Dorn-Dürkheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

Geography

Location

Dorn-Dürkheim lies between Mainz and Worms, in the “Heart of Rhenish Hesse”. The municipality belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Rhein-Selz.

History

In 767, Dorn-Dürkheim had its first documentary mention in a document from the Lorsch Abbey. The municipality belonged from the 10th to 12th century to the Bishopric of Worms and passed thereafter as a fief to the Lords of Bolanden. Assigned to the Oberamt of Alzey beginning in 1457, Dorn-Dürkheim was temporarily occupied by the French, before the community, along with the whole province of Rhenish Hesse passed to the Grand Duchy of Hesse. In 1897, Dorn-Dürkheim acquired a railway link on the Osthofen–Gau-Odernheim line. Since the Second World War, Dorn-Dürkheim has belonged to the newly founded federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, at first in the Alzey-Worms district. The municipality was incorporated into the Verbandsgemeinde of Guntersblum in 1972 and was also assigned to the Mainz-Bingen district.

Politics

Municipal council

The council is made up of 13 council members, counting the part-time mayor, with seats apportioned thus: (as at municipal election held on 13 June 2004)

Coat of arms

The municipality's arms might be described thus: Per fess sable a demi-lion rampant Or armed, langued and crowned gules, and azure a crozier from base issuant, the crook ending in a rose argent.

Economy and infrastructure

Transport

The nearest Autobahn interchange is Biebelnheim on the A 63, some 10 km away.

Palaeontology

In 1972, one of Europe's richest mammalian fossil fields was discovered through pedological investigation at Dorn-Dürkheim, with many species from the Miocene. In an oxbow of the ancient Rhine bone and tooth fragments were recovered from more than 70 mammalian species, among others sabre-toothed cats, hyenas, tapirs, muntjacs, dwarf deer, forest antelopes, forerunners of today's horses, and proboscideans from the time about 8.5 million years ago