Herxheim am Berg

Geschichte

Herxheim am Berg is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.GeographyLocationThe municipality lies in the Palatinate on the German Wine Route. Herxheim am Berg belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Freinsheim, whose seat is in the like-named town.HistoryIn 774, the municipality had its first documentary mention as Heriesheim.The municipality’s landmark is the roughly one-thousand-year-old Evangelical church. Formerly Saint Jacob’s Church (St. Jakobskirche), the building contains the lower section of a quire tower with a groin-vaulted chancel onto which is built a semicircular apse. The church was built about 1014, making it one of the Palatinate’s oldest ecclesiastical buildings. The nave came into being in 1729. In the chancel, wall paintings have been brought to light showing the Four Evangelists, both in human shape with wings and with the heads of their symbols. In the apse’s vaulting there was a representation of the Last Judgement, and on the south wall, one can see the Apostle Paul. The paintings were done in the latter half of the 14th century.