About the city
Kirchheimbolanden – The small residence
Kirchheimbolanden, or as the locals say Kibo or Kerchem, is located between Kaiserslautern and Mainz, directly on Napoleon’s former imperial road, today’s L401. The village stretches for around three kilometers from north to south. It is situated around the wooded mountain and climbs the neighboring heights with its new development areas. A town for over 600 years, Kirchheimbolanden acquired its medieval fortifications under the Counts of Sponheim and its charming baroque appearance under the Princes of Nassau-Weilburg. In the last century it was the seat of a district commissioner’s office, since 1900 it has been a county town.
Text: Klaus Kremb
Urban geographic approaches
From the signpost on the A63, the view of the city opens up: the city in the foreground, the Schillerhain in the middle ground and the 687 m high Donnersberg in the background. That is also 280 million years of geology. Because that’s how old the Donnersberg, which was formed as a sub-volcano in the Palaeozoic era, is.
Magmatic rock – technically known as rhyolite – defines the background, while the middle ground is no less spectacular in terms of geological history. This is because the Schillerhain, Kirchheimbolanden’s local mountain, was the coastal edge of what was then the Upper Rhine Tertiary Sea 30 million years ago.
And the hilly surface shapes in the foreground are the result of modern sedimentation and erosion processes. This geological pattern can be studied very well from the Bischeimer Höhe.
Approaches to the history of the city
In Kirchheimbolanden, the townscape-defining towers of the medieval fortifications, the old town gate towers and the church towers attract attention. The town logo stylizes them. Kirchheimbolanden has been a town since 1368, when it was ruled by the counts of Sponheim-Dannenfels.
You are represented in the town’s coat of arms with your heraldic image, a chessboard. However, a seal from the late 14th century also shows a boar as the second coat of arms. The town’s coat of arms thus dates back to the decades immediately after the town’s elevation. The “Wutz” – Kirchheimbolanden’s heraldic animal – has therefore also had its place on Römerplatz since 1998.
Another sculpture awaits us in the suburb: the fountain stele by Mainz artist Eberhard Linke, erected in 2001. In seven cubes placed one on top of the other, it depicts people and events from the city’s history. Seven historical dates are the points of reference:
1368
1777
1778
1792
18th century
1848/49
1938
The modern Kirchheimbolanden
Napoleon’s imperial road led directly through the village – as in Morschheim and Marnheim. Today’s L 401 elegantly bypasses it, as does the new highway, of course. These transportation routes reduce the distances and increase the value of Kirchheimbolanden as an industrial location and as a place to live. The town is the administrative, educational and business center of the municipality.
In aerial photographs, the old town stands out very clearly from the more recent areas of the city. The baroque courtyard area can be seen just as clearly. At its center is the castle, which since its expansion into a “senior citizens’ residence” is once again clearly visible as a three-winged complex. The industrial areas are no less characteristic of modern Kirchheimbolanden.
The immediate vicinity of the A-63 gives the economy here further opportunities for growth. The industrial and commercial “active areas” in the north-east, east and south of the city are the decisive basis for further development.
