for instance William Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament was printed at Worms in 1526.
Geography
Geographic location
Worms is located on the west bank of the Rhine River in between the cities of Ludwigshafen and Mainz. On the northern edge of town is where the tributary Pfrimm empties into the Rhine and on the southern edge of the city the tributary known as Eisbach or "Ice Stream" in English, flows into the Rhine.
Boroughs of Worms
Worms has 13 boroughs (or "Quarters") that surround the city center. They are as follows:
| Name | Population | Distance from Worms city center |
|---|
| Abenheim | 2.744 | Northwest of City Center (10 km) | | Heppenheim | 2.073 | Southwest of City Center (9 km) | | Herrnsheim | 6.368 | North of City Center (5 km) | | Hochheim | 3.823 | Northwest of City Center | | Horchheim | 4.770 | Southwest of City Center (4.5 km) | | Ibersheim | 692 | North of City Center (13 km) | | Leiselheim | 1.983 | West of City Center (4 km) | | Neuhausen | 10.633 | North of City Center | | Pfeddersheim | 7.414 | West of City Center (7 km) | | Pfiffligheim | 3.668 | West of City Center | | Rheindürkheim | 3.021 | North of City Center (8 km) | | Weinsheim | 2.800 | Southwest of City Center (4 km) | | Wiesoppenheim | 1.796 | South West of City Center (5.5 km) |
Climate
The climate in the Rhine River Valley is very temperate in the winter time and quite enjoyable in the summertime. Rainfall is below average for the surrounding areas. Snow accumulation in the winter is very low and often melts within a short period of time.
History
Celts and Romans
The city has existed since before Roman times, when it was captured and fortified by the Romans under Drusus in 14 BC. From that time, a small troop of infantry and cavalry were garrisoned in Augusta Vangionum; this gave the settlement its Romanized but originally Celtic name Borbetomagus. The garrison developed into a small town with the regularized Roman street plan, a forum, and temples for the main gods Jupiter, Juno, Minerva (upon whose temple, as is usual, was built the cathedral) and Mars.
Roman inscriptions and altars and votive offerings can be seen in the archaeological museum, along with one of Europe's largest collections of Roman glass. Local potters worked in the south quarter of the town. Fragments of amphoras show that the olive oil they contained had come from Hispania Baetica, doubtless by sea and then up the Rhine. At Borbetomagus, Gunther king of the Burgundians, set himself up as puppet-emperor, the unfortunate Jovinus, during the disorders of 411–13. The city became the chief city of the first kingdom of the Burgundians, who left few remains; however, a belt clasp from Worms-Abenheim is a museum treasure. They were overwhelmed in 437 by Hun mercenaries called in by the Roman general Aëtius to put an end to Burgundian raids, in an epic disaster that provided the source for the Nibelungenlied.
Middle Ages
Worms was a Roman Catholic bishopric since at least 614 with an earlier mention in 346. In the Frankish Empire, the city was the location of an important palatinate of Charlemagne (Karl der Grosse), who built one of his many administrative palaces here. The bishops administered the city and its territory. The most famous of the early medieval bishops was Burchard of Worms.
Worms Cathedral (Wormser Dom), dedicated to St Peter, is one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture in Germany. Alongside the nearby Romanesque cathedrals of Speyer and Mainz, it is one of the so-called Kaiserdome (Imperial Cathedrals). Some parts in early Romanesque style from the 10th century still exist, while most parts are from the 11th and 12th century, with some later additions in Gothic style (see the external links below for pictures).
Four other Romanesque churches as well as the Romanesque old city fortification still exist, making the city Germany's second in Romanesque architecture only to Cologne.
Golden Age
Worms prospered in the High Middle Ages. Having received far-reaching privileges from King Henry IV (later Emperor Henry III) as early as 1074, the city later became a Reichsstadt, being independent of a local territory and responsible only to the Emperor himself. As a result, Worms was the site of several important events in the history of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1122 the Concordat of Worms was signed; in 1495, a Reichstag concluded here made an attempt at reforming the disintegrating Imperial Circle Estates of the Reichsreform (Imperial Reform). Most importantly, among more than a hundred Imperial Diets held at Worms, the Reichstag of 1521 (commonly known as the Diet of Worms) ended with the Edict of Worms at which Martin Luther was declared an outlaw after refusing to recant his religious beliefs. The first complete edition of the Bible in Modern English, translated by William Tyndale, was secretly printed in Worms in 1526.
Modern era
In 1689 during the Nine Years' War, Worms (like the nearby towns and cities of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Oppenheim, Speyer and Bingen) was sacked by troops of King Louis XIV of France, though the French only held the city for a few weeks. In 1743 the Treaty of Worms was signed, ending the Second Silesian war between Prussia and Austria. In 1792 the city was occupied by troops of the French First Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars. The Bishopric of Worms was secularized in 1801, with the city being annexed into the First French Empire. In 1815 Worms passed to the Grand Duchy of Hesse in accordance with the Congress of Vienna and subsequently administered within Rhenish Hesse.
Worms was heavily bombed by the Royal Air Force during the last few months of World War II — in two attacks, on Feb. 21 and March 18, 1945. A post-war survey estimated that 39 per cent of the town's developed area was destroyed. The RAF attack on Feb. 21 was aimed at the main train station, on the edge of the inner city, and at chemical plants southwest of the inner city. The attack, however, also destroyed large areas of the city center. The attack was carried out by 334 bombers that in a few minutes rained 1,100 tons of bombs on the inner city. The Worms Cathedral was among the buildings set afire in the resulting conflagration.
In the attacks, 239 inhabitants were killed and 35,000 (60 percent of the the population of 58,000) were rendered homeless. A total of 6,490 buildings were severely damaged or destroyed. After the war, the inner city was rebuilt, mostly in modern style. Postwar, Worms became part of the new state of Rhineland-Palatinate; the borough Rosengarten, on the east bank of the Rhine, was lost to Hesse.
Judaism in Worms
The city is known as a former center for Judaism. The Jewish community was established in the late tenth century, the first synagogue was erected in 1034. The Jewish Cemetery in Worms (illustration, right) dating from the 11th century is believed to be the oldest in Europe. The Rashi Shul, a synagogue dating from 1175 and carefully reconstructed after its desecration on Kristallnacht is the oldest in Germany. Prominent rabbis of Worms include Elazar Rokeach and Yair Bacharach. At the Rabbinical Synod held at Worms in the eleventh century, rabbis for the first time explicitly prohibited polygamy.
Much of the Jewish Quarter was destroyed in the events known as Kristallnacht in 1938. Worms today has a very small Jewish community and a recognizable Jewish community in Worms no longer exists. However, after renovations in the 1970s and 1980s, many of the buildings of the Quarter can be seen in a close to original state, preserved as an outdoor museum.
Town twinning
Worms is twinned with:
Notable citizens
- Saint Erentrude, or Erentraud, (~650 in Worms –710) is a virgin saint of the Roman Catholic Church
- Heribert of Cologne, born ~ 970 in Worms, Archbishop of Cologne and Chancellor of Emperor Otto III
- Meir of Rothenburg, German rabbi and poet, a major author of the tosafot on Rashi's commentary on the Talmud
- Hans Folz born 1435/1440 in Worms, a notable medieval German author
- Ludwig Edinger, German anatomist and neurologist
- Samuel Adler, a noted Reform rabbi, was born in Worms
- Timo Hildebrand, German national footballer, born in Worms
- Rabbi Rashi, who lived in the Jewish quarter
- Rudi Stephan, German composer
- Friedrich Gernsheim, German composer, conductor and pianist
- Curtis Bernhardt, German film director
- Hermann Staudinger, born 16 August 1889 in Worms, chemist who demonstrated the existence of macromolecules which he characterized as polymers
- Hugo Sinzheimer, German legal scholar, member of the Constitutional Convention of 1919
- Vladimir Kagan, born 1927 in Worms, furniture designer
- Johann Nikolaus Götz, poet from Worms
- Ida Straus, wife of Isidor Straus, co-owner of the Macy's department store, and famously loyal to her husband on board the RMS Titanic
External links
- The of the city of Worms
- website
- , website of the Worms Cathedral with pictures (click on the "Bilder" link in the left panel)
- , the famous football club of Worms
- , a historic page with old pictures
- , another website about Worms
- , the famous football club of Worms
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