Monsheim

Monsheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Monsheim lies in the southern Wonnegau in Rhenish Hesse on the river Pfrimm, which rises in the southern Donnersbergkreis and empties into the Rhine at Worms, which is roughly 10 km from the municipality. It is also the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Monsheim. The Pfrimm valley has long been settled. In the Monsheim municipal area there have been many archaeological finds. Important are the finds made in the rural area known as Hinkelstein. Here, in 1866, while a field was being cleared to make way for a vineyard, a burial ground was discovered. Originally standing here was a menhir some 2 m tall, known in the local speech as the Hinkelstein; this is now kept in the Monsheim Castle grounds. The discovery was investigated by the Mainz prehistorian Ludwig Lindenschmit the Elder (1809–1893) who described it in 1868. The Worms physician and prehistorian Karl Koehl (1847–1929) put forth the name “Hinkelstein type” as a description for the culture whose artifacts had been unearthed in Monsheim, and today the term “Hinkelstein culture” is customary.