Dackenheim

Dackenheim 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 along the northernmost stretch of the German Wine Route. Dackenheim lies in the foothills between the Palatinate Forest and the Upper Rhine Plain. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Freinsheim, whose seat is in the like-named town.ClimateYearly precipitation in Dackenheim amounts to 534 mm, which is very low, falling into the lowest tenth of the precipitation chart for all Germany. Only at 8% of the German Weather Service’s weather stations are even lower figures recorded. The driest month is January. The most rainfall comes in May. In that month, precipitation is 1.9 times what it is in January. Precipitation otherwise hardly varies over the year. At 32% of the weather stations, lower seasonal swings are recorded.HistoryAs the Dackenheim golf course was being built in 1998, witnesses to prehistory were unearthed in the shape of potsherds, which were identified as being from the Rössen culture (4700-4500 BC), leading to the inference that Dackenheim, like the neighbouring town of Freinsheim, might have been settled as early as the New Stone Age. Another find in 1952, with a sandstone human head, might be from the Bronze Age. It can now be found in the Historisches Museum der Pfalz (“Historical Museum of the Palatinate”).