The Eisbach, locally known as die Eis, is a 38-kilometre (24 mi) long river and left or western tributary of the Rhine in the northeastern Palatinate and southeastern Rhenish Hesse, in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Below Ebertsheim, it receives the 5-kilometre (3.1 mi) long Seltenbach from the right and a few metres further, its largest tributary, the Rodenbach from the left.

Here, it receives up to 350 cubic metres (12,000 cu ft) per work day of waste water from the sugar beet processing plant Südzucker-Werk Offstein.

From this point onwards, the Eisbach is called Altbach ("old brook") and flows south of the Worms city centre, through the Bürgerweide ward.

Neolithic settlements were established at the Wormser Adlerberg, in Weinsheim, Horchheim, Wiesoppenheim, Albsheim an der Eis and Asselheim.

[2][3][4][5] The Wormser Adlerberg is a small eminence, piled up by the Eisbach, where the high ground which is secure from flooding, reaches right up to the banks of the Rhine.

The valleys of the Pfrimm and the Eis form natural corridors through the hills and were therefore important east-west routes from the Rhine through the Kaiserslautern Basin to Gaul even in prehistoric times.

[18][19] This road increased further in importance during the Merovingian era because it linked Metz, the capital of the eastern part of the empire, Austrasia, with the Upper Rhine region.

During the Saxon Wars, Charlemagne used Worms as an assembly area for his troops, because there, near the Palatinate, was sufficient room and plentiful supplies for large armies.

[20][21] Around 900, Eisbach is mentioned in the Wormser wall-building ordinance as one of the places that shared responsibility for maintaining the city wall of Worms.

[28][29] About fifty years later during the dispute over the throne between King Adolphus of Nassau and Duke Albert of Austria the decisive Battle of Göllheim took place.

[30] Dort fand er für seine Streitmacht, die auf etwa 5.000 Mann - vorwiegend Reiter - geschätzt wird,[31] on the fields by the Eisbach where there was extensive pasture.

[32] After King Adolphus had falle in the Battle of Göllheim on 2 July 1298, his victor, Albert of Austria, refused to let him be buried in Speyer Cathedral.

So Adolphus' body was initially interred in the Cistercian convent of Rosenthal, which lay left of the Eisbach on its tributary, the Rodenbach.

Whether the Stadtbach already existed in Roman times or was diverted during the Middle Ages from the original course of the Eisbach is still unclear today.

[35] The Stadtbach was first mentioned in 1016, when Bishop Burchard gifted three mills near St.Paulus[36] Immediately on the Eisbach, on the Rhine side of the Roman city wall,[37] lay the castle of the Salian dukes of Worms, which was demolished in 1002 in order to build St. Paul's on the same spot.

In the late 12th century the Stadtbach was owned in equal thirds by the churches of St.Paul, St.Martin and by several citizens of Worms who, sometime between 1198 and 1217, sold their share to Nonnenmünster Abbey (the Maria-Münster).

The state road, the Landesstraße 395, which runs through the valley from Grünstadt-Asselheim to Enkenbach, is closed for a whole Sunday to all motor traffice and is reserved exclusively for walkers, usually hikers, cyclists and inline skaters.