page_title: Dirmstein
section_title: Baroque era
hierarchical_section_title: Dirmstein / History / Chronicle / Baroque era
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ortsplan von Dirmstein aus dem Jahr 1746, Aufnahme durch Ortsbürgermeister Jürgen Schwerdt, Freigabe (GNU-Lizenz) gem. Mail vom 28.04.2006 an Benutzer:Mundartpoet
context_page_description: 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 thirdlargest Ortsgemeinde in the Verbandsgemeinde of Leiningerland, 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.
context_section_description: In the course of the Baroque era, a considerable community once more grew out of the two original centres, the "Upper" and "Lower Villages". One of this era’s most important persons was Baron Marsilius Franz Sturmfeder von Oppenweiler (1674–1744), Caspar Lerch’s second daughter’s grandson. Having earned hostility for his wasteful running of the estate and his debts, he became legendary for his years-long quarrel with the authorities. He had his alleged success immortalized in 1738 on Castle Sturmfeder’s gateway, the Michelstor – along with many inscriptions – in the form of a sculpture of a victorious struggle over the devil, which according to contemporaries bears the then mayor’s facial features. Above the gate’s side entrance, a stone chimera has also been placed. The last bearer of the family name died in 1901.
  Dirmstein has the interdenominational coöperation between the Catholic Prince-Bishop of Worms and the Protestant Elector, which happened despite an end being put to the condominium, to thank for its famous simultaneous church, St. Laurentius (Saint Lawrence’s). With this church building in the mid-18th century began a phase of prosperity for the village that lasted a good hundred years. From 1780 to 1801, only a century after the inferno of the Nine Years' War, Dirmstein, according to various sources, was even awarded town rights.
  A social problem grew out of the short-lived running of a stoneware factory that existed from 1778 to 1788 in the middle of the Upper Village. There, the Bishopric of Worms was having "Dirmstein Faïence" made from the white clay that came from the Bishopric’s own stripmine near today’s Hettenleidelheim in the northeast Palatinate Forest, a product whose now few preserved examples are sought-after in collectors’ circles. As early as 1779, a few months after production began, the then mayor, Johann Michael Graeff, schemed against the factory head and ceramics expert Johann Carl Vogelmann, casting false accusations his way, whereupon Vogelmann’s belongings were withheld as he, along with his wife and seven children, was hounded out of the village. Graeff took the banished former head’s job at the factory, but was such a dilettante when it came to running the business that in 1782, the Bishopric unseated him. Under Graeff’s successors, though, the business never did recover, leading to the 20- to 30-strong workforce’s impoverishment, culminating in strike-like events. Further reasons given for ending the project were the cumbersome carting of the raw materials over some 25 km and the distribution difficulties with the finished products in the face of the many customs duties.
caption: Upper Village 1746: contemporary map, south is at top
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