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The various Mainz city coats of arms in the town hall, starting with Ebersheim at the bottom and doubtlessly ending up with Gonsenheim (with a halo) at the top.

The city fathers of Mainz are a voracious bunch.

Not satisfied with merely running the city itself, they have a long history of snaffling up surrounding villages and then hyphenating them onto the city.

By the beginning of the last century, they’d grabbed 3 (dating back to the 13th C even) and didn’t even bother with the hyphenation.

That started in earnest in 1907 with Mombach and continued without a break until 1938 when they swallowed Gonsenheim, the undisputed jewel in the crown.

1945. No steps forward, 5 steps back
Amöneberg, Kastel and Kostheim, located on the American side of the Rhine, are grabbed by Wiesbaden (although this lot still maintains that it’s a temporary administrative blip….) and Bischofsheim and Ginsheim-Gustavsburg were shifted to Groß-Gerau.

Then 1969. Big gobble gobble gobble

Drais, Ebersheim, Finthen, Hechtsheim, Laubenheim, Marienborn all get swallowed.

Legend has it that they made a play for Klein-Winternheim a couple of years later (closer to Mainz than Ebersheim, in fact), but abandoned the idea when they realised that they’d have to hyphenate an already hyphenated village.

There’s evidently a “hyphen limitation” statute on the books somewhere….

07 Sep This entry was published on 7 September, 2010 at 11:00. It’s filed under Mainz and tagged History, Klein-Winternheim. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.