Wolfstein, Rhineland-Palatinate
Wolfstein was founded in 1275 on Habsburg King Rudolph I's orders, which called for a “fortified and free” town near his castle, “Woluisstein”, now known as the "Alt-Wolfstein" (“Old Wolfstein”) ruin. Rudolph forthwith granted the new town the same town rights and freedoms as the town of Speyer. As an “everlasting marketplace”, it was to be a sanctuary for commerce, trade and dealing. The first townsmen and -women came from the surrounding, much older villages.
Dorsheim
As archaeological finds show, the lands around what is now Dorsheim were settled quite early on. From the Old Stone Age (100,000–10,000 BC) comes a whole series of various artefacts, which are now in private ownership. Known to be from the New Stone Age (4000–1800 BC) are a great many small hatchets and points, the 12 flint blades from the hoard on the street “Am Rebstock” and Rössen finds (ceramic) from the countryside lying east of Dorsheim. Unearthed from the Hallstatt times that followed have been all kinds of bronze rings from former barrows on the Dorsheim Heath, as well as ceramics from not only the Hallstatt culture but also the Urnfield culture and the Hunsrück-Eifel culture, once again in the countryside lying east of Dorsheim. Roman finds (3rd century AD) have come to light at two sites in the municipality. Various archaeological objects that have been found are now in museums in Bad Kreuznach, Mainz, Bonn and Berlin, although many are in private ownership. It can be said with certainty that Dorsheim was one of the villages founded in Frankish times (500–750), bearing witness to which are finds from Merovingian graves unearthed right near the community centre. On 30 March 1349, Dorsheim had its first documentary mention in a document issued by Count Palatine Ruprecht. For almost 650 years, Dorsheim was a Comital-Palatine or Electoral Palatinate village. It is therefore not surprising that the main charge in the municipality’s coat of arms is the Palatine lion. From 1796 to 1814, the village lay under French rule, first Revolutionary French, and later Napoleonic. Dorsheim lay within the Department of Rhin-et-Moselle. After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the region passed to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1815. After the municipality had celebrated its 600th anniversary in 1986 based on the first mention of Dorsheim in documents from 1386, Dorsheim citizen Herrmann Gellweiler delved deeper into the local history and discovered that Dorsheim had already been mentioned in previous documentation from a few decades earlier, in 1349. Too late, the erratum was put to the commemorative plate made for the “600th anniversary” that depicted Count Palatine Ruprecht making a gift of a vineyard in the “Dorsheimer Berg” to his daughter Else. After the new information came to light, Dorsheim was able to mark its 650th anniversary in 1999 based on the now oldest documentation only 13 years after the 600th anniversary.