Old town hall
The former seat of the local administration is affectionately called Old Town Hall by the people of Harxheim.
The local administration is now located in modern premises in Bahnhofstraße, but the old location continues to be of great importance for community and club life.
The building in Mainzer Straße 6 – affectionately called Old Town Hall by the people of Harxheim – was probably built in the first half of the 18th century partly in half-timbering 1). Until 1972 it served as the town hall or municipal administration.
The Old Town Hall ca. 1935, in front left the gate to the storage room of the fire department trailer
Image source: 75th anniversary of the Harxheim Volunteer Fire Department, commemorative publication 2002
The old municipal administration on a photo in the commemorative publication for the 1200th anniversary of the village in 1967
Image source: Festschrift 1967: 1200 years of winegrowing community Harxheim
After that, the municipal administration moved to the old school (Mainzer Straße 28), which became vacant after the new elementary school in Gau-Bischofsheim was put into operation in the 1972/73 school year.
In 1972, the municipality of Bodenheim was also formed, so that almost at the same time as the administration moved to the old school, some of the municipal administrative tasks were also transferred from the local municipality of Harxheim to the municipality of Bodenheim.
Since 2019, the local community administration of Harxheim is located in the new community center at Bahnhofstraße 38.
The sign of the mayoralty of Harxheim in the Volksstaat Hessen – after the First World War it hung here (today it hangs in the new community center in Bahnhofstraße)
Image source: Siegfried Schäfer
From 1958 – i.e. since Heinrich Brehm took over the mayor’s office – until 1972 couples were married in the old town hall by the local mayor. Prior to that, local mayors had conducted their official business, including marriage ceremonies, from their residences. Since the founding of the municipality of Bodenheim, the registry office has been located in Bodenheim.
The building at Mainzer Straße 6 remained the property of the local community after the administration moved away. It was first converted into a medical practice and in 1973 the first general practitioner in Harxheim, Dr. Atassi, settled here. In 1989 the practice, by then headed by the physician Dr. Baumann, moved to Bahnhofstraße. After that, the rooms in the old town hall were used for the care of kindergarten children. Starting in 1999, there was an Internet café on the upper floor for several years. Many Harxheimers familiarized themselves here with the Internet, which was still a very new topic at the time. Even today, the premises are gladly used for club and community purposes.
In addition to the local administration, the volunteer fire department was also housed at Mainzer Straße 6. Initially, it had only one room accessible from the west gable end, where a fire trailer was stored. When a fire broke out, he was driven to the scene of the fire. In the 1930s, one of the first automobiles in the village, the Opel Olympia of the Fritzsch family, was used for this purpose. From 1970 onwards, there was an enclosed hall behind the building in what is now the courtyard; this housed the fleet of fire engines, which in the meantime had grown to three. The room in the building now served as a workshop. In 1987, the fire department moved to its new location on Bahnhof Street.
The Old Town Hall before the renovation with fire station, photo from 1987
Image source: Ralf Buchert
The shield of the Harxheim local court with the coat of arms of Rhineland-Palatinate
Image source: Ernst-Ludwig Happel
In the early 1990s, the building was extensively restored. The front entrance has been removed and the second floor truss now appears exposed. In the rear part of the yard was built an annex, which houses a kitchen. As an old town hall, the building embodies much of the identity of the village. So it is also fitting that the Harxheim coat of arms hangs on the front.
Across from the old town hall at Gaustraße 2, by the way, sovereign tasks were also performed until 1972. Here used to be the agricultural farm of Johann Ludwig Happel II, where the Harxheim local court was located. The duties of the local court were performed by Johann Ludwig Happel II – partly together with other members of the local court. This included certifications of signatures and transcripts, but also securing estates as needed before accepting inheritances or assisting in the establishment and maintenance of property boundaries.
Local courts were originally introduced in Rhenish Hesse by the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1899, having previously existed in the other Hessian provinces of Upper Hesse and Starkenburg. After the Second World War, the local courts in Rheinhessen continued to exist for several decades. Today, Hesse is the only federal state in which there are local courts as auxiliary authorities of the judiciary.
Even in earlier centuries, when Harxheim belonged to the county of Falkenstein, there was a local court here. Old court seals testify to this. The court seal from 1636 even forms the template for our current local coat of arms.
References:
1) The chronological assignment comes from Rüdiger Gottwald, a passionate Harxheim local historian, and was confirmed by the architect Ralf Buchert. At the beginning of the 1990s, the building was restored under his direction and the half-timbering was exposed in the process. This allowed conclusions to be drawn about the presumed date of construction.
Krienke, Dieter (2011): Verbandsgemeinden Bodenheim, Guntersblum and Nieder-Olm. . .
Reßler, Tanja (2017): Economic Center “Alt Hashem”. In: Ortgemeinde Harxheim (Hrsg.): Festbuch 2017. Harxheim. Eintausendzweihundertfünfzig. Selzen. S. 129 – 143.
Local Court, 2021, in Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ortsgericht&oldid=207408377
