Battenberg (officially Battenberg (Pfalz)) is an ''Ortsgemeinde'' – a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

belonging to a ''

Verbandsgemeinde A (; plural ) is a low-level administrative division, administrative unit in the Germany, German States of Germany, federal states of Brandenburg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt. A is typically composed of a small group of Municipalitie ...

'', a kind of collective municipality – in the

Bad Dürkheim Bad Dürkheim () is a spa town in the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration. It is the seat of the Bad Dürkheim (district), Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, and the site of the discovery of the element caesium, in 1860. Geogra ...

district in

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Geography

Location

The municipality lies in the

Rhine-Neckar The Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region (, ), often referred to as the Rhein-Neckar Triangle, is a polycentric Metropolitan regions in Germany, metropolitan region located in south western Germany, between the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main region to the nor ...

urban agglomeration on the seam between the

Haardt The Haardt () is a range of wooded, sandstone hills in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in southwestern Germany. The range is some long and lies within the Palatinate Forest (''Pfälzerwald''). Its highest point is the Kalmit, near Maikammer ...

and the

Upper Rhine Plain The Upper Rhine Plain, Rhine Rift Valley or Upper Rhine Graben ( German: ''Oberrheinische Tiefebene'', ''Oberrheinisches Tiefland'' or ''Oberrheingraben'', French: ''Vallée du Rhin'') is a major rift, about and on average , between Basel in the ...

. Standing together 300 m above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...

, high above the river Eckbach's banks are the small village and the like-named castle, Burg Battenberg, to the east. Battenberg belongs to the ''Verbandsgemeinde'' of Leiningerland, formed in 2018, whose seat is in

Grünstadt Grünstadt () is a town in the Bad Dürkheim (district), Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with roughly 13,200 inhabitants. It does not belong to any ''Verbandsgemeinde'' – a kind of collective municipality – but is noneth ...

, although that town is itself not in the ''Verbandsgemeinde''.

History

Battenberg Castle Battenberg Castle () is a castle ruin near Battenberg in the county of Bad Dürkheim in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Location The castle stands on a foothill of the Haardt range of sandstone hills which rises abruptly from the ...

, which was owned since the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

by the Counts of Leiningen, to whom belonged the ''Leiningerland'', controlled together with the other castle across the dale to the north (1 400 m away

as the crow flies The expression ''as the crow flies'' is an idiom for the most direct path between two points. Etymology The meaning of the expression is attested from the early 19th century, and appeared in the Charles Dickens novel ''Oliver Twist'' (1838): ...

Neuleiningen Castle Neuleiningen Castle is a ruin on the eastern edge of the Palatinate Forest in the States of Germany, state of Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany in the Municipalities of Germany, municipality of Neuleiningen in the Bad Dürkheim (district), Bad D ...

, the entrance to the valley, the Eckbach valley. On 7 September 1966, the municipality was given the epithet “(Pfalz)”. Until 1969, the municipality belonged to the now abolished district of Frankenthal (''Landkreis Frankenthal'').

Politics

Municipal council

The council is made up of 8 council members, who were elected by

majority vote A majority is more than half of a total; however, the term is commonly used with other meanings, as explained in the "#Related terms, Related terms" section below. It is a subset of a Set (mathematics), set consisting of more than half of the se ...

at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman. Kommunalwahl Rheinland-Pfalz 2009, Gemeinderat
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Coat of arms

The municipality's

arms Arms or ARMS may refer to: *Arm or arms, the upper limbs of the body Arm, Arms, or ARMS may also refer to: People * Ida A. T. Arms (1856–1931), American missionary-educator, temperance leader Coat of arms or weapons *Armaments or weapons **Fi ...

might be described thus: Per fess azure an eagle displayed wings elevated argent armed and langued gules, and argent a greyhound courant sinister sable. Battenberg's arms developed out of the link between the Counts of Leiningen and

Murbach Abbey Murbach Abbey () was a famous Benedictine monastery in Murbach, southern Alsace, in a valley at the foot of the Grand Ballon in the Vosges. The monastery was founded in 727 by Eberhard, Count of Alsace, and established as a Benedictine house ...

Alsace Alsace (, ; ) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,9 ...

. The “greyhound” here is called the “Hound of Murbach” in the German blazon.

References

External links

Municipality’s official webpage

Private webpage about Battenberg

Battenberg in the collective municipality’s Web pages
Bad Dürkheim (district) Palatinate (region) {{BadDürkheim-geo-stub