I would like to pass on a brief history of the village Hayna, repeating what I found in (and translated from) a book called, "Hayna, the History of a Tobacco-village", by Christian Schüler, published in 1994 by the Historical Landmark Preservation Society of Rheinland-Pfalz. My thoughts and doubts are enclosed in parentheses.

The history of Hayna has to begin in 1057, when the Salic Emperor, Henry IV, made a gift of five large properties to the Bishop of Speyer. Among these was a property on which the village of Herxheim was found. (There was a quote in the yearbook of the Bishopric saying that Henry loved Speyer the best of all his possessions. By the way, the history of the Bishopric of Speyer can be traced accurately back to Bishop Hilderich who was named to the post on 614 AD. We are talking some history here!)

Herxheim developed into a thriving small town, and had its own church. In 1213 the Bishop Conrad von Scharfenburg, with the permission of the Pope Innocent III founded the Domkantorei ( this is a singing school which provides the music for the Cathedral.) He bequeathed to the Domkantor the church at Herxheim as a perpetual benefit, which meant that the tithes and other income from the church went to support the school (and the Domkantor, of course).

In a document from 1272, in which the incomes of the newly elected Bishop Friedrich von Bolanden are confirmed, mention is made that "the newly cleared fields of Hayna and Hatzenbühl, belonging to the parish of the church in Herxeheim, and like that church, owe their tithes and other fees to the Domkantorei", from which we can assume that the villages were ordered to be founded by the Bishop of Speyer sometime in the middle of the 13th Century.

A look at figure 1. shows a small village laid out along a single road, the farmyards laid next to each other, and the fields stretching out behind them. This drawing is from the 1830's, but there is no real evidence to indicate that anything has greatly changed in the 700 years of its existence. There are no Bronze Age finds, as in some areas nearby, and nothing from the Dark Ages. It seems convincing to argue that this village was planned, and the forest cleared, fields plowed and houses and barns built - and families moved in and began a history.

(And what a history! Well, we'll get to that directly.)

The village was a "Kings-village", one of eight in the area. This meant that some of the people in the village were "King's people", and belonged to the King (later to the Elector, as the ruler came to be known), owing him taxes and duties, but being able to move from one King's village to the next without paying the usual fees. The other people in the village belonged to the Bishop of Speyer. They had to pay what was called "the large tithe" to the Domkantor, and "the small tithe" to the priest of their own village church, which was dedicated to St. Michael. In addition, they had to pay many other fees and taxes, similar to the English poll- tax, and a death-tax. They were also restricted in their freedom to marry and move to another place.

In the tax list from 1470 there were 33 houses inhabited by 44 grownups. The spiritual needs of the congregation were attended by a priest and a chaplain. Each had a house, and it was the obligation of the villagers to keep the houses, the church-tower, and the graveyard in good condition. There were either empty houses at that time, or many families only had one parent. When we take into account the fact that there was in 1460 a war between the Elector, Friedrich the First and his cousin, Louis of the Schwarzen, it is a sad, but not surprising situation.

In 1525 there was in the Holy Roman Empire a Peasants Uprising, inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther. A look at the list of the demands they presented to those in authority gives us an accurate picture of the desparate conditions under which the peasants (or serfs, which is what peasants were in those days) had to eke out a poor existence. They were willing to continue to pay the large tithe, but asked that excesses be used for the poor, and to help pay the war-taxes. They asked that the small tithe be done away wtih completely, and that the work that was required to be done for the lord be returned to earlier, lower levels. They also asked that they be allowed the right to hunt the wild animals and birds and to fish, as they had been allowed in earlier times. There should no longer be restrictions in using the common fields and meadows, and no more fees for collecting wood to burn, or building wood from the forests. As far as their rights, the peasants asked that their serfdom should be ended, although they would be prepared to swear allegiance to the lord, and they wished a return to the old, written punishments, instead of the courts making their own punishments. And finally, they were no longer willing to pay the death-tax.

(Sounds a lot like the story of Robin-Hood, doesn't it? Too bad there was no hero helping these people out.) On the 23rd of April, 1525 a group of Pfalzer Bauern (farmers) got together and put these articles to the Bishop. He, like all the other lords all over, refused. The peasants rampaged and pillaged the Bishop's castle at Jockgrim, but on June 23/24, they were beaten by the soldiers of the Elector, Louis the Fifth, at Pfeddersheim, and all hope of change was lost. In July the authorities from the villages had to appear before the Bishop and ask his apology, swear anew allegiance, and pay fines, of course. The fines were set at a limit the peasants could pay. But all the old taxes and fees still had to be paid as before And the restrictions remained.

The census in 1530 reports 33 houses inhabited by 52 grownups and 85 children. The children's mortality rate back then was 66% who died before reaching the age of one. (Sheesh.)

From the record of the church elders in 1544-1548, we see that they sold everything they could to get enough money to support the priest. They sold the grass that grew in the graveyard, and willow wands cut from the hedge that grew next to the priest's house. But it wasn't enough to support the priest, and he wished to leave. Since they had already lost the chaplain, this would mean the end of their own parish church (they would have to walk to the church in another village for everything). They wrote to the Domkantor and asked for his help. But we don't know what the answer was.

This was in 1585, and shows how desperate the situation had become for Hayna. The letter also includes the information that the village had lost its right to graze cattle and horse in the Insheim Forest, with the result that there were only a few cows and horses in the village. This meant that there was not enough manure to fertilize the fields. It was at this time that a Fund for the Poor was created in the town, which was perhaps able to help the poorest, until it was auctioned off in the secularization following the French Revolution in 1797. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Here in 1585, we see the peasants of Hayna, poor and burdened with taxes, entering the 17th Century, which, with its wars and pests, would bring so much suffering to the Pfalz.

(The Thirty Years War, the war between the Protestant and Catholic rulers in Europe is a complicated story, which I would rather not have to explain, even if I could! Suffice to say that Spanish troops, and against them French troops, and then Swedish troops, who with the French were again defeated - all, all were in the Pfalz, needing provisions, looting, killing, doing all those things that give soldiers a bad name - and doing it to our ancestors. Especially in 1636.) In that year a great band of Croatian mercenaries is recorded as having fallen upon Hatzenbühl, spreading the pest, as well as destruction. It is hard to imagine that Hayna would have been passed by unharmed by such a horde.

At this point I would like to briefly relate a legend that has been told for many generations in Hayna, which cannot be true, because the village has never been anywhere but where it is now. (At least, according to the book from which I am translating this.) Nevertheless the story is told that "when the news of the Croatians reached the village, seven families fled to the nearby woods and hid until the Croatians had done their worst. When they returned to the village, which back then was located in Klein-Hayna, they found the entire village burned to the ground and the blackened bodies of the other villagers, murdered by the mercenaries, in the still smoldering ruins. They buried the bodies in a mass grave, to prevent them being taken by the wolves. The seven families decided to abandon the now eerie site and move further west to present-day Hayna to begin anew. In time the old gravestones of the old village were used to build the new houses, for example, that of the priest." (I have recently been reading in a book about the history of Hatzenbühl, which was wiped out by that attack of the Croatians, and lay in ruins for over thirty years. I suspect that this story is actually about Hatzenbühl, which appears to have originally been situated in the Klein-Hayna, which is a depression that lies halfway between the present-day villages.)

Well, even if that story isn't true, the Thirty Year's War did have a destructive effect on Hayna, as this quote from the beginning of the 1700's shows, "The village of Hayna was totally ruined in the Thirty Years War, and its population almost wiped out. The fields are overgrown with trees and bushes. It was a long time before a few families resettled." But this resettlement did not begin until after the end of the war (in 1648) and then progressed very slowly.

The new bishop, Lothar Friedrich, Freiherr von Metternich, elected in 1652 issued a public call for refugees to return to their homes and for foreigners to come and settle near Speyer. This call was repeated in 1660 and apparently had an effect. In 1667 Hayna had 77 inhabitants again of whom a third came from somewhere else.

Unfortunately this positive development did not last very long. Louis XIV of France declared war on the Elector of the Pfalz in 1673 and the Pfalz once again became the scene of battles and pillaging. Listen to this shocking report from the bishop written January 9, 1679. "The town of Lauterburg, and the villages around there are in such a desolate and pitiful state, that the people don't even have anything to wear, some have run away and those who remain do not even have bread to eat." That this description also applied to Hayna can be seen in the fact that at that time there were only 7 households left.

Even though the whole area at this time was at its economic nadir, France, who was at the zenith of its power, annexed the Pfalz as far east as the Rhine. The bishop was allowed to keep a few of his rights and privileges as well as the income and the authority in his territory, but the territorial rights went to the French king as well as the additional taxes. He didn't get much from this land which had been bled dry. In 1682 Hayna couldn't even produce the large tithe.

At the beginning of the 1700's (1701-1714), during the Spanish War of Succession, the Emperor Leopold and the French king Louis XIV were fighting for the Spanish throne. In 1702 Landau was occupied by the imperial troops and after that changed hands no less than four times. One can imagine what effect this had on the surrounding villages.

In spite of this, Hayna began to bloom. As we can see on the building inscriptions on the half-timbered houses that line the street in Hayna today, most of them were built in the first twenty years of the 18th century. Near the church is the oldest house, built in 1701. In 1709, 1711, 1714, 1716, and 1717 (when Peter Winstel built the Winstel house Winstel street), further houses were built near the church. In 1715 the church itself was made higher and longer. In 1722 the church was already too small and they tore down the old church from the Middle Ages and built a new one, that was consecrated on the 29th of September 1722. With the consecration, the name was changed from the patron Saint Nicolaus to Holy Cross. In 1750, 550 people were living in Hayna. In 1530 remember, there were 137 people.

At this time the priest, Johann Kasimir Kelle, began to keep a church book just for Hayna and Hatzenbühl. After the destruction and anarchy of the preceding 100 years, he provided spiritual guidance and raised the morale of the villages, helping them to consolidate and motivating them to build new churches. In 1785 the parish of Hayna became independent from Hatzenbühl. Anton Werner was named the first priest and in 1790 they built him a new house which still stands across from the church. When the National Convention of revolutionary France declared the end of feudalism in August 1789, this also applied to the area which was controlled by the Bishop of Speyer, but ruled by France. This meant that in Hayna serfdom, the nobles' hunting rights, the powers of the bishop, all kinds of fees and other taxes, as well as the "large tithe" came to an end.

In 1797 the entire west of the Rhine belonged incontestably to France and the fund for the poor mentioned aboved, which was 7 1/8 acres of farmland, was auctioned off. So that the income would still available to the poor, a citizen of Hayna, Jakob Gutenbacker, bought the field and continued to donate its income to the poor.

In 1801, the Treaty of Lüneville confirmed that the lands taken by Napoleon did indeed belong to France. As part of this treaty, the Bishopric of Speyer ceased to exist. Hayna, as part of the French possesions, was switched to the Bishopric of Strasbourg, where it remained until 1817. In 1813, as the time of Napoleon's rule was drawing to a close, the citizens of Hayna collected money to build a new church, but had to wait until 1818 to get permission to build. By that time, the Pfalz belonged to Bavaria.

After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the French border was returned westward to the Lauter River, ending France's unofficial possesion of Hayna (and much of the Pfalz) since 1680, and the official possesion since 1801. At first, the Pfalz came under the jurisdiction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until, in 1816, it was given in an exchange to the Kingdom of Bavaria, where it would remain for a hundred years. (Which is why all those immigrants from the Pfalz say they are from Bavaria, and confuse their descendents!)

In 1820 the new church was finally built. And the population was growing. In 1811 there were 664, in 1822, 749, and by 1836 there were 866 people living there, made up of some 130 families. This is how it would remain with little change until the 1960's. A schoolhouse was built in 1824/25, the church expanded in 1862, the main street was paved in 1839, and in 1898, at the inn "Zum Kreuz" (at the cross or crossing) the first post office was opened.

In a report about an inspection tour on Sept. 14, 1856 (I'm not sure from whom!), comment is made on how wonderfully clean and ordered everything is. Hayna is called a model village, and its mayor, Herr Weigel, is praised for his leadership, and good example. It is around this time that Weigel, and others begin to grow tobacco, which would in time define the face of Hayna. Many of the tobacco-drying barns are still standing today with their typical appearance, tall and brown.

At this point my translation ends, because after this point in time, my Winstels left for America.

Carol Saint-Clair
December 1999
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