Gau-Bickelheim
Template:Infobox German location Gau-Bickelheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Geography
Location
Gau-Bickelheim lies south of the Wißberg (mountain) in the Rheinhessisches Hügelland (Rhenish-Hessian Uplands).
Politics
Municipal council
The council is made up of 16 council members, who were elected at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.
The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:[1]
| CDU | WG Gau-Bickelh. | WG Erbenich | Gesamt | |
| 2009 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 16 seats |
Mayor
Gau-Bickelheim's mayor is Jürgen Vollmer (WG Gau-Bickelheim).
Coat of arms
The municipality's arms might be described thus: Per fess abased argent three pickaxes palewise in fess, the middle one abased, gules, and gules a wheel spoked of six of the first.
The pickaxes are a canting charge: “Pickaxe” is Pickel in German, which sounds rather like the second and third syllables of the municipality's name, Gau-Bickelheim. The escutcheon's base contains the Wheel of Mainz, an historical symbol of Electoral Mainz.[2]
Town partnerships
Culture and sightseeing
Buildings
- Pfarrkirche St. Martin (“Saint Martin’s Parish Church”)[3]
- Kreuzkapelle (“Cross Chapel”)
Economy and infrastructure
Transport
Running through the municipality is Bundesstraße 420. Running nearby from northwest to southeast is the Autobahn A 61. The Gau-Bickelheim interchange (Nr. 52) is not right on Bundesstraße 420, but rather, it can be reached over Bundesstraße 50. The interchange itself is rather a sprawling one and looks somewhat like a half cloverleaf. This came about because the original plan called for there to be an interchange between the A 60 and the A 61 here.[4] In the mid 1990s, an off-highway service centre was built nearby.
Gau-Bickelheim has at its disposal a railway station on the Rheinhessenbahn.
Public institutions
- Gau-Bickelheim highway police station[5]
Notable people
- The writer Arno Schmidt lived for a short while in Gau-Bickelheim after the Second World War as an Umsiedler (member of a mass migration). The municipality is mentioned in passing at the beginning of the narrative Schwarze Spiegel (“Black Mirrors”). The narrative Die Umsiedler gives this time a literary treatment.
References
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