The commune is located in a moderate seismicity zone.[7]
Hydrography
The commune is located in the Rhine catchment area within the Rhine-Meuse basin. It is drained by the Seltzbach stream, the Froeschwillerbach stream and the Sumpfgraben stream.[8]
The Seltzbach, which is 33 km long, rises in the commune of Gœrsdorf and flows into the Sauer at Seltz, after passing through 14 communes.[9]
For the period 1971-2000, the average annual temperature was 10.6°C, with an annual temperature range of 17.8°C. The average cumulative annual rainfall is 820 mm, with 10.6 days of precipitation in January and 10.2 days in July. For the period 1991-2020, the average annual temperature recorded at the nearest Météo-France weather station, ‘Preuschdorf’, in the commune of Preuschdorf, 4 km away as the crow flies[11], is 11.3°C, and the average annual total rainfall is 834.2 mm. The maximum temperature recorded at this station is 39.8°C, reached on 4 July 2015; the minimum temperature is -19.9°C, reached on 8 January 1985.[12][13]
The commune's climate parameters have been estimated for the middle of the century (2041-2070) according to different greenhouse gas emissionscenarios based on the new DRIAS-2020 reference climate projections.[14] They can be consulted on a dedicated website published by Météo-France in November 2022.[15]
Commune member of the Sauer-Pechelbronn community of communes.
Town planning
Typology
As of 1 January 2024, Kutzenhausen is classified as a rural town, according to the new seven-level communal density grid defined by INSEE in 2022.[17] It is located outside an urban unit. The commune is also part of the Haguenau catchment area, of which it is an outlying commune. This area, which includes 34 communes, is categorised as having between 50,000 and less than 200,000 inhabitants.[18][19]
Land use
The commune's land use, as revealed by the European biophysical land cover database Corine Land Cover (CLC), is characterised by the importance of agricultural land (67.7% in 2018), a proportion roughly equivalent to that of 1990 (68.5%). The detailed breakdown in 2018 is as follows: arable land (56.3%), forests (23.7%), urbanised areas (8.7%), grassland (6.3%), permanent crops (5%).[20] The evolution of land use in the commune and its infrastructure can be seen on the various cartographic representations of the area: the Cassini map (18th century), the staff map (1820-1866) and the IGN maps or aerial photos for the current period (1950 to the present).[Map 1]
Map of infrastructure and land use in the commune in 2018 (Corine Land Cover).
Commune covered by the Pechelbronn inter-municipal local planning scheme.[21]
Toponymy
From Goten hause, a possession of the nearby abbey of Wissembourg; another Kutzenhausen was located near Drusenheim and probably owes its name to the former abbey of Arnulfsau. In the past, the abbeys were also called Goten hause, an old form spelt Chuzichusi.
History
The municipality of Kutzenhausen originated from the former bailliage[22] and, at the beginning of the 19th century, included the towns of Niederkutzenhausen and Feldbach, now the village of Kutzenhausen, Oberkutzenhausen, Merkwiller and Hoelschloch.[23][24] In 1888, these two districts formed the new commune of Merkwiller, and Kutzenhausen was transferred from the arrondissement of Wissembourg to the arrondissement of Haguenau-Wissembourg on 1 January 2015.
In France, the first oil wells (mainly oil sands) were sunk in Kutzenhausen. Oil production, together with a refinery, continued until the 1970s.
Heraldry
Coat of arms
Quarterly:
First quarter: A gold field with a black saltire
Second quarter: A green field with a gold sheaf of wheat
Third quarter: A green field with three silver bars
Fourth quarter: A black field with a gold ploughshare positioned diagonally (bend sinister) with the point facing upward
Protestant church[31], rue de l'église[32], built between 1763 and 1765, used alternately by Protestants and Catholics until a Catholic church was built in 1905.
The former synagogue[43][44]. Destroyed in 1940 by the Hitlerjugend, the youth wing of the Nazi party, it was destroyed in 1957 because it was in danger of collapsing.
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