The placename ending —heim (cognate with English home) suggests that Dackenheim might have been founded about 600, at the time when the Franks were taking the land.

Clear clues as to settlement in Merovingian times come from grave goods unearthed in 1910 in the rural cadastral area “In den 24 Morgen”, and others brought to light in 1976 in the field “Am Liebesbrunnen”.

The village had its first documentary mention on 22 November 766 in the acts of Lorsch Abbey (document 1143) as Donatio Nantheri in Dagastisheim (Nanther's donation in Dackenheim).

In the wake of the Mainz Monasterial Feud – also known as the Baden-Palatinate War – (1461–1462) and after Margarethe von Leiningen-Westerburg's death, Dackenheim passed in 1471 to Electoral Palatinate.

[3] The German blazon reads: In Rot auf grünem Grund nebeneinander, je in goldener Kleidung mit goldener Krone und silberner Gloriole, rechts die Gottesmutter mit dem Kind auf dem rechten Arm, links die heilige Katharina, in der Rechten ein gesenktes silbernes Schwert mit goldenem Knauf und einem zerbrochenen roten Rad zu ihren Füßen, oben zwischen den Kronen und Gloriolen ein sechsstrahliger goldener Stern.

Dackenheim's arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Gules on a mount vert, both vested, crined and crowned Or and nimbed argent, dexter Mary Mother of God holding the Christ Child on her dexter arm and sinister Saint Catherine, in her dexter hand a sword proper palewise, point on the mount, her sinister arm embowed, at their feet on the mount, surmounting the sword, a broken half wheel spoked of four of the field, in chief between the two crowns and nimbi a mullet of the third.

[4] The centre of this village that grew together from five monastic estates in the 12th century is its Catholic parish church St. Maria (“Saint Mary’s”).

The nave was renovated in the 18th and 19th centuries, at which time a relief of the Fall of Man from an earlier church building – possibly from the Tympanon Portal – was integrated into the gable.

In the single-nave interior, the chancel columns with their richly decorated capitals (palmettes, heads, seated figures) are likewise still Romanesque.

The complex is in a league with seven others in Frankfurt Rhine Main Region, the Palatinate and the Saarland as part of the so-called Rotationsgolf concept of the Mannheim golf course designer and investor Dr. Hermann Weiland.

One main street leads from Bundesstraße 271 (the German Wine Route “proper”) through the middle of the village and by the church, and onwards another 3 km to Freinsheim.