Dirmstein

Dirmstein is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. With its roughly 3,000 inhabitants, it is the biggest Ortsgemeinde in the Verbandsgemeinde of Grünstadt-Land, whose seat is in Grünstadt, although that town is itself not in the Verbandsgemeinde. Dirmstein lies in the outermost northeast of the district and the northwest of the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration.In the 8th century, Dirmstein had its first documentary mention, although this was undated. The first dated documentary mention came in 842. Although it never belonged to the Counts of Leiningen, it is today counted as part of the Leiningerland, the name used for those noblemen’s old domain. The historical and well restored village centre has been raised to a monumental zone by the monument protection authority. Of the 58 protected objects, 48 lie within this zone. With few exceptions, they go back, like the village’s foremost landmark, the Baroque simultaneous church St. Laurentius (Saint Lawrence’s), to the municipality’s heyday in the 18th century, towards the end of which Dirmstein apparently held town rights for two decades, although some sources are disputed.GeographyLocationDirmstein lies at an elevation of 108 m above sea level on the Upper Rhine Plain in the northeast Palatinate. Twelve kilometres to the east (as the crow flies) flows the Rhine, while 9 km to the west begins the Palatinate Forest and 2 km to the north runs the boundary with the neighbouring region, Rhenish Hesse.