Bad Sobernheim
This old, charming
health resort
with its wonderfully restored downtown area, is the only Felke-bath in Germany.
Bad Sobernheim lies in a widening of the Nahe valley, between Martinstein
in the west, and the
Disibodenberg
to the east. It borders on the north by the mountain cliffs of the
Soonwald region
and in the south by the range of hills between Meisenheim and Kirn, a branch
of the Westrich. The character of the area's vegetation comes from the mild,
rather dry climate. It is no wonder that Bad Sobernheim is surrounded by vineyards,
which are considered to have one of the best locations along the Nahe.
Among the many things to discover is the
Matthias Church
(St. Matthew) with its famous Stumm organ and the new stained glass
windows, designed by Georg Meistermann. There are also two late medieval
chapels, the city hall, built in the year 1535 (remodelled in 1860 and again
in 1970), numerous old courtyards, as well as patrician and middle class houses,
including the "House with the little oriel" from 1614/1622. All these make the
town especially attractive.
Would you like to take a little stroll through the town?
Bad Sobernheim received its town charter for the first time in 1292 (once again in 1324,
and for the last time in 1330, renewed in 1857) and only began to grow beyond its medieval
town walls around the middle of the last century. In addition to the beautiful half-timbered
facades in the area of the old town centre, there are also some very unique and unusual
things to see in the outskirts of the town. In the Nightingale Valley, on the other side
of the Nahe, you can visit an open-air museum in which you
can see typical farms and all the important types of houses that have been found all over
Rhineland-Pfalz over the past centuries and have largely disappeared from our consciousness
today. According to the concept of the museum, farmhouses, farmsteads with stables and barns,
workshops of various craftsmen, residential buildings and community centres are naturally
combined here to form a self-contained village ("museum villages"), supplemented by numerous
smaller objects such as village fountains, rural chapels, way crosses and the stone benches
that were so typical for the region. Or you can take the 3.5km long
barefoot path "under your feet", which starts at the spring
pavilion and leads as a circular path along both sides of the Nahe - without shoes and
stockings of course.
The winegrowing village of Steinhardt, which belongs to Bad Sobernheim, was 35 million
years ago, in the Oligocene era, on the edge of a shallow
subtropical sea whose coastline ran along the Kreuznach Basin and Staudernheim Bay. The
sand mined in the Steinhardt sand pits dates from this period. This sand contains the
famous "Steinhardt Erbsen" (Erbsen=peas): round, pea-shaped, sometimes slightly elongated
sandstone spheres, which often contain plant and animal fossils. Shape and size of the
sandstone spheres often indicate the enclosed fossil (up to 17cm long spruce cones have
been found!). Since the sea in the Middle Oligocene had initially retreated by raising
the Upper Rhine Graben, and after a renewed lowering it advanced west again to Bad Sobernheim,
two layers of sand can be distinguished here: the "lower" and the "upper" sea sand. In
the deeper area there are the Steinhardt Erbsen with maritime fossils, while in the
sandstone spheres of the upper area mainly plant remains are enclosed, especially conifer
cones, mostly of larches, pines and spruces. Two species of snails can also be found in
the upper sea sand. The Steinhardt Erbsen were probably formed near the shore in warm,
barium chloride-bearing thermal baths, which obviously only existed in the Steinhardt
region. The plants and animals decaying in the immediate vicinity of such thermal baths
formed hydrogen sulphide, which reacted with the barium chloride of the thermal baths
to barite, whereby the sand around the fossils was enclosed and fossilized.