Sankt Goar - History

History

The area around what is now the town of Sankt Goar was already settled in Roman times. The name in the Early Middle Ages was Wochara, after a short brook emptying into the Rhine here.

The name by which the town goes today is from Goar of Aquitaine, who came to live on the site where the town now stands during Frankish, Merovingian King Childebert I’s reign (511-538). Goar came as a young clergyman (actually, a monk) from Aquitaine in the southwest of France and at first lived as a hermit in a cave on the Rhine. With leave from the Bishop of Trier, he worked as a missionary to the local people. He was well known for his great hospitality, particularly towards the Rhine boatmen. Later, he built on the site where the town now stands a hospice and a chapel. Many legends gathered about him. After his death, about 575, Goar’s grave became a pilgrimage site and the place was named after him. Frankish King Pepin the Younger transferred the hospice and chapel in 765 to the Abbot of the Benedictine Prüm Abbey as a personal benefice. From this grew the Sankt Goar Canonical Foundation, witnessed as early as the late 11th century.

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that “a small church” was dedicated to Goar of Aquitaine in 1768 “in the little town on the banks of the Rhine which bears his name (St. Goar).” It is also reported that Charlemagne built a church over the site of Goar’s hermitage. It is around this church that the town of Sankt Goar grew on the left bank of the Rhine between Wesel and Boppard.

Beginning in 1190, the town was under military protection and the jurisdiction of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen, the monastery Vögte, who had taken ownership. In 1245, Count Diether V of Katzenelnbogen built the castle, Burg Rheinfels. When the last of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen died in 1479, Sankt Goar passed to the Landgraviate of Hesse. On 1 November 1527, Adam Krafft, who would later be a professor of theology, began to introduce the Reformation on a mission from Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. In 1567, upon Philip’s death, the Landgraviate of Hesse was divided among his four sons. His youngest son, Philip II, Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels, was awarded the Lower County of Katzenelnbogen, and thereby the castle and the town. In 1580, 175 people in Sankt Goar fell victim to the Plague; only 18 years later, in 1598, it claimed another 142. In 1635, in the midst of the Thirty Years' War, more than 200 people died in another outbreak. In 1598, Franz Schmoll built the Rheinfels-Apotheke in Sankt Goar, only the third apothecary in Hesse, after the ones in Kassel and Marburg.

As a result of a longstanding dispute between Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt over the partitioning of the Landgraviate of Hesse, the latter had Burg Rheinfels and Sankt Goar besieged for several weeks in the summer of 1626 with help from Imperial troops. which eventually led to the town’s capitulation and its attendant plundering by Spanish troops. Between 1626 and 1647, Sankt Goar belonged to Hesse-Darmstadt. In 1647, troops of Landgravine Amalie Elisabeth of Hesse-Kassel conquered the castle and the town. On 14 April 1648, George II, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt ceded the Lower County of Katzenelnbogen along with Sankt Goar “in perpetuity” to Hesse-Kassel.

While Hesse-Kassel was under Imperial law the rightful landholder, lordship over the Lower County of Katzenelnbogen passed to Landgrave Ernst I, who on 30 March 1649 made his entrance into Sankt Goar and founded the Hesse-Rheinfels(-Rotenburg) line. Landgrave Ernst ruled until his death in 1693 at Burg Rheinfels, his comital residence, as one who was tolerant in matters of religion, and one who took great interest in his office, contributing considerably to Sankt Goar’s economic growth, something the town sorely needed after the ravages that it had sustained in the Thirty Years' War. In the Nine Years' War (known in Germany as the Pfälzischer Erbfolgekrieg, or War of the Palatine Succession), however, the town and the castle lay under siege yet again, this time by 28,000 French troops. Despite attempts at storming the town, they could not penetrate its defences. In 1711, after a dispute over inheritance, Landgrave William of Hesse-Wanfried was awarded the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rheinfels; he then called himself William of Hesse-Rheinfels. The Emperor transferred the castle to him in 1718. In 1731, Christian of Hessen-Wanfried (known since 1711 as Hessen-Eschwege) inherited the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rheinfels along with the castle. The castle was ceded to Hesse-Kassel for good in 1735. In 1755, after Christian’s death, the Landgraviate passed to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rotenburg. In 1794, the castle was given up to French Revolutionary troops without a fight, and in 1796 and 1797, great parts of it were blown up. French rule lasted until 1813.

In 1815, the castle passed into Prussian hands and Sankt Goar became a district seat. After the First World War, the town was for a while once again occupied by the French. The Second World War, too, came to Sankt Goar. In mid March 1945, American troops reached the town and occupied it, although occupational authority was transferred, once again, to the French in early July. Since 1946, Sankt Goar has been part of the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate. In the course of administrative restructuring in Rhineland-Palatinate, the district of Sankt Goar, whose seat the town had been, was dissolved in 1969 and the town was grouped into the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis, whose seat was in Simmern. In 1972, the town also became part of the Verbandsgemeinde of Sankt Goar-Oberwesel.