Gau-Algesheim, Germany

Under financial pressure, Gau-Algesheim was pledged to the Baden Margraves. The Margrave himself then further pledged it in 1461, and the villages of Dromersheim, Gau-Bickelheim, Ockenheim, Windesheim, Kempten, Münster and Büdesheim to the financially strong Count Philipp I, Count of Katzenelnbogen. Under him, the term Wein vom Gau, meaning “Wine from the Gau (or Region)”, was coined. As Philipp died in 1479 without a male heir, Gau-Algesheim ended up involved in the Katzenelnbogen succession dispute.

“Living well under the crozier” was not something that held true at all times. Often domestic or foreign armies would sweep through the town bringing war's attendant burdens and havoc, for instance, in 1248 during the struggles between Emperor Frederick II's and King William II's troops, in 1553 in the war of Protestant princely opposition to Emperor Charles V, in 1631 when Swedish King Gustav II Adolf's troops burnt much of the town down, or 1690, 1733 and 1792, when French soldiers burnt or seized Gau-Algesheim.

Even the two conferrals of town rights, the one in 1332 at Elector of Mainz Baldwin of Luxembourg's request by Emperor Louis the Bavarian and the one in 1355 by King Charles IV in support of the Archbishop of Mainz, were primarily motivated by political and military considerations and were only secondarily meant to further the towsfolk's security and well-being. Nevertheless, there arose a weekly market and a wine market along with a healthy number of craftsmen and businessmen with the urban life then creating supply and demand for regular markets.

At the same time, a great many financial pledges and the mention of a Jewish head tax point to rather a high demand for cash and business. Eventually, for over 400 years, from the latter half of the 14th century until the end of the Old Empire, there arose the Amt of Algesheim under the governance of Amtmänner, Landschreiber, Amtskeller (all titles for various officials) and Schultheißen (roughly “sheriffs”) of the Mainz overlords.

The overlords’ might, already demonstrated in the municipal law of 15 July 1417, was keenly felt by Gau-Algesheim when Elector Albrecht of Brandenburg put an end to efforts to secure self-administration for the town by issuing the state law of 3 January 1527 because the town had taken part in the “Rheingau Uprising” in 1525, and released “unser stadt Algeßheym von unserm landt dem Ringgaw” (“our town Algesheim from our land, the Rheingau”, in archaic German), cutting the town off from the Rheingau, supposedly in perpetuity. Alongside this, pictures of the town, cadastral plans and village descriptions from cartographer Gottfried Mascop's 1577 atlas, the 1590 and 1668 village descriptions and the 1595 Police Law give impressions of the extent to which, and within what bounds of administrative structures the small farming town's social and economic life, and also the townsfolk's self-awareness and self-will developed.

From 1797 to 1815, Gau-Algesheim, along with the whole of the territory on the Rhine's left bank, belonged to the French Republic or the Napoleonic Empire. In the person of scientist, engineer and officer Rudolf Eickemeyer, who was from 1811 to 1813 and again from 1814 to 1815 the maire and from 1815 to 1822 the Bürgermeister (“mayor” in French and German respectively), Gau-Algesheim had a personal continuity from the time of French rule on into Hessian times. Eickemeyer gave the community a modern shape by reforming fire control, restructuring finances, expanding the town's building work, and furthering schooling and agriculture.

The town's growing importance found expression in the institution of a notary's office (1809), the building of the Ludwigsbahn (Mainz-Bingen railway) with a station (1859), the building of a postal depot (1861) out of which grew postal shipping and a post office, and in Georg Presser's (1862) and the Avenarius Brothers’ (1869) first factories.

The traces left in Gau-Algesheim by the Catholic priest Peter Koser from 1869 to 1890 are still apparent today. The Rheinischer Volksbote (“Rhenish Messenger”), first published by the printer Reidel in 1869 and under Father Koser's editorship, was for decades a regionally important organ of the Catholic Centre Party. A teacher preparation institute (an institution that prepared students for teacher's college), known to locals as the Lateinschul (“Latin School”) or the Aljesemer Hochschul (“Algesheim College”, in dialectal German), a childcare centre, a credit and savings union on a coöperative basis, a farmers’ and consumers’ association, and not least of all the newly built Catholic parish church and the establishment of church music in 1888 confirm Peter Koser's religious and sociopolitical contributions in a time of political and ideological struggles.