Lochheim

Lochheim is a Wüstung, a deserted medieval village, on the northwestern edge of Sandhausen near Heidelberg. It sits on a flat, sandy ridge at the southern edge of the Neckar's alluvial cone, in the northern Upper Rhine lowlands. The Leimbach and Landgraben streams run past to the north. To the south rise broad dune fields of the Pflege Schönau forest, which include the nature reserve Sandhausener Düne, Pflege Schönau-Galgenbuckel.

Ceramics from the ridge show people living here from the seventh century onwards. The first secure written mention dates from 1131, though a church consecration of 1061 may already point to the place. Between 1196 and 1198 Schönau Monastery acquired the village and turned it into a Grangie, a monastic farm. The church came down in 1208, the final step in turning the settlement into farmland. Schönau's estate managers appear in the records until 1245, and farming carried on into the fifteenth century. The Cistercians did the same to other villages in the region, often moving their inhabitants to neighbouring settlements. In the early and high Middle Ages the area also processed silver ore brought in from Wiesloch.

The site came back to light in 1993. Students from the Sandhausen Gymnasium, led by Manfred Löscher, then walked the fields and picked up ceramics spanning the seventh to the fifteenth centuries. Aerial photographs reveal the outlines of several house plots, a small hall church and a lowland castle with water-filled moats. Nothing of the settlement stands above ground today. The clearest trace is a street name: both Sandhausen and the Heidelberg district of Kirchheim have a Lochheimer Straße.