Approximately 20 miles west of Würzburg, Külsheim lies in the midst of forested hills and cultivated fields on the edge of the Odenwald forest and above the valley of the small but historically and culturally important Tauber River, today of touristic importance as well. Külsheim is situated between the somewhat larger towns of Tauberbischofsheim (some 8 miles away) and Wertheim (about 10 miles distant) in what has come to be the county of Main-Tauber (the Tauber flows into the much larger Main River at Wertheim). Throughout later medieval times, Külsheim had been under the rule of the state of Mainz, to Külsheim’s northwest, and under the electoral prince-bishop of Mainz, who during several epochs was ex officio chancellor of the Holy Roman empire of the German nation. The Tauber River Valley was the scene of intense military conflict both in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1525 and in the War of German Unification in 1866.
The region shows evidence of continuous settlement from the younger Stone Age on (4000-1800 B.C.). The oldest settlement documented here is by that people associated with ceramics decorated with spirals ("Bandkeramiker"), who, some 3000 years before Christ, had followed the Danube westwards from southeastern Europe into what became Austria and Germany. They were followed at some later point in time by an Indogermanic group from the Asian Plains, a people characterized today by their unique battle-axes and their ornamented ceramics ("steitaxtleute"/"Schnurkeramiker"), mixing with smaller groups from Spain and France (Michaelsberg culture) just at the end of the Stone Age. For the Bronze Age (1800-750 B.C), there are remains of the Urn-fields People, a more agrarian, less pastoral people from Europe’s Northeast, who seem to have risen to a position of dominance. Roman occupation seems to have ended less than 10 miles southwest of Külsheim; admirers of the Romans might want to say that Külsheim was just outside civilization. The forms of the village and church names - Cullesheim and St. Martin - point to early settlement by the Franks from the West (thus, ?Franconia”), who were pushing back the expansion of the Alemanni towards the south of Germany. Catholics from the late 5th century on, the Franks brought with them the Christianization of the area.
The oldest surviving, written reference to Külsheim is from 1144: "Cullesheim" seems to refer to the village belonging to the extended family of a certain "Culo", about whom, however, we know nothing beyond that. How long the village had been called Cullesheim prior to 1144 is also unknown. In 1144 the name of the village is cited in connection with "Oddo de Cullesheim", apparently its lord then, whose line is mentioned only some three times that we know of in the next seventy years: an indication that Oddo’s house was not especially prominent. Mainz would increasingly gain control of Külsheim from the 13th century on, the same century in which Külsheim was granted the status of a city (1292). The new rights accorded a city meant that it citizens were freed from serfdom and given certain commercial liberties. Despite the widespread persecutions of Jews during the last decade of the 13th century ("Rindfleisch pogroms"), the "city" also began to attract a small Jewish population, probably never more than some 250 persons. No records about the details of the life of this particular Jewish community seem to predate the late 18th century, when a synagoge and quarters for a rabbi were erected. Many of the Jewish families were involved in the trading of livestock; a few had small stores for shoes or wool. When from the late 19th century changes of residence were allowed, most of the Jewish population left for larger cities or foreign countries. By the time of the national-socialist takeover in 1933, only some 36 Jewish citizens still remained in Külsheim. Though they immediately came under increasing pressure, especially with the prohibition of Jewish businesses, the violence escalated in 1938 with and following the so-called "Reichskristallnacht" in November). At least sixteen more Jews had emigrated by 1940; still others moved during this time to German cities. The some thirteen Jews who remained in Külsheim were all deported to the Gurs concentration camp in the French Pyrenees beginning in the night of 21/22 October 1940; at least six more former residents of Külsheim were also deported to Gurs. Fifteen of these nineteen Jews still or recently from Külsheim would be murdered as a result of this operation. In this so-called "Wagner-Bürckel-operation", some 6000 Jews were arrested from all across Baden, 94 of them originally from smaller communities in the region, including Külsheim and Grünsfeld (also Tauberbischofsheim, Dertingen, Freudenberg, Impfingen, Königheim, Messelhausen, Wenkheim, and Wertheim). Under National Socialism, some 40 Jews who were still or had been associated with Külsheim were murdered; of these, only two had been born in the 20th century. For the most part, those murdered were those too old and too poor to flee. The families with several dead included the names Adler, Bruckheimer, Bär, Baum, Hahn, Reichert, Scheuer and Strauß.
The passionate religiosity of the area is evident in the many carved works still to be found here by Tilman Riemenschneider († 1531) and in various reminders of the violent revolution (1476) preached not quite fifty years prior to the Peasants' Revolt (1525) at nearby Niklashausen by the heretical Marian visionary, John Böhm (known as Hans, the piper, or also the drummer, of Niklashausen). Just three or four miles from Külsheim, the abbey of Bronnbach was one of the first Cistercian monasteries built on German soil. Mainz kept Külsheim relatively free from the ever threatening political, ecclesiastical and economic dominance of these Cistercians, but also later from the dominance of the Reformation. The citizens of Külsheim had participated in the Peasants’ Revolt in 1525, occupying the castle at Külsheim; they were subdued by Mainz and its allies. Tilly wintered some of the Catholic troops in Külsheim once during the Thirty Years War. The hysterical, transconfessional, religious and civil prosecution of supposed witches in the early days of modernity reached Külsheim between 1611 and 1617.
The Napoleonic invasion ended the rule by the bishops of Mainz and Würzburg, bringing Külsheim in 1803 under the princes of Leiningen and then in 1806 into the Grand Duchy of Baden. The "Kulturkampf" of liberal states against the Catholic Church, which would be carried on under Prussian dominance in the 1870’s, had already been begun here in the last years of the still independent Duchy of Baden in the 1860’s.
This brief historical background explains the pleasant style of spoken German typical in Külsheim today: basically a Rhein-Franconian dialect, but with Hessian (Mainz) and Swabian (Baden) colorings. It is hard not to like someone immediately who speaks it well.
According to a study on the revolution of 1848, published on the Internet in the year 2000 by the University of Freiburg, the town of Külsheim belonged in 1852 – twenty years before Rosa's departure – under the regional administrative jurisdiction of Tauberbischofsheim (BA Tauberbischofsheim) to the county, Unterrhein. At that time, Külsheim had a total of:
1935 registered inhabitants
461 Families
2 Protestants
1703 Catholics
230 Jews
917 Men
1018 Women
340 full citizens of the town, Külsheim.
Given the poverty, wars and emigration (interrelated realities) of the time, the population would likely have sunk by 1872. In 1866, one of the decisive battles of the War of Unification was lost by the forces of Baden and their allies at the neighboring village of Hundheim. The subsequent housing of the victorious Prussian troops in Külsheim and environs, with its concomitant requisition of the cattle and other large animals needed otherwise for milk, meat, and plowing, deepened the already systemic poverty of the town. In fact, the statistics that were reported for 1871 record the total population down by 100 persons from 20 years before, now down to 1835 inhabitants, composed of 898 men and 937 women.
In the year 2000, the town was the main part of the now wider community which today is designated by the name, Külsheim, located in the county of Main-Tauber under the regional administration of Stuttgart. It belongs today to the federal state of Baden-Wurttemberg. Granted already in the 13th century the official status of a "city"(with its right to build an inner-city wall with a fortified castle †the technical sense of "city"- at the center of the surrounding houses or "sub-urban" dwellings), today’s political community of Külsheim, even including five surrounding villages (Eiersheim, Hundheim, Steinbach, Steinfurt, and Uissigheim) but after the 2006 closing of the military base for a tank garrison, still has only somewhat over 5200 inhabitants.
Both the region and the town itself are lovely: the rolling hills, half in agriculture, half in woods; the Odenwald forest and, across the Main River, its Bavarian counterpart, the Spessart forest; the red sandstone buildings (the colored sandstone is the deepest level of the "Germanic trias" of red sandstone, then calcium, and finally surface clay that is the geological legacy of the Triassic era in Europe); the medium-dry to dry white wine and the vineyards; the brooks; the rivers; the churches, large, medium, and small, those visible from afar and the chapels and grottos that surprise you around the next turn of the path. The spoken dialect ("Taubergruendisch") is an attractive species of Ostfranconian family of dialects with Hessian and Swabian colorings (corresponding closely to the geological divide between red sandstone Franconia and light-grey limestone Franconia); it is hard not to like someone instinctively and immediately who speaks this dialect well. Still, the people aren't as easy-going as in the less hilly and more prosperous area of Lower Franconia; rather, they are a bit more feisty, open to the mystical and the revolutionary. (they more quickly see red and not just greys). Calculation is not their everything, as there had often been little by way of the opportunities wealthier areas tend to calculate about.
Until relatively recently, the town was laced with small canals, at most a yard or so wide, fed by natural springs. Although the canals were replaced in the 1950’s by underground storm-drains to channel and control the fast-moving spring water (which nowadays can be heard gushing through the drains beneath the streets), the town is still known today as the ?city of fountains”. One of the loveliest of these several fountains forms the official logo of the city, The fountain portrayed in the town’s logo could be well described by the short, but well-known German poem of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer about a fountain at St. Peter's Square in Rome:
The Roman Fountain
Up shoots the stream that falling fills
The circle of the marble case,
Which covers itself, then overflows
Into the second pool’s base.
The second, too, becomes too rich:
It pours into the last.
And each dish takes and gives at once.
Each streams and rests.
Külsheim is also respected today for its considerable production of wine, especially the semi-dry to dry white wine of the appellation, "Hoher Herrgott" (literally, the "High Lord God", named for an unusual sandstone crucifix with two cross-bars - Caravaca style - up on one of the vineyard hills). The red sandstone of the region is also evident in the medieval and modern architecture of the town and much of the surrounding area; notably, Külsheim’s still surviving castle fortification and its large Roman Catholic church of St. Martin are made of such sandstone, as are many simple walls, barns, and houses.
The front or street-side edge of the Adelmann family’s house-and-barn ensemble in the Boxhagel neighborhood of Külsheim was built over one of the small canals. One of Rosa’s daughters, Hilda, recalled that her mother had said something about the house’s having been surrounded by a water ditch; this canal on the street-side is what Rosa had referred to. Until the canalization of the 1950’s, children, adolescents, and occasionally even intoxicated adults made sport of the house, jumping up and down on the bridge over the canal on the outer barn side, out of the sight of those in the house, but with the effect of making the whole ensemble shake.
After the departure of the Adelmann family, the Schoeller house belonged first to the Seitz family (their earlier neighbors), then to the Grimmer family. At some point, perhaps in the 1950’s, the original house-with-barn was demolished. It had stood on the spot situated later between the homes of Eberhard Geiger und Berthold Wolpert.