Kreuznach

Kreuznach (Creuznach), a town and watering-place of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, situated on the Nahe, a tributary of the Rhine, 9 m. by rail S. of Bingerbrück. Pop. (1900), 21,321. It consists of the old town on the right bank of the river, the new town on the left, and the Bade Insel (bath island), connected by a fine stone bridge. The town has two Evangelical and three Roman Catholic churches, a gymnasium, a commercial school and a hospital. There is a collection of Roman and medieval antiquities, among which is preserved a fine Roman mosaic discovered in 1893. On the Bade Insel is the Kurhaus (1872) and also the chief spring, the Elisabethquelle, impregnated with iodine and bromine, and prescribed for scrofulous, bronchial and rheumatic disorders. The chief industries are marble-polishing and the manufacture of leather, glass and tobacco. Vines are cultivated on the neighbouring hills, and there is a trade in wine and corn.

The earliest mention of the springs of Kreuznach occurs in 1478, but it was only in the early part of the 19th century that Dr Prieger, to whom there is a statue in the town, brought them into prominence. Now the annual number of visitors amounts to several thousands. Kreuznach was evidently a Roman town, as the ruins of a Roman fortification, the Heidenmauer, and various antiquities have been found in its immediate neighbourhood. In the 9th century it was known as Cruciniacum, and it had a palace of the Carolingian kings. In 1065 the emperor Henry IV. presented it to the bishopric of Spires; in the 13th century it obtained civic privileges and passed to the counts of Sponheim; in 1416 it became part of the Palatinate. The town was ceded to Prussia in 1814. In 1689 the French reduced the strong castle of Kauzenberg to the ruin which now stands on a hill above Kreuznach.