The 20 Pipe Well''Bockenheim: Cruising the northern end of the German Wine Road''
at www.stripes.com. Retrieved 30 Mar 2014. (german: 20-Röhren-Brunnen) is a

water well A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. Th ...

in the

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...

village of

Altleiningen Altleiningen is an ''Ortsgemeinde'' – a municipality belonging to a ''Verbandsgemeinde'', a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Geography Location The municipality lies at an e ...

in the northeast of the Palatinate Forest. The well was probably driven around 1600 and was used originally to supply

drinking water Drinking water is water that is used in drink or food preparation; potable water is water that is safe to be used as drinking water. The amount of drinking water required to maintain good health varies, and depends on physical activity level, a ...

to Altleiningen Castle on the hill above. Its present design dates to 1855.

Geography

In the vicinity of the well is the Eckbach stream, which has its own source four kilometres upstream and is a left

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...

of the

River Rhine ), Surselva, Graubünden, Switzerland , source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , source2 = Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein , source2_location = Paradies Glacier, Graubünden, Switzerland , source2_coordinates= , sourc ...

. It picks up the water from the 20 Pipe Well, which today supplies the greatest amount of water to the stream. Running past the fountain is the 23-kilometre-long Eckbach Mill Path, which begins at the source of the Eckbach in Hertlingshausen and follows it downstream to

Dirmstein Dirmstein ( pfl, Dermschdää) is an ''Ortsgemeinde'' – a municipality belonging to a ''Verbandsgemeinde'', a kind of collective municipality – in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. With its roughly 3,000 inhabitants, ...

in the

Upper Rhine Plain The Upper Rhine Plain, Rhine Rift Valley or Upper Rhine Graben (German: ''Oberrheinische Tiefebene'', ''Oberrheinisches Tiefland'' or ''Oberrheingraben'', French: ''Vallée du Rhin'') is a major rift, about and on average , between Basel in the s ...

Layout

The well is fed by the strongest fracture spring (''Spaltenquelle'') in the Palatinate. The water rises from a

fracture Fracture is the separation of an object or material into two or more pieces under the action of stress. The fracture of a solid usually occurs due to the development of certain displacement discontinuity surfaces within the solid. If a displa ...

and is initially impounded into two large well chambers before being pouring out of 20 parallel pipes. The amount of water is controlled by a system of impounding the

ground water Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated ...

which was very well thought through for its day. – Link corrected 5 August 2012 Above the well is a

protected Protection is any measure taken to guard a thing against damage caused by outside forces. Protection can be provided to physical objects, including organisms, to systems, and to intangible things like civil and political rights. Although th ...

inscription tablet of sandstone dating to 1855, when the well was given its present appearance; it was also rebuilt in the 1980s, undergoing a thorough renovation including some new components. The inscription is an imaginary dialogue between the walker (W) and the well (B): : ''Siehe, Wanderer:'' : ''Gottes Brünnlein hat Wasser die Fülle!'' : W.: ''Ja, Brünnlein, du hast Wassers die Füll;'' : ''Gibst Jedem zu trinken, der da will.'' : B.: ''Der reiche Gott hat mirs gegeben;'' : ''Machs mir nur nach, so wirst du leben!'' : W.: ''Was bleibt dann aber mir zuletzt?'' : B.: ''Ein Wasser, das ewig dich ergötzt.'' ...which, translated, means: : ''See, walker:'' : ''God's little spring is overflowing with water!'' : W.: ''Yes, little spring, you're full of water;'' : ''Give it to everyone who wants some, so they may drink.'' : B.: ''God, who is generous, gave it to me;'' : ''Just do the same and you will live!'' : W.: ''So what, then, will I have in the end?'' : B.: ''A kind of water that fills you for ever.''

History

The well was built at the behest of the counts of Leiningen in order to improve the water supply to their family seat, the castle of Altleiningen, and to ensure a permanent supply. There are no records of the exact year of construction, but historians estimate that it dates to around 1600.

References

Literature

* {{DEFAULTSORT:20-Pipe Well Water wells Heritage sites in Rhineland-Palatinate Palatinate Forest Buildings and structures in Bad Dürkheim (district) S20PipeWell