Bergholtz

Geography

Located halfway between Colmar and Mulhouse (23km of Mulhouse and 25km of Colmar), with the outlet of the valley of Guebwiller, Bergholtz leans with the under-Vosgean hills limestones (Schwartzberg), while opening largely in the east on the Rhenish plain by a low loess like terrace which offers excellent arable lands. The village developed along two perpendicular ways, one connecting it to Guebwiller while following the line of change of incline between plain and hill, the other ensuring the outlet towards the plain of the localities of the ditch of Orschwihr.
The name of Bergholtz (compound of Berg, mountain and Holtz, wood) seems to indicate that the village drew its first resources from the exploitation of the forest which was to cover Schwartzberg (“black Mountain”). However the exposed slopes had to be early converted into vineyard. At the 18th century, the wine of Bergholtz was famous. After a continuous backward flow since the end of the 19th century, largely due to the industrialization of the valley of Guebwiller, agriculture found in the last decades of 20th unquestionable dynamism (see the data of INSEE).

History

There is no document on the origins of Bergholtz which always seems to have belonged to the territorial seigniory of the Abbaye of Murbach. There are traces of a family of ministériaux of the abbey which took the name of the village; these Bergholtz had to die out at the 15th century, since sees some in 1456 the abbot Murbach to engage their castle with Conrad of Hungerstein. At the end of the 17th century, it belonged to Pierre Simon, former baillif of the lieu.
The burrow of the abbey drawn up in 1550 gives to this castle the name of “Wamschturm” and describes it like having “house, turn, carries and forecourt”. Schoepflin, at the 18th century, says to us that there remains about it still “a square tower built out of stones of size”. In 1789, the peasants descended from their mountain ransacked the goods of the abbey with Guebwiller and Lautenbach; the inhabitants of Bergholtz made like them and left of Wamschturm only one unimportant hillock now planted vines.
Old descriptions and the form of the piece or not suggest a rather primitive castle, composed of a keep, built on a mound, in the center of an enclosure circular having a forecourt and surrounded by a ditch. The traces of this castle can be compared with the mound of Oststein, in the common neighbor of Issenheim. In both cases, we would have sentinels of Murbach, with the limits of its territory on the side of the plain.

The house dîmière of the abbey, partially of XVIe century, exists still, transformed into farm. The church, in the same way belonged to the abbey (the first known priest with Bergholtz appears in a document of 1207). In the middle of the 18th century, when the frenzy of new buildings seized the canons, one demolishes the old church of the place and the prince-abbot Casimir de Rathsamhausen came itself, on March 5th, 1759, to pose the first stone of a new sanctuary dedicated to Saint Gall. Furniture was renewed and, mainly, there still remains.

The old cemetery was abandoned. In 1901, one discovered there eleven decorated sarcophagi which aroused a great interest in the local scholars, more especially as Felix Wolf, the conservative of the Historic buildings who had taken the excavation in hand, dated them from the time caroligienne. They since, with more probability, were allotted to the 11th century. Those which remain are dispersed in the museums of the area.

Administration

Demography

Places and monuments

Personalities related to the commune

See too

Common of Haut-Rhin

External bonds

Bergholtz on the site of the Community of Communes of the Area of Guebwiller
Site of the Community of Communes of the Area of Guebwiller
Bergholtz on the site of the national geographical Institute
Bergholtz on the site of INSEE
Bergholtz on the site of Quid
Localization of Bergholtz on a chart of France and communes bordering
Plane on Bergholtz on Mapquest
* Satellite sight of Bergholtz on maps.google

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