Gau-Bickelheim

Gau-Bickelheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

Geography

Location

Gau-Bickelheim lies south of the Wißberg (mountain) in the Rheinhessisches Hügelland (Rhenish-Hessian Uplands).

Politics

Municipal council

The council is made up of 16 council members, who were elected at the municipal election held on 7 June 2009, and the honorary mayor as chairman.

The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:

Mayor

Gau-Bickelheim’s mayor is Friedrich Janz (CDU).

Coat of arms

The municipality’s arms might be described thus: Per fess abased argent three pickaxes palewise in fess, the middle one abased, gules, and gules a wheel spoked of six of the first.

The pickaxes are a canting charge: “Pickaxe” is Pickel in German, which sounds rather like the second and third syllables of the municipality’s name, Gau-Bickelheim. The escutcheon’s base contains the Wheel of Mainz, an historical symbol of Electoral Mainz.